Sharks with friggin lazers! Options

[Kanada Ten]

In Shadowrun, lasers appear to be primarily electrically powered, which makes sense. The most primitive laser is basically a light bulb with a focusing lens (one can use the sun to set things on fire with a good lens). All one would need to do to make a man-portable kilowatt laser is to make a LED that is strong enough to take in and output a thousand watts, a lens to focus it, a power source with a kilowatt output.

Frequency of the output light is very important to how well the energy is absorbed by the target; it doesn't matter how many pentawatts you pump into something if it reflects 100% of the radiation, or absorbs zero. Then beam diameter: square root reduction of watt power versus damage area. And most electrical methods of beam generation produce Wattage at a 20% beam to 80% waste ratio, making them very hot and very wasteful - which is why the missile killers use chemical reactions, ram jet turbines, or equivalently limiting resonators. Then you get dirt or mud on your output coupler, or misalignment of the chamber, and the weapon is reduced to slag.

IMO, man-portable laser weapons are a joke.

This post has been edited by Kanada Ten: Feb 10 2008, 03:17 AM

[hyzmarca]

Frequency of the output light is very important to how well the energy is absorbed by the target; it doesn't matter how many pentawatts you pump into something if it reflects 100% of the radiation, or absorbs zero. Then beam diameter: square root reduction of watt power versus damage area. And most electrical methods of beam generation produce Wattage at a 20% beam to 80% waste ratio, making them very hot and very wasteful - which is why the missile killers use chemical reactions, ram jet turbines, or equivalently limiting resonators. Then you get dirt or mud on your output coupler, or misalignment of the chamber, and the weapon is reduced to slag.

IMO, man-portable laser weapons are a joke.

One must assume that Sixth World weapons designers have created extremely efficient and robust infrared LEDs.

[Fortune]

And really good batteries.

[Sir_Psycho]

If we have nerps, then we have everything.

[TonkaTuff]

As for wielding the Firelance, it's been my understanding that vehicle weapons don't come with the hardware necessary for metahumans to wield them as personal weapons (no grips, triggers, etc.) because they're designed to be integrated into weapon mounts. Though they took out the requirement for mod kits in 4th, in 3rd, you had to take all that stuff off, and tweak some other things (switching them to belt/hopper feed, for instance) to turn personal weapons into mountable guns - which indicates that not being able to wield them is the default state for weapons designed to be mounted.

[Stahlseele]

As for wielding the Firelance, it's been my understanding that vehicle weapons don't come with the hardware necessary for metahumans to wield them as personal weapons (no grips, triggers, etc.) because they're designed to be integrated into weapon mounts.

yeah so? O.o
it's what smartlink and DNI are there for *g*