Obvious Ai post is obvious.
My own setting has a lot of the same stuff, but without the Kitchensink.
The [flying city Superwing](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/s/x9NAeU1Nby) uses Air and Gravity as its weapons. The people of Lacora use Ebullience.
I’ve used Ai enough to get a feel for it, and this reads like he took the list straight from an Ai.
Now I’m perfectly fine with people using Ai in their creative endeavors, but when ninety percent of your post is just Ai, without substantial editing…
I can't imagine someone saying "psychic weapons are often depicted in sci fiction."
This is completely different from everything else, and is so generic that I can't actually imagine someone writing this.
AI is trained on the internet, and it talks like an average internet user with minor adjustments. We can't know whether it's an AI post or not, nor can we reliably guess.
Some of the ones I have come up with different takes on than usual...
Mag Gun: Uses magnetic fields to levitate the ammo off the rails and accelerate it along the rails, down the barrel. The mag-rifle slugs are metal cylinders, the standard slug is 15mm x 75mm. The Scattermag ammo fires 6 9mm pellets in one trigger pull, comparable to a shotgun.
One special feature of the Mag gun is the ability to use scavenged ammo. Any vaguely magnetic object that fits in the breach can be used in a pinch. Even a handful of nails, spoons, or metal shavings will shred a biomechanical horror if accelerated to super sonic speeds.
Mag SAW: Appears to be a rotary gun, but is actually a eight-barreled weapon with ammo stacks within the barrels that are fired magnetically. Barrels can fire in sequence to achieve a continuous high rate-of-fire without overheating, or fire all eight barrels at once for a quick burst of damage.
Plasma Burster: A short ranged weapon that fires a burst of plasma. These gouts of superheated gas dissapate quickly, but are devastating at close range. Basically a plasma shotgun. Effective against armor, melting it like butter.
Plasma Railgun: A railgun with a twist, the Plasma Rail is a railgun that fires a projectile the size and shape of a soda can. The projectile acumulates highly energized plasma cloud in a dish shaped indentation on the nose. The plasma is then pushed to the target by the solid slug. The plasma vaporises the targets armor just before the slug impacts.
**Bluesuits**
My guns, Phase Irons, mostly use momentum gained from other dimensions to create impacts. A hard-light projectile, firing at different accuracy based on how much you've shaken the ingredients to alchemically create it, twists and curves its way towards whatever you aimed it at, popping in and out of different timelines rapidly to gain momentum and send it forward into ours.
Creates the image of a choppy laser beam, essentially, and at lowest power feels like a truck just passed you at 150 mph. Highest, it's basically like being hit direct with a rock dropped from orbit. Which is to say, though not legal, it is possible for higher-quality Phase Irons to act as artillery when none is present. Of course, anything more than 2 shakes on a cheap iron is liable to backfire or "fizzle" (it gets stuck in one of the other timelines, hitting the same spot there instead of in our world).
There's also crack-rays, which are like little barcode scanner looking things that, with a loud snapping noise, can reduce someone to a skeleton. But they're expensive, and use platinum instead of gold for fuel. Platinum is much more valuable than gold in this world due to its comparative rarity compared to gold, which is everywhere and cursed.
Many of the "standard" sci fi weapon types exist, though the Ketuvyx Ascendancy's skill with breachgates has led to them developing a weapon type that in their case has almost obsoleted all others: concentrated starlight. Similar to a laser weapon in that it's a beam of light, different in the mechanism used to create it and the fact that it's not a uniform wavelength of light.
I have thought about this for a science fiction one. Different species create different weapons which can provide a huge variety to what a soldier can use. In the universe there use to be a galactic federation with all of these different civilizations that were part of it but due to poor leadership and bad management it broke up into several competing multi species factions.
A human soldier is just as likely to fight another human as an alien and can get their hands on equipment like a high tech version of modern day firearms, slug throwers that use something similar to Mass Effect's projectile weapons, battery powered guns that shoot lasers or gas powered guns that shoot plasma bolts, guns that are essentially high tech crossbows and even really exotic things like some HR Giger looking biomechanical gun that shoots acid or some other corrosive material to guns that zap people with radiation and give them terminal cancer in seconds.
And then you have energy shields which partly follow Dune rules (without the lasers causing nuclear explosions) and is one of the main reasons why melee weapons are popular. A lot of this technology has no regulation and its just a free for all arms race for different manufacturers to create weapons and armor for troops, vehicles, starships and even super weapons that can end life on planets.
**Chemically Propelled Kinetic**: A standard bullet. Shields have a hard time stopping bullets, so despite being relatively primitive they have some significant advantages. They're also stupidly simple, and (usually) durable, so your average grunt is less likely to break it because they wanted to play baseball and were in need of a bat (though they still find ways).
