Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Toaster]

Keep in mind several people use cutting lasers while nobody's used a Heavy Gauss Cannon.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Heavy Gauss Cannons are a relic right now. They are hilariously overpowered against humans, and grossly innefficient against battlesuits, the two most common enemies. PSLs outshine the HGC in almost every regard. Right now we are headed towards a primarily energy-and-piezoelectric-weapon army. We (or Anton at least) are planning to begin mass production of new weapon types as soon as field testing results are back.

[Toaster]

Have the nuclear loads ever been tested?

[Nikitian]

I really really want to see crystalline-projectile grenades

That said, I'm slightly afraid that it might be the only good use that tech-branch might compete with piezoshards. Unless we make complex projectiles, of course.

Also, the treatment/containment method for crystalline wounds is still not found, it appears, unfortunately.

Have the nuclear loads ever been tested?

I don't think so, actually.

[Toaster]

Good thing we're looking to add a firing range on the Sword!

[syvarris]

@Nik

For laser suppression, I think holding the beam on the enemy's cover, and maybe just past it, would be sufficient.  It'll be visibly melting he cover.  Even if it isn't obvious, anyone who peeks out will notice very quickly, and any allies would be quite hesitant to follow (even once the shooter leaves, since it isn't obvious!).  This utility greatly increases if you use an FEL, since you can set it to visible light, and wide angle.  Coating the entirety of someone's cover might not kill them if they peek out, but it'll probably blind them, or at least render it impossible to return fire.

For a gun to suppress better than a laser, it needs to constantly be expending ammo.  Even the Testament, which has a 180 round magazine, would run out of ammo pretty quick.  We could make a gun with a larger ammo pool, but the reduced damage would mean any troops with even minor armor would be practically immune to suppression.

I honestly think adding a generator to all our standard lasers would be a good idea.  It might add a token to the cost, but an infinite ammo weapon is very useful, especially since it can also be used for utility things, like cutting.


You mentioned lasblasters being useful as a cheap laser weapon for infantrymen.  My question is why we need such a thing.  Kinetics do more damage, and are generally better against armor.  We don't often have targets that require energy weapons to deal with, and when we do, continual beam weapons are better.

[Comrade P.]

The only thing that still bugs me about beam weapons is extreme predictability of the projectile trajectory, which isn't quite good, because trained soldiers can just dodge continuous beams with some acrobatics.

[Nikitian]

Because cheap and efficient kinetic-resistant armor is more readily available than energy-resistant? I am speaking based on performance of CD Longcoat, but so far it seems more or less general rule for the setting. Making battleplate (as well as certain parts of Protectorate suit) requires very complex and difficult to produce materials - those reflecting nanotubes, IIRC. We have skipped this problem by inventing hexsand, but so far only kinetic armoring is more or less easy and straightforward. As evidenced by hexbug, by the way.

... It really seems that maybe we should watch our hexsand armor samples closely.

The only thing that still bugs me about beam weapons is extreme predictability of the projectile trajectory, which isn't quite good, because trained soldiers can just dodge continuous beams with some acrobatics.

This comes with a good thing, though: at ground-based combat distances, you'll have very hard time dodging lightspeed-shots - by comparison, you'd rather dodge gauss-weapon bullets (oh, and we're intentionally not talking about current plasma 'projectiles').

[Comrade P.]

The only thing that still bugs me about beam weapons is extreme predictability of the projectile trajectory, which isn't quite good, because trained soldiers can just dodge continuous beams with some acrobatics.

This comes with a good thing, though: at ground-based combat distances, you'll have very hard time dodging lightspeed-shots - by comparison, you'd rather dodge gauss-weapon bullets (oh, and we're intentionally not talking about current plasma 'projectiles').

Well, speaking single-shot, it is naturally harder to evade the beam which goes at speed of light, of course. We can probably design some kind of fast-"blinking" beam, which gives you the thickness of fire of solid projectile machinegun and the speed and destructive power of energy beams.

[Sean Mirrsen]

There are, really, two reasons why machineguns are good at suppression. They are flashy, and they miss a lot. The loud DAKKADAKKADAKKA and the muzzleflash, with the chaotic and spectacular impacts of bullets, is what is most effective at keeping people in cover.

