Vanu probably work with plasma "blob" projectors, not beams. The only beam weapon for the vanu in PS1 was the BFR AI weapon, and seeing as it was:-
A.
Hit-scan
B. Associated with BFRs
C. Attached to the most unstable weapon platform in the game.
I don't see it returning to planetside (at least in its current configuration).
Most Vanu weapon names are misnomers, the beamer is a plasma caster, the pulsar is just a rapid-refire plasma accelerator (out of the magazine, heated? contained and accelerated in projectile form towards the enemy).
If a beam is involved it is as a guiding force dictating the path the projectile travels, rather than being the damage source.
Originally Posted by NewSith
there is a a piece of metal covering the barrel, something you may actually call muzzle, that means the shots are made from inside the gun, not from the outside.
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Agreed, though the "muzzle" is most probably a heatsink, projectile guidance mechanism (and maybe accelerator chamber) who's to say the NC didnt steal a few railgun prototypes of some Vanu plasma tech).
Originally Posted by NewSith
the explanation for which is the one Pyreal gave. Vanu weaponry does not shoot lasers. It shoots beams. Beams of energy, not light.
Vanu weaponry does not shoot lasers. It shoots beams. Beams of energy, not light.
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Phyreal said nothing of the sort, he just wants a continuous beam weapon rather than a flickering one.
Beams are usually pulsed to reduce the thermal, fuel and materiel (what its made of) cost of a continuous beam, given the Vanu level of tech I do not doubt they could create a man or vehicle portable beam weapon if they so choose (but hit-scan weapons are unfair so we choose to melt our foes with plasma "spheres").
I could wiki physics descriptions of the words you used but clearly didn't understand (beams, energy), but in the end, it
does not matter from a gameplay standpoint if a beam weapon is firing lasers, electrons (lightning, yay) or whatever.
Any continuous beam with a high velocity will have the same properties as a laser, near instant hit, impossible to dodge and pinpoint accurate (pro and a con depending on how wide the beam is and how unstable the firing platform).
The ONLY "low velocity" beam weapon I have ever seen in a videogame is the "Phase Stream Projector" in Oni (old game, on the PC and Playstation1/2?, great weapons, good fun) where the beam was slow enough that it created a slow moving channel of doom similar to a high pressure fire-hose (or a gel based flamethrower before it was ignited) I looked but could not find a youtube vid with the oni gun in-use.
Either way that weapon would be more for air-ground use due to the fairly slow speed of the projectile mass and the need for sustained exposure to rack up damage (sort of bathing a tank in thermite).