About Laser weaponry.

[Rusty Shackleford]

I don't see why everyone suddenly has a problem with this. It's always made perfect sense to me. To generate a beam of light that is powerful enough to kill someone requires enormous amounts of power, more than a simple handheld battery can supply. Modern laser assemblies would have to be carried by a vehicle, and are too large to be anywhere near effective in the field for military applications. Pulse lasers exist, true, and while they are more energy efficient, they still require massive amounts of energy to work.

A handheld laser gun, even 500 years in the future, makes sense to have only a few shots. Lasers aren't going to suddenly require miniscule amounts of power to generate beams strong enough to kill someone. Visible beams at that, where a good portion of the energy lost will be to the visible spectrum. Also, makes sense because if you can hold that shit in your hand, it also makes sense that most of the thing is actually a heat sink. I actually disliked how the captain's pistol recharged itself. It makes no sense whatsoever.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

I don't see why everyone suddenly has a problem with this. It's always made perfect sense to me. To generate a beam of light that is powerful enough to kill someone requires enormous amounts of power, more than a simple handheld battery can supply. Modern laser assemblies would have to be carried by a vehicle, and are too large to be anywhere near effective in the field for military applications. Pulse lasers exist, true, and while they are more energy efficient, they still require massive amounts of energy to work.

A handheld laser gun, even 500 years in the future, makes sense to have only a few shots. Lasers aren't going to suddenly require miniscule amounts of power to generate beams strong enough to kill someone. Visible beams at that, where a good portion of the energy lost will be to the visible spectrum. Also, makes sense because if you can hold that shit in your hand, it also makes sense that most of the thing is actually a heat sink. I actually disliked how the captain's pistol recharged itself. It makes no sense whatsoever.

 

I'd rather carry one gun + power cells than the current standard of 'at least two'. Having a gun in every slot is silly, and doesn't let you send out as many armed dudes and dudettes.

[swat43]

I don't see why everyone suddenly has a problem with this. It's always made perfect sense to me. To generate a beam of light that is powerful enough to kill someone requires enormous amounts of power, more than a simple handheld battery can supply. Modern laser assemblies would have to be carried by a vehicle, and are too large to be anywhere near effective in the field for military applications. Pulse lasers exist, true, and while they are more energy efficient, they still require massive amounts of energy to work.

 

The one of many problems is, having people hoarding them selves with E-guns just to deal with the threat. I would like to see you carry seven 5-7 Kg in your bag so you can deal with the threat. What you will already notice, you wont even have the space to get em in, second is, getting the gun from the bag. Quiet time consuming. (Of course that is compared to reality) But since this is 2Dspessmen, no logic required because f*ck logic.

The laser coils/mags/cells are meant to bring some meaning for the weapons at all, not just mindless hoarding and who ever has more guns, wins. This is to balance the hoarding away, and bringing something new to armory.

[Kane]

Could just keep the standard setup, but remove the internal battery from most, if not all weapons, and give them a standardized (or not) magazine, possibly with higher-grade variants, and have the rechargers to re-power the depleted energy magazines. This may or may not have already been suggested.

[Susan]

On station, that purpose realistically isn't expected to exceed to dispatching of carp, large crowds that gather, and the occasional lusty xenomorph maid. For this purpose, a weapon with a restriction on useage as heavy as a requirement to remain anchored to a singular recharge point seems fine. And let's be honest, systems like that would probably be cheaper.

I can support this. It's sort of the idea of the station security force having the civilian/not full-auto version of weapons, while ERT has high-grade gear.

 

I don't think this makes sense at all.

Security guards in our current day and age can carry weapons from handguns to submachine guns capable of automatic fire; to say that suddenly in the future corporate security is provided with weapons so monumentally useless (energy weapons that don't recharge or can't be reloaded - srsly) is ridiculous. A weapon that is capable of being reloaded isn't something I'd considered 'high-grade'. It's what I'd consider 'normal'.

[Davidchan]

I don't think this makes sense at all.

