Beam weapons

Dear Devs.

There is nothing, NOTHING, cooler than continuous beam weapons.
The Monkeylord would never have sold Sup Com if it just fired fat laser bolts.
Please include continuous beam weaponry, it looks and feels amazing.
Laser bolts are a relic of the 60's. Lets get real and modern with our lasers.

Candidates:
Orbital laser.
Umbrella.
Towers.


That is all.
Thank you.

Laser beams aren't viable because of the shape of the planets.

@stormingkiwi vat aboot dis?


If i understand correctly there'll be a constant type laser coming from the metal planet at least.

That's blatantly OP, I call nerf.



Seriously though, Uber did post somewhere that well... Beams don't work with a planets curvature. Because they cut through the planet. That's why they are bolts.

yea but you're forgetting about space.

It was suggested that we have them at least for orbital lasers. could have a pretty cool effect. Like in akira. or some other rts i think it was 40K

Oh yeah absolutely AGREED.

Orbital lasers should

a)be a beam of death

b)glass the planets surface.

Here's what bgolus said for the whole "beam laser" thing that everyone's talking about.

Towers range and elevation make that a moot point, and the surface to space/space to surface stuff also doesn't care about curvature. Likewise orbital fighters.

Anywhere a continuous beam can exist instead of a bolt, it should.

Uber programmed a laser beam into the game, if I understood something I saw on these forums correctly.

It.

Does.

Not.

Work.

Yeah, not for tanks and bots it doesnt.
Ever played Supreme commander?

It.

Does.

Work.

Not as a blanket rule, but in the cases i indicated it absolutely does.
There were laser beam tanks in Sup Com that sucked because of the faults you all mention, thats kinda obvious. But towers and high orbit stuff has no problem.

I don't understand the problem with the curvature. If the beam comes from high enough, shouldn't look good? Like a beam turret? A taller bot? A plane? Or satellites and umbrellas having a bit of a conversation?

I'm so sorry, it won't work for towers for the reasons already stated. Towers will be able to hit targets a little further away than ants, but not greatly so, and still won't be able to beam stuff beyond curvature of planet.

Beams fine for orbital and aerial stuff, and I would love for orbital lasers to fire a beam not a bolt. But it honestly won't work on the ground, even for towers.

Look, the radius of earth is 6370km.

The distance to the horizon from a ten metre tall object is 12km.

The range of a laser tower is 100km, and typically planets have a radius of something below 1200.

Say the laser tower is 10 game units tall.

On a 500 radius planet, the distance to the horizon would be 100 units more or less exactly.

So laser towers simply wouldn't work on any radius smaller than 500.

Because Ants outrange them, so Ants would never move into range. So do missile turrets, come to that.

The question of the accuracy of that approximation is whether you think an ant will take more than a second to drive along a laser tower. I.e. 10/7 seconds.

It's a tad inaccurate anyway. The curvature of the planet means that the distance to the horizon along the ground will be slightly more. In practice that planet radius where towers are rendered completely pointless will be slightly less than 500. But point is the same. Incidentally, double laser towers are rendered pointless at 600 radius

HOLY **** THAT LOOKS AWESOME.
WANT.
Also beams sound cool.

Ok. So perhaps I do not know what a beam is. That's fine. I still want it.

if you click the picture it haz linky to unit suggestion thread where you can support it and suggest your own units.

Beam lasers won't work for surface targets, due to a planets curvature.

It could still work for orbital and air. The T1 air scout shoots something that looks like a laser. Don't the orbital fighters aka Avengers shoot lasers?

Things that could shoot lasers:
Anything in the air of anti-air.
Anything in orbit of anti-orbital.

Air:
T1 scout
T2 Laser Gunship

Orbital:
Orbital laser, duh
Avenger

Anti-Orbital:
Umberella

Beam lasers buddy, not bolt lasers.

Beam lasers couldn't work for tanks due to the planets curve, as for AA....ehhhhh, it's personal preference.

Personally Id like the Orbital laser and Umbrella to shoot photon torpedoes at each other.

Lasers, bolt lasers. I was trying to make the point that some units can shoot in a strait line with no interference of the planet curvation and objects.

Beams are shiney, I like beams


I don't know if i can say this in a topic about beam weapons but what about plasma weapons? They can shoot in an arc. For example the wraith (covenant tank) from Halo. It shoots a plasma ball in an arc. I would love it if their was some artillery that shot projectiles like that.

Plasma weapons projectiles glow so they look awesome. I would love to see a fight on the dark side of the planet between units with plasma weapons.

That's more an issue with the scale of units than with a spherical playing field.