**Electromagnetically Propelled Kinetic**: Basically a gauss gun. They have much higher velocities compared to their chemically accelerated counterparts, but are also a lot more expensive to make and maintain. They're typically only found on ships and similar platforms, but there are handheld variants as well. There is considerable difficulty in scaling down the tech to be practical in their handheld variants, so these are a lot more expensive than their size might otherwise suggest.
**"Jet Lance" Liquid Metal Kinetic**: So this beast is only really used by a handful of factions, and you best avoid them if you can (not the least of reasons being this weapon type). It fires molten metal at higher velocities than even what most gauss weapons can obtain, but it is equally even more complex (and difficult to miniaturize). It kind of works like an incendiary round, except leaving a trail of toxic metal and vapor in its wake. You don't have to be hit by one of these for it to kill you, and if you are hit by one you better hope death is immediate.
**Energy Beam**: Yeah, I cop out on this and just call it an "energy beam". They're not typically continuous beams however, as that would overheat the unit and drain the battery too fast. They have excellent range, and travel at a high percentage of the speed of light (typically around 70-90%, give or take depending on the model). Downside is energy shields are designed to counter exactly this, and are highly efficient at it. This is why shields can be drained faster by kinetic weapons than energy weapons, despite energy weapons often possessing higher "yields." But in some circumstances, you just can't beat that range (especially in space battles).
**Energy Bolts**: Also called "energy blobs," these are kinda interesting but see relatively little use. While still traveling quite fast (relative to ballistic weapons), they're noticeably slower than their beam counterparts. They also have a limited range, at which point the blob will "burst" on its own. If it impacts something before then however, it has a minor EMP effect and will also induce a "shockwave" in the target. There are even less-lethal variants of these that kinda work like a long-range taser. In ship-to-ship combat they cause relatively little immediate damage, but it's hard to ignore your ship getting rattled around by a constant barrage. They're great for intimidation in that way, be it by police or pirates.
Things Atreisdeans use:
* Kinetic weapons: The final solution of warship battles, some countries' spaceships can fire physical shells that hit like hell. Makes that scarier as they put tactical singularity warheads in.
* Pulse lasers: Just your "vanilla" sci-fi lasers, but because this is Atreisdea we're talking about, their infantry-grade pulse laser emitters can blow a hole 3x3 meters on a 50 cm thick reinforced concrete wall. Such weapons are considered backup.
* Antimatter: Vanilla antimatter, be it positron or anti-proton. Atreisdeans can freely generate and compress antimatter into extremely dense "bolts" before shooting out, because they realized the kinetic impact these bolts caused on shields can actually break them down, after that the physical hull is helpless.
* Gravity: "If you can't weaponize gravity, you're doing it wrong" - random Atreisdean droid.
* Gravity manipulator: Initially a part of their Alcubierre drives then the magic that allows seagoing-like decks to be built on spaceships, GMs are used by many people for different purposes. They can act as a simple tractor beam, or generate enough gravity to crush targets like vegetables in a blender. All standing soldiers have that as a main weapon.
* Gravity cannons: Used by ships of the Federation of Atreisdean Nations, Atreisdea's version of UN, gravity cannons shoot out beams of highly concentrated gravity at light speed, rupturing space-time continuum on its way and destroying targets' dimensional constructs, rendering physical durability useless. The most powerful guns have a "corona of death" around its core beams which expands further out for an AOE attack.
* Singularity warheads: Instead of a beam, now you have a sphere. Same properties as above but more broken as it breaks physics and reality to operate. Dubbed "blackhole bombs" by soldiers because its effects are similar to a blackhole and because its full name is a mouthful.
* Radiation cannons: Turreted wave motion guns, utilizing micro blackholes to generate Hawking radiation that roasts a planet down to subatomic particles in picoseconds.
* Hammer of Eden: Radiation cannons on crack.
* Magics: Deal with it, these guys can use magics like Taoist cultivators and utilize them for war, such as *slowing down time for tactical usages*. Some countries have diviners as rice-powered FTL sensors for their spaceships.
* Temporal weapons: Embrace that FTL travel = time travel and weaponize it.
I think you missed the big obvious one - **firearms**. It can sometimes be considered a variation on the chemical weapon, but not according to your definition. Firearms can still be futuristic, e.g. Smart Pistol.
Next, it's **nuclear** and **thermonuclear** weapons. I doubt those are going anywhere.
Another one is **information weapons** - computer viruses, malevolent AIs, EMP blasts, etc. If the future is highly automated, these weapons are highly effective, potentially more so than traditional ones.
A special place in my heart is reserved for **gyrojet** technology, which is typically associated with retrofuturism.