Security guards in our current day and age can carry weapons from handguns to submachine guns capable of automatic fire; to say that suddenly in the future corporate security is provided with weapons so monumentally useless (energy weapons that don't recharge or can't be reloaded - srsly) is ridiculous. A weapon that is capable of being reloaded isn't something I'd considered 'high-grade'. It's what I'd consider 'normal'.

 

The difference here is that the weapons available now are almost subnormal. Security Officers generally aren't very well equipped. Sure, IRL equivalents will have tasers, handguns or on the rare occasion a submachine gun or rifle, but only on high security details and assignments, usually these are a form of deterrent, not many people are going to cause trouble to a man holding a gun, specially one capable of automatic fire.

But, even the most well equipped security guard really doesn't compare to Response Team. Be it SWAT, Counter-Terrorism or FBI Heavy Force-Responders, the Private Security officer is hardly going to be in the same league when it comes to equipment or even training.

A Security Guard might be given a Kevlar Vest and Submachine gun, when he has trouble he calls into the police, the Swat Officer comes wearing not just a chest guard, but shoulders, arms and even leg protection, an Assault rifle that might have a silencer or flash suppressor on it with a holographic sight and laser sight to ensure his aim is true, and a rail mounted grenade launcher with a smoke or even tear gas grenade in it.

Both have the potential to be lethal, but the Response Team is always going to be better armed, better trained, and best capable of dealing with a hostile situation.

In terms of the server, The Security Forces are supplied with a number of tools to help handle reasonable situations that might develop from Domestic threats (the crew going a bit crazy, being cooped up, or a mutiny/revolution breaking out) But the ERT team has the some of the best weapons and gear available, RnD came just maybe scrap together equivalents or maybe something better, but it 's head and shoulders above what is sitting in the Armory just incase a pirates or a hostile force tries to take the station.

[Susan]

That doesn't address my concern at all.

The Aurora is in fact a high security research station so, as you said in real life security guards carry rifles or sub machine weapons, is presumably why they have an armory with as many weapons as they do.

However. There is minimal difference between an assault rifle and, say, MP5 in this consideration. Yes, range, round size, damage, all these are important - but we're not talking about that. We're talking about the ability to reload. Do you know why security guards and SWAT members carry weapons that can reload? So they don't run out of goddamn bullets.

I do not see a scenario ever where someone develops an energy weapon that is only capable of being recharged as specific stations because that would be completely and utterly useless in ANY combat scenario, including the ones you listed. Especially the ones you listed. And a gun that fucking reloads isn't even good technology; it should be the standard. Every single firearm attainable by a human being possesses the ability to reload. Why in the fuck would you design a weapon that CAN'T reload? Further, how in the hell is an antique pistol capable of regenerating rounds (the captain's pistol, like 200 years old) less advanced than a /replacable battery/.

It's like trying to say a gun you manually reload is worse than a gun that generates it's own goddamn bullets. It makes no sense.

[Chaznoodles]

In response to Sue's post above;

Just take the lack of a reload function on laser weaponry to be part of the design. it might save money on Nanotrasen's part - and we all know it's about the money - or it might be a simpler way to manufacture it, or it might make handling easier, etc.

About the antique pistol regenerating, but others needing charged? Take it as forms of technology that have been lost through time, and haven't been able to be replicated, much like STCs in the 40K universe.

[Davidchan]

I think Sue and myself have been misunderstanding each other, or least not fully pushing the same ideas.

I do feel there should be a vareity of weapons on the station, and there should be means to reload/recharge them as the situation calls for them.

Security's weapons should have removable cells, magazines or power supplies that can be swapped out. Recharger stations (table mounted ones) should be available for recharging of these cells individually, and recharger ports (wall mounted ones) should be available to recharge a weapon without the need to remove the power cell.

