Is there any other method of acquiring the book?

Worth the buy if anyone is interested in designing some spacecraft concepts. Thoroughly enjoyed the purchase.

@@thatkinginyellow5653 I'm glad you enjoyed it! - hoojiwana from Spacedock

You guys should look at Destiny for some sci-fi stuff on your lists. Destiny exotic weapons could probably have completely filled this list, and, as a gunsmith, I find very interesting as concepts.

I can’t believe you talked about warframe and didn’t mention the gunblades

When you read the lore for the lasgun, it sounds ridiculously OP. Then you look at it's stat line and realise that you're not in Kansas anymore Toto.

And, of course, there's the old Guardsman joke about it: What d'you call a Lasgun with a laser pointer? Twin linked. 😁

My copy of "The Imperial Infantrymans' Uplifting Primer" informs me that my lasgun is more than capable of taking any conceivable enemy down in at most a few shots. Really, the only thing that can defeat a lasgun-wielding Guardsman is his own Commissar, if he should fail to maintain said lasgun properly.

"He who mocks the power of the lazgun has never had to walk through a field of 20,000 of them."

@@reliantncc1864 Ha! Well said, soldier! *shoots the next trooper instead*

Oh yeah, the Needlers are the bomb. Also, I feel like it was weird to put a crossbow on the list. Laser guns are already stretching the bounds of firearm, but a crossbow just really doesn't count.

I was waiting desperately for the needler

I've actually been replaying Halo CE Anniversary recently, and it reminded me just how cool the Needler is. The reload especially is very meaty and satisfying.

glorious pink death!!!! most fun weapon to use, always sucks to die to it lolz

And of course you could dual wield those monsters, which was insane but so much fun And Tracer's guns are really cool, the idea of only needing to make some super special rounds once and then just "reusing" them is very cool

Normal, RGB, bitcrushed or triple-wielded?

Should have been on the list or have an entire list for alien weapons.

@@TheSpearkan The detexture rifle, obviously

@@TheSpearkanTriple wielded is absolutely busted.

It looks nice but is very simplistic: an alien gun that shoots glowy stuff. I can see what it didn't make the list.

Geth plasma SMG sounds crazy as it spins up, Salarian scorpion pistol mini sticky bombs, Bee plasmid from Bioshock. Not the top weapons but cool nonetheless.

Do you remember the title so I can search?

@@jakeaurod if I recall right, it was in a Q&A video. Which one, no idea.

that is by far the wisest dumb thing i have heard about fictional weapons ever.

Gun Jesus knows his stuff.

Actually that is a good reason why the future uses energy weapons. Batteries are so much more reliable.

Bolter isn't very sci-fi. We already have a pistol that does that from I think the 70s. We literally can make a bolter right now. Sci-Fi by definition is speculative in nature.

No bolter? This heresy cannot go unpunished!

Artillery isn't on this list;) On a more serious note, I wish people, who argue bolter would just look up modern artillery tech and not just stop at gyrojet. Then they would have understood how broken that thing is. Active-reactive systems, controlled airburst, ramjet rounds, beam riding and inertial guidance. All of that and more was minituariazed to 25mm, 20mm or even 12mm irl already. The sci-fi part comes from the ability to mass produce said ammo with less then 100k$ per round.

@@murphy7801 to be honest I might forgive them if they put bolters in number 1 for top ten sci fi rocket launchers.

They try too hard

It's built around a prototype Federation Starfleet TR-116 rifle (which itself is neat and unusual in the Star Trek 'verse, since it is an actual rifle, as in a weapon that fires a solid, chemically-propelled bullet through a rifled metal barrel, but using 24th-century tech and materials science, such as tritanium bullets). The micro-transporter enhanced version - after its debut as a tricked-out murder weapon - was eventually developed into the TR-116A and TR-116B, which are available in Star Trek Online. Surprisingly, while shields normally disrupt transporter tech, the TR-116A and B are good for shooting through personal energy shielding.

Definitely one of the coolest concepts in weapon design, particularly since it's not actually that crazy. The technology in it already existed in the Star Trek universe. It comes off as what a genius gun designer like Browning might build if given Star Trek tech to work with.

That was a cool gun, especially how every part of it MADE SENSE in the universe(which is very rarely the case in Treknology one-offs). I seem to recall the episode around it being cool as hell too, but that might be dodgy teenager judgement.

Shooting through walls, that's almost better than cheat codes.

A neat idea, but Why not just transport the bullet directly into the target?

