It is nearly impossible to find spacefaring vehicles that don't have some level of armament on them. Even civilian craft will often be armed, though those are often optional or after market additions. Because of the fast majority of people buying thier ships operate in locations where some amount of 'defense' is required, the ship manufacturers always have an option for weaponry mounting points (you can request the weapons be removed, but it almost never happens).
Spaceborne weapons have been produced for centuries by not just different races, but different companies. The naming and classification of these weapons had been anything other than standardized, often with weapons being released with model numbers making them sound like new weapons, while in fact, they're the same junk they've been selling for two decades, with a shiny new name. It difficult to compare two models of the same type of weapon from the same manufacturer, let alone compare two weapons across two different manufacturers or races.
The Interstellar Ship Authority has created a standardized weapon categorization standard, and does independant testing and rating of ship armaments that they publish bi-anually. However, that's just the weapons they certify; anyone can use the certification standard to help customers understand how weapons relate to each other. (This standard is so popular, both the League and Terran militaries have adopted it as their official standard.)
Note: All ships on this wiki will have their armaments listed in the ISA standard.
The ISA standard for ship weapon classification is as follows:
<Common Weapon Type Name> Grade <Grade Number><Class Letters> (Gen <Generation Number>)
Examples: Grazer Grade 3C (Gen 7), Railgun Grade 12S (Gen 2), Plasma Lance Grade 2SN (Gen 43)
The ISA officially recognizses the following weapon type names:
Other weapon types may be used (especially for Sooni and Grey weapon systems). However, those are unofficial designations and may be subject to change, or inconsistent in their usage or meaning.
The ISA recognises the following weapon variant specifiers as being allow in conjunction with the weapon name:
These weapon variants are viewed as modifying the base weapon type significantly enough that specification is not just allowed but required.
It should be noted 'Lance', 'Spinal' and 'Spinal Lance' variants are outlawed on civilian registered ships without special licensing. 'Cannon' variants are allowed, though the ISA has recently reclassified some cannons as lances, for regulatory reasons.
Weapon grades are a integer number starting at 1 with no upper bound. They serve as a rough approximation of how "powerful" a weapon is. This rating is relative to the weapon type, it's variant, it's class and it's generation. This means that a 'Grade 3C' weapon is likely to be more powerful than a 'Grade 8S' weapon, since capital weapons are typically so much more powerful than small ship weapons.
Typically, however, inside the same class, type and variant, weapons can be compared with relative ease. A 'Plasma Lance Grade 3C' is going to be more powerful than a 'Plasma Lance Grade 2C'. While not exactly true, a good rule of thumb is to assume grade damage output is logarithmic, while power consumption is linear (or in some cases exponential).
This gets a little more complicated when Generation is added into the mix; generally older (lower) generations are higher power consumption and lower damage than newer (higher) generations, but it takes specialized knowledge to really compare.
There are two primary weapon classes: C and S. Class C weapons are considered "capital ship" class weapons, with an order of magnitude more destructive potential than S ("small ship") class weapons.
Additionally, the N Specifier is used to indicate if a weapons is classified as 'civilian'. Civilian weapons are typically slower, lower yield and usually safer to operate than other weapon types, which has lead to the N classification having a dubious consumer perception.
While the N classification is important for consumers to understand that they might be buying a lower-powered, less feature-full weapon that complies with a wide variety of governmental regulations, it has been met with a great deal of disdain from the ship buying community at large. Not only does it almost always mean, "worse", it would be stupid to assume that everyone lives under the same laws, if any. There are plenty of N class weapons whose limitations aren't required by local governments.
A (possible apocryphal) example would be this exchange between a young first time ship owner and a local drydock owner:
"But this one's a Grade 4, that's just a Grade 2. Isn't a higher grade better?"
"Look kiddo, if you’ve got a weapon mount installed by any qualified shipwright, it doesn’t care what sort of piece you pop on. S’long as you can power it, it’ll work. So don’t go for any civvie shit. That ‘N’ in the Grade means 'Nope'. Put a real bit o’ iron on it."
Apocryphal or not, variations on this exchange happen often enough there's been increasing pressure on the ISA to drop the N specifier and use an R or M classification for "commonly restricted" or "military" instead. So far, the ISA has filed those suggestions into a nearest fusion reactor.
Weapon generations are an integer number starting at 1 with no upper bound. They represent, roughly, the technological complexity of the weapon system in question. They are not related to calendar age (Sooni weapon generations, for example, are typically in the double or triple digits). It is, roughly, trying to say that 'it would reasonably take this many iterations to produce a weapon of this complexity and feature set'.
While grade can't be compared across weapon types, variations or generations, generation is a bit more universally comparable. A 'Gen 1' weapon will be lower complexity than a 'Gen 10' weapon, regardless of type. Weapon power consumption or damage output still can't be compared, but generation combined with grade helps paint a picture of how advanced a particular weapon system is.
The term 'energy weapons' refers to any weapons that take energy in place of ammunition. This does not mean that they don't require a 'fuel' (such as plasma), but rather they aren't typically limited to ammunition stores and their "fuel" can be generated by the ship (subatomic particles, hydrogen, etc).
A "grazer" is a gravity assisted particle accellerator, and it's name is a misnomer of "gravitic laser" (and it's mispelled). Grazers are not lasers, they are, in fact, particle accellerators. They accellerate subatomic particles (neutrons, typically) to a significant fraction of the speed of light. The larger the neutron generation, the larger the 'beam'.
Grazers, despite their complexity, are very user friendly and predictable. They have become the most common energy weapon type with strong proponents among military types because of their range and energy efficiency.
Plasma is most commonly used to generate fusion inside of a fusion reactor, however, it's an incredibly powerful weapon when well contained. The problem with plasma is that it is a high-energy state of mater and it wants to condense into a gas quickly. In order to prevent it from doing so, it has to be magnetically constricted. This means that most plasma weapons have a range of however far out they can keep the beam cohesive.
Plasma weapons, while having devistating damage, are power hungry, short range, and indiscriminate. Before grazer technology was miniaturized plasma was prefered, but it's fallen out of favor due to it's range issues and the difficulty in putting it on smaller craft.
Gravitic plasma weapons were the response to the technological advances of grazers. Typically utilizing a good deal of the same technology, gravitic plasma weapons use artificial gravity wells to overcome the confinement issues of traditional plasma weapons, to a high degree of success.
Gravitic plasma is still considered highly experimental and it's hardly even being researched (since the flaws of grazers are widely considered acceptible). Current generation weapons, however, are highly promising as alterntives to grazers with the same devistating (if not moresore) impact of a plasma weapon but at truly terrifying distances.
Note: It is possible to fire a traditional plasma weapon into a subspace bubble, allowing for it to achieve literal astronomical distances, however, that would be considered a subspace weapon, and is banned by the Charlemagne Accords.
(Current thoughts: this is the Sooni/Grey tech territory. Flinging neutron-degenerate matter like plasma; think grazer/plasma hybrid x 1000)
(Also possible: gravity shitfuckery)
Magnetic projectile launch system, often utilizing solid metalic projectiles.
Railgun that utilized a gravitic, not magnetic launch system.
A self propelled, semi-autonomous short-lived weapon system designed to deliver a payload to a target.
A larger missile, often fully autonomous, with a greater payload and longer endurance.
A torpedo that, instead of an explosive payload, generates a concentrated cloud of plasma around it, allowing for much longer range plasma "shots".
Like above, but uses gravity to concentrate the plasma.