'Sarissa' Railgun System
A special design of railgun of the Hyperion Federation. The Sarissa was designed out of need for a shotgun-like weapon with an extremely large velocity.
As such, the Sarissa fires a shell similar to a railgun except when it leaves the barrel and not having any electrical current flow through the shell, the shell detonates and fires a tight cone of shrapnel at a target. The explosive is a very powerful shockwave that is stored within the shell. As this is released, the shockwave takes a frequency very close to the natural frequency of the shell itself, causing it to resonate. This largely amplifies its explosive power and gives the fragments an even higher velocity.
The angle of spread is typically very low, giving the weapon a very long range. The pellets travel at about mach 48 (16 320 m/s). This requires a very large energy draw in the rails. The railgun uses almost 1 megavolt, easily above the threshold of arcing through air. As such, when a current is detected through the rails when there is no projectile, it is designed to immediately shut down.
Additionally, the weapon has a very high fire rate. As the rails are made of a superconducting material, no heat is produced and allows the weapon to fire at a very high rate. The weapon was designed by a Rih'kiel who had a requirement for a very powerful, long range, CIWS. Lasers or photon cannons usually take this role, however, are subject to atmospheric diffusion. This is why the rih'kiel developed a railgun with a high fire rate.
After seeing the very large destructive potential, similar weapons were built and provided to infantry. It has a reputation for having a very large recoil, so snipers with this weapon are often equipped with H-37 Cyber Suits. Alternatively, variants with lower fire rates are available. Furthermore, infantry with this weapon must take great care not to fire or otherwise make current flow while the rails are dirty or wet. As discussed earlier, the huge voltage coupled with very low resistance causes a several megaampere short circuit current. Anything inside the weapon is immediately vaporized and heat transferred to the rails, potentially enough to rise the temperature above that materials superconducting threshold and result in the weapon destroying itself.
Without these limitations, however, Sarissas are the ultimate shotgun sniper machine gun. Able to lay down an area, even at long range, with a large quantity of bullets.
Eventually, the HF starfleet noticed the very powerful performance of the weapons, even compared to other HF weapons. They also realized that the drawbacks are completely nullified in space, and the shrapnel will have a much higher velocity due to the non existence of atmospheric drag. They built a new form of starship armament out of it, also named the Sarissa. Starship armament Sarissas favor small, fast targets because the shrapnel may vaporise against the thick hull armour of some well armoured ships and cause no damage.
Item type
Weapon, Ranged
Owning Organization
Comments