In my opinion, prototype weapons (proto-pistol and other such monstrosities) should not have a removable clip, at least the low tier ones, as they are still in the design and application phase, not production and use full scale. They should require use of a charger in order to recharge (generally requiring permission from security to do or requisitioning a charger port for use in RnD/Misc Research)

Sef-Recharging weapons should exist as they do now. Their internal reactors or power cells so advanced or complicated they can not be removed easily, especially without risk of damaging the weapon. The Advanced Laser, for example, has a miniature nuclear reactor, removing it from the coolant system could cause it to overload and explode, after at time.

The argument I was TRYING to make about ERT having better weapons was if (and hopefully when) we implement prototype pistol-esque upgrades to weapons, better coils, optics or capacitors to marginally increase the effectiveness of these weapons, items in the ERT armory should come with these where applicable, and the regular security armory would have the basic version of weapons where they apply.

The antique laser pistol is a plot hole in itself, either being lost technology, or just a branch of technology not pursued, as the competitors to the tech may have undersold it or proved their technology was more cost effective to create or easier to manufacture and field.

[Frances]

In response to Sue's post above;

Just take the lack of a reload function on laser weaponry to be part of the design. it might save money on Nanotrasen's part - and we all know it's about the money - or it might be a simpler way to manufacture it, or it might make handling easier, etc.

About the antique pistol regenerating, but others needing charged? Take it as forms of technology that have been lost through time, and haven't been able to be replicated, much like STCs in the 40K universe.

Sue raises a good point. Unless there's a clear purpose to energy weapons that ballistics do not fill, it doesn't seem to make sense to have non-reloadable energy weapons as a way to "cut costs", given they are literally less effective than modern-day weapons. If NanoTrasen wanted to cut costs, they'd switch to ballistics. Make energy weapons reloadable.

Also, regenerating ammo has been taken out of the antique pistol, so the last point is moot.

[EvilBrage]

I haven't really seen it as a measure to cut costs or the like, but rather as a way of containing the destructive power of a station. I've seen the example of the lone hero holding out against the legions of carp or what have you, but think of this from a company perspective: do they really want anyone who gets their hands on a laser rifle to be able to neutralize the rest of the station? Just the strategic placement of rechargers as well as the lackluster damage done by laser weapons leads me to believe that these are civilian model weapons that have been intentionally watered down by NanoTrasen. Research is capable of creating truly military-grade weaponry (the advanced energy guns that automagically recharge comes to mind) and the Pulse Rifles carried by the Death Squad are also an example of something that was truly meant to be military grade. The captain having a gun with a regenerating battery made sense, especially since it's inside a display case; it was probably a relic from his soldier days or something equally cliché, but more importantly, was actually meant to be used in extended combat on a battlefront as opposed to fired a few times to incapacitate someone.

You know that guy in the white shirt and shiny badge behind the desk at your neighborhood corporate building? Putting in stronger energy weapons is the equivalent of giving him a fully automatic AR15 with two clips. Barney does not need an AR15, and if a mysterious band of terrorists show up, that's when you call the police (or the ERT, as our server's comparison.) The reason laser guns don't seem able to handle combat scenarios is because they weren't meant to, in my opinion - I'm not entirely convinced that NanoTrasen is ignorant that its research station is run by asylum inmates.

[Susan]

It isn't run by asylum inmates. In lore, NanoTrasen isn't fucking retarded, but we're stuck with players that like this kind of shit to be the norm so there's a suspension of disbelief.

Now, let's think for a second here. What person sat down and decided they wanted to create one of the most useless, clunky, all-around awful weapons ever to be designed? What sort of weapons specialist went to his drawing board and decided 'woah hey guys i have an idea how about we design weapons that can't be reloaded despite having reloadable firearms since the dawn of gunpowder weapons!'. There are a thousand more effective ways to go about the 'civilian weapon' argument, including high-powered electrode guns or stun bolts. Yet they've provided us with fully lethal weapons when it is in their capacity to produce stun projectiles capable of knocking you flat on your ass.

