This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Tweaked the Fallout 3 example; the Gauss rifle isn't an energy weapon. It fires a tiny slug at high velocity through electromagnetic coils.
I would like to strongly object to the idea that laser weapons would "just burn a hole through a target", because that makes it sound like it's not going to be lethal. Saying that they are "just stronger laser pointers" is sort of like saying an assault rifle is "just a stronger slingshot".
Consider that the process by which lasers "burn" through targets involves turning the surface into gas or plasma. The expansion of this gas will cause physical, mechanical damage to surrounding tissue, as bad or worse than a bullet wound will. The idea that lasers are self cauterizing is technically true for the tiny part of a person's body that it hits, but given that this is only a minor area compared to where the real damage will be done (again, mechanical not thermal effects), it's kind of misleading.
Lasers are positively devastating as weapons. Yes, current battery technology is not at the point where they are practical for man portable use, but they ARE at the point where it is practical for mobile platforms like the Boeing Airborne Tactical Laser (reportedly capable of punching holes through tanks at many kilometers away), and an Israeli anti-rocket platform mounted on a Merkava Chassis.
- Wait, it was my understanding that pulsed lasers would cause considerable amount of damamge, but a standard continuous beam however, would be the "powerful laser pointer?" Even though the "burn a hole right through" part is probably inaccurate, wouldn't the steam and gas mess with the beam unless it was using the pulsed laser technique?
T Beholder: The same for repeated pulses. But if one maneuerable object shoots at another it's not like it going to pin the same point all the time, so this seems to be less of a problem. Anyway, (according to estimations in Weaponry in Space: The Dilemma of Security) the energy threat of target kill is roughly the same in both cases, even though damaging factors and possible countermeasures are different.
Zarpaulus: Which do you think is more likely to make holes in a ship's hull, a bullet or a lethal energy weapon, judging from the damage a laser pistol did in Heart of Gold I'd say the energy weapon.
Who suggested that the guns in
Fire Fly may have been energy weapons because "the sound effects definitely suggest an energy weapon", I don't think he saw very much of the show.
Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better launched as Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better Discussion: From YKTTW
From YKTTW Working Title: Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better
Vampire Buddha: Removed a tonne of
natter:
Natter
- Justified in that Borg shielding is only capable of adapting to energy weapons... which leads to Fridge Logic when you wonder why Starfleet doesn't make kinetic weapons standard-issue, since they're obviously far more effective.
- Because by the time they issued the thousands of rifles to all their vessels the Borg would have come up with armour to block them. Picard's tactic only worked because it was unexpected.
- Except the Borg have been getting their asses handed to them repeatedly by kinetic weapons long before Picard used the holographic Tommy Gun. See: Data kung-fu-ing the Borg earlier in TNG, Worf ginsu-ing them with his knife, one member of Species 8472 ripping apart an entire cube's worth of drones with its claws....
- The reason is mentioned in the Deep Space 9 entry on the page, one reason why the Tr-116 rifle wasn't adapted because of new technologies making it obsolete. Another reason, that would probably be more likely, is because it was too good, one could transport its rounds right to its target, allowing people to assassinate with little effort.
- Not really, the Transporter was weak and thus untracable, but that would make it even easier to block, and since anything and everything seems to block transporters...
- Everything, that is, except for the interior walls of Deep Space Nine, even when they NEEDED to be able to block transporters.
- Not technically projectile weapons. Hologram copies of kinetic weapons. Somewhere Picard just doomed some race that thought such a weapon might be a surprise.
- There's also the notion of the "War of Assassins", which is a permission for the nobles to duke it out among themselves with any means at their disposal... as long as they don't involve Normal People who are not personally serving them. While it is rarely followed to the word, it generally does prevent massive WMD deployment.
- Though to be fair the primary hand weapon they use against the bugs inside their Powered Armor is a flame thrower that has a "beam" setting and can "cut" through walls. Making it sound suspiciously like a plasma weapon.
- Sounds like a souped-up version of a modern-day cutting torch, which isn't really far-fetched at all.
- It was the range of several hundred meters that cued the suspicion.
- Technically, any flame-based weapon is a plasma weapon.
- Interestingly, the "missiles" that Navy ships use in the Honor Verse do not fit this trope; they're missiles at range, but the warhead is a complex system for creating X-ray lasers.
- Explained as a method for increasing the lethal radius of a warhead. Against shielded, heavily armored vessels, fusion bombs would have to get very close. Hitting a ship outright would be effective, but shields and (more importantly) active missile countermeasures make that unrealistic. Relativistic missiles would be unable to hit a maneuvering target, but are the most destructive weapon available against planets. Which is why they're banned.
- They're not banned per se, it's just that any use of 'weapons of mass destruction' against a planetary population without first inviting them to surrender would be considered a violation of the Eriandi Edict and leave any force/fleet/navy responsible open to annhialation by the Solarian League Navy (the Honorverse's largest). Said edict being about the closest thing the Solarian League has to a formal foreign policy, and one that had been enacted several times.
