Anyways, lasers can cause grevious damage to a body with a single shot. In an antimaterial role, it could presumably melt the armor of a vehicle. Obviously, it's not too energy-efficient, but by the time you get FTL you're throwing lots of controlled energy around anyways.
In most cases however, a bullet with the same force won't even leave a body/vehicle to shoot at.
How do you fire a bullet at lightspeed, or so I have no idea what you mean?
Really fast. Nah, but the advantages of laser is speed and accuracy, but where a laser vapourizes what it shoots at, the bullet just deforms, doing more damage for less energy.
I doubt that vaporization can ever be considered LESS damage than anything...and, again, once you get FTL you're probably harnessing the equivalent of modern-day cities to power children's toys.
Force, not speed. A solid projectile can easily put out much more force without having to move at light speed.
Lasers are a lot cheaper to get moving at lightspeed, and it's not the speed that breaks stuff with lasers. It's the heat.
Force is tricky when dealing with light. Light is pretty much massless, so there's no force either. Just heat and such.
Well there would be recoil. If you're using enough energy to vaporize a tank, that is a ton of light and energy in one spot, and light has energy and momentum,which will cause noticeable recoil.
Photons have NO mass. If you turn on a flashlight, do you feel recoil? Why not, the photons are moving at the speed of light?
Anyways, lasers can cause grevious damage to a body with a single shot. In an antimaterial role, it could presumably melt the armor of a vehicle. Obviously, it's not too energy-efficient, but by the time you get FTL you're throwing lots of controlled energy around anyways.
In most cases however, a bullet with the same force won't even leave a body/vehicle to shoot at.
How do you fire a bullet at lightspeed, or so I have no idea what you mean?
Really fast. Nah, but the advantages of laser is speed and accuracy, but where a laser vapourizes what it shoots at, the bullet just deforms, doing more damage for less energy.
I doubt that vaporization can ever be considered LESS damage than anything...and, again, once you get FTL you're probably harnessing the equivalent of modern-day cities to power children's toys.
Depens on the type of FTL. Alcubierre warp drives are very energy efficient once constructed. Handwavium drives are even better.
I'm assuming increases in energy technology roughly equivalent to those in spaceflight. Any FTL is WAY more than we have now.
It all depends on efficiency. Once you can muster enough energy, lasers are often the better choice. (Not always, overheating problems are annoying). Why would you need to completely vapourise a thing when scrapping it is enough. For the same amount of energy you'd need to kill one human by laser, you can probably shoot ten.
I agree with this stuff, but lasers do have some advantages.
Versatility--it works about as well on heavily-armored tanks as rabid squirrels. You just need to aim at something important on the tank and the center-of-mass of the squirrel.
Accuracy--Aside from dissipation and perhaps diffraction, nothing changes the direction of a laser.
Ammunition--Lasers use electricity. Assuming advancements in energy storage roughly proportional to those in energy overall, it's probably easier to carry a battery with enough juice for 5,000 shots than it is to carry 5,000 bullets--and you don't need to change the clip. Assuming the assumed improvements in power generation assumed for lasers in the first place, it's also easier to replace.
Also, bullets are harder to deflect. A field of particles or some really good mirrors completely negate a laser.
I'd disagree. Lasers of sufficient power can burn through mirrored glass and the like, while bullets can be "deflected" by mundane armor.
Actually, light has energy and momentum, but no mass. Momentum is a result of energy, not mass.
Momentum equals speed times mass. Mass = 0 Momentum = 0
By that logic, light isn't affected by black holes.
Hm? How do you figure? Isn't acceleration due to gravity based on the sum of the squares of
both masses?
Err, guys. Can we stop arguing? This really doesn't matter and I don't want the whole operation shut down....
This is sci-fi. Lasers are very relevant, hence this is a germane topic.
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Topic: Galactic Machinations (Semi suggestion game). Space elves (Read 25647 times)