Someone asked recently what kind of weapon works well in space. This kind.
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I mean, railguns would probably be more effective in space, I actually remember there was a story with an alien race making an empire with energy weapons (so possibly lasers by another name) and developed excellent shields to make them useless against them.
Then they ran into humans who had railguns....and they just smashed through their shields because they were kinetic weapons. It's always good to have a variety of options than only improve one.
Rail guns still have the problem that the barrels and magnets wear out with every shot. And unless I miss my guess(based on my own experience with linear accelerators) they'd generate a fair bit more heat than something like this.
Not saying kinetic weaponry wouldn't have a place, but in early space combat it'd likely take the form of guided missiles which externalize most of their heat after leaving the ship.
Kinetic energy would have the best place against stationary targets, like mortar fire is in the modern era. Space stations and planets. You can calculate rotations and orbits, and deceleration is nearly zero in a vaccuum, so you can fire near-light railgun shots from years away, to completely kill a planet from several directions, nearly undetectable given their small size and speed.
A laser's energy would dissipate over those distances, the aggression would be obvious, but kinetic weapons could sentence a genocide to a world before the world even knows a war is declared, the politicians could still be on trading and speaking terms for years while one side knows the killing blow is already inbound.
Mutual annihilation seems incredibly easy once you control forces like that. Might be one of the reasons we're not seeing active extra terrestrial life out there.