Gladius Driver

"The Gladius Driver is an experimental VEGA ship Kinetic weapon that includes a proximity-triggered detonation."

General
The Gladius Driver is a unique Kinetic weapon with the ability to detonate for full damage if close enough to a target.

It fires a blocky white slug with a blue trail, detonating with a small explosion.

Advantages
Gladius Drivers are the first fleet-oriented Kinetic weapon a player can unlock. They have high projectile speed, allowing the weapon to reliably hit moving targets especially when equipped with Iridium Magnets.

Their proximity detonation dramatically improves their accuracy, allowing them to still be viable when paired with Phased Projectiles, which ignore a portion of enemy shields and deal direct health damage.

As with other Kinetic weapons, their long range enables ships to kite most others.

Disadvantages
Gladius Drivers have a significant minimum range, making them useless in close quarters.

Gladius Drivers also have poor mass efficiency, they generally lose to Polaron Rays equipped with Focused Optics.

Trivia

 * Despite the in-game description and the graphics, the "proximity detonation" really means that the Gladius Driver has a significantly larger hitbox, making it much easier to land hits than weapons with small hitboxes, like the Mass Driver and Wave Driver.