- True for his Terro-Human Future History; even the ship-to-ship actions in Space Viking are fought without energy weapons (though sonic stunner is used near the end of Fuzzy Sapiens). Piper does use energy weapons (needlers and blasters) in his Paratime stories.
- Justified in that the Colonies are implied to have placed very little resources into military development due to the relative peace that existed within their culture before the first Cylon War. Incidentally, communications technology is also implied to have been neglected, for some unknown reason.
- Partially true. There are actually two different laser pistols that show up. One is a valuable nonfunctional antique, a prototype of all current handheld energy weapons. The other is used by the antagonist of the episode, and works reasonably well until quickly running out of power. (It should be noted that we see a space warship using heavy duty energy weapons, one shot of which is capable of completely piercing a medium sized freighter. The impression this troper gets is that energy
weapons are around in the Firefly universe, but really compact power supplies to make them usefully handheld are not).
- A kind of stun rifle also shows up in one episode, which is set on one of the more advanced central planets. Jayne uses it to great effect until he comes upon a locked door, against which the stun rifle is completely useless. It would appear that the main reason the Firefly crew mainly relies on slugthrowers without much in the way of high-tech frills is simply that if a laser pistol malfunctions, you need to take it to an electronics expert, while a revolver jam is a far easier thing to fix on your own.
- In the Big Damn Movie, the Operative uses what looks like a laser pistol, which actually acts much like one would expect a real laser to operate, firing an invisible beam. Mal is knocked down by the beam, but it doesn't do much more than inconvenience him. Then again, Mal has been tortured to death before without much in the way of ill effects, so a single piddly little laser beam isn't going to slow him down.
- So basically, Mal died without suffering any ill effects?
- That depends entirely on your definition of dying. His heart stopped, but obviously not for long enough to kill the brain. And it wasn't without ill effects - still proving he has a lot of points in his CON stat :)
- There are exceptions; the Kull Warriors have what amounts to a repeating Staff Weapon on their wrists, which pretty much smokes anything the humans have.
- But only for personal weapons. In space, the railguns used on Earth ships are useless peashooters and missiles always get shot down by enemy Energy Weapons. They are replaced with Asgard technology as soon as they get it.
- The missiles would work fine if the guys shooting them weren't idiots that lob two shots from long range, see them go down, and then instead of firing them all or getting closer just give up. It's even more of a wallbanger because we see that the warheads can do massive damage and we know that thanks to it's shields the ship can easily brave enemy fire long enough to fly to point blank range, denying any chance at interception, and yet for some insane reason they never ever do so.
- The replicator example is explicitly justified in the show as well: The Asgard somehow managed to develop energy weapons without developing kinetic weapons first, so they relied on the human's inferior technology to battle them.
- Which is actually quite reasonable - even if they didn't use weapons in their "youth" as a race, they probably had tons of tools - which they adapted to weapons when they encountered hostiles. Projectile weapons are not simple to make - it took us hundreds of years to get to todays firearms, which are still quite lacking. Asgard weapons were probably also auto-targeting and firing, leaving Asgards with no skills to actually operate firearms effectively.
- Goa'uld shields are weak against even more primitive weapons: they allow slower projectiles such as arrows to permeate.
- Which made them suspiciously like the personal shields from Dune... Although, they apparently keep Replicators out - regardless of their speed.
- There is an episode where SG-1 compare the standard Jaffa staff weapon to the P-90s they use, showing the superior rate of fire, accuracy at range and overall effectiveness - pointing out the staff weapon is a weapon of fear, the P-90 is a practical weapon of war... which given the enormous number of people that SG-1 have killed with them seems a valid argument.
- Considering how effective the Jaffa staff is when Teal'c uses it at range, I'd put it more down to SG-1's plot armour than to P90s being better.
- Problem with said example is that Teal'C is/was First Prime of a major Goa'uld. It'd be like pointing out how good a 30-year veteran in marital arts is next to a 13-year-old boy.
- NOBODY EVER CORRECT THAT TYPO.
- A ship impact would be very blunt, and might buckle frames and plates but, unless severe, you might not get a hull rupture (YMMV and depends on which two ships are colliding, and how). A micrometeor is very, VERY fast but also extremely tiny. A bullet, halfway between, might pose a threat to a thin hull. It might be safe to throw pistol bullets around in a warship; using a machine gun on a civilian space station could potentially cause problems.
- But, in many GURPS settings, when firing multiple rounds of laser there is a chance that one or more shots follow a previous shot, making a "train" of laser. For the purpose of damage, the target armor is counted only one, so the resulting damage is often terrific. Justified as laser weapons have no recoil, and a steady shooter can easily keep aiming at a specific spot.
- This was removed in 4e but lasers were given more damage and the ability to punch through armor more effectively. The recoil is still much less than kinetic weapons.
Joeyjojo: man I haven't seen this much technical natter since
Old-School Dogfighting. i am going to give it a
major trim in the next few days.
- Evilest_Tim: Nope, beat you to it. Bwahahahaha.
