Mass drivers are tricky. Yes, you'd figure that they're projectile-based weapons. Yes, that's the conclusion we're led to when we read their description.
...Except they can never run out of ammo .
On the subject of the [Charging] Mass Driver, the Prophecy Guide says: "The Mass Driver uses energy as its ammo supply, so it is virtually unlimited. WHen the pilot holds down the trigger, the driver essentially knits together the raw material on a molecular level and supercharges it with kinetic energy."
... from the makers of the Sonic Accelerator Gun.
there's still the stormfires
Ah, the Stormfire. From interesting backstory (Wing Commander IV) to funny excuse to include them (Wing Commander Prophecy) to over-blown entire-game and physics model based around how everyone loves machine guns in space (StarLancer). It's really a model for the essentially problem with the space sim genre as a whole.
(... did somebody say nobody likes cockpits? Nobody make a game with cockpits!)
Im a bit hazy about the weaponary used in the WC universer, but when did they used energy based weaponary to the customary ballistics based weapons??
The claim has been at various points has been that ballistic weapons are prefered for fighting on a ship (because the rounds cause less damage to the surroundings and pose less of a risk of decompression), while energy weapons are prefered for ground combat where collatoral damage is less of a worry.
(... now, I'm sure this has been contradicted in *practice* many times, but that's supposedly the military doctrine in Wing Commander.)
Hehe, and it just occured to me that you were right in the first place... in a way. These are Confed tanks, simply because at this point in time, the BW hasn't yet had enough time to produce any equipment on its own. So, all the tanks would presumably be ex-Confed junk.
I've always wondered if Wing Commander IV's mercenary tank squadron was lifted straight from Hammer's Slammers...