Coilgun
(Copied straight from .XML 'backup' file, needs formatting and corrections. ZM User (talk) 18:13, 22 April 2024 (PDT))
A Coilgun is a linear series of electromagnets with all of their central holes aligned. If the electromagnets are individually pulsed in order, a magnetically-permeable slug will be accelerated by each coil in turn. Such a series of coils can be made as long as the builder wishes, limited only by the room available and the materials needed to hold the coils.
Development
People have been building coilguns for entertainment ever since the electromagnetic coil was invented. The difficulty of building one large enough to accelerate a useful slug fast enough to overcome gravity and reach a target while at the same time maintaining the coils in alignment well enough to aim the slug made a coilgun-based weapon system impractical until the 21st century. Various Earth-based military research efforts had barely gotten coilguns to the point where they could be deployed on (floating) warships as their main armament when the Darjee envoys arrived with news of the approaching Sa'arm.
Confederacy technology made railguns and coilguns practical, and both were developed concurrently. The first practical railgun was fielded as a point-defense weapon. The Point-Defense Railgun or "PDR" worked well, but it suffered from erosion of the rails and required maintenance after only a few shots. However, as its use was often the only separation between "survival" and "complete destruction" of the mounting ship, all maintenance issues were quietly accepted as a necessary evil. The "Hero" spinal main armament railgun followed soon after, and then smaller versions were fielded as the "Baby Hero" and "Junior Hero" guns.
The first practical coilgun was developed as a replacement for the Baby Hero gun. Once the basic technology was developed, replacements for the Junior Hero and full Hero Gun soon followed. The coilgun versions suffered no mechanical effects from use, and continued development shrank the size of the coils as well as the distance required between coils. Eventually there came a time when the "Baby" coilgun, then the "Junior" coilgun, and finally the "Full Hero" coilgun could be mounted in a turret, able to traverse and elevate.
With the arrival of a turret-mounted anti-ship coilgun, the anti-ship railgun was completely eclipsed as a shipboard weapon. The only survivor was the original PDR. The PDR, warts and all, was considered reliable and trusted, and while a "PDC" Point-Defense Coilgun equivalent was developed, it never completely replaced the original PDRs.
The 7th Military District, where the coilgun versions were developed, fielded fleets of coilgun-turreted warships. This technology was never adopted by Central Command, though. It was only after the destruction of Home Fleet during the Third and Fourth Battles of Earthat and the subsequent disassembly of Central Command that the vast shipyards of Jupiter and Saturn started building coilgun-carrying warships. The "Sirius"-Class heavy cruisers and "Emperor"-Class battlecruisers were typical of the ships turned out by the Earthat yards once they accepted coilguns.
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