Making EM Guns Viable in Space Combat (3e)

[Polydamas]

Moving back to the original topic, I am told that the hard science wargame Children of a Dead Earth has a lot of very rapid fire railguns shooting ~1 gram projectiles at ~3-10 km/s which ablate their targets. Their heavier railguns and coilguns shooting projectiles in the hundreds of grams or kilograms tend to be specialist close-range weapons with a lower 'muzzle velocity'. Those are different assumptions than the assumptions in GURPS Spaceships, not sure about GURPS Vehicles 3e. But it shows that depending on your assumptions about future technology you can have a place for different kinds of electromagnetic guns.

And its GURPS Spaceships pp. 28, 29 which assumes that its relatively large, low-velocity electromagnetic guns shoot projectiles which can redirect themselves towards a target (page 59 suggests that they have 'muzzle velocities' on the close order of 3 km / s). That is a GURPS 4e product, other rules make different assumptions!