With new heating technology in their hands, the HDC starts improving one of their best weapons: the Railguns. The heat, gathered by their armor, now goes into plasma injectors, that infuse plasma into the trail of the projectile after it fires. This leads to a stream of plasma hitting the target exactly where the shell, a hardened AP shell, penetrated the armor. This way much more damage can be done with a single shot, while also providing better defences.
Another new weapon based on plasma technology are cannons that fire a stream of thin plasma. This can be devastating against smaller ships, with less armor, and is very good to hit weak spots
A similar weapon was also created, that uses molten, nearly solid metal. Its carried by smaller ships, and fires a fine grid of metal that gets solid after a few minutes touching another metal. Its use it to block enemy cannons by blocking their barrels.
The last new weapon class is laser based.
At first, we have one of the best uses for lasers: Point defense. An AI based system was improved to allow the laser based point defense to localize rockets, and than use the lasers to burn to the explosive charge or the thruster to destroy the rocket. All PDs are nearly perfectly coordinated with fast turrets and the ability to get extra energy from the advanced energy distribution system to even destroy bigger rockets. Some PD turrets are on small rail systems to keep their arc of fire while aiming at the rockets. Bigger ships are also equipped with a really good radiation detection device, so the PD can shoot down nukes first
The other application is for laser weapons, but those are only installed on bigger ships. They are the perfect choice to hit vulnerable spots, and ignore plasma shields for the most part. The downside is, that they consume nearly all the energy of a bigger ship, and therefor are rarely used/installed
