CONCEPT – Modern Firearms

First there were rocks, then rocks became spears, spears became arrows, arrows became bullets. Later rockets and lasers came along.

Since setting of the Universe of ELZA can be described as “80s-90s with access to advanced space travel technology”, it is a pretty logical to conclude that most firearms there are based on similar principals as their real life counterparts. Below is a brief breakdown of all hand held weapon classes that are used by technologically advanced human inhabitants of the Universe of ELZA.

Standard Projectile Weapons

These are the basic firearms fed with cartridges that usually include a casing, explosive compound similar to black powder, and a bullet. There are some exotic alternatives to this method though. For example, on Ekhaya colonists found a species of Bamba-Berries that when dried could easily explode after a modest concussion, providing a potent natural alternative to chemically produced explosives. Because of this “explosive” nature, SPW’s are pretty noisy, and produce waste like excessive gas and empty casings.

Despite all those shortcomings such personal weapon systems are so effective, cheap and reliable, that most military personnel, law enforcement and civilians are using SPW as their weapons of choice. When warfare outside planetary bounds became more prominent in human-inhabited space, a special class of projectile weapons has distinguished itself from the rest of SPW’s. These firearms have few mandatory design additions that make them well-adjusted for usage in airless weightlessness and extremely confined environments like spaceship interiors.

The Imperial Standard Multipurpose Assault Rifle sits somewhere in-between SPW and SGPW.

It meets most of the requirements like caseless ammunition, integrated suppressor and an advanced heat dispersion system.

The recoil of this weapon is not suppressed by any means though which makes it pretty hard to shoot without support in zero-G.

Later generations of Imperial personal weapons have addressed the latter issue.

Space-Grade Projectile Weapons

Extra-planetary military actions have provided a bunch of challenges to manufacturers of hand held weapons:

• Spaceship interiors were very susceptible for damage with empty casings.
• Narrow environments were a single shot could provide a mild concussion to everyone in the room.
• Air-cooled weapons tended to rapidly overheat in the vacuum during prolonged engagements.
• Last, but not least, recoil force from shooting a conventional weapon in zero-G could lead to unpredictable consequences for the user.

Design solutions that were created to address these problems include:

• Caseless ammunition – ammunition with special casings that are made of hard propellant and disintegrates completely when the shot is fired. While leaving no debris the downsides with that come with use of caseless ammunition are: lack of heat dispersion through ejected casings, residuals from propellant clogging the chamber and increasing need for frequent maintenance.
• Active cooling systems – designed to negate effects from lack of air that would naturally cull weapons and extended risk of overheating from use of caseless ammunition, there are multiple solutions for cooling down projectile weapons: detachable heat sinks are most commonly used to siphon heat from the barrel, liquid-based cooling systems do also exist, but are much less prominent because of their weight.
• Recoil dampeners – SGPW’s that use propellant to apply force on projectiles usually have mechanical systems in place that help to dampen or redirect the recoil and counteract the kick that follows the shot. Unfortunately, because of basic physics, these solutions are only partially effective, so all combatants are trained to anchor themselves somehow during firefights in zero-G. Some advanced military-grade spacesuits do also come with systems that counter force of weapon’s recoil through automatic use of spacesuit’s thrusters.

Aside from SGPW’s there are multiple alternative weapons that are increasingly used for space-based close quarters warfare. These include portable laser weapons and more exotic recoilless solutions like coil guns and rocket-based firing arrays.

Portable Laser Weapons

While being extremely energy hungry, Portable Laser Weapons are the perfect solution for the close quarters space warfare. A strong enough laser beam can easily burn holes inside a spacesuit or overheat body armor of enemy combatants while producing neither sound or recoil of a projectile weapon. Unfortunate downsides of these are:

• Non-instant effect on the target – a laser has to be pointed for some time at the armored target to produce any real harm.
• High energy requirements – while being smaller versions of spaceship-based laser weapons, PLW’s lack privilege of being connected to a vessel-based fusion reactor. It means that effectiveness of a Portable Laser Weapon is strictly limited by the size and weight of a battery their user can carry.
• Lack of physical force applied to the target – laser beam can be reflected or refracted by some materials making use of PLW’s limited against well-prepared targets and in some atmospheric- and weather conditions.

Despite these shortcomings, Portable Laser Weapons have found their avid users. For example, new weapons of the Imperial Hand include a built-in high frequency pulse lasers that can easily burn though clothes and permanently blind opposing combatants while being fed from a relatively small battery.

Exotic Projectile Weapons

Some hand held weapons are used so rarely that despite their differences they fall under a single umbrella classification of being “Exotic”. These weapons include, but not limited to:

• Magnetic-Operated Coil-Guns and Rail-Guns – these EPW’s use electrically charged magnets or coils to propel a metal slug towards its target. Because they happen to have shortcomings from PLW’s, but very little advantage against SPW’s, such weapons are very rare and only used for very specific orations.
• Sling-Operated Weapons – modern crossbows are used by some units for covert operation because of their completely silent operations and a huge variety of bolts. Limited impact force, range and firing speed makes them ineffective during standard military engagements.
• Compressed Gas-Operated Weapons – while having similar advantages as sling-operated weapons these are highly limited by the amount of compressed gas the operator can carry.
• Rocket-Propelled Portable Weapons – some units have experimented with portable arrays of smaller rockets that can automatically track and pursue a target. These cutting edge weapons have shown themselves to be extremely effective in space combat, but are very rare because of extremely high production cost and limited range of projectiles when fired in atmosphere of any kind. Still, larger versions of RPPW’s are frequently used against armored vehicles by all technologically advanced civilizations in human-inhabited space.

Notes

It’s important to mention that this article does not cover all hand held weapons that will ever appear in the Universe of ELZA, but it sheds a good light on logic behind most of them. Since it is a CONCEPT article, all feedback is welcome and appreciated! Link to the Discord Server below!