The story is set in some high-tech and/or
futuristic society. There are
massive computer networks, sentient robots, and
ships that can zip across space with the same amount of effort it takes you to go to the store down the street. Despite all this technology, however, combat isn't all that different.
Battle armor may have some gizmos on it, the guns may have higher muzzle velocities and an ammo count greater than the population of several rural communities, war vehicles may be able to do some fancy new tricks, but combat is the same at heart, bullets and shells still rule the battlefield.
If there are
energy weapons in the universe, they either are experimental and wracked with issues like overheating and unwanted by-products, or they're horribly disadvantaged with few available shots before a recharge or a new power pack is required. They will often also be the first type of weapon to go wrong; the more complex parts a weapon has the more likely it is to break. The reason for favouring projectiles in fiction is
Rule Of Cool — while subjecting stuff to melting or explosive evaporation is cool,
broken pieces of the same stuff flying away with a boom may be even better than the mediocre zap of a laser. This does of course have its roots in the fact that
Reality Is Unrealistic: serious laser weaponry actually uses short duration pulses with incredibly high energies that would simply explode an object into plasma the same as if it were hit by a high-velocity projectile... but audiences still expect to see
Laser Cutters, so we're stuck with them. There are also real world scientific reasons for using projectiles instead of energy weapons, especially against shielded ships. In defending against lasers, the in-universe shields may be extremely effective at re-radiating heat back into space. To stop a projectile, the shield has to decelerate it, and any force applied to the projectile is in turn applied to the shield generator.
Mike Wong of Stardestroyer.net
does a good job explaining how the strength of even the strongest shield can come down to how well it's attached to the superstructure of the ship. Sometimes kinetic weapons themselves don't appear to have advanced, either. Future weapons won't necessarily
''look'' more "advanced" or really be that different from modern ones: whether rounds are fired from a modern rifle or a
space railgun, it still functions the same. Precise guides held by a solid external structure are still required to accelerate the projectile. Compare
Rock Beats Laser,
Boring, but Practical,
Modern Stasis and
Break Out The Museum Piece. Usually goes hand in hand with
Our Weapons Will Be Boxy In The Future. Contrast
We Will Use Lasers In The Future, where energy weapons are more prevalent than kinetic weapons.
