Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: wEvil on May 24, 2001, 05:54:00 am
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How does it work?
Does it need "ammunition"?
Can it physically be mounted on a small scale?
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It doesn't need ammo it's energy bassed (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/wink.gif)
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a beam of pure energy would have a hard time pushing the amount of damage they apparently do.
I don't know how much damage a LASER or MASER does, but a sort of system to focus EM energy doesn't seem to be possible.
Or is a beam cannon just a large-scale particle accelerator?
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I think a bullet makes more damage than a laser.Yeah the beam is a large-scale particle accelerator.
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we all die but when we die we die whit spacecrack.
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iqc 102628858
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During the cold war, the USA designed a project, I only know the name in french, but its funnily translated by starwars. One of the elements of this project was the use of large lasers to shot down russian nukes fired against the USA. Do you know he size of an ICBM? That's large. A laser of this kind could shot them down in no time. Lasers can be really powerful. Remember than many industrials use them to slice metallic elements. The only other efficient alternatives are diamond cuters ,high pression water jets, and ,I think, plasma torchs (don't imagine using them as weapon, their range is ridiculous).
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venom2506
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over a large distance the particle function of light breaks down and the laser beam loses its' coherence, starwars was retired exactly because the laser weapons were ineffective. And an ICBM rotates to maintain its' trjectory, making it hard for a laser to "burn" through the casing.
I can imagine a laser working in close quarters, maybe as an AAA weapon, but the wattage would have to be rediculously high to build a hotspot up on a fighers' hull fast enough to burn through.
In atmosphere this diffusion effect is even more pronounced.
Look what they're reduced to using now - small interceptor missiles..(that don't even work...*cough*)
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There is a difference between a laser and phaser and what other else you want to call it. Mostly ignored by Sci fi stories like Freespace.
First, a laser travels indefinately, u aim it at the egde of the universe, it'll go to the edge of the universe, i'll give an example when though...
Second, the starwars program was canceled do to budget cuts not laser ineffiency, to simply cost the USA to much money to put that up there. in that time peroid, just to launch something into orbit cost upwards of 200million dolars, and they wanted a mass launch of these things?
Third. FS Beam weapons are purely fictional, the only way they would truely work is if they were mass drivers or partical base, [v] leaves that one open, and my argument doesn't lie there (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)
Back to the laser in 1, Have you ever seen a one of the proposals for geting into orbit and travelling the stars? A disk shiped device is mounted on a huge laser which fires at it's underbelly heating up the atmosphere underneath it propellig it up to space.
2, sail type device, A focused laser it targeted on a spacecraft to propell it to the stars, this laser has INDEFINATE range.
To sum it up, FS 2 beam weapons, are not lasers (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/rolleyes.gif)
But this is Sci fi so anything goes (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/biggrin.gif)
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[This message has been edited by Nephilim (edited 05-24-2001).]
[This message has been edited by Nephilim (edited 05-24-2001).]
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Speaking realistically (we are here right), the beam cannons could not be lasers because then you wouldn't be able to see them. Maybe if they were flooded with plasma, making a powerful laser/plasma cannon combo, which might be possible
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Co-Creator, GroundZero ("http://www.subspacezero.com")
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the Captain of the Spamtik call it a " photon beam cannon" though even though it must therefore have something to do w/ photons, it is not necissarily a laser. need i remind you this is tech 300 years ahead of us. we may not even be able to understand it with our current understanding of physics.
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Given the amount of cash plowed into research on this by our weapons-mad govornments if there was a LASER based weapon capable of mass destruction they would have discovered one by now.
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it can go threw shields which fighter lasers cant seem to do (completely)
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I would imagine the fact a beam applies damage continuously for a few seconds creates a hole in the shield where it cannot be recharged fast enough.
I won't pretend to know how a shield works or would work
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STARWARS = Strategic Defence Initiative
They did come up with a laser capable of shooting down an aircraft at altitude, but it was a massive piece of equipment built on the ground. I'm sure it would have taken a LONG time to micronize it enough to make it fesable for space launch(unless they built it sectional and flew it up in pieces). There are several reasons for the cancellation of the program. One of which is the treaty signed by the biggies, US, Russia..etc(not sure who all they were) I think it was tied to a treaty having to do with non-proliferation. Budget and other things surely contributed to the program being dropped. But they can and have built very powerful lasers.
