Scion-Sending Missile
The Scion-Sending-class anti-ship missile, colloquially known as the "I don't like you" is a type of missile fielded by the Gudersnipe Foundation during the first few centuries of the Kamian Succession Wars. The weapon was likely in service before that, but would not have seen much action.
Design
The missile is armed with a Nuclear II forty-megaton warhead(technically variable yield, but they were never set for less). Placed in front of and around the warhead is a shell of Steel-fired osmium and tungsten compressed to over twice the natural density of osmium. The shell is shaped much like the copper cone around a rocket-propelled grenade. When the warhead detonates, the shell is propelled forward as a jet of super-heated, high-energy plasma.
The weapon is notorious for being able to penetrate any known armor, and due to it's proximate at detonation, it bypasses most shields. The impact is compared to a single shot from a dreadnought capitol ship.
However, the Achilles heal of the missile is it's inability to be fired from a standard missile tube, or from a torpedo tube. It requires a specially constructed tube, and is highly vulnerable to counter-measures when first launched. Most starships arrange the tubes on a 90 degree axis from the direction of travel, requiring the weapons to turn; the Scion-Sending's slow acceleration speed leaves it vulnerable in this turn. Its larger and longer tube requirements also mean that it could only be fitted to the largest class of ships. In order to fit it to smaller ships(where the real need lay) the weapon had to be put in a forward-facing 0/0 tube, making it even less effective.
Launch Tube
If forced to rely souly on it's rocket motor, the Scion-Sending had a launch speed too low for effective use, making it vulnerable to counter-measures and boost-phase defense systems(which can be devastating to the launch ship). To counteract this, the Scion has to be launched from a magnetic coil-lined tube that provides a considerable fraction of it's initial acceleration velocity.
For best results, the tubes are aligned with the nose of the ship, allowing the missile to also gain much of the ship's forward momentum. This design was the most common implementation, though Some scions were fitted to tubless launchers on Orbital Weapon Platforms, and a fighter-carried version was even produced.
Operational History
Scion-Sendings may have been fielded as early as the late Fifth Age with the primary stumbling block being the burner casing. Due to the drastically different launcher requirements verses more traditional missiles, they saw very little use. It was only by the Battle of Lerma that the Crimson Blade was fielding ships with the correct launch tubes incorporated into the original design.
During the Battleship Crisis in the first few years of the war, Scion-Sending tubes were ommited from designs as the requirement called for fast, cheap, easily built systems, and the missile did not meet the requirements for Grand Standardization. While powerful, it was not considered very useful.
By the Battle of Lerner Fields, many frigates and destroyers had been outfitted with Scion-Sending launchers, giving them the ability to deliver the weapons dangerously close to targets.
However, the old weakness of the missiles remained: the need for a specialized launcher - in this case a launcher that extended nearly the full length of the ships it was being fitted to. This made the launchers highly susceptible to damage, and after a few high-profile accidents, the missile systems were discontinued from use.
The primary innovation of the Scion-Sending, the tungsten/osmium shell, was incorporated into the Scion Torpedo, which eventually became the Skipper Missile.
