Gaiaterra: Elysea's Conflict/Cyclotronic Weaponry

When the Voshkod first witnessed Alliance particle accelerator weapons in battle around 2004 V.C., they were shocked. The weapons afforded penetration that allowed them to penetrate even the toughest of tank armor, as demonstrated when a Rocketeer squad destroyed the Apocalypse tank Fist of Vengeance. After that incident, the Voshkod demanded a particle accelerator weapon to match the Alliance's own weapons.

The best minds at the Ministry of Experimental Science were put to work on the problem immediately. However, all attempts to capture Alliance accelerator weapons and reverse engineer them failed, while attempts by Voshkod spies to steal the blueprints for the Alliance's most state-of-the-art particle accelerators similarly failed to produce any satisfactory results. In the end, the scientists were forced to make do with old Cherdenko-era cyclotron designs. Nevertheless, they were able to develop a working weapon: the Cyclotron.

Coming In Hot
It should be noted that the Cyclotron diverges somewhat from Alliance particle accelerator-based weapons; where the Alliance accelerates minuscule quantities of hydrogen to relativistic speeds, the Voshkod opted to accelerate a far larger projectile, but at much lower velocities. Thus, Cyclotronic weaponry is only able to accelerate its projectiles up to 0.5% light speeds, but still very destructive for a rifle, due to the comparatively large mass of its projectiles, each weighing over a milligram. Unfortunately, the (somewhat) larger size of the projectile also leads to increased air resistance, which means that a lot of energy is wasted. However, the Voshkod realized that this could be used to their advantage since friction generates a large amount of heat.

Thus, the projectiles fired by Cyclotronic weaponry are coated in an outer layer of magnesium, which makes them burn fiercely and cause even more damage upon impact. When fired, the projectile leaves a very bright white streak across the battlefield, all the way from the barrel to the target. While lacking the penetration of Alliance proton weapons, the projectile usually turns into a highly destructive, if extremely small, fireball on impact, basically it's a long-range flamethrower. This makes it far more deadly against structures and infantry as compared to Alliance accelerator weapons, although it does suffer in the anti-tank department. Naturally, these weapons are extremely complicated and difficult to manufacture and are only sparingly issued to elite soldiers and vehicles to examine their effectiveness in field tests, though results thus far have been extremely promising, with soldiers giving favorable evaluations of the destructive capability of the weapons. To the point that Cyclotronic weapons, alongside the Desolator Defoliant, have completely replaced the Voshkod's flame-based weapons.