New weapon types (including laser and plasma)

Austin Berry shared this feedback 36 days ago
Not Enough Votes

i think we should get laser and plasma weapons ingame and my reasoning for this is as follows

1. We already have laser weapons in the real world already

2. We are developing feasible plasma weapons right now and it is likely already in the refinement stage of development.

If we already have these technologies before we have even setup extraplanetary colonies why don't we have them in a game that is set TEN thousand years in the future. and to head off any arguments about it not being a thing in 2082 when the almagest project departed, in the year 2025 we have such technologies, imagine what almost 60 years of maturation in these fields could produce

Replies (3)

photo
1

- Laser PCS 1x1, ball turret

- Hyper laser 8x2x2 railgun style, charge-up and a firing sequence that cuts through blocks with high damaging laser.

- Plasma turret 3x3, 5x5 and 2x5x1 static maybe

Also new production processes and materials to procure the corresponding ammo and systems.

photo
1

... and computers are in ENIAC size :-)

photo
1

Lasers are cool, but they'd definitely need some balancing. If I recall IRL a 10MW laser-emitter (powerful enough to light-saber people in half) can fit in your pocket, the focusing mirror allowing the laser to compensate for atmospheric distortion fits in the bed of a truck (1x1x2 LG at most), and the power supply in SE1 for that is less than 1 LG small reactor. Railguns in SE1 are one of the best weapons just on projectile velocity alone, if we're adding a 1x1x2 hit-scan turret then there needs to be a reason for me not to lightsaber small planets in half with 4 large-reactors worth of them mounted to the nose of my ship.


...Plasma weapons needs clarification, what do you think a plasma-weapon is?

-If its just "shoots flaming projectiles", then we've had incendiary ammo since WW1.

-If its "shoots bolts/beams of glowing ionized particles like in Halo" then physics says you'll need to be so close to your target that you can hold a grinder out the window for extra damage.

-If its "shoots a canister full of plasma that breaks/explodes on impact", then what you've got there is the standard sci-fi coat of paint over a standard explosive bullet/shell.

-And if its something else then you'll need to explain it to me.

photo
1

"10MW laser" - what is the irradiated energy of such a laser? It's nice if the instantaneous irradiated power is 10MW, but so what if the pulse lasts a few nanosecond? The important thing is always the energy imparted to the target, transferred to the target.

And nobody has cancelled the decrease in radiation intensity with the square of the distance...

photo
1

... I'm fairly certain 10MW over a few nano-seconds would blow holes in anything you ever pointed it at. A quick google-search and a bit of math says the YAL-1 was a "megawatt class laser" imparted about 40KW of inferred power on a target per second and was adequate to shoot down ballistic missiles. If we then use that to say our 10MW laser imparts 400KW/s on a target, and skip over the whole "inverse square law" bit to say it has the same range as all the other weapons because this is a laser with fancy adaptive optics in the future and not a flash-light, then we end up with a weapon that probably needs some balance-work to avoid being too overpowered.


Personally, I like the idea that it could still have ammo, not as shots expended to fire it but rather as coolant you'd need to blow through the systems (and vent from the ship) between pulses to keep it from melting. I still think it would need more to balance it though.


Also, I'd still like to know what plasma stuff Gaz thinks we're working on IRL, because sci-fi stuff becoming IRL stuff is just cool to see happen.

photo
1

I think the easiest way of balancing any sort of laser system is introducing engineering complexity (and as a result, fragility)


the original game had a mod called 2cm beam system that I think would be a perfect thing to replicate - the weapons were powerful and scaled well, but needed a significant, dedicated infrastructure to avoid cutting your own ship in half (less so for the laser as opposed to ion beam, but it's still a good representation)

photo
1

A system where you've only got fixed laser emitters and you'd need to route the beams through the ship in to turrets with lenses to use it? That would be an interesting idea, but I don't know that it would be enough, you'd still end up with people swinging gigawatt sized hit-scan weapons around.

photo
1

About the YAL-1 device (I deliberately don't write "weapon") - I'm not sure if there has ever been a real test of the device against an imitation ballistic warhead.

