NationStates

Dead Snow wrote:

Enzo Turga wrote:
NOU

*waves fist at snowy*

lulz. maybe in the future we can have a skirmish...

Kreanoltha wrote:

Enzo Turga wrote:
But this is very hot light. Personally, I preffer to base my weapons off of plasma too.

This. Plasma is far more damaging than either lasers or bullets.

Mohawk Clans wrote:So basically, on the ground, solid projectile is better but in space, laser is somewhat better?

Rethan wrote:

Kreanoltha wrote:
This. Plasma is far more damaging than either lasers or bullets.

It's also a [i]lot[i] harder to wield. It dissipates in a heartbeat, can't be contained beyond a few metres reliably and in general as a long range weapon is pretty damn useless.

IMO: What weapon type you use is irrelevant. A weapon does damage. For story purposes, that's all you need.

Also: What Solar Communes said.

Rethan wrote:I is sorry Snowy. I make exceptions for particularly epic people. Also, plot. I'm just worried about people going LOL I USE PLASMA I IS BETTER because Plasma sounds cool. Plasma is highly damaging, it's just hard to contain beyond a few metres. Not impossible, just hard. Heck, I sue Plasma Sheaths for Suicidium.

'Ghetto Blaster':
A newer weapon slowly being introduced across the fleet is the Mercury Vortex Rail Gun. The design is based around a standard rail gun, once the correct current is reached a mercury bead is injected into the barrel. The mercury flashes into a highly conducting vapour. The electromagnetic field from high current discharge accelerate plasma out of the barrel. The plasma then forms a group of vortices that wrap around each other heading to the intended target, when the reach the minimum distance the wrapped vortices compress the plasma in a violent explosion. This can cause immense damage to a ships structure and/or shields. The vortices can reach temperatures of +20,000°c, meaning any object passing through/near the beam are in for a scalding.
The minimum distance for the vortices to reach is ~ 25,00km.
There are many draw backs to this, the main being the release of mercury vapour; a highly toxic substance to most biological creatures. The Reich is looking for ways to store this safely and use it as a weapon.

Kreanoltha wrote:

Enzo Turga wrote:
But this is very hot light. Personally, I preffer to base my weapons off of plasma too.

This. Plasma is far more damaging than either lasers or bullets.

Rethan wrote:I is sorry Snowy. I make exceptions for particularly epic people. Also, plot. I'm just worried about people going LOL I USE PLASMA I IS BETTER because Plasma sounds cool. Plasma is highly damaging, it's just hard to contain beyond a few metres. Not impossible, just hard. Heck, I sue Plasma Sheaths for Suicidium.

Rethan wrote:

Kreanoltha wrote:
This. Plasma is far more damaging than either lasers or bullets.

It's also a lot harder to wield. It dissipates in a heartbeat, can't be contained beyond a few metres reliably and in general as a long range weapon is pretty damn useless.

IMO: What weapon type you use is irrelevant. A weapon does damage. For story purposes, that's all you need.

Also: What Solar Communes said.

Kreanoltha wrote:It only dissipates if you lack the proper containment methodology. My RP weapons produce a compression field around it to keep it hot and contained until it come in contact with a large object. Then if it maintains contact with it for more than two seconds it dissipates and allows the plasma to expand catastrophically.

Kreanoltha wrote:

Rethan wrote:It's also a lot harder to wield. It dissipates in a heartbeat, can't be contained beyond a few metres reliably and in general as a long range weapon is pretty damn useless.

IMO: What weapon type you use is irrelevant. A weapon does damage. For story purposes, that's all you need.

Also: What Solar Communes said.

It only dissipates if you lack the proper containment methodology. My RP weapons produce a compression field around it to keep it hot and contained until it come in contact with a large object. Then if it maintains contact with it for more than two seconds it dissipates and allows the plasma to expand catastrophically.

Arthropoda Ingens wrote:

Kreanoltha wrote:It only dissipates if you lack the proper containment methodology. My RP weapons produce a compression field around it to keep it hot and contained until it come in contact with a large object. Then if it maintains contact with it for more than two seconds it dissipates and allows the plasma to expand catastrophically.

This makes your plasma weapon weaker than a laser, though. You're expending energy to create the plasma, you're expending energy to move the plasma, and...

And you're expending energy to generate the containment/ compression field.

The last one's the problem. The energy you put into containing the plasma, other people can put straight into their projectiles or lasers.

