[quote=@Ezrath]

In my mind it is a crossbow... just modified. I'll still work on the CS a bit here and there so I'll see what I end up with. As for being cumbersome, the Dawn Officer armor has its own power that allows them to jump further, sprint faster, and hit harder than most without it. At least that's what I took from it, so I rolled with it.

Another edit: I really don't get the lore behind Vaulters having crossbows. I mean they have literal tons of advanced technology they all use on a day to day basis involving both technology and magic, and yet they don't have some sort of plasma-based weaponry or even Space Marine-esque bolters?
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So the Vaulters on Auriga have their origins starting from the Vaulters in Endless Space, complete with the future technology. An escape pod from a Vaulter ship crashed into Auriga, and that's how the Vaulters started- I always took it as they had lost a lot of their technology on the crash, then as time went on as they lived on Auriga they just sort of forgot. Then the Great Quake happened and they found everything again, and they could replicate it with the help of Dust but didn't really understand it- that's why I always thought the crossbows kind of look like rifles but re-purposed. But really it's probably just Amplitude trying to strike a balance between Fantasy and Sci-fi to go along with the rest of the game.

..I realize now that my problem with the rifle was mostly semantic. I imagined a sniper-like thing but if what you meant was a crossbow-type thing than that's fine.