Additionally - the YAL-1 is a chemical laser -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_oxygen_iodine_laser


The " Peresvet" may be a gas-dynamic CO2 laser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-dioxide_laser - the Russians have done quite a bit of experimentation with it...


The essential point is that both types require a "charge", a physical material that is consumed when the weapon is "fired". So such a weapon is not powered by electricity - that is only for ancillary purposes.


About laser cutting machines - you will have noticed that the distance between the cutting head and the material to be cut is very small - a few centimetres, often only a few millimetres. At larger distances (tens of centimeters to meters) the device no longer cuts at all... This is just a consequence of the "law of inverse squares".

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Teal wrote : "A system where you've only got fixed laser emitters and you'd need to route the beams through the ship in to turrets with lenses to use it?"

This is a crucial thing!

The optical head is just the last piece of equipment (and dimensionally the smallest). The laser beam generators and the optical paths from the generators to the head are many times larger.

A good example is the laser communication station from SE1 - it contains an optical head, with a large grid block underneath. The laser gun in SE2 should be similarly arranged. Only the block under the optical head would have to be many times larger - for an idea in SE1 scale, it could be a 1x3x3 or better 2x3x4 blocks (= 9-24blocks), and the head block would have to be attached directly to the generator block. Or connected by an "optical path" block for deeper coverage in the armor. But the generator must always be as close as possible to the optical head.


This could also be done as a " stack" - the generators (for example a block 1x1x3 or 1x1x4) would provide power (for example, when powering 1MW, they would provide 50kJ of energy per pulse/shot) and could be stacked linearly or in a cube or block.

An optical head (according to SE1) with a 1x1x1 block would itself function as a communications station, and when connected to the generator blocks as a weapon. The optical path blocks would reduce the power/energy transported from the generators to the optical head. All devices would require cooling.


As I studied the information on the YAL-1, one iántersting thing caught my eye - it wasn't just one laser. Along with the combat laser, there was a laser locator (lidar) and a precision laser rangefinder in the device.

=> https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/boeing-yal-1-airborne-laser-testbed.4526/ and other

photo
1

Just for fun and sci-fi, assume aether drag is real, and that scaled up photonic toroidal vortices are a possibility. Create a pulsed energy weapon using toroidal sub-light energy beams that will disrupt matter on contact. Sent in a series of high velocity 'doughnut' like energy packets, that streak across space, from an emitter canon. The system would be backed up by sets of tesla coils, tapped photon multipliers, an AC storage capacitor/inductors charged via giant DC to AC motor generator converter, and a hybrid cylindrical optical resonator, with light wave EM guide coils.

photo
1

4f0a018d89b3de837298940c48f9cc40 ...y..y..yeeess...2f3db2a32b45d1d207201f8f2504a3e0

photo
1

@Semtex

"I'm not sure if there has ever been a real test of the device against an imitation ballistic warhead."

Two successful tests in 2010, and it was meant to be used on a missile during the boost phase, not the missile's payload.


"...the YAL-1 is a chemical laser..."

The power-supply for a 10MW electric laser IRL is huge and not a practical to move about. Fortunately, people in the SE universe seem to have developed very small nuclear reactors that would suffice.


"About laser cutting machines - you will have noticed that the distance between the cutting head and the material to be cut is very small..."

I'd have serious safety concerns about anyone that wanted their laser-cutting equipment calibrated (or modified) to cut things from across the room. We have ship-mounted laser-weapons now, they aren't great, we're still improving them and working out the bugs, but they currently work at several kilometer's range thanks to a big fancy adaptive optic that distorts the beam in such a way so as to turn the air itself in to the laser's last focusing lens. I may not be able to write my name in size 4 font with one on something from that range, but with megawatts of power I can absolutely burn a basketball-sized hole in a target.


"The optical head is just the last piece of equipment..."

I'm not opposed to this sort of engineering, I just didn't think it adequate by itself to balance what could easily become the infinity+1 gun with hit-scan projectiles.


@Deon Beauchamp

...That sounds complicated, and large enough to possibly not result in an improvised death-star laser being mounted to every large-grid anyone ever builds, and its not hit-scan... that might just do it :)

photo
Leave a Comment
 
Attach a file
You can't vote. Please authorize!
You can't vote. Please authorize!