Do you mean Voyager's hideous Compression Phaser Rifles? The TNG movie era phaser rifles are the best from Trek followed by the Into Darkness rifle and Enterprise M.A.C.O. rifles IMO.

@@brentbartley6838 I think they're both called compression rifles. I assume they mean the one that looks more like a standard future rifle from First Contact. Pity that Nerf's attempt at it was so damn ugly.

@@brentbartley6838 HELL no, I'm talking the type 3A phaser rifle. None of that super-soaker lookin shit.

Also worth mentioning that (AFAIK) this franchise gave us the concept of the ionized-path Lightning Gun.

YES! The UT series has some wonderful weapons. The Flak cannon is arguably a shotgun, but it just feels different. But there is nothing more satisfying than a kill with the bio rifle.

Flak cannon is awesome, too, but the ripper from 99 has always been my favorite.

Arguably less fun than telefragging in that game, but yes it's a rollicking good time.

Yes

It's neat, but not practical unless you're going for assassinations, which is why the Federation dropped the program.

One of my bridge officers in Star Trek Online never leaves the ship without their TR-116.

@@WillWilsonthesafetyguy likewise! They’re honestly the best weapon in game when it comes to the Borg.

Awesome mention, love DS9!

A while back in a DnD campaign, I ran a cowboy themed artillerist artificier that "used" caster shells as his spell slots for casting his spells. Getting his shells back during rests was just him reloading his own ammo and etching a glyph on the casing. Loved Outlaw Star, Cowboy Bebop, and Trigun, the holy trinity of space western animes, as a kid growing up.

And it coms with a free aimbot.

For the Greater Good!

Sounds like something that would sneak out of warframe, only with less war crime additives. Or the Thanix from Mass Effect.

talking about W40K; anything made by' nids is win automatically. those fuckers can (and will) adapt to anything, given time. if not, sheer numbers (rippers are nasty) or subterfuge (lictors and genestealers) ;) . love space commies weapons and power armor though.

@@filanfyretracker pretty much all weapons in 40K are considered war crime generators almost by existence. The Tau Pulse Rifle is like having a man portable 30mm cannon, that will atomize you and pulverize what's left into meat chunks that are ready to server well done if not outright carbonized. But even by 40K weapons this is tame and doesn't get into the depravity that are Dark Eldar weapons. Those are the real intentional, blatant and as painfully as possible war crime generators.

Call them guns

Plus they're amazingly compact. They're absolutely perfect for their role because they'd never get in your way as you go about your job, but they still are there when you need them. I can still hear that "charge-up" noise when they're turned on.

100% agree about the PPG; comes in a variety of sizes, sounds cool as hell when it fires, and makes sense to issue to people near pressure hulls.

@@reliantncc1864 Yeah, the PPG charge-up noise will always mean 'awesomeness' to me

PPG is definitely on my list, but wouldn't be at the top. Love how the books (specifically Psy Corps #3) made the PPG very suboptimal in the rain, and the fact that this would catch Mars-born Garibaldi off-guard. Earthforce went all-PPG because it never expected to need to use them on Earth. I just like the detail there.

What happens? It makes a really, really big and unpleasant splatter all over the place. Someone clearly saw what Kenshiro does in Dist of the North Star and said: That needs to be in a pistol.

The dominator is judge dred's gun but it's not just cool and badass it's also thematically integral to the story. It's an embodiement of the entire plot and is a magic system of its own. Spectacular sci fi weapon from a conceptual standpoint and for everything else it's just judge dred's gun but anime do i need to say anymore?

Minority Report, but a gun? I like it.

@@CptJistuce Not quite. Minority Report is "Our precogs have told us you are going to commit a murder, so we're here to arrest you and hold you in a medical coma so that won't happen." Pretty damn dystopic. Psycho-Pass is "In a nation where everyone is under very nearly constant biometric surveillance, psychological and audio-visual, and if the AI in charge of the system decides your 'crime coefficient' crosses a legislated threshold, the Public Safety Division's elite cops and enslaved 'latent criminals' are sent to hunt them down and generally kill them very, very gruesomely." It's MUCH more dystopic.

Man psycopass was amazing

Deckard's pistol was the first sci-fi firearm that I was truly enamored by. I grew up on Star Trek TOS, and while the Phasers were freaking cool, they were closer to magic than reality. But the Blade Runner pistol was familiar and futuristic at the same time. It was just so purpose-built -- a sidearm powerful enough to retire a Replicant. Iconic. My honorable mention would be the double-barreled laser pistols from The Black Hole, which received a tribute of sorts in Guardians of the Galaxy. (I think they also inspired some designs in Halo.)

