Beam weapons

Not when the size of planets vary so much.

StormingKiwi is right about planets having much to sharp of a curve, but that doesn't matter at all in the orbital layer or for any unit that fire in an upward arc only.

The umbrella and orbital laser both need to be beams for a completely different reason... so that we can see where they are shooting.

So it's the planet to be wrong. It should be flat.

I think you're on to something... beam weapons are cooler than planets... we need to play on giant beams. Problem solved. Instead of interplanetary nukes we can just point our maps at each other. It will be metal.

All we need are curved lasers. Awesome trumps realism, right?

Technically "star wars" style lasers require line of sight because it's a focused beam of light.

As long as you embrace the anime style I see no reason to exclude curved lasers ala Zone of the Enders


lAz0rz! Pew pew p3w!

(one of my favourite games btw)

They are plasma or particle bolts I believe rather then light speed travelling photons.

Ill get my geek on here, Im pretty sure the "lasers" in star wars were not focussed light alone, seeing as they travel much slower than light. They were some kind of laser induced plasma projectile. Anything that travels slower than light implies it has mass, and if it has mass it is affected by gravity. The laser bit really only refers to its luminance and possibly its ignition method, the bolt part refers to its resemblance to a bullet in all other ways.

In any case I argue that a beam, wherever possible to do so, should be used. If the towers are unable to accomplish this on the smallest planets then increase their height until they can. It is after all why they are mounted on a tall tower to begin with is it not? I strongly oppose the "rule of cool", but there are several units so far and probably more to come than can and should utilize the visual aesthetic of a full beam. Its cooler and has no drawback. It might even be easier to render from a system resources point of view.

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/scale-megathread.48650/ : D

There's a middle ground between continuous beams and bolts, pulsed beams (example: pulse lasers in Mechwarrior)

Unfortunately pulsed beams would suffer from the same curvature of the planet problem that continuous beams do. However, like continuous beams, they'd work fine for in some circumstances (AA, orbital units)

There're supposed to be lasers pulsing in the rapid succession.

Applied Phlebotinum

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Laser

No they really are plasma weapons.

Then why call the lasers in the movies? When that cause caused confusion?

because buzzwords.

There's room in the game for a really tall defense structure with a beam weapon. If it can't bear on a target because of terrain or curvature, tough luck...

this is especially the case if hills or other terrain variations become important.

if you follow his link it sais it's just an acronym...

I did follow his link but i was trying to say it becomes an issue with suspension of disbelief. People understand what a laser is and how it acts. So phlebotinum.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a completely ad-hoc plot device"
—David Langford, A Gadget Too Far

Well when the films came out.......the general public would have called them lasers anyway.

and it was done on pupose so that the public would associte the two to kinda grasp what was going on and why they where using them over bullets other than just: it's da fiuchaaaar