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How many @ssh0les do we have on this ship anyway?
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SDI/StarWars lasers release about as much energy as 50 lbs. (~23kg) of High Explosives. Basically if they could hit the engines/fuel tanks they could make the ICBM go boom.
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Israel uses laser-based anti-missile defense systems. These lasers are mounted on two trucks (one for the laser and one for the power source), and are deployed near the frontiers.
They are adjusted to shoot down relatively low-altitude unidentified projectiles, and are highly effective against cruise missiles and alikes - mainly due to their extremely short response time and high refire rate. This cannot work on long range, though, simply because the atmosphere is too much of a barrier, and causes the laser to dissipate rather quickly.
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If you want my opinion on what beam cannons would most likely be in real life, it would be neutral particle beam weapons. Accelerate a beam of deuterium atoms with an added electron giving them a charge for the magnetic fields to grip, then once you get to the muzzle the extra electrons are stripped and you now have a beam of relativistic, neutral particles. Depending on how fast and how dense the beam is, you could saw through starships like there's no tomorrow.
And yes, it would require 'ammo', deuterium beam mass.
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would such a weapon work on heavier atoms?
we can accelerate a uranium atom to an appreciable speed, but how about accelerating a bunch of them at once?
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Originally posted by wEvil:
would such a weapon work on heavier atoms?
we can accelerate a uranium atom to an appreciable speed, but how about accelerating a bunch of them at once?
It doesn't even have to be heavier atoms, it can be big chunks of metal or anything else that can be moved by an electromagnetic charge.
Something to remember is that the energy that gets delivered by anything is equal to mass times velocity. Now a photon doesn't have much mass, but they're moving VERY VERY fast, so a laser DOES have physical impact. There's even a kind of spacecraft drive based on the use of lasers as a propulsion system. A powerful enough laser beam could push something into orbit, or to another star system for that matter, if it were big enough.
The only reason that ANY energy weapon should be visible is because of energy 'leaking' from the edges. That said, with the kind of energy output that beam cannons are capable of, even a 1% leakage would easily account for the beams being as visible as they are.
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Except in space there shouldn't be a 'leakage'
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Originally posted by morris13:
It doesn't even have to be heavier atoms, it can be big chunks of metal or anything else that can be moved by an electromagnetic charge.
Then it's not a beam weapon any more. It's a linac projectile cannon (or railgun/gaussgun/massdriver/etc)
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Originally posted by Shrike:
Except in space there shouldn't be a 'leakage'
Maybe 'inefficiency'?
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It's not gonna glow like that though. You only get a Tyndal cone (the technical term for it) when you shine light through a colloid...smoke is a good example. Space is so sparse of material that you'll barely get any reflections.
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The SDI project was cancelled due to the fact it was extremely expensive, the parts were too large and the Lasers diffracted when they came even close to the atmosphere.
I don't know about any Laser propulsion systems, but I know there is one that is basically a large sail to "catch" the solar wind ( a stream of particles spewed from the sun).
And I figured out how a Photon cannon would work.
When a Photon hits a metal, it can, if it has enough energy, make the electron on a metal atom fly off. Now, IMHO Photon Beam Cannons would be a stream of highly charged Photons that cause the electrons in a metal to be expelled into space, causing the metal to collapse in on itself and make a hole in the targets hull. This also, in theory, works on any material, but it is most efficient on metals.
I am not sure if this would work to bombard a planet though, due to diffraction in te atmosphere.
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"Supernova, ya supernova, supernova goes pop
supernova, ya think it's over but the supernova don't stop" PM5K
Death:"Arnold Judas Rimmer... your life is over. You will travel with me to the-"
#knees death in the groin#
Rimmer:"Remember matey, it's only the good that die young"
"Do not fear the chickens. Become one with the chickens. Respect the chickens and... #BOK!# LEG IT!!!"
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so at best a beam cannon like that could only hope to depressurise a ship and kill the crew in real combat terms?
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Photons don't have charge!
If you had a powerful enough beam cannon....say, a particle accelerator going at .9 C, or a gamma ray laser, you could probably punch through almost any ship in your way.
