Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-38854975-20190905144044/@comment-25396609-20191101214830

This was made with fairly limited real-world technology; their biggest limiting factor being the need for numerous large capacitors to get enough power to be worthwhile.

Have you even SEEN the Navy's laser weapons? Those things are literally the size of a car (and have to be to do what they do).

The thing about a laser is you need a large, inflexible gas-filled tube to generate one strong enough to be useful at range; this is non-negotiable and is an issue with the laws of physics themselves. To make electromagnetic weapons work at longer ranges you just need to strap better batteries to them.

Dust can solve one of these problems. And it is the battery issue with the railgun.

Electricity Dust is in and of itself a form of capacitor; it is stored electrical energy capable of instantaneous generation and discharge. All you really need is a secure storage system for the powder form of it and a simple mechanism to regulate how much is pumped out and discharged at once.

Electromagnetic weapons have another advantage in that they can be made more compact; they can fold up when not in use. Lasers can, too, but they are limited by the size of the tube; which, being made of glass, is also incredibly fragile when compared to the all-metal construction possible with EM weapons tech. That same fragility makes it wildly impractical to give them any sort of melee form; striking with them once your aura is down will instantly shatter the tube, rendering them inoperable until you can replace it.

Besides if you're firing on the enemy from multiple kilometers away, you probably don't need a Huntsman on the job to begin with; their job is being able to survive up close and personal with the nasties.