Raise you the Ripper or Bio Rifle

I remember that one fondly. That game was ingenious for pushing alt fire modes into new territory.

The original combo weapon, a fine choice. - hoojiwana from Spacedock

I would hit people with that combo before they even came around the corner. Similarly, one of my favorite tactics was to bounce grenades off of walls around corners, or to bounce them off walls in front of me when being chased so that it caught my pursuer off-guard.

IMO the Shock Rifle is pretty much a mandatory inclusion in lists like this. Power, precision, knockback, area denial, this thing does it all. Not to mention a *_very_* high skill ceiling and the extreme catharsis-factor when you finally git gud with it. PC Gamer named the Flak Cannon as "the greatest gun in PC gaming." While the Flak is definitely in the All Time Top 10 list, we all know who the REAL king of the arenas is...

My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle.

Shiny.

Only the Bolter and the Pulse Rifle are sci-fi weapons (mostly). The rest are reskinned real life weapons. They look cool, but the Morita, MA5 and Lancer (minus chainsaw bayonet) could exist today in a real life military.

That’s what makes them cool: their plausibility in the real world

@@owenlagger but then they are not sci-fi, just science. This doesn't take away from the coolness factor of the design, but it stops being fiction, as they have become real things.

Great suggestion from a great game

Cool gun (if nothing else, it gets around the whole "hammerspace" issue), but the assault rifle mode was a bit underwhelming. Fine for standard mooks, but it really made you dependent on concentrated squad fire to bring down tougher targets.

I loved the 'infinite ammo on cooldown' of the DC-15s that came with that package. Decent punch per shot, you could do a lot with it as long as you were careful

@@selachianseas999 that was part of the gameplay I think, the characters in RC aren’t Jedi with lightsabers so a super battle droid is going to require concentrated fire

You beat me to it. The DC-17m is awesome and actually not as far-fetched of an idea as most people think.

amen to that

Rock and Stone to the bone!

The Cryo cannon combo with the melee damage drills is just perfection - hoojiwana from Spacedock

We are unbreakable!

Deep rock is great for extremely satisfying guns. They have missiles, lasers, plasma, grenades, miniguns, shotguns, and even an upgraded version of the M1 Garand that lets you levitate while aiming it.

Did I hear a Rock and Stone?!

Delete is the wrong word. It would have to be anti matter to be a delete.

@@murphy7801 it is debated how the GBE works but I think delete is correct. antimatter would annihilate anything it hits, but e=mc² means that hitting even the air Infront of you would be the same as a nuke. What we see from the GBE is a beam that goes through everything along with an area around the beam that is suddenly empty of matter. It does cause explosions in some instances but its often the object being hit exploding due to the massive hole in it. The physics of the gun are questionable at best. But to my understanding it's ment to shoot gravitons that warp space-time, Effectively erasing whatever it passes through from existence. Edit: Also it's possible on the boundary between inside and outside the beam instead of erasing atoms it accelerates them outward (due to negative mass) causing the explosions we see. But definitely less powerful than e=mc² would dictate for an annihilation.

I was gonna add the double take too!

Vasquez: "Let's Rock!"

Noisy Cricket is what you're thinking of, and honestly it could use a mention in any list of SF small arms. Hilariously impractical, and of course K should never have given it to him.

@@reliantncc1864 Read the MiB novels that take place after the movies. Elle actually reads the manual on the Cricket and discovers how to hold it so you don't wind up on your ass when firing it. It's all in the wrist.

@@alexanderwatson1980 You mean fan fiction? No, thanks. I don't want to hear about some fan's attempt to explain away something that was only included for comedy. If it knocks you backward 20 feet, how you hold it doesn't matter.

@@reliantncc1864 I get it. Reading is hard for some folks.

The side-on silhouette of the PPG *is* a snub-nosed .38 Apparently JMS chose this for a "detective's revolver" vibe

Haha that railgun was so ridiculous and fun - hoojiwana from Spacedock

Qualta Blade >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Final Fantasy's attempts at Gunblades.

He should have given them a mention while talking about the gravity gun, considering the Prawn mech had one Vickus killing one of the mercs by yeeting a pig at him was astonishing

Is it a practical design? No. Is it cool and iconic? Absolutely yes!

The phaser is a brilliant piece of worldbuilding; it's a multitool first and a weapon a very distant second. The perfect analogy for Starfleet and the Federation as a whole. It's also fitting how the TNG-style phasers get replaced by the more weapon-like phaser rifles as the Borg and the Dominion enter the scene.