The SDI energy weapons were powered by either chemical reactions or (very) small nuclear powerplants.....nothing like the massive fusion generators you have on every ship in FS2. It's a question of scale. Compare a BB gun to a tank cannon....that's SDI to FS2.
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and shivan cannons are powered by...umm..well....the equivalent of a small supernova? :P
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heh, subspace and/or ZEP taps power sources.
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If I remember correctly, the Particle Beam weapons they were thinking of using didn't even have to have a large amount of mass to do significant damage.
One of the sub projects under StarWars was Brilliant Pebles. It was more of the Mass Driver approach. It would fire a stream of small "pebles". The sheer kinetic impact on the warhead would be enough to destroy it.
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bit like the Maxim cannon?
and under FS2 physics such a weapon would have a big problem punching through shields
(and they are...bits of spacedust made into a shell by an EM field?i dunno)
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Originally posted by wEvil:
would such a weapon work on heavier atoms?
we can accelerate a uranium atom to an appreciable speed, but how about accelerating a bunch of them at once?
The Maxim Gun is a smaller version of this (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)
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Co-Creator, GroundZero ("http://www.subspacezero.com")
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Originally posted by Shrike:
Except in space there shouldn't be a 'leakage'
Well, thats not true actually. In space you won't have diffraction off of intervening particles, sure. What you WILL have with the kind of particle density and energy level being generated here is that unless you can make sure that every single particle is vibrating at precisely the same frequency and travelling at precisely the same direction (and I mean unbelievably precise here) The particles being fired from the beam cannon will run into EACH OTHER. Remember that in order to deliver this energy effectively they'd want a very focused beam using particles at very high energy levels. That means they're vibrating very quickly and and are packed very tightly together. Unless your focusing system is absolutely flawless you're going to have minor variences in frequency and vector of the particles in the beam, and they'll run into each other. That creates the visible beam.
I also realize that it wouldn't be a beam cannon anymore if you were using solid material rounds, I only meant to demonstrate that the principle is the same, in the same way that a .22 target pistol and a 16 inch main battleship cannon firing an 1800 pound shell use the same basic principle. =)
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Well..if the beam was a LASER then all the photons would be lined up...which is what a laser is and there would be little/no leakage, even at those power levels.
ergo, the beam cannon must be a PA.
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Originally posted by morris13:
What you WILL have with the kind of particle density and energy level being generated here is that unless you can make sure that every single particle is vibrating at precisely the same frequency and travelling at precisely the same direction (and I mean unbelievably precise here) The particles being fired from the beam cannon will run into EACH OTHER. Remember that in order to deliver this energy effectively they'd want a very focused beam using particles at very high energy levels. That means they're vibrating very quickly and and are packed very tightly together. Unless your focusing system is absolutely flawless you're going to have minor variences in frequency and vector of the particles in the beam, and they'll run into each other. That creates the visible beam.
Well, if you're using a proper beam mass (say deuterium), every atom weighs the same. Thus, you have much better control, because there is no variability in particle mass/size. Thus, each atom gets the same acceleration force imparted by the beam cannon. So little to no collisions even at very high energy levels. Obviously, if it's a laser, you don't even have to bring this up as it's not applicable.
Oh, and brilliant pebbles were essentially small (10-20kg, IIRC) guided orbital missiles that destroyed their target via kinetic impact.
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maybe the beams are graphics generated by the ship's computer so you can get out of there way.
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Eye....CANDY! du-duh da du!
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and how would you aim the beam ?
changing the course of highly energetic particles once they reached near-lightspeed would take fully as much energy as it took to accelerate them in the first place (in the instance of an AAA beam where baing able to aim it if of paramount importance)
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All your dirty secret are belong to us!
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Originally posted by Carl:
maybe the beams are graphics generated by the ship's computer so you can get out of there way.
Now there's an idea. I recall in Slaying Ravana one of your wingmen says something like 'they aren't in visual range (the capital ships engaging each other in the battle), but we can see their beam signatures'. Maybe they are generated by the computer based on non-visible data that is detected.
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well..if beams are invisible and /or highly focused in a high energy state would any EM radiation be visible at all?
