Trying to think of what aliens use for personal weapons between the "Bows and swords" and "Lasers and mass drivers." I'm thinking spring launched flechetes in pre-loaded cartridges which are wound in a factory.
interesting dynamic with directed energy countermeasures, right? a really good fog generator would totally nerf the range on any kind of coherent beam emitter. kevlar armor messes up flechettes. you really might be in hand-to-hand combat a lot.
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Well, if a flechete gun is one handed (much less recoil and no need for a long barrel) then you can carry a sword in your other hand (assuming a biped with two arms)
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Actually, if aliens never invent rifles and think bows are obsolete, then gunblades suddenly make a lot of stupid sense. The flechetes are in spring loaded cartridges that can be mounted onto any weapon.
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A warrior mounts one onto their melee weapon, and mounts the rest in their shield and body armor.
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Another weapons development route that humans mostly forgot about is sling stones. A trained slinger can throw stones fast enough to penetrate metal armor. A warrior alien with stronger arms might do even better with porcelain bullets and grenades.
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Alien round: bullet sized drone. Senses proximity and deploys a parachute to minimize impact, deploys legs, crawls through armor and delivers poison.
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Defeated by laser point defense, also fully automated. Unless it's traveling fast enough that any sort of parachute delivered payload is either impossible or impractical. At high energy levels it's a contest between lasers and mass drivers.
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If you want the space opera option, plasma exists so that organics can enjoy fancy light shows, but they are less energy efficient than lasers or mass drivers, and ultimately represent a pointless compromise between the two.
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The most efficient use of missiles and drones is as smart land mines, that hide on the surface of planets and wait for things to enter the effective range of their micro nuclear warheads. Anything else is defeated either by counter missiles or laser point defense.
End of conversation
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