Starlance AAA Railgun

A large, very long range anti air weapon employed by the HF miltary.

The Starlance is a 200mm railgun which has been designed to destroy targets from extremely long distances, often well beyond visual range. It is equipped with a radar for tracking targets in or even above the stratosphere, and can also receive and deliver tracking data to and from friendly forces. Once a target is detected, it can track them with a laser. This type of lock is almost impossible for the enemy to remove. 

It was designed to be placed on a planetary surface and destroy air targets, so the railgun has a comparatively low voltage. It uses about 50 kV within its rails but must still prevent arcs between the rails. When the propellant within the shell detonates to fire, it emits a gas that is extremely non conductive which prevents arcs. However, as a large current is sent through the rail, this can easily lead to the shell obtaining extremely high velocity. The propellant is also a very energetic quark-gluon plasma, so a massive amount of energy is transferred to the shell. The shells of these weapons are also rocket assisted and have wings that fold out after firing, and can change course if the target performs evasive maneuvers. This is very unlikely though, as the shell can travel this very large distance in seconds. 

On impact, the railgun shell is designed to spread this high velocity impact over a very large area. This way, it is wasting far less kinetic energy in an overpenetration. Even with this technology, it is still highly likely to overpenetrate depending on the target but the damage this causes is far greater. The tip of the shell behaves in a way somewhat reminiscent of a hollow-point bullet. For this reason, it performs less effectively against well-armoured targets but can damage them heavily.

The unit is portable but large and heavy. A large vehicle can incorporate it as its primary weapon, such as a Revenant tank, and like virtually all HF assets can be Teleported. There is also a variant that was designed for use in space against large fightercraft. It can be upscaled like other starship weapons, so some very large ships sometimes use them against small ships like frigates. They are quite effective in this role and the voltage can be increased without any risk of arcing because of the nonexistance of atmosphere in space.

As hyperion forces in general are designed to perform when massively outnumbered, the Starlance is designed to be reloaded quickly. It has several replicator bays within the weapon itself that can build new shells soon after firing and providing redundancy in case some are lost, probably in battle.