The Cutting Beam is a sustained beam weapon originally developed by the United Earth Federation to defeat Overlord armor. Third- and Second-generation powered armor systems proved to be highly robust, especially the Overlord scheme, which used a layered approach to defeat incoming weapons fire. When a bolt is fired at an equipped ship a dispersion field acts to break it up, often forcing the round to hit a wide area, reducing armor penetration. On impact two more systems come into play the Armor Integrity Field and an Energy Absorber array. The AIF absorbs and deflects the energy while maintaining the integrity of the physical armor, and the array absorbs a portion of the shot’s energy, converting it into usable power and then shunting that back into the AIF to help recharge the field. Kinetic weapons are defeated via a similar if different approach.
Faced with such sturdy armor the most effective weapon at the time for defeating it was armor-piercing torpedoes. These specially designed warheads were devised to overwhelm the AIF by unleashing a highly focused energy pulse right at the point of impact. Researchers noted this interaction and surmised something similar could be done with a sustained beam weapon, which led to the development of the cutting beam.
After designing and discarding several variations they developed a sustained charged particle weapon that proved effective. Since its inception, the weapon has undergone a few modifications in the eight years since humanity left Earth, but the fundamentals remain largely the same. The beam is composed of highly compressed charged particles with roughly half those particles being protons. The humble proton was found to be highly ideal for beam weapons due to its relatively high mass and charge. In addition, they are fairly easy to strip from any given particle source. Protons however aren’t the only particles in the beam, the particle stream contains several exotic particles including a new one added during the mark three upgrades, epsilon particles.
Epsilon Particles are rare, highly energetic particles with three times the mass of protons but they are unstable. Notably, they will break down quickly after being produced, desaturating into a mix of less exotic particles. These particles are extremely difficult to contain due to their destructive effect when they come into contact with energy fields. They were added to the beam for precisely this reason. The presence of epsilon particles in the beam improved shield penetration rates significantly.
Not only are the particles effective against shields but they do a number to physical materials on contact. The charged particle stream on contact with matter is noted to not only weaken the physical materials but cause extreme thermal heating in the target. The result is localized flash vaporization. Not only do ships suffer from flash vaporization but the beam is known to ignite plasma fires.
The current iteration of the cutting beam is capable of firing for nearly a minute before requiring recharge. After a full discharge, the beam requires a few seconds to cool and recharge before the beam can be fired again, lest the weapon be damaged. The long firing cycles are achieved due to the clever use of a Rydium-based cooling array. When the weapon is firing the waste heat is collected by an integrated heat sink which pulls the heat away from the emitter assembly and into the cooling array where a series of Rydium convertors take the heat and convert it into usable energy, which is then shunted back into the weapon capacitors reducing the strain on ship generators and improving weapon efficiency.
Tactically the cutting beam is often used in slashing attacks. In such an attack the firing ship allows the beam to drift along the length of the target. Thereby allowing the cutting beam to hit multiple compartments, spreading the damage across the breadth and span of the target. In some cases the beam can actually cut the targeted ship in half. Cutting beams however can also be used for focused pinpoint attacks, where the beam is focused on a single point and allowed to burn through the hull.
Given the sheer power of cutting beams, the Refuge does have concerns about encountering enemies armed with similar weaponry. Efforts exist to develop new defensive systems better able to resist such beams. Overlord armor is highly robust but vulnerable to sustained beam weaponry. Most current developments revolve around evolving the armor with the addition of energy shield expert Vera to the science department, they have begun looking into integrated mitigation shielding and surface forcefields. Theories about hard-light energy barriers have also been put forth, but hard-light technology remains largely theoretical at this point. Regardless, such efforts have fallen behind in recent years due to other projects taking priority in light of the storm.