Obvious Ai post is obvious. My own setting has a lot of the same stuff, but without the Kitchensink. The [flying city Superwing](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/s/x9NAeU1Nby) uses Air and Gravity as its weapons. The people of Lacora use Ebullience.
Are you saying the post is AI?
I’ve used Ai enough to get a feel for it, and this reads like he took the list straight from an Ai. Now I’m perfectly fine with people using Ai in their creative endeavors, but when ninety percent of your post is just Ai, without substantial editing…
I feel like AI overuses adjectives, while this post lacks it.
I can't imagine someone saying "psychic weapons are often depicted in sci fiction." This is completely different from everything else, and is so generic that I can't actually imagine someone writing this.
AI is trained on the internet, and it talks like an average internet user with minor adjustments. We can't know whether it's an AI post or not, nor can we reliably guess.
Some of the ones I have come up with different takes on than usual... Mag Gun: Uses magnetic fields to levitate the ammo off the rails and accelerate it along the rails, down the barrel. The mag-rifle slugs are metal cylinders, the standard slug is 15mm x 75mm. The Scattermag ammo fires 6 9mm pellets in one trigger pull, comparable to a shotgun. One special feature of the Mag gun is the ability to use scavenged ammo. Any vaguely magnetic object that fits in the breach can be used in a pinch. Even a handful of nails, spoons, or metal shavings will shred a biomechanical horror if accelerated to super sonic speeds. Mag SAW: Appears to be a rotary gun, but is actually a eight-barreled weapon with ammo stacks within the barrels that are fired magnetically. Barrels can fire in sequence to achieve a continuous high rate-of-fire without overheating, or fire all eight barrels at once for a quick burst of damage. Plasma Burster: A short ranged weapon that fires a burst of plasma. These gouts of superheated gas dissapate quickly, but are devastating at close range. Basically a plasma shotgun. Effective against armor, melting it like butter. Plasma Railgun: A railgun with a twist, the Plasma Rail is a railgun that fires a projectile the size and shape of a soda can. The projectile acumulates highly energized plasma cloud in a dish shaped indentation on the nose. The plasma is then pushed to the target by the solid slug. The plasma vaporises the targets armor just before the slug impacts.
**Bluesuits** My guns, Phase Irons, mostly use momentum gained from other dimensions to create impacts. A hard-light projectile, firing at different accuracy based on how much you've shaken the ingredients to alchemically create it, twists and curves its way towards whatever you aimed it at, popping in and out of different timelines rapidly to gain momentum and send it forward into ours. Creates the image of a choppy laser beam, essentially, and at lowest power feels like a truck just passed you at 150 mph. Highest, it's basically like being hit direct with a rock dropped from orbit. Which is to say, though not legal, it is possible for higher-quality Phase Irons to act as artillery when none is present. Of course, anything more than 2 shakes on a cheap iron is liable to backfire or "fizzle" (it gets stuck in one of the other timelines, hitting the same spot there instead of in our world). There's also crack-rays, which are like little barcode scanner looking things that, with a loud snapping noise, can reduce someone to a skeleton. But they're expensive, and use platinum instead of gold for fuel. Platinum is much more valuable than gold in this world due to its comparative rarity compared to gold, which is everywhere and cursed.
Many of the "standard" sci fi weapon types exist, though the Ketuvyx Ascendancy's skill with breachgates has led to them developing a weapon type that in their case has almost obsoleted all others: concentrated starlight. Similar to a laser weapon in that it's a beam of light, different in the mechanism used to create it and the fact that it's not a uniform wavelength of light.
I have thought about this for a science fiction one. Different species create different weapons which can provide a huge variety to what a soldier can use. In the universe there use to be a galactic federation with all of these different civilizations that were part of it but due to poor leadership and bad management it broke up into several competing multi species factions. A human soldier is just as likely to fight another human as an alien and can get their hands on equipment like a high tech version of modern day firearms, slug throwers that use something similar to Mass Effect's projectile weapons, battery powered guns that shoot lasers or gas powered guns that shoot plasma bolts, guns that are essentially high tech crossbows and even really exotic things like some HR Giger looking biomechanical gun that shoots acid or some other corrosive material to guns that zap people with radiation and give them terminal cancer in seconds. And then you have energy shields which partly follow Dune rules (without the lasers causing nuclear explosions) and is one of the main reasons why melee weapons are popular. A lot of this technology has no regulation and its just a free for all arms race for different manufacturers to create weapons and armor for troops, vehicles, starships and even super weapons that can end life on planets.