The entire concept of a 'civilian' weapon is ridiculous. Do you know what kind of weapons civilians have? Hunting rifles. Shotguns. Semi automatic pistols. Hell, my uncle has a Remington he uses for hunting and that piece of shit from now is x100 more effective than the 'civilian' weapons we have in the future because you can actually reload the goddamn clip. What idiot sat down and decided to make them non-rechargable? Wouldn't the more intelligent choice be to defuse the laser beam so it causes less trauma and shock if you want to go the 'civilian' route? Removing the utility of being able to reload the damn thing on the fly is a decision only an idiot would make; I fail to see any justification for it. In any engagement lasting more than a minute, it is useless. Against more than like three space carp, it is useless.

And, for the record, Barney carried a magnum revolver. I don't really think you're going to be 'incapacitating' with that.

[Erik Tiber]

To just preempt this argument, you don't need to worry about lasers, say, burning a hole in the station, which is what I think would be a notable concern in space. Given that these are likely pulse lasers, the pulsing could be optimized for use against flesh rather than metal. Due to the way pulsing works, different materials with different specific heats will need different 'rates' of pulsing to burn through them as quickly as possible. You could probably adjust it to cause less trauma against flesh if you felt the need to, for some reason, this presents you with a variety of options. But nobody really cares about that stuff, so back on topic.

Back on topic: I'm still agreeing with Sue over this. We can and should give these rifles magazine-equivalents. It could be either a normal power cell, which we can balance out by showing just how power-hungry lasers can be. Alternatively, we could give them a special laser-rifle magazine thing which can only be used by these weapons; simply state that it's a power cell combined with a heat-sink to help cool the thing, and that laser rifles and energy guns can't use normal power cells because they don't have heat-sinks on them. I have no idea how one would 'recharge' a heat-sink, maybe the magazine recharging stations could just replace them?

[Davidchan]

You know that guy in the white shirt and shiny badge behind the desk at your neighborhood corporate building? Putting in stronger energy weapons is the equivalent of giving him a fully automatic AR15 with two clips. Barney does not need an AR15, and if a mysterious band of terrorists show up, that's when you call the police (or the ERT, as our server's comparison.) The reason laser guns don't seem able to handle combat scenarios is because they weren't meant to, in my opinion - I'm not entirely convinced that NanoTrasen is ignorant that its research station is run by asylum inmates.

 

Nobody is calling for increased damaged, fire rates or capacity on the base weapons. We want them to function wholly as they do now. I already outlined a scenario where we could easily remove quarter to half the weapons on the station/from the armory, replace them with 1-2 power cells/reloads a piece for a much more sane situation that results in EVERYONE who needs a weapons, getting one, hell there would be enough for everyone to have carbine or full rifle with a pistol as back up. They'd carry around a similar number of shots as they normally would holding 3-4 rifles in their pack, and there would be a delay in fire fights because reloading would require more user input than simply dropping/stowing the depleted rifle and pulling out a fresh one before firing again.

Security (and players in general) would be less to just drop depleted weapons since recharging them would become much more sensible and any intelligent Warden could run like a proper quartermaster of the armory and issue replacement cells on a 1 to 1 basis for depleted ones to recharge, even if we use standard power cells for charges, this means most rifles consume about 15kW of energy to fire 8 shots if they come equipped with a high capacity cell as standard (like Mechs and Cyborgs)

The only way to make energy weapons stronger would be through upgrades, which could still easily be balanced and explained since there really is no way to modify an existing ballistic weapons aside from adding a scope/sight to it, where as there is a plethora of interchangeable parts on laser and ion weapons that could be swapped out with upgraded models, which is more or less how our machine system runs.

[Guest]

Reviving this thread again, because this was never reviewed.

Quite honestly, the biggest weakness of energy weapons is their complete inability to actually reload, and once you run out of goddamn bullets, you're probably screwed in a ranged engagement unless you have 2-3 more sidearms to finish the job.

And this kinda actually does make energy weapons suck and pale in comparison to any other ballistic weapon. Energy weapons are only good in one situation, and that situation where there are a lot of windows.