It should be noted that the 'Catastrophic Expansion' of your plasma is useless. 'Catastrophic Expansion' (Vaporisation of material, and gas generally requires a lot more space than solid material. Cue shockwave) is an inherent property of pretty much any weapon that hits with enough energy for a hard kill. Whether it's a laser, a projectile, or something more exotic - material (I.e. parts of the target's hull and interior) gets vaporised and 'Catastrophic Expansion' happens.

EDIT: For that matter, whether you expend energy to create the plasma ('Heating Stuff') or to simply accelerate it (As in a projectile) is completely irrelevant. The energy content of whatever you're firing remains the same. You'd be served just as well if you just fired your plasma without first turning it into a plasma, dumping all that energy into acceleration rather than heating. It'll get dumped into the target either way.

Drakcon wrote:A real world weapon developed by the U.S. Air Force called the Pusled Energy Projectile is a type of laser system that heats the surface of the target creating a small amount of exploding plasma. It is now a non-lethal weapon but it can be used as a lethal weapon, a early name was Pulsed Impulsive Kill Laser (PIKL).

Polish Worlds wrote:Plasma flamethrowers are a mandatory item.

Like heat-rays.

But yes, plasma weapons will be like "shotguns" in FT ground combat.

If you want to go with a handwaved solution just invent a purely fictional word for it like "Tiberium Cannon". It tends to prevent this sort of discussion and opposition to it greatly because it doesn't pull scientific names from RL to attempt looking like realistic.

Arthropoda Ingens wrote:

Drakcon wrote:A real world weapon developed by the U.S. Air Force called the Pusled Energy Projectile is a type of laser system that heats the surface of the target creating a small amount of exploding plasma. It is now a non-lethal weapon but it can be used as a lethal weapon, a early name was Pulsed Impulsive Kill Laser (PIKL).

That's sort of like calling a rifle an Organic Matter Disruptor. Personally, I think that when one's weapon fires a laserbeam that's supposed to do the damage, it's sensible to call it a laser weapon, just like I consider it sensible to call a rifle that fires a bullet a projectile weapon, rather than an organic matter disruptor.

Of course, this does bring up the point that we'd call pretty much all of these things a 'Gun'.

Kreanoltha wrote:I tend to use my own version of hand handwavium known as massive-reactorium. Plus I like technobable. Basically the idea is to create a supper-compressed version of plasma that is several times hotter than anything that could occur naturally. A few shots to take out the shields and then another one or two to destroy the ships hull.

Arthropoda Ingens wrote:

Kreanoltha wrote:I tend to use my own version of hand handwavium known as massive-reactorium. Plus I like technobable. Basically the idea is to create a supper-compressed version of plasma that is several times hotter than anything that could occur naturally. A few shots to take out the shields and then another one or two to destroy the ships hull.

That doesn't address the points I made. I don't care about the handwaving - we all do it, and most freely acknowledge it. Besides, plasma's a SciFi staple in the first place, so can't really blame people for using it -, and I see no issues with plasma weapons, silly though they are in a 'Realistic' context. But one could violate physics far worse than that (And everyone with FTL or energy shields does so). That's all pretty cool with me.

My issue is solely the idea of the plasma weapon being somehow significantly more destructive than an equivalent energy-input laser or projectile.

Your idea of super-compressed plasma's perfectly ok (Okay, so if we were to RP out a fight, I'd probably work a bit of snark into a post on account of some of the issues with it, but I do the same thing with the products of my own imagination, too), but there's really no reason for it to violate conservation of energy and for that matter, it'd actually be unbalancing if it somehow did this. And while unbalancing's likewise perfectly cool within the universe of one's own imagination, doing so tends to cause issues when one wishes to interact with other people (Read: Roleplay). Other people may not like being disadvantaged for, quite frankly, rather silly reasons very much.

So I'd really suggest keeping it as about level with lasers or projectiles in terms of destructive potential.

Kreanoltha wrote:Maybe this is just me, but I've found that there is no real difference in weapons is terms of damage.

Kreanoltha wrote:This. Plasma is far more damaging than either lasers or bullets.

Everyone has their own little tweak that makes their weapons the best.

Arthropoda Ingens wrote:

Kreanoltha wrote:Maybe this is just me, but I've found that there is no real difference in weapons is terms of damage.

Err... Yes. That is the point I'm making. You were quite explicitly denying this very point mere minutes ago, though:

Kreanoltha wrote:This. Plasma is far more damaging than either lasers or bullets.

I'm happy to learn that you've changed your mind, though.

Everyone has their own little tweak that makes their weapons the best.

Not really. I at least have never described my IC weaponry as 'Best' or 'Better', nor as 'Worse' or 'Worst'. I tend not to quantify it, especially not relative to other people.