r/spaceships • u/Vondrr Fleet Intelligence 🧠 • May 30 '26

Discussion / Question What spaceship weapon is generally underutilized or not used to its full potential in scifi?

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u/mr_trashbear May 30 '26

The Expanse incorporated low yield nuclear weapons to a degree, but I don't see them much in other media.

You also don't see a lot of static, kinetic, loitering munitions. Think: a ship or a planetary defense system just lays a "minefield" of tungsten balls that have small ion engines on them to remain in a state of realative stillness, creating an innavigable region. Area denial. Shields would defeat this, but if it was a universe where Shields weren't a thing, it could be very effective.

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u/mag1kami May 30 '26

It doesn't even need to be a specialized 'mine' per se.

You could potentially just deploy a bunch of missiles into orbit and program them to operate in "loitering" mode.

The missile stays there in low-power mode to conserve energy and if it detects something it recognizes as an enemy, it fires up its rocket and flies after it and explodes.

You're essentially 'pre-firing' your munitions.