lasers pfft... a piece of shiny silver would easily stop that... now a plasma discharge, thats different.
When I hear "lasers" I am thinking more of beams of charged particles being shot out of a linear accelerator. Such as protons or even whole atoms. Lots of them. Moving at close to the speed of light. Technically they are particle cannons and not lasers but to most people they are lasers because they look like classic laser weapons from science fiction.
Incorrect. There are two explanations why. The naive explanation is that unless a surface is perfectly reflective (impossible in the real world), it will absorb some portion of the energy from the laser. A powerful enough laser will only reflect partially for a very brief period while the rest is absorbed. The large amount of energy absorbed will cause the atomic dissipation of the material, resulting in a surface that is not reflective at all, eventually resulting in the expected destruction. More accurately, on a quantum level, reflection is achieved by the atom absorbing the photon, which puts its electrons in an excited state, after which they release a portion of the energy as another photon. A high-powered laser causes the atom to absorb photons faster than they emit, resulting in the eventual dissipation of the material. In short, lasers are effective weapons, and they have a LOT of advantages. (And all the recent sci-fi claiming that particle weapons are the ultimate form of futuristic weapons aren't taking into account the enormous amount of information we've found out about quantum mechanics in the past 100 years.) [EDIT] With regards to my last observation, yes, lasers are technically particle cannons (photons can be considered particles (and if we want to get technical, photons aren't the only particles that exhibit wavelike properties)), but the explanation modern sci-fi has towards using particle cannons as weapons is simplistic, relying primarily on using a particle cannon to convey energy to a target at near-light speeds. It's not all about delivering the maximum amount of energy to the target to facilitate destruction.
We have Star Wars "lasers" (bolts) right now instead of Star Trek lasers (beams). We originally had the tanks firing lasers but we ran in to a lot of line of sight issues because of our spherical planets and how low to the ground they are. Someday we may add units with laser beams.
I see your quantum laser and raise you a particle cannon firing copious amounts of anti matter ions. Its kinetic and mutually annihilative at the same time! Gotta love "lasers" that create explosions when they hit.
Hm this is actually concerning me. I was fully expecting to see laser based units and defense towers - I think neutrino said he also would like to have those. I loved how intimidating lasers were in TA, like the green heavy laser which did heavy damage and had a really powerful sound. Right now every unit in the game seems to shoot some sort of missile which follows a curved trajectory. Would it help making a curved laser bolt instead of a straight one?
All of the lasers in TA were "bolts" and not "beams". This is what PA currently has as well. I seem to remember a modded tank for TA that had weapons that that kinda looked like beam lasers (I think they were pink) but they were really just very long bolts with some creative cosmetic mods. Ah here it is.
Okay let me simplify. Everything that is shot appears to be ballistic in nature. When are we gonna get more lights shooting across the screen with the following pew sounds. I dont care what the "type they are" just want lights with pew sounds followed with explosions.
Alpha lacks a lot of things more important than lasers. I think on a planet's surface lasers are going to be functionally limited to relatively short ranges just because of the curvature of the planet. The planets are so small that the planet's curvature greatly limits the range and effectiveness of line of sight weapons. They could be designed as some types of short-range weapons. Alternately, large star-trek style beams might be used to fire up and/or down from the surface of a planet, where its curvature is irrelevant.
We already have full support for beams. As Ben said, we used to have them, but we need to solve some fairly serious line of sight issues before we bring them back into the game.
I suppose the only way to really make the beam lasers work then is to have the units that produce them be pretty far from the surface (satellites, gunships, maybe really tall daddy long legs style spider bots).
Duh. Laser towers. But yes, LoS weapons are gonna have trouble crossing round planets. That's no good for standard tanks, but it's a very clever way of trimming down long range units like the Jethro. It can't hit ground very well, but it's an AA weapon so who cares. LoS weapons will also massively benefit from altitude. That makes the high cliff rocks great spots for laser batteries, once again favoring laser towers. It helps jump jet types, hill climbers, light aircraft, and anything on the ocean, since they don't have to deal with as much terrain.
Well Los on earth is like 80miles, I guess with a lot smaller planets mean the horizon effect is more pronounced. Could be used as point defends weaponry tho
Does this mean that the present "pulse" lasers follow a ballistic path, rather than a straight line, so as to avoid the same line of site problems that seem to be an issue with beam weapons?
