Real laser weapon?

[meiam]

It's the future! Shouldn't there be a few laser weapon, especially for the VS since they're tech and science and all.

I mean a real laser (laser weapon in most sci fi make as much sense as explosion sound in space) so essentially:

1) hit scan, no projectile (or a projectile that goes at speed of light).

2) Fire straight ahead, no flight decay.

3) You either don't see the light beam in flight (you could have a large flash once the beam hit an object/person) OR you see the entire stream, from mouth of the gun to the point of impact, you can argue that the laser would cause the air to emit light, but this stream of light appear after the target has been hit.

4) The attack would be partially or completely blocked by smoke.

You could just balance this by making the gun weaker or have a very long reload time. Would make for good sniping.

[BigBossMonkey]

Give the Liberator some ES weapons for the main gunner, and this would be pretty cool as one.


BZWAP! Laser Bugzapper!

[Atheosim]

Sounds like tons of fun.

[Top Sgt]

Balance

One faction with laser beams that do not deviate in flight at all vs 2 others that have much less powerful bullets which drop and deviate in flight?

[Atheosim]

Originally Posted by Top Sgt

Balance

One faction with laser beams that do not deviate in flight at all vs 2 others that have much less powerful bullets which drop and deviate in flight?

He just said that you could balance it by making it weaker. So it would be weaker than projectile based, but would be hitscan.

[SpcFarlen]

Unfortunately giving one faction hitscan would unbalance things really fast. Not bullet travel times means you dont have to lead. TR and NC need to lead targets at a distance. Even if it were for all factions, then it becomes the go to weapon because of that.

Interesting idea, but i feel it does more harm than good.

Edit: even damage aside it makes you able to have more shots hit the target. So thus there is more damage being done regardless.

[DviddLeff]

They had the continuous laser for the VS BFR in PS, but to compensate for the instant travel time it was very weak.

Even so, it was cool to see - but not on a BFR that often tried to use them when it was running; making lasers randomly thrash about and look ridiculous.

[basti]

While Sci-Fi Laser weapons ala star wars dont seem to make much sense, they do make more sense than those real physics laser weapons you may imagine.
Thing is, lasers are pointless on a planet. The atmosphere itself steals away a great amount of the energy. Besides that, its still just light, and it seems to be physically impossible to directly transfer electricity to Light (We have a step in between. Those old Lights we used for ages were just a tiny piece of metal that we heated up. Most of the energy went into heat. Those new Energy saving lights are actually a chemical reaction.), and if it is indeed impossible to do the direct transfer, then its pretty much impossible to build a actual laser that doesnt have a hour long preperation time.

[Kilmoran]

Originally Posted by basti

While Sci-Fi Laser weapons ala star wars dont seem to make much sense, they do make more sense than those real physics laser weapons you may imagine.
Thing is, lasers are pointless on a planet. The atmosphere itself steals away a great amount of the energy. Besides that, its still just light, and it seems to be physically impossible to directly transfer electricity to Light (We have a step in between. Those old Lights we used for ages were just a tiny piece of metal that we heated up. Most of the energy went into heat. Those new Energy saving lights are actually a chemical reaction.), and if it is indeed impossible to do the direct transfer, then its pretty much impossible to build a actual laser that doesnt have a hour long preperation time.

We use lasers right now for defense systems... and there are also combat versions... though they seem to primarily blind people which is for some reason more cruel and unusual than killing them with explosives.

[Furret]

Yeah I think we can agree we're not going for the super-realistic side if we want lasers in the game. I think this weapon would be really great to use, especially from a liberator or something. Here's my interesting take on the idea.

Flying from a liberator, you can use this 'laser bomb' if you are a certain minimum hight of the ground. You fire a sort of rope/grappling hook down to the ground, which is projectile, not hit scan, and it releases a huge amount of energy through the wire into the ground, creating a sort of light and energy explosion at the target. This ability could easily be an add-on modification that uses all of the current afterburner energy (if liberators have afterburners) to create an explosion at the target, with the amount of afterburner energy obviously changing the energy of the explosion (preferably a sort of exponential equation to make it close to useless to spam it, and its really best once you have full burners. It would also be a cool effect if they showed the charge flow through the wire like a sort of godly lightning strike coming from the liberator. This would also make for super cool effects during night combat, and also would show where the lib is when it makes each laser strike.

[meiam]

Awwwww yeah, a disco lamp bomb weapon!

As for the science behind those laser, the atmosphere taking away energy is true for regular ballistic weapon just as much as laser, you could have a severe damage drop as distance increase. Also VS is supposed to have plasma technology, so making super strong laser should be easy following on that (in fact flinging plasma would harder).

Could also have continuous laser, think of it as extremely weak machine gun but with insanely high rate of fire.

The weapon could also only be effective against infantry or vehicle (the wavelength would be made to match up to the target, or something) and do 0 damage to the other one.

[FastAndFree]

Ever since we were told about the empire specific fighters I have been holding on to the hope of firing laser beams all over the sky

[Zekeen]

Originally Posted by meiam

It's the future! Shouldn't there be a few laser weapon, especially for the VS since they're tech and science and all.

I mean a real laser (laser weapon in most sci fi make as much sense as explosion sound in space) so essentially:

1) hit scan, no projectile (or a projectile that goes at speed of light).

2) Fire straight ahead, no flight decay.

3) You either don't see the light beam in flight (you could have a large flash once the beam hit an object/person) OR you see the entire stream, from mouth of the gun to the point of impact, you can argue that the laser would cause the air to emit light, but this stream of light appear after the target has been hit.

4) The attack would be partially or completely blocked by smoke.

You could just balance this by making the gun weaker or have a very long reload time. Would make for good sniping.

This really belongs in the idea section. That said, it also needs to be fleshed out, but it's a good concept. I'll flesh out a more game-friendly version of actual laser weapons in the idea section (and now I wanna draw up a Vanu gun concept, despite being NC).

In the mean time, the Vanu do have some almost laser weapons. In PS1 they had a near instant anti vehicular weapon. It would hit instantly, worked on a clip, and did less damage than the other anti vehicular weapons. But it was a big ass laser cannon, and it could hit moving aircraft, no need to lead the target. So I bet we get more Vanu weapons like that in PS2.

[wasdie]

"Real" lasers work nothing like in the movies.

I work with lasers in real life. The blasters and whatnot from Star Wars are all plasma rounds and weaponry, not lasers.

[Kriegson]

Originally Posted by Kilmoran

We use lasers right now for defense systems... and there are also combat versions... though they seem to primarily blind people which is for some reason more cruel and unusual than killing them with explosives.

Maiming someone for the rest of their life is considered more sinister than simply killing them.