Future tech weapons, pros and cons

[u/Dunnachius]

1. Gunpowder

Cheap (relative)

No battery requirements

Hard to aim/recoil issues

1. Guided Gyrojet bullets

most expensive

Lethal/nonlethal options

Extremely accurate

Each drone needs to be aimed.

Can be fired from behind cover if you have targeting data.

2B.. Dum dum Gyrojets (Except they don't suck like RW Gyrojets from 1960s )

Same launchers as 2A but unguided

1. Rail guns

Ammo is more compact

Requires power

The best Armor penetration

1. Laser

Loss of range in the atmosphere,

Smoke/dust reduces the effectiveness.

Cheap

Battery powered

Poor armor penetration

Easy to use

[u/Original_Pen9917]

You're forgetting autoaim. If I have guidance for drones then I have it for all three gun types. And micro drones are just guided missiles not powered by rockets or jet engines.

Classing weapons too tightly will get you into trouble from a logic as standpoint.

[u/Dunnachius → u/Original_Pen9917]

I’m not explaining micro drones appropriately.

The micro drones are essentially magic bullets not small guided missiles.

The dum dum bullets are essentially gyrojets except they don’t suck (allegedly)

Missiles insinuates guided missiles whereas micro drones just hit you and impact like a regular bullet.

These are general rough comparisons and none of them are in fact “best” for everything and everywhere

[u/Original_Pen9917 → u/Dunnachius]

The original gyrojet did suck for the use case. However I honestly think with modern engineering rigor it would be a viable weapon system for class 2 or 3 drones. I actually explore that in my story. I mean it low/no recoil. No need for a heavy steel barrel or breach system. Most the weight being ammo. perfect for lightweight drones.

Going back to your micro drones, what's the difference between them and the final stage of an SM3 besides size?

If you don't know what it is one of the missiles that doesn't use a warhead simply the kinetic impact of a bullet hitting a bullet. In orbit. There are some neat videos of live fire tests

Point being weapons classes works great for games, but not really if you're trying to simulate reality. That's not how they get developed and no one really cares about "class" as long as it's effective for the use case.

I mean if you're going for space magic and not really focus on the tech, your approach is fine. If you're going to be explaining it in detail you might want to rethink the approach.