[quote=@ASTA]
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This only opens up the possibility of someone drifting into the roleplay and proclaiming that their fictional suits of armor are incapable of sustaining damage from traditional science fiction weaponry. Throwing around the "I" word is a rather dangerous slippery slope to start down. [/quote] That's just space opera, soft Sci-Fi for you.
Which is also the popular kind.

[quote]At the end of the day, your standard M4 carbine is identical to a longbow, a crossbow, a flintlock rifle, or a near-future railgun in principle (but not in mechanical function). While the rules for a DEW may be different, a handheld railgun is going to be constrained by Sir Issac Newton's tyranny, making the few merits that it retains somewhat moot and irrelevant if the creature firing it is incapable of withstanding the recoil that such an infantry arm will generate upon being fired. If people are going to hand-wave the issue of recoil away with a railgun, the same can be done for the firearm.[/quote]Recoil is generally ignored in Sci-Fi, not so shockingly.
EDIT: Here I obviously meant soft Sci-Fi where entertainment value has far higher priority than scientific accuracy.

[quote]At any rate, I'm not using modern firearms for my faction, but it irks me when I see people writing off customary firearms as inherently useless in space opera settings. [/quote] They aren't always but even then they generally show feats which would make modern firearms look like peashooters.
That's just part of the genre.
Something scientific blub-blub gun will perform massively energetic showings one time and then reduced to the equivalent of modern firearms next.
Some try for a bit more consistency (generally upwards) or avoid typical sci-fi damage tropes (vaporizing people, etc) but overall things are still the same.      

[quote]The antimatter itself, at least from my perspective, isn't the problem, but the concept of an FTL positron beam strikes me as being over-the-top even for a space opera setting. Your standard graser, x-ray laser, or neutral particle accelerator is overpowered enough, but throwing matter at warp factor [insert random numerical value here] is a tad ludicrous. [/quote]Excuse me?
Why I can't use the same mechanism which makes my FTL work?
My superluminal beams are pretty much consistent with whatever tech I have.
Pardon me for having the brain to apply it consistently for my race.
Leagues better than many sci-fi which has FTL beams "just because".
Also I think you have ridiculously low standards for "overpowered". Like I said this is space opera where science takes the backseat for entertainment and large-scale battles.