Misquoting SG-1, a suppression weapon would be a weapon of terror. It is designed to intimidate the enemy. A laser, even a continuous one, is too precise - it is a weapon of war. It's designed to kill the enemy.

If you want a real suppression energy weapon, you already have one, as long as your targets are in an atmosphere. You can't get much more intimidating than deadly, bright, LOUD blasts of artificial lightning.

It's probably the only thing the Red Hand is actually good at.

[Comrade P.]

We can't intimidate sods UWM use with mere gunfire, do we? That is why you make things that just kill.

I'm slow at getting things.

[Radio Controlled]

Wha?  Kinetic guns are pretty great in ER.  Yes, they have weird damage variablitity, but all ER weapons have that.

I think he means regular ol' chemical explosive driven firearms?


@blaster

The reason I am leaning in the direction of a blaster is because I think a pulse could have higher peak energy (damage) than a continuous one.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Continuous and pulsed modes of operation

A laser can be classified as operating in either continuous or pulsed mode, depending on whether the power output is essentially continuous over time or whether its output takes the form of pulses of light on one or another time scale. Of course even a laser whose output is normally continuous can be intentionally turned on and off at some rate in order to create pulses of light. When the modulation rate is on time scales much slower than the cavity lifetime and the time period over which energy can be stored in the lasing medium or pumping mechanism, then it is still classified as a "modulated" or "pulsed" continuous wave laser. Most laser diodes used in communication systems fall in that category.

Continuous wave operation
Some applications of lasers depend on a beam whose output power is constant over time. Such a laser is known as continuous wave (CW). Many types of lasers can be made to operate in continuous wave mode to satisfy such an application. Many of these lasers actually lase in several longitudinal modes at the same time, and beats between the slightly different optical frequencies of those oscillations will in fact produce amplitude variations on time scales shorter than the round-trip time (the reciprocal of the frequency spacing between modes), typically a few nanoseconds or less. In most cases these lasers are still termed "continuous wave" as their output power is steady when averaged over any longer time periods, with the very high frequency power variations having little or no impact in the intended application. (However the term is not applied to mode-locked lasers, where the intention is to create very short pulses at the rate of the round-trip time).

For continuous wave operation it is required for the population inversion of the gain medium to be continually replenished by a steady pump source. In some lasing media this is impossible. In some other lasers it would require pumping the laser at a very high continuous power level which would be impractical or destroy the laser by producing excessive heat. Such lasers cannot be run in CW mode.

Pulsed operation
Pulsed operation of lasers refers to any laser not classified as continuous wave, so that the optical power appears in pulses of some duration at some repetition rate. This encompasses a wide range of technologies addressing a number of different motivations. Some lasers are pulsed simply because they cannot be run in continuous mode.

In other cases the application requires the production of pulses having as large an energy as possible. Since the pulse energy is equal to the average power divided by the repetition rate, this goal can sometimes be satisfied by lowering the rate of pulses so that more energy can be built up in between pulses. In laser ablation for example, a small volume of material at the surface of a work piece can be evaporated if it is heated in a very short time, whereas supplying the energy gradually would allow for the heat to be absorbed into the bulk of the piece, never attaining a sufficiently high temperature at a particular point.

Other applications rely on the peak pulse power (rather than the energy in the pulse), especially in order to obtain nonlinear optical effects. For a given pulse energy, this requires creating pulses of the shortest possible duration utilizing techniques such as Q-switching.

The optical bandwidth of a pulse cannot be narrower than the reciprocal of the pulse width. In the case of extremely short pulses, that implies lasing over a considerable bandwidth, quite contrary to the very narrow bandwidths typical of CW lasers. The lasing medium in some dye lasers and vibronic solid-state lasers produces optical gain over a wide bandwidth, making a laser possible which can thus generate pulses of light as short as a few femtoseconds (10−15 s).

Q-switching
Main article: Q-switching
In a Q-switched laser, the population inversion is allowed to build up by introducing loss inside the resonator which exceeds the gain of the medium; this can also be described as a reduction of the quality factor or 'Q' of the cavity. Then, after the pump energy stored in the laser medium has approached the maximum possible level, the introduced loss mechanism (often an electro- or acousto-optical element) is rapidly removed (or that occurs by itself in a passive device), allowing lasing to begin which rapidly obtains the stored energy in the gain medium. This results in a short pulse incorporating that energy, and thus a high peak power.

