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A starship must be able to destroy or neutralise threats — both to itself, or to its government's interests — whether such threats be other ships, military facilities, or natural phenomena such as asteroids. They do this using a range of offensive technologies.

Rail Guns

Also called 'gauss guns', rail guns use a combination of compression recoil and electromagnetic acceleration to fire projectiles at very high speeds. Projectiles are most often simple metal slugs, but explosive ordnance can be fired from some systems.
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Rail guns use the simple physical principle that projectile weapons have relied upon for centuries: sharing momentum hurts.

Most rail gun systems also release a series of harmless metal flechettes with each shot. These are intended to act as decoys which reduce the chances of the real ordnance being intercepted by active defence systems.

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Ship-to-Ship Missiles

Ship-to-ship missiles use conventional explosive warheads, and are relatively weak. When fired at the undefended hull of another vessel, however, they can cause catastrophic damage.

While the fuselage of a ship-to-ship missile is less well armoured than that of a ship-to-surface missile, the warhead usually features a penetrating design which is intended to breach the hull of the target vessel.

Because missiles can be intercepted easily by defensive systems, ship-to-ship missiles are generally only deployed once an opponent's defences have been seriously impaired.

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Ship-to-Ground Missiles

Also called a ship-to-surface missile, leveller, or nuke, the ship-to-ground missile is a weapon of last resort which can be deployed against city-sized targets, whether they are based on a planet or not.

Ship-to-surface missiles would normally be fired from orbit to a target on the ground, but there is no specific reason why they should not be used against targets in space. They have been used in this fashion by various commanders, including Admiral Groath Betombe, to great effect.
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The warhead of a ship-to-ground missile is radiological in nature, and detonation results in a nuclear blast.

Flash Lasers

Also classified as a defensive system, lasers are used to "flash" the sensor palettes of opposing forces. This temporarily overloads the sensors by causing what is known as a "full read", which in turn blinds the enemy tactical system for several milliseconds.
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While the effect of laser flashing may not sound considerable, with so many autonomous weapon platforms in use, and such reliance on holo-based tactical computation, it can have a significant impact on the course of a battle.

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Cutters

Some large-frame starships, for example dreadnoughts, are fitted with limited cutting beam capacity.

Cutters are able to focus a large portion of the ship's reactor output into a beam of laser light, which can slice quickly through materials such as hull plating and plasteel.

The energy demands of running a cutter can drain a ship's capacitors quickly, and thereby compromise both defensive capacity and engine reliability, so the weapon is used sparingly.

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Rift

The Rift system is a new Imperial Combine prototype. It was tested in the field at the Battle of Meccrace Prime (→LOTD).

The system uses a series of reflexive GNGs to create a free wormhole. This is gravitationally slung at the target, ripping through the space which it occupies and tearing apart any matter contained within.

The rift weapons deployed during the Invasion of Herses demonstrated that the system is capable of firing while interdiction is in effect (→TRD).