@HaelYou say plasma and warp are the main weaponry/travel type things. However... there are many things other than that.
Plasma is built up, contained, and then released in a sudden burst. It'd be 'slower' than lasers, faster than Mass Accelerator Cannons (depending on the type of plasma burst), sure, but it's not exactly the best weapon out there.
For example, particle accelerators could be weaponized to fire streams of near-light-speed particles of various kinds, or even antimatter. And antimatter is very real, even today, if expensive to create. The effect would be your ship sort of eroding under a faintly glowing stream, with whatever it's hitting being lit up rather spectacularly as the antimatter annihilates your armor (and itself). It wouldn't be as effective against shields, of course, depending on what the shield is made of.
And drones/missiles can still play a large part. Even torpedoes- sublight torpedoes. I've always had a habit of having a nation that has a great deal of normal torpedoes, of various sorts, and a couple larger 'sublight' torpedoes. There's nothing special about them, except accelerating so fast that it'd appear to hit instantly, if within a certain range. And, of course, they'd be very, very, very dense. High mass + high speeds = very high impact force. A railgun, today, wouldn't need any warheads, because the impact of its round would be enough to create an equally large explosion as our best high explosives.
Drones can be launched, and can drift on ballistic courses, completely silent, until they open up on an enemy with missiles or somesuch. Likewise, missiles can be sent on ballistic courses too. Given adequate countermeasures, they'd be invisible- too small to be picked up as anything more than debris on radar, too stealthy for any emissions to be detected.
So?
What are your thoughts on all of that?
Plasma can be good, but it has many, many drawbacks. A nuclear weapon impacting your shield might even be enough of an EMP to collapse a plasma weapons' containment shield, and release any weapons' plasma that were about to fire- sorta like a gun self-destructing.
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