under construction
The Nivenian Empire has access to a broad variety of weapons and other military hardware, with particularly advanced kinetic and missile weapons, along with advanced Quantum Chromodynamic Shields (currently thought to be a unique development).
General Design[]
The Nivenian Empire mainly uses kinetic and missile-based weaponry in the range between high petajoule and high zetajoule yields. While some energy weapons exist, most notably in the form of the narrow-beam protium fusion drives present on almost all ships, kinetics and missiles are much more common. As extremely shock-tolerant solid-state electronics exist in the Nivenian Empire, the dividing line between missiles and kinetics has become increasingly blurred, as smart bullets with onboard reaction control systems enter the battlefield.
Another consideration is that almost all Nivenian Weapons draw their energy from the nuclear fusion of protium - narrow-beam protium fusion rockets are based on protium fusion, most missiles and bullets (and everything in-between) have protium fusion warheads, and most ships draw their power from protium fusion reactors.
Weapons range[]
Main Page: Weapons range
Weapons range is an important factor in all space warfare. Some weapons have ranges of hundreds of kilometers, while others are accurate at almost infinite distances.
Fusion Missiles[]
Fusion Missile Launchers[]
Nivenian fusion missile launchers work by accelerating ring-shaped projectiles out of single-stage coilguns. As the magnetic field of an electromagnetic coil is symmetric about the axis of the coil, ring-shaped projectiles have a uniform external magnetic field applied to them, causing a uniform acceleration. By using a design with a uniform acceleration, accelerations of nearly a gigagee are possible. However, due to their nature as single-stage devices, it is difficult to sustain these levels of acceleration for a barrel longer than the projectile itself.
Using advanced solid-state electronics and metastable metallic hydrogen directly embedded into the metal, relatively primitive metallic hydrogen-decomposition rocket engines can be used in combination with some primitive reaction control systems to give the projectiles about 15 km/s of delta-V with a maximum acceleration of nearly fifty gees. The tip of the warhead is a fusion bomb initiated either by the impact of the projectile (for smaller sized-weapons) or a smaller toroidal fission implosion bomb inside the device that can be activated electronically.
Extra-large and Titanic fusion missile launcher projectiles use thermal-plasma nuclear fusion rockets, which, while less effective than most protium drives, are able to withstand acceleration very well. These models can have over a thousand kilometers per second of delta-V.
| Size | Weapon mass | Weapon support system mass | Energy usage
|
Delta-V
|
Projectile mass
|
Explosive Yield |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Extra-small | 7.86 Mg | 78.6 Mg | 7.86 TW
|
8.00 km/s
|
13.6 kg
|
1.36 PJ |
| Small | 57.4 Mg | 574 Mg | 57.4 TW
|
10.0 km/s
|
340 kg
|
34.0 PJ |
| Medium | 469 Mg | 4.69 Gg | 469 TW
|
15.0 km/s
|
8.50 Mg
|
850 PJ |
| Large | 3.83 Gg | 38.3 Gg | 3.83 PW
|
20.0 km/s
|
204 Mg
|
20.4 EJ |
| Extra-large | 168 Gg | 1.68 Tg | 3.03 PW
|
800 km/s
|
21.0 Gg
|
2.10 ZJ |
| Titanic | 3.15 Tg | 31.5 Tg | 27.7 PW
|
1.20 Mm/s
|
525 Gg
|
52.5 ZJ |