While a laser does have 20 shots, more than likely you're going to either whiff those shots or miss a lot, assuming you're the average user of a laser rifle. Once you're out, you need to completely leave the fight you're in just to charge your gosh darn weapon.

[swat43]

But there is still one thing, i'd like to have some clarification on first. IF we do have the energy cells, coils, mags or w/e, would they be affected by EMP? Should we change the aspect of the energy cells we have currently, and have them being affected only if they are inserted inside the energy gun, or should they be affected by EMP even if they are carried as a back up reload cells?

Lore wise, how they were implemented? Mechanicaly wise, how do they work and what are their cons/pros mechanicaly?

[Guest]

But there is still one thing, i'd like to have some clarification on first. IF we do have the energy cells, coils, mags or w/e, would they be affected by EMP? Should we change the aspect of the energy cells we have currently, and have them being affected only if they are inserted inside the energy gun, or should they be affected by EMP even if they are carried as a back up reload cells?

Lore wise, how they were implemented? Mechanicaly wise, how do they work and what are their cons/pros mechanicaly?

 

Ah, yes, we do need to make EMP still viable against energy weaponry in some way.

Personal opinion: EMP should not make your ammo/energy cells default to zero.

Instead, I would prefer the weapon and the cartridges be debuffed and more prone to malfunction such as microfusion/radiation backblast that will cause a lot of humorous and situational brutality to the user. Mostly small doses weighted in with a small chance for malfunction. A lot like the AEG, for instance. Or, reduce their ammunition efficency and make them use 2x-4x as much charge for a shot. Still useful in a pinch, but not much after that.

They should still be affected by EMP whether they are loaded in the gun or stowed inside your bag. Fair is fair, etc.

It's really easy to justify via lore. Just say that energy weaponry required to be charged with no possibility for energy ammunition has quickly become outmoded, and easily phased out by weaponry with microfusion/energy cell charges, because the latter is much more reliable for a personal defense or assault weapon.

Mechanically, different weapons have different types of ammunition, not unlike ballistics. Laser rifles require larger microfusion cells which have medium-high capacity mixed with medium-high impact and damage output. Laser rifles in-game are arguably the most versatile despite their bulkiness, though they only have a lethal mode. This is their trade-off, it is very difficult to exercise nonlethal force with a laser rifle, as it's classified as a PDW with the intent to use lethal force to pacify a particularly dangerous or armed suspect.

Energy carbines and pistols (or, rather, anything with an interchangeable energy mode) would be given electron charge cells. Generally, when the electron setting is set to be positively charged, you get a stun bolt setting, its power is painfully hardhitting yet nonlethal, but its downrange accuracy is negligible due to the nature of it being a typical, unfocused projectile. When negatively charged, the result is a medium-impact, high-focus spliced-laser beam with rather high accuracy compared to stun electrodes. They require less charge, are generally more lethal, accurate, but their hits to stun is noticably higher than that of a stun setting, mostly due to the fact this is a setting to kill, and not to stun.

Protopistols, I'd imagine, would be a bit more weird, I'm not sure entirely how to deal with those.

AEG's nuclear reactor would remain the same.

[Killerhurtz]

Just putting it out there: I've played with protopistols. Anyone who claims balance has NOT done so.

Because with NO mining, I can make a one-shot-kill laser six-shooter with a scope.

With mining? I can make a 30-shot one-shot-kill (even with armor) laser guns that puts you on fire... from across the station. Oh, you got friends? They're down in two seconds flat unless you brought an army.

Protopistols are NOT balanced.

[Zidanyia]

SHHHHHH no they're fine

[Guest]

Just putting it out there: I've played with protopistols. Anyone who claims balance has NOT done so.

Because with NO mining, I can make a one-shot-kill laser six-shooter with a scope.

With mining? I can make a 30-shot one-shot-kill (even with armor) laser guns that puts you on fire... from across the station. Oh, you got friends? They're down in two seconds flat unless you brought an army.

Protopistols are NOT balanced.

PROTOPISTOLS ARE BALANCED, SSSSHHHHHHHHHH.