Taoist Dragon wrote:Well I love lasers! Afterall this is a sci-fi space game but I feel the humble laser is somewhat misrepresented so here my thoughts on the matter.
Now this isn't really taking into account the changes in odessy just something I'd like to give lasers more 'flavour'
Beam Lasers should be constant DPS no alpha lasers. Decent optimal and crap falloff. Constant cap usage
Pulse lasers should be the high alpha low ROF lasers. Decent optimal and crap falloff. Pulsed cap usage as is now.
Lasers should be the highest tracking of all weapon systems as they only have to redired light not a physical shell etc.
This is mainly a cosmetic change but it would look awesome to have beam tracking all over the place frying targets and big pulse blasts ala star wars :D
first off, a laser has to build up a lot of power, then discharges it at once. therefore, they have their own capacitor per se'.
its a large cap, the ship slow charges it until its full, then discharges it in a massive beam of light. look at star trek: TNG.
they use phased array antennae (same as we use in the military for guiding RADAR beams) to steer laser (different frequency, high power). multiple capacitor banks slow charge then discharge through the antenna (or phasers which create a magnetic field to guide the beam). that would give .8 or better tracking because its all digital and at the speed of light. as we have it, we do have physical weapons pointing, so the metal has to accelerate and track. mass being what it is...we can miss at times.
a pulse laser has 4 smaller caps that are discharged in sequence. they dont have the power nor range of a beam, but they have a higher rate of fire. instead of a big jolt, we get a bam/bam/bam/bam.
i prefered the sound the heavy pulse lasers make. zub zub zub zub.
to me, mega pulse should be the same, only 1 octave lower, 20 decibles louder (10x the sound) and 1/2 the rof of the heavy pulse sound.
like ZUUUB ZUUUB ZUUUB ZUUUB! it should rawk the battle field when them massive caps go off. (atleast in the ship, because sound cannot travel through a vacuum and light has nothing to reflect off of so we dont see the beam in space).
as far as beams being continuous and outstanding tracking, we could do something similar if we used phased array, but the power level would be extremely low in comparison. there is no time to charge up that massive cap and discharge it onto some innocent passer-by.
i have always felt that lasers in general should have tremendous tracking due to, as you stated, "guiding a beam of light".
we could back off range and give them better tracking for balance, but i kinda dig how we have it, except for power grid/cap consumption. and that horrendous sound mega pulse make..
give us ZUUUB ZUUUB ZUUUB ZUUUB!
i want my neighbors to come over when my subwoofer rattles THEIR house...