Lasers: Beam vs. Star-wars

Neutrino's mentioned a few times that his favored type of laser is star wars style projectiles which take time to fly from weapon to target. An alternative which I'm partial to is the more realistic instantaneous beam. In particular, I think they might complement each other nicely, making an interesting visual contrast and creating a distinction between hitscan weapons and weapons that may miss a sufficiently fast-moving unit. Imagine a tactical missile defense system based on instant lasers, taking advantage of their accuracy. How do the rest of you feel?

def a fan on projectile type... the beam tends to get messy on screen.

there is a few exceptions on the star wars projectile vs star trek beam weapons. The defiant for example had pulse weaponry which was quite similar to projectile and very awesome to watch.

Beams look great when they're modest and subtle (and don't hang around for seconds at a time). You can have an Independence Day beam, and it'll be just fine on its own, but it gets silly when you get 30 of them on screen.

Reminds me of tachyon beams in Spring. That thin, slow firing spear of bright blue was really striking amidst a field of rocket and projectile fire, and the units were so expensive (moreso in energy to support the weapon than in metal to manufacture) that you rarely had more than a few.

The answer is both, they function completely differently from each other, no reason to treat them like exclusives.

Mike

Both.

If you remember the ORIGINAL Star Wars: A New Hope you'd know that they also used both.

I prefer the original destruction of Alderaan

I agree, but the impression I'd gotten from Neutrino's posts was that the developers see it as a dichotomy. Demonstrating the contrary is rather the point of the thread.

Double post, disregard

"Projectile" lasers are easier to implement in a game that already has highly evolved projectile physics. You don't need to do anything more than give them a model, set the speed, tag them for "not affected by gravity" (if you feel they should behave that way) and you're pretty much done. They work the same as a bullet with magic properties.

Beam lasers (hitscan style) may need their own extra engine implementation(s) in order to function and render properly. They are a damage over time weapon (as opposed to single hit), so units with them need to track targets to keep the beam on them, the engine needs to keep track of time on target (i.e. do X damage every tick as long as the beam is on) and you'd also need to play with unit hitboxes so you don't get a too-obvious mismatch between the unit model, and where the beam is hitting.

I love beam weapons (like the Cybran T2 point defense), but as much as I want them implemented in PA, I also want Uber to have a solid core to focus on, and if they haven't got beam weapon code in now, I reckon I can wait until beta for them to consider adding beam weapon types in to the engine. It can also be convoluted to balance; I seem to recall some controversy over those same Cybran T2 PDs being considered OP by some because they never missed, so you couldn't micro your tanks out of harms way the same way you could against any other factions PD.

You could argue that a projectile PD should miss x% of the time (whether unit inaccuracy or target movement), so a beam PD would need an x% reduction in DPS to be "properly balanced" against the projectile PD. In essence, arguing that the projectile DPS calculation should include misses as part of the damage over time averaging when calculating "true" DPS from a unit balancing perspective.

I don't actually agree with that necessarily, however I am not a professional game developer, so my game balancing comments should probably be taken with a figurative grain of salt

And thus why I said it outright, Beating around the bush in this case is a waste.

Mike

Wait a second, there's a NEW New Hope? Is it the Disney one? And it's worse?

Boooo.

Anyways, yeah, Beams and "Laser Guns" fufill different roles entirely, primarily because Beams are hitscan/raytrace and Laser Guns are simulated. Laser Guns are regular weapons, while Beams tend to be heavily specialized because of their inherent OPness.

Beam lasers don't necessarily have to be damage-over-time. A single short pulse works at least as well (and is actually how real-world high power lasers tend to function). Though I'm a pretty big fan of seeing a high-damage continuous beam sweep across a field of T1 units, explosions in its wake...

Certainly this shouldn't be a priority issue, but it's always better to make the community's opinion clear earlier rather than later. Seeing as PA isn't supposed to be about micro, I expect "harder to micro against" might well be seen as an advantage.

And considering this isn't anything new the guys at Uber I don't see why the unique needs should be any challenge to them.

Mike

The only thing I would have a problem with is that theoretically, both a constant beam AND the lasers from like Star Wars and TA would go forward at the EXACT same speed. They're both visually instantaneous.

So if you bring back the lasers from TA, if you added in beams, it wouldn't make any sense for one to go faster than the other. It just isn't possible.

With that said, I believe that going for Awesome would include both in a way that makes it cool.. without even asking about why they're different when they should be exactly the same.

Knowing Uber.. they'll find a way to not only do both, make them the same, mix it up a little, and then make it astronomical.
(pun not originally intended, but know what? Pun intended.)

Edit :
Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander were already awesome.
Astronomical is the new Awesome.

I don't think it will be; I know they actually made the Cybran T2 PDs and anti-missile lasers in SupCom, they know far better than I what would need to be done

My point being that implementing them has an associated time cost; if Uber have the time to spare (during alpha) I'm all for it, if they would prefer to spend that time on existing issues (during alpha), I completely understand that. I was assuming the alpha period to be mostly "fix what we have now" and beta to be "add in the new stuff bit by bit and make sure it works".

I'm perfectly happy to wait until beta for Giant Death Beams from Spaaaace! to turn up in the game :mrgreen:

Considering Alpha is specifically for implementing things that aren't already working, at some point they need to implement other weapons. If the Goal being Unit Variety and how weapons play a big part in providing that unit variety, then I feel it would be foolish to pass on the SupCom Style Beams because of the potential within.

Admittedly I never played TA, and it's been prolly 5+ years since I've seen the Original Trilogy but what? I think the SupCom setup worked really well and made sure they each had unique characteristics with little overlap at all really.

Mike

OK I got curious during another thread and blagged the linux build on my (windows) work machine to have a look at the unit files. And behold, sat in the folder structure is /PA/media/pa/beams/temp_beam/temp_beam.json

I now strongly suspect we'll be seeing at least one unit during alpha that has a beam weapon. Oh hells yeah :mrgreen:

That's where suspension of disbelief comes in. The generally accepted name for the artillery shells in TA was "plasma artillery", yet there's no way in hell you could keep a superheated plasma ball intact, inside an atmosphere, long enough to arrive at your target. So you deliberately forget how physics works for a bit, and take the weapon at face value. Consider the TA "laser" (Star Wars "blaster") to be a charged particle weapon if you like, and the beam weapons to be true lasers, if you don't like the difference in propagation velocity

If I remember correctly(I give at best 50% odds), the issue with implementing beams one of the devs said, was actually a fog of war/rendering issue. Making the beams appear at the edge of your fog of war instead of at the location where fired.

Considering we played FA if the fact that if you didn't have vision on the origin of a Beam (the unit/turret itself) you could see the beam I don't see a need to get it perfect.

Of course, with all the other revolutionary coding going on, I don't see what they can't tackle the problems Beams might present.

Mike

If I'm being honest, I prefer my discrete projectile weapons to be firing lumps of metal, and my directed energy weapons to be firing beams. My science gland would demand nothing less.

Having said that, i can ignore such demands if the content is presented in a compelling enough manner, and it's pretty obvious that there is room for both forms of energy weapon in PA.

It may be of interest to some people that the concept of firing plasma as discrete entities has recently taken some steps forward: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...lutionize-energy-generation-us-navys-weaponry