Kinetic Weapons VS Energy Weapons - Which is Better?

Spacedock delves into the oft-discussed choice between kinetic and energy weapons in science fiction.

THE SOJOURN - AN ORIGINAL SCI-FI AUDIO DRAMA:

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Battlezone II Music by Carey Chico

Spacedock does not hold ownership of the copyrighted materiel (Footage, Stills etc) taken from the various works of fiction covered in this series, and uses them within the boundaries of Fair Use for the purpose of Analysis, Discussion and Review.

[vaniellys]

Halo taught me that you need both: energy weapons are more efficient against shields and kinetic are more efficient against armor. Although in Stellaris it's the other way around.

[luscinius]

In wise words of The Road to El Dorado: Both. Both is good.

Also, kinda sad that people always forget about using gravity catapults as propelling method for kinteci weapons.

[telestobreakerofgames]

One of my favorite examples of Energy vs. Kinetic weaponry is found in the Space Battleship Yamato. It's primary armament is Positron Shock Cannons, which as the name implies, fires high energy positron beams.

However, in certain cases, the Yamato's guns can also fire Type 3 shells, which can be fired even with the engine off (which supplies energy for the energy beam attacks). This flexibility is a good compromise I believe.

[nicholaswalsh]

Depends on the vibes you want in your setting.

[isned]

A something to consider, weapons that require large amounts of electricity might still have the risk for something like magazine explosions even if there are no chemical propellants or explosive shells to worry about. Capacitors and high power batteries can react violently to being damaged, catching fire, shooting jets of molten material, or just straight up exploding, and that's with relatively low power devices today. Scale that up the energy requirements of something like a laser weapon and overloaded phaser pistols acting like grenades in star trek seems pretty reasonable. This applies to other methods of energy storage too, flywheel storage systems can rip themselves into a spray of shrapnel or send heavy metal disks bouncing around if damaged the right way and superconducting loop storage can straight up vaporize itself if the cooling fails while the loop is charged up.

[DrakeAurum]

"You can't use indirect fire with lasers." Crosshair pulls out a handful of coin-size mirrors and smirks.

[AlexTekle]

I like how in LOGH, the weapons of their ships are so powerful they can effectively send a beam volley across a solar system, so to compensate they simply build massive fleets and fight via attrition

[Duckieperson]

If we want to stick to realism, I think it all comes down to two questions:
- Over what distance can laser beams be focussed effectively, without overheating?
- Over what distance will kinetic projectiles be able to reach their target before they can be dodged or intercepted? (To which velocities can kinetic projectiles be accelerated?)
In the void of space, range is everything and stealth is basically impossible, so whatever weapon type will have the longest reach will render the other one obsolete. I personally think lasers are more plausible, but it’s hard to say.

[DecidedlyNinja]

An important note about kinetic weapons (guns, missiles, and guided shells in between) is that they become more effective in damage, range (based on difficulty to evade), and difficulty to intercept as the closure rate between the two ships increases. This means that a ship with slow weapons going up against a ship with fast weapons (especially beams) should aim to approach at the highest possible speed and will be in trouble if it fails to destroy the enemy before closest point of approach. Unfortunately, when both ships use the same weapons, neither one can gain a relative advantage this way, so it's harder to come up with interesting maneuvers.

[JordonVirtue]

Never thought I'd see Forgotten Weapons here. That rules, haha.

[ODST_Parker]

I must admit that I'm a sucker for conventional kinetic and/or explosive weapons, even in science fiction.

Guns, cannons, missiles, bombs, torpedoes, it's not just about the damage they deal, but the physical factors involved in using them. If you've ever seen a submarine movie where you have scenes of the crew loading torpedoes into their tubes, if you've ever seen the broadside guns in Revenge of the Sith spit out those massive shells accompanied by awesome sound effects, if you've ever played Halo 2 and heard the MAC gun on Cairo Station spooling up to fire from right below the barrel, and if you've ever seen Galactica absolutely fill the black of space with heavy cannon rounds and tracers from point-defense turrets, then you know the sheer satisfaction ballistic weapons can have in any setting.

Sure, energy weapons might be more practical or effective, and definitely more creative in many examples of sci-fi franchises... but they'll never be as COOL as the good ol' gun.

[Gaarafan]

Mobile Suit Gundam Iron Blooded Orphans was an interesting subversion of expectations when it came out. Energy weapons were a staple of the series up to that point, so it was a surprise that they weren't used for most of IBO's run, and one did show up, it was a big deal.

[chrisbingley]

Planetside 2 did this in a cool and fun way. TR had normal bullets. NC had gauss rifles. VS had energy weapons. Which I feel is a great way to help differentiate between the factions.

[cisclanu]

It's funny when people realize that lasers aren't supposed to be visible bright beams of light and instead are more like the ones in The Lunar War, that you can only see them if you're the target

[zephron]

Love the Mandalore reference, and yes I agree.

[Purple]

I like how in Dune, lasguns are extremely powerful, but noone typically uses them because most things are shielded making them kind of a kamikaze weapon. Yet, for the same reason, shields are inherently risky because if someone really wanted to kill you, a lasgun would insure destruction. It also makes things interesting since shields don't work well on Arrakis, so lasguns can be used, but there's still that risk.

[WhitzWolf]

I love how most of these comparison thought pieces end with "they're both/all good, use what YOU want." It's an important thing to keep in mind.

[bombomos]

All say this...

Kinetic keeps going and going and going.
"Once you pull that trigger someone, somewhere, sometime is going to have a very bad day."

[Paradukes]

My definition for an energy weapon: If you need to load any kind of ammo (Excluding power packs) it isn't an energy weapon. If you can hook it straight up to a reactor to fire it with nothing required except power, it's an energy weapon.

[richardrothkugel]

I ran into this energy / kinetic weapon problem and came up with an elegant solution. In my game, weapons (armaments) are split into delivery systems, rather then damage types; projectiles (ballistic, gauss, casimir, etc., any unguided missile), beam (laser, plasma, ion, etc., a stream of energy) and munitions (mines, torpedoes, missiles etc., any guided missile or bomb). There's a good mechanical reason for this. Projectiles, based on their velocity, have drift and aren't 100% accurate. Projectile damage is relative to distance and velocity, the further away or close-in you fire, the less likely you are to hit the target, making them an ideal medium range weapon. Beams on the other hand are relatively instantaneous and are 100% accurate, however distance diffracts / reduces damage, so long range does damage, but is sub-optimal, but short range ramps damage up, making them an ideal weapon for short range combat against faster or smaller targets. Munitions are staged and guided with near 100% accuracy unless being jammed or disrupted, making them ideal for long range combat, but useless at short range combat (dead / arming zone).

Being a game, players build around these limitations to maximise their ship's effectiveness while having access to many different damage types and not being restricted / shoe horned into a specific damage or weapon type.