Mode-locking
Main article: Mode-locking
A mode-locked laser is capable of emitting extremely short pulses on the order of tens of picoseconds down to less than 10 femtoseconds. These pulses will repeat at the round trip time, that is, the time that it takes light to complete one round trip between the mirrors comprising the resonator. Due to the Fourier limit (also known as energy-time uncertainty), a pulse of such short temporal length has a spectrum spread over a considerable bandwidth. Thus such a gain medium must have a gain bandwidth sufficiently broad to amplify those frequencies. An example of a suitable material is titanium-doped, artificially grown sapphire (Ti:sapphire) which has a very wide gain bandwidth and can thus produce pulses of only a few femtoseconds duration.

Such mode-locked lasers are a most versatile tool for researching processes occurring on extremely short time scales (known as femtosecond physics, femtosecond chemistry and ultrafast science), for maximizing the effect of nonlinearity in optical materials (e.g. in second-harmonic generation, parametric down-conversion, optical parametric oscillators and the like) due to the large peak power, and in ablation applications.[citation needed] Again, because of the extremely short pulse duration, such a laser will produce pulses which achieve an extremely high peak power.

Pulsed pumping
Another method of achieving pulsed laser operation is to pump the laser material with a source that is itself pulsed, either through electronic charging in the case of flash lamps, or another laser which is already pulsed. Pulsed pumping was historically used with dye lasers where the inverted population lifetime of a dye molecule was so short that a high energy, fast pump was needed. The way to overcome this problem was to charge up large capacitors which are then switched to discharge through flashlamps, producing an intense flash. Pulsed pumping is also required for three-level lasers in which the lower energy level rapidly becomes highly populated preventing further lasing until those atoms relax to the ground state. These lasers, such as the excimer laser and the copper vapor laser, can never be operated in CW mode.

The very idea behind using shards is that they can deliver a whole lot of energy in a short amount of time, while being relatively small (shielding notwithstanding). And from what pw's been saying, we might be able to get cutting-laser power into a laser rifle-sized package, which I don't think we can match with another ammo type/continuous fire (barring very expensive gauss rounds).

3) a laser rifle sized weapon, shard a big as can fit into a stock or magazine size of an assault rifle or something. 10 Shots, can be reloaded.

3. About cutting laser power, probably higher actually.

I'm basically trying to pack medium level firepower into a low-level (aka regular human) sized package, hopefully also with low(ish)-level cost (though ammo might be a tad more expensive).

However, obviously we can't have it all, so I'm seeing what sacrificing continuous fire in favor of pulses can net us. I don't want the rifle version to be more expensive than the smallest free electron laser (which is already infinite fire, so good for suppression) if at all possible (though I'm doubtful of that myself).
I'm thinking of perhaps also going for an 'energy bazooka' type weapon that is one shot but can be reloaded. Why energy, and not kinetic/psl? Because shard tech favors direct energy weapons the most I think.

That all said, this thing isn't set in stone yet, so the rifle version might still become continuous. Though then there's gonna be a whole lotta overlap with the FEL.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I had a very stupid idea lately, that is likely impossible IRL, but might work in ER.

You know how a piezoelectric material generates an electric charge when compressed? There is a similar principle called piezoluminescence, which is exactly what it sounds like - generation of light with applied stress.

Suppose we build on our experience with blueraditite and PSL ammo, and create a piezoluminescent crystalline metamaterial? If it is transparent enough to act as its own lasing medium and focusing system, and durable enough not to shatter...

Mechanical compression lasers, anyone?

Failing that, PLL weapons that explode into lasers?

[Parisbre56]

So you could just punch it with a kinamp and fry everything in front of you? Sounds good to me.

Irrelevant, mostly @RC and Sean: I think piecewise said that pure hexplate (the original one, the one recovered from the anomalous planetoid) can reflect energy instead of absorb it. So you could use it to create an expensive but reusable focusing tube for high powered laser pulses that would otherwise destroy it, so that you can make a reusable lightweight laser bazooka. Don't know if making a reusable energy bazooka is more effective though, I have a feeling one use might be better/cheaper. Sean could also use that to reflect X-rays, which I think is something he wanted for a ship-based weapon of his, don't remember right now.

[Xantalos]

Well then. Who feels like waking me up this time?