Chronicles of Sol: The Fall

While the Valorian Confederation has not engaged in a full-scale war in centuries, their fleets and ships are not without weapons. As even in peacetime, they need good weaponry to defend their precious trade routes from pirates and raiders. The Valorians unlike the Cathamari do not value brute force weapons solutions. Instead, they focused on producing a highly efficient, and cost-effective weapon that could easily be mass produced and supplied to their fleet cheaply. The result of this was the Plasma Pulse Cannon. A weapon that could easily be reconfigured to suit different roles, and was both cheap, and effective.

The Valorian pulse cannon is a surprisingly effective, and elegant weapon. It fires an ionic plasma pulse. This pulse begins life as inert plasma, which is superheated and imparted an ionization charge. A discreet amount of this plasma is injected into an acceleration chamber where electromagnetic coils accelerate it to c-fractional velocities. The exact speed depends on the model of the weapon with the heavier ship-to-ship varieties achieving speeds in excess of .8c.

The ionized plasma pulse exits the acceleration chamber at these high speeds and is wrapped in a low-level containment field. This field ensures the plasma bolt maintains integrity as it careens across space. The field does the job incredibly well giving these plasma pulses an impressive range. Not only that but the weapon actually supports a rather rapid fire rate, unfortunately, the containment bubble has a rather low integrity which limits the amount of plasma each bolt can contain. Furthermore, the plasma density of the projectiles is also rather low. As such while these weapons have great range, and possess a rapid firing speed it suffers from a rather low effective yield. Being a plasma weapon, its performance against armor is decent, but against powered armor, it suffers from extremely poor armor penetration. The weapon is however quite effective against shields and can bring shields down very quickly. It can also make short work of an unprotected hull thanks to its high accuracy, and rapid fire rate.

The weapons characteristics and widespread usage in Valorian ship design has impacted Valorian tactics. In combat, Valorian ships prefer to engage at range. Pelting their foes with rapid barrages of low-impact plasma fire. While relying on their powerful shields to tank enemy return fire, and using their fast engines to maintain distance.

This is a strategy that the pulse cannon is well suited to. It also plays well to the Valorian military strengths. In addition, the cannon’s plasma projectiles can be modified to have additional effects while in the field. These are simple to implement, and skilled users can make and revert the changes in seconds.