EVE Fiction

As a person also settled in engineering, I'm perfectly happy with the explanation. We already know ships in Eve can rapidly create complex structures using nanotechnology. Hell, how many centimetres of armour plating does our ship reconstruct with every cycle of an armour rep? For that matter, how are massive starships built so fast from raw materials?

This explanation makes perfect sense for lasers, makes perfect sense for hybrids (which turn the entire ammo slug into plasma anyway, so it doesn't matter what size it was before), and sounds so last-minute-force-it-to-fit that it just HAS to be how Minmatar do it.

And slapping a warhead to a stockpile of missile fuselages makes perfect sense to me as well.

You need to remember that the various corporations in New Eden are concerned with maximizing profit and minimizing cost, so if they can put out a single product line that works for all ships, regardless of gun caliber, they're set for life.

tl;dr nanites make everything better.

Details... Okay, I'm going to go all theoretical for a moment, but bear with me. After reading the item descriptions again, I think I've come up with a basic theory for how each of these systems work.

Hybrid Charges consist of a titanium shell around a core of atoms contained within what is likely a magnetic field inside the shell powered by a small capacitor charged on launch.

When fired in a railgun, a portion of the energy used in the acceleration of the charge is fed into the canister to superheat the contained atoms and convert them into a suspended plasma... or perhaps to generate them in the case of antimatter. Then the entire shell is hurled out in a sabot manufactured by the gun itself. On impact, the containment vessel fails releasing the contained plasma in a burst that causes massive damage.

In the case of blasters, the entire shell is converted into plasma and hurled out the barrel at high speed. There are a number of ways this could be done, my personal favorite being a limited antimatter release into the firing chamber. As it is not a contained charge being fired, the plasma rapidly dissipates resulting in extremely poor range and rapid energy falloff.

Standard Projectile Ammunition is a bit trickier, as autocannons fire bursts of shots that consume only one unit of ammunition while artillery fires only one shell. The idea that the ammo represents warheads that are mounted onto cartridges manufactured by the gun's module itself is an attractive one, but how we go from one shell for artillery to a burst of shots for autocannons leaves a bit to be desired. It's possible that artillery fires a canister of multiple warheads I suppose.

Blasters and lasers don't need to worry about this problem because they're not firing an actual round, and railguns would work regardless of the diameter of the shot (so, the difference in size is probably translated into how fast the round is going, not how big it is) so the only ones for which this is a problem are projectile weapons.

In the real world, when a round is fired from a gun that is of a larger caliber than the round itself, the difference is compensated for with a sabot. given that this is probably some kind of ultra-advanced futuristic caseless ammo, I don't think it's too hard to imagine them having self-assembling sabots that allow them to fit-all-sizes, with again the larger guns translating into a higher muzzle velocity.

The warhead that is fired through a barrel must have the diameter of the Caliber. so you will not fire a 1200 mm artillery shell through a 1400 mm caliber barrel and vice versa.

The way I always looked at weapon ammo is that we are not carrying. Completed rounds with is. Its more like we are carrying the components that are rapidly assembled when the gun is loaded. That would in my mind count for how different guns use the samessamesIze ammo. And how we are able to carry so many rounds.

Since when do railguns use a propellant charge to fire?...

Unless youre considering electromagnetism as a form of propellant that can scale to this idea... Though in that sense even the smallest weapons platform for rails could use the same amount of energy as capital weapons.

In fact i believe the only theoretical weapon in game is the blasters (seeing as the USAF has published the fitting of LAMS onto fighters irl)

Edit: Though the usage of autocannons in space... i would love an explanation for this... as conventional projectile propellants MUST have oxygen to explode and well.... propel...




I've always thought of it as this:

You're using the standard/faction T1 ammunition therefore the packages you buy can be used in both weapons as all ammunition types for say large guns come together in a bulk package. No offense but a 1400mm artillery projectile would not cause such damage in comparison to an 800mm if the 800mm projectile is fitted into a propellant sleeve for the 1400mm.

It would just punch through more easily and keep on going (also the explosive type, thermic, etc would not be as effective as there is less room in the shell at the tip than the 1400). On the other hand the 1400mm would well.... pack a punch as it was the correct size ammo type for the gun... and still keep on going

800mm hole vs 1400mm hole + damage type... you can do the math. Velocity would not play a major factor if both have the proper force to apply to shields/armor/hull. It would all come down to the shell size and type


I'd rather agree to someone's previous comment of nanopacks. This far into the future one can assume autoloading mechanisms could easily include nanites into the operation, larger shells taking longer times to load and fire. Fit the proper shell type in the tip and voila insta-shell.

There are multiple propellant types that do not require oxygen available even nowadays. As a matter of fact, even the most common black gunpowder does not require oxygen as it carries both fuel and the oxidizer for the reaction, hence can be used in oxygen-less environments or (technically) even vacuum.


Yes, there is some inconsistency in the use of sabot. I, personally, prefer the nano-assembled rounds as well. This would also explain how ships' bonus can influence the performance of the guns that are fitted on it (f.ex. assembly lines tailored to projectile shells increase reloading time of projectile weapons).

Plenty of modern ammunition operates perfectly and repeatably in a zero oxygen atmosphere, or in a vacuum, because they have all the oxygen they need to react to completion in the propellent mixture. It doesn't even seem unlikely that this same sort of propellent mix is used for spaceship ammunition.

The only type of high-explosive weapon that uses external air as oxidizer are the thermobaric bomb types. The rest carry their own oxidizer compounds with them. Inluding the most common types of explosives, TNT, C-4, nitroglicerin and all of the derivatives/alikes.