@@shinyagumon7015 That's part of why I really like the itty-bitty Type 1 phaser. Such a multitude of uses, in a package the size of a garage door opener.

@@shinyagumon7015 Yeah, I mentioned the other day to someone who hadn't seen TOS but commented about the early TNG phasers being impractical while watching that show, that as part of the show's... sort of 'less-military' rebrand between the two series, they redesigned the uniforms and equipment to make it clear what the Federation was about: that this is a society so peaceful but also confident in its ability to improvise under pressure to overcome obstacles by understanding them, that their military consists of people who are scientists and diplomats first and soldiers a distant second (even bringing their families with them on fancy ships like the Enterprise) rather than a dedicated full-time military, and the rather un-threatening weapons packed full of utility features were a great prop design / worldbuilding element to help sell that idea. It's almost as much a "poke it with a stick" implement for scientific exploration or a pocketknife for MacGuyvering solutions to problems as it is a weapon.

Freaking love that series! It lends itself well to a lot of creative uses as well - like setting up the rifle in a remote location, then triggering it when your enemy comes around looking for you, or setting it up to fire two-round bursts where the first round is heavy enough to break a light shield, and the second round is left as a hollow-point to deal with the squishy enemy just behind the shield.

In one of the later books (I believe it's in The Human Division) some CDF soldiers come under fire from a sniper hiding in an apartment building. The squad leader stands up to act as a distraction and let's her combat unitard absorb the hit, but giving away which apartment the sniper is in. One of the troopers then fires a grenade programmed to with mini cameras instead of explosives to pinpoint the sniper's exact location in the room.

the sounds of some of the guns in Firefly make me think there is more going on than typical cordite. Like they made some other kind of propellent.

Space marine boltgun is based off of a real pistol that shoots rockets. It's from the 1960s. Hardly call it sci-fi. There called Gyrojets. We could make a boltgun today. Just not very cost effective. So it isn't sci-fi.

@@murphy7801 by that standard most weapons on Spacedock's list aren't sci-fi. But they are, because they're guns in sci-fi settings, and your weirdly narrow interpretation is entirely ignorable.

@@murphy7801 dude if that’s your line of thinking about half the weapons on this list shouldn’t be there. Also given that 40K is very much in a sci-fi setting it should be there.

The impression I've gotten is that the people behind this channel don't like/cover 40K all that much, (though maybe that's just because I haven't watched very far back), so it makes sense that he not put its guns ohv this list.

@@murphy7801 the gyrojet part is real. The armor-piercing, internal explosive part is not (as far as handheld weapons go). So there are still parts of it that would fall under the sci-fi definition, therefore still fit in the criteria. And the others who have commented on how lucrative your criteria are would be correct

Eh, I agree on the sound, but the Saber's problem (and that of the Mattock in ME3) is that it's neither fish nor fowl. If you want to pick off targets at range with a couple hits, there are sniper rifles that will do the job better (M-13 Raptor is basically a harder-hitting Mattock with an integral scope and slightly smaller ammo capacity, not to mention a lever-action reload) and up close they don't have the rate of fire or ammo capacity to compete with full-auto guns. As a full-auto Mattock the Harrier is devastating, although it runs out of ammo fast. In ME2 I agree the Mattock is a top contender.

Personally prefer NC weapons more. Compact hand held coil guns, slow rate of fire, but hit like a brick and look cool.

Will always have a soft spot for Planetside 2. There’s something about the NC weapons fire sound design that’s pretty interesting too.

personally I love the uniqueness of AdMech weaponry. Arc weapons to fry your enemies with lightning, rifles that fire servitor shot made to hone in on targets, gigantic Anti-material Arquebus firing ultra-dense munitions, and my personal favorite: Radium weapons that actively irradiate the battlefield, the enemy, and the troops using them. oh AdMech, never change.

Mount an AR Heavy Barrel and magazine capacity upgrade, and you cease needing any other gun.

That was kind of fun to see the starting "basic piece of crap" rifle from ME1 come back as a near-gamebreaker. The only ME3 character of mine that didn't use it as a primary weapon was the adept, and only because I wanted to change up the loadout from my engineer build. Even on the soldier and sentinel builds I'd swap their N7 Typhoons out for it on certain loadouts (e.g., if I wanted my soldier to carry a thermal-scoped N7 Valiant and Venom).