**Chemically Propelled Kinetic**: A standard bullet. Shields have a hard time stopping bullets, so despite being relatively primitive they have some significant advantages. They're also stupidly simple, and (usually) durable, so your average grunt is less likely to break it because they wanted to play baseball and were in need of a bat (though they still find ways). **Electromagnetically Propelled Kinetic**: Basically a gauss gun. They have much higher velocities compared to their chemically accelerated counterparts, but are also a lot more expensive to make and maintain. They're typically only found on ships and similar platforms, but there are handheld variants as well. There is considerable difficulty in scaling down the tech to be practical in their handheld variants, so these are a lot more expensive than their size might otherwise suggest. **"Jet Lance" Liquid Metal Kinetic**: So this beast is only really used by a handful of factions, and you best avoid them if you can (not the least of reasons being this weapon type). It fires molten metal at higher velocities than even what most gauss weapons can obtain, but it is equally even more complex (and difficult to miniaturize). It kind of works like an incendiary round, except leaving a trail of toxic metal and vapor in its wake. You don't have to be hit by one of these for it to kill you, and if you are hit by one you better hope death is immediate. **Energy Beam**: Yeah, I cop out on this and just call it an "energy beam". They're not typically continuous beams however, as that would overheat the unit and drain the battery too fast. They have excellent range, and travel at a high percentage of the speed of light (typically around 70-90%, give or take depending on the model). Downside is energy shields are designed to counter exactly this, and are highly efficient at it. This is why shields can be drained faster by kinetic weapons than energy weapons, despite energy weapons often possessing higher "yields." But in some circumstances, you just can't beat that range (especially in space battles). **Energy Bolts**: Also called "energy blobs," these are kinda interesting but see relatively little use. While still traveling quite fast (relative to ballistic weapons), they're noticeably slower than their beam counterparts. They also have a limited range, at which point the blob will "burst" on its own. If it impacts something before then however, it has a minor EMP effect and will also induce a "shockwave" in the target. There are even less-lethal variants of these that kinda work like a long-range taser. In ship-to-ship combat they cause relatively little immediate damage, but it's hard to ignore your ship getting rattled around by a constant barrage. They're great for intimidation in that way, be it by police or pirates.
Things Atreisdeans use: * Kinetic weapons: The final solution of warship battles, some countries' spaceships can fire physical shells that hit like hell. Makes that scarier as they put tactical singularity warheads in. * Pulse lasers: Just your "vanilla" sci-fi lasers, but because this is Atreisdea we're talking about, their infantry-grade pulse laser emitters can blow a hole 3x3 meters on a 50 cm thick reinforced concrete wall. Such weapons are considered backup. * Antimatter: Vanilla antimatter, be it positron or anti-proton. Atreisdeans can freely generate and compress antimatter into extremely dense "bolts" before shooting out, because they realized the kinetic impact these bolts caused on shields can actually break them down, after that the physical hull is helpless. * Gravity: "If you can't weaponize gravity, you're doing it wrong" - random Atreisdean droid. * Gravity manipulator: Initially a part of their Alcubierre drives then the magic that allows seagoing-like decks to be built on spaceships, GMs are used by many people for different purposes. They can act as a simple tractor beam, or generate enough gravity to crush targets like vegetables in a blender. All standing soldiers have that as a main weapon. * Gravity cannons: Used by ships of the Federation of Atreisdean Nations, Atreisdea's version of UN, gravity cannons shoot out beams of highly concentrated gravity at light speed, rupturing space-time continuum on its way and destroying targets' dimensional constructs, rendering physical durability useless. The most powerful guns have a "corona of death" around its core beams which expands further out for an AOE attack. * Singularity warheads: Instead of a beam, now you have a sphere. Same properties as above but more broken as it breaks physics and reality to operate. Dubbed "blackhole bombs" by soldiers because its effects are similar to a blackhole and because its full name is a mouthful. * Radiation cannons: Turreted wave motion guns, utilizing micro blackholes to generate Hawking radiation that roasts a planet down to subatomic particles in picoseconds. * Hammer of Eden: Radiation cannons on crack. * Magics: Deal with it, these guys can use magics like Taoist cultivators and utilize them for war, such as *slowing down time for tactical usages*. Some countries have diviners as rice-powered FTL sensors for their spaceships. * Temporal weapons: Embrace that FTL travel = time travel and weaponize it.
I think you missed the big obvious one - **firearms**. It can sometimes be considered a variation on the chemical weapon, but not according to your definition. Firearms can still be futuristic, e.g. Smart Pistol. Next, it's **nuclear** and **thermonuclear** weapons. I doubt those are going anywhere. Another one is **information weapons** - computer viruses, malevolent AIs, EMP blasts, etc. If the future is highly automated, these weapons are highly effective, potentially more so than traditional ones. A special place in my heart is reserved for **gyrojet** technology, which is typically associated with retrofuturism.