The fabric of the Sith Empire is driven by conflict. This has led to strong selection pressure for personal weapons technology.
Vibroblades and vibroswords are a popular melee weapon; Sith military always carry vibroblades, which are often used to sever the heads of failures to present to their lord in hopes of avoiding punishment. Taser batons are common in police forces.
Force pikes are popular among guards, useable to stun or kill.
Double-bladed swords are a classic Sith dueling weapon that have become very popular with groups that like to show off their ability with difficult-to-handle weapons. (A doubleblade is better at defense— the parrying bonus isn’t quite as good as that of a staff because the wielder needs to pay attention to the orientation of the blades so they can parry with the edge— but suffers a penalty to attack compared to a single-bladed sword.) The classic doubleblade is a 180cm weapon, with 60cm blades on either side of a 60cm handle. It is carried slung across the back, either with edges exposed to show how dangerous you are, or with leather sheaths hooked over the guards. A more subtle classic design has solid sheaths that match the handle, turning it into a staff; a simple release mechanism allows the wielder to remove the sheaths, which can then hook over the belt or simply be discarded if the wielder is in a hurry.
Modern ones make use of machinery: some have the blades spring out of the handle (two blades the length of the handle, and two bars the length of the handle that reach halfway up the blade to avoid creating a weak point), which may be concealed in a walking stick. (Wielders of this type also practice with only one blade extended for close-quarters fighting.) Others take the form of a staff that retracts telescoping guards to reveal the blades on command; these are less likely to lose a blade in a botch. Some are made to split in two to make them easier to handle in close quarters as paired shortswords.
Most ranged weapons can be hooked up to identify-friend-or-foe (IFF)
tracking to avoid shooting comrades. A weapon with IFF Trigger set
will not fire on anyone designated as a comrade, but will also not
allow taking fancy shots like shooting over your friend’s shoulder.
IFF Trigger is a skill rating for the weapon, which must be rolled
against the current degree of the fog of war
(which can get
quite high if military-grade battlefield jamming is in use). It does
make it more practical to spray autofire into a melee. IFF codes
are usually generated at deployment time, and stealing them is
considered a great feat of espionage (which is why it’s
important to have a mole on your enemy’s staff).
Gauss rifles and railguns are not as common as blasters; blaster gas takes up a lot less space than kinetic ammunition. Weapons collectors often have a fine selection of obsolete muskets, revolvers, semiautomatics, and assault rifles that actually make use of gunpowder. Some military units have railguns as well as blaster cannon to provide a diversity of damage types.
Grav weapons are generally much more expensive than magnetic launch ones, and are usually only created if there is some reason to accelerate a fragile projectile to tremendous speed.
Seldom used in hand-held weapons; getting enough photons into a beam to do damage is expensive. Capital ships have been known to use them for the advantage of being able to project damage at the speed of light, but only rarely; it’s too easy to fabricate armor with ablative reflective layers that will disperse an ordinary laser beam.
The usual weapon known as a laser
is actually a turbolaser, which is
actually a blaster using its own plasma as a lasing medium, carrying an extra
payload of high-energy coherent photons. The term was originally a project
code name devised by engineers who wanted to throw off industrial spies; there
are no actual turbines in a turbolaser.
So uncivilized.
— Obi-Wan Kenobi
Shoot bolts of magnetically stabilized plasma, derived from liquid blaster gas. Plasma being much less dense than liquid, you can get a lot of shots out of one before reloading. A standard blaster power pack can usually provide the energy for fifty shots, while the blaster gas cylinder lasts for 250 shots.
Depending on the source of the blaster gas, you can get blaster bolts nearly any color of the spectrum. Some gunslingers have custom mixes that have a signature bolt color.
Some blasters are equipped for stunning, which requires a specialized set of emitters that load the bolt with separated clusters of ions instead of superheated blaster gas; when the bolt impacts, the containment field collapses and the separated charges recombine with a high voltage discharge, much like the impact of a taser. Stun shots usually consume three times the energy of a blaster bolt and 1/10 the blaster gas. Stun bolts are pale blue and not as bright as a blaster bolt. They tend to be short-circuited easily by conductive anti-blaster armor.
The huge capital ship weapons capable of destroying a light freighter with a single hit are also large enough that they’re difficult to aim at a light freighter that’s taking evasive action. Most capital ships have smaller turrets for dealing with such minor threats.
Ion blasters are similar to blasters operating in stun mode, but more specialized in delivering electrical damage. The bolt they emit contains multiple nodes of alternating charge that create multiple currents across the target. These are most useful in disrupting electrical systems, including droids, by overloading circuit breakers and burning out components. An ion blaster bolt will damage organic beings as well, but not as much as a blaster of equivalent size and power.
High-energy blasters capable of disintegrating their targets from
the immense heat delivered; the bolts are a brilliant blue-white.
They have a low rate of fire and go through power packs very quickly.
(Mandalorians,
who won’t exist until 7000 BBY, call them rippers
.)
Stunners that temporarily reduce an opponent’s dexterity.
The Dashade make a
sonic disruptor
that fires both kinds of damage.
Blinding weapons are useful for crowd control, but visors that can stymie such attacks are common. Urban combat units often have visors that are synchronized to blinder-equipped droids, turning opaque momentarily while the blinding light is being projected.
Millimeter-wave microwave guns (like the Active Denial System) heat unprotected epidermis and create a burning sensation. They are easily blocked by robes with a conductive lining, those with a layer designed to resonate to the beam, or just a fair amount of dampness.
Kinetic bombardment is usually performed with mass drivers to devastating effect on planetary surfaces; it is not, however, useful for precision targeting. Energy bombardment is possible, using high powered lasers with adaptive optics to compensate for the distortion of the atmosphere. Capital ship blasters can reach the surface of a terrestrial planet, though they need to recalibrate to put more energy into the magnetic bottle so it will survive the trip.
Gloop guns, glue grenades...
The Echani (2) produce gear for people who emphasize maneuverability; their vibroswords are supercooled to keep them in alignment, doing a bit of cold damage on attack. Mandalorians (2) are more about brute force. Zabrak (2). Verpine (2). Nagai favor knife fighting. Arkanians make energy shields.
The Jal Shey, Matukai,and Krath do not exist yet. The Baran Do might. The Massassi are Sith.
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