@@Myomer104 The only real competition the Lancer had as an assault rifle was from the N7 Typhoon, which is much heavier and less controllable but comes with native armor/cover-piercing and some nasty bonus damage attributes. For other DLC guns, well, the Venom is pretty much a one-shot kill against anything short of a Banshee or Atlas on normal (and makes a mess of the general area) and the N7 Piranha in the hands of a vanguard (or Wrex and Grunt in Citadel) is just obscene.

Ah, you mean the Peacemaker guns used by Judges in the 2012 Dredd movie. But yes, it's weird that in games like Halo, the Spartans don't have any rifles with shotgun, grenade launcher, laser, or plasma weapon attachments, or even switching between semi and full automatic fire (which is of course for gameplay mechanics to pick up lots of guns)

​@MegaKnight2012 Honestly, while I like the idea of Spartans being trained to use anything effectively, I find it surprising they lean into the Spartan-sized weapons more. Like the Space Marines and their Bolt Guns. The only examples I can think of are the Spartan Laser and the upsized Magnums occasionally mentioned in the novels.

@@MegaKnight2012 especially given the Aliens inspiration the UNSC had in CE, hell some concept art for the rifle which would become the MA5B has similar functionality to the Pulse Rifle. Except instead of the pump action underbarrel GL being tube fed it has this giant frak off 12 gauge looking magazine which I hate but it's still far closer to the M41A than the MA5B ended up being in the end.

TBF a kinda similar idea is Deus ex invisible war has a universal ammo type for all guns.

@@mitwhitgaming7722 Yeah, it's real weird the Spartans don't have more personalized weapons. Given they're strong enough to flip tanks, there are standard issue guns they might break (some real guns have freaking plastic triggers), or they should at least have no problem with recoil.

It's not very sci-fi it's based off a real weapon. We could probably make it now. Sci-fi is about speculation about the future.

@@murphy7801 and a modified AK and a crossbow aren’t? Did you even watch the video?! 😂

@@murphy7801 Like the above said, the video has 2 basically real weapons. And the fatman is a fucking cartoon weapon.

The one time I'll actually help an agent of the corpse god.

@@chrisbingley That’s the God-Emperor of Mankind to you

@@jonathonloughridge9191 Try and make me, I'm a little behind on my Skull offerings this month.

@@chrisbingley The Mortifactors have some spare skulls for you. Just be sure to knock really loudly on the door when you get there.

The lasgun is an awesome weapon. It may not have the sheer power of many weapons in the 40k universe but it is still a manstopper. It has few moving parts to go wrong and the ammo is self charging.

@@stephenjdutton agreed the lasgun in terms of infantry based weapons is a really underrated weapon, where even more advanced weapons fail, whereas the lasgun shines, simply put, when compared to any other reasonable or rational sci fi universe that has legions of soldiers, the lasgun is one of the go to choices, simply because it’s Cheap Ludicrously accurate to the point where it’s only hindrance would be the user Easy to manufacture in massive amounts of numbers Simply to both maintain and operate ensuring the ease of logistics The ammunition can be easily recharged via a charging point, either in a designated area of a building or on the fly with things like valkyries and chimeras and even leman Russ tanks all have charging stations built inside them, allowing the squad or unit to resupply its ammunition whilst on the move. If the first lasbolt doesn’t do anything then the second or twenty shots after that would. Its magazine can hold up to a thousand rounds of ammunition and each guardsmen carry’s four into combat. And so on and so on, again the humble lasgun whilst pathetic in the eyes of more advanced weapons like tau plasma or pulse weapons, to things like Star trecks phasers or even the stormtroopers blaster, the lasgun can more or less match or even rival most of its competitors and again if one lasgun isn’t up for the task then ten lasguns on full auto should be enough to deal with most problems even space marines for all of their power, can be taken down with sufficient numbers of lasguns. Although many people call the lasgun a laser weapon, I’d say it’s more akin to a pulse rifle or a cross between the two, where it fires pulses of directed thermal energy, enhanced through both a laser beam and a hard light projector, which would explain why lasbolts somehow manages to have mass and recoil, similar to say forerunner technology where beams of solid light can be used to create a bridge, i theorize that the lasguns can do something similar however in a much smaller and focused beam, rather than say a bridge, all the while lasers aware used to increase the power of the laser pulse for a split second giving a lasbolt both mass and thermal energy, it’s just my personal opinion, however it does support some of the lore regarding lasguns

And with the alt-mode, you can see through surfaces, and shoot freely at the red-bodies you can see running about...