[quote]I admit, that 50% lightspeed figure should be toned down, and will be toned down. Drastically. Also, that 10c cruising speed? Yeah... we have that technology already. Nobody's broken the lightspeed barrier, but the mechanism for doing so has existed since the late 90's. Thing is, we have absolutely no idea how to create the negative energy (yes, real thing) fuel that it would need. Plus, by the original design, it would need multiple universes of that. Using modern designs created by Edward White and his team at NASA, that figure can be reduced to the mass of the Voyager space probe. We still don't know how to create a single particle of this stuff though, but it probably exists according to quantum physics. Besides, that's a really, really slow ship to the rest of the galaxy. A few weeks to Alpha Centauri for humans, and the Eternal union just pops in at Mars from somewhere outside Sol in seconds.

My idea for the humans in the long run, however, is that they use "primitive" science to great effect. A high-power railgun could one-shot an alien ship, despite being "primitive" in comparison to "generic DEW".

I like harder (Not that hard, but harder) sci-fi (hence why I chose the Alcubierre Drive instead of a "Hyperdrive" or "Warp Drive"), but I've always been bad with research. In fact, I was going to make those cannons less "whoops I forgot a projectile at that speed would destroy a planet" and more "Cutting beams, but, like, molten metal". Think Sovereign's main gun from Mass Effect. Instead, I was lazy and picked a number less than 90, said "eh, it'll work", and threw it in.

Also, I'm kind of surprised that nobody complained about the fact that a sublight vessel (a fighter, no less) made it to Mars in 20 minutes. That's another thing to fix.[/quote]

The Eternal Union probably used FTL to traverse that distance in such a short span of time. I figured the ship's "cruising speed" was the general velocity it operated at during ship-to-ship combat or when it was merely coasting through space using sub-light engines. Or something along those lines. I don't know why I thought that. 

And, the idea that railguns or other types of projectile weapons are primitive is never justified in science fiction for some reason. I mean for one, you lose the indirect fire capabilities of projectile weapons---unless your DEWs defy all physics and somehow can arc over hills, mountains and around corners.

In the vul'kruun's case, they just modernized the firearm and standard solid-propellant cannon technology as well. And the railgun, the coilgun or its helical sub-types were never actually invented, but they were successful in creating shaped charges (both high-explosive and nuclear) that could propel a projectile through a barrel at extreme velocities. Sort of like a voitenko implosion gun, except minus the device's habit of self-destructing during the firing procedure. There are also light-gas guns, combustion light-gas guns, electrothermal light-gas guns, standard electrothermal guns, electrothermal-chemical guns, and scram cannons.