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Originally posted by wEvil:
and how would you aim the beam ?
changing the course of highly energetic particles once they reached near-lightspeed would take fully as much energy as it took to accelerate them in the first place (in the instance of an AAA beam where baing able to aim it if of paramount importance)
Very powerful magnetic fields. Superconductors, once powered up, take no energy.
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there is another thing tho..
in space intertia rules, so firing a particle accelerator/railgun or almost anything will push you backwards..
so that must mean a full-on frontal barrage must be a double strain on destroyers because they have to provide opposite force to stop being pushed around everywhere...
which in turn would put stress on the superstructure.
and one other point.. why would a beam cannon need heatsinks?
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yes it does. the mission where you destroy the collossus they said the heat sinks were overloading.
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Yea but would a beam cannon need them?
would 24th century materials science have done away with the need for active cooling with a superior superconductive material?
would you need such a material to make a cannon "small" enough to be mounted on a 200m ship?
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There's no real reason why you couldn't make a beam cannon fit on a 200 m ship, after all, the SDI sats were much smaller than that. Granted, they were lower powered, but combining helical or 'trombone' style accelerators, superconducting magnets and a fusion powerplant, I don't see why not. Don't forget that FS2 beams do GIGATONS of damage, far more than is conceivably needed. Plus, you only need really long accelerators when you're seriously pushing high relativistic speeds, ie scientific experiments. Weapon-type peebees would fire much more particles at lower speeds (only C-fractional)
As for heatsinks, I honestly don't know... I would assume you'd need some, but whether it's as important as they are in FS2... I can't say. It really depends on the technology used.
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Originally posted by Shrike:
Photons don't have charge!
If you had a powerful enough beam cannon....say, a particle accelerator going at .9 C, or a gamma ray laser, you could probably punch through almost any ship in your way.
I point you towards this formula:
hf=1/2mv2max+theta (greek letter-a zero with a line through it)
This is the energy of a photon required to release a electron in a metal. Theta is the work function (or resistance to having an electron emitted). So photons DO have charge (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/tongue.gif) (any particle with even a negligable mass, when moving, has energy, and since these photons would be emitted in a wave, they would always have energy).
And who says Photon Beam Cannons use the visible part of the electro-magnetic spectrum?
In theory, the photons could be set up with the right wavelength, frequency etc. and could be gamma rays, not visible light.
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"Supernova, ya supernova, supernova goes pop
supernova, ya think it's over but the supernova don't stop" PM5K
Death:"Arnold Judas Rimmer... your life is over. You will travel with me to the-"
#knees death in the groin#
Rimmer:"Remember matey, it's only the good that die young"
"Do not fear the chickens. Become one with the chickens. Respect the chickens and... #BOK!# LEG IT!!!"
The Claw- Project Coordinator and modeller of Alternate Reality ("http://members.tripod.co.uk/sPaZm") and official spare wheel of The Perfect Storm...
[This message has been edited by The Claw (edited 05-27-2001).]
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true...but a GASER (sniggers)
would require a helluva lot more energy to work...and you would require shielding to protect the crew 'cause X and G rays are more harmful.
Neutrinos might not have mass.
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Originally posted by The Claw:
I point you towards this formula:
hf=1/2mv2max+theta (greek letter-a zero with a line through it)
This is the energy of a photon required to release a electron in a metal. Theta is the work function (or resistance to having an electron emitted). So photons DO have charge (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/tongue.gif) (any particle with even a negligable mass, when moving, has energy, and since these photons would be emitted in a wave, they would always have energy).
And who says Photon Beam Cannons use the visible part of the electro-magnetic spectrum?
In theory, the photons could be set up with the right wavelength, frequency etc. and could be gamma rays, not visible light.
You are wrong....photons do not have charge. Check this link. ("http://www.stanford.edu/dept/EHS/rad/manual/part1/photons.htm") Photons have energy, but are chargeless...if they were charged, you could bend a laser with a magnetic field, which we all know you can't do.
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Actually, X and G rays shouldn't require any more containment than possible... you're forgetting the Subach HL-7 uses X-rays.
So, if they can produce the energy and shielding to efficiently use X-rays in fighters, they can produce the aforesaid to use gamma rays on cap-ships, even though the step up between the two is rather large.
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"Supernova, ya supernova, supernova goes pop
supernova, ya think it's over but the supernova don't stop" PM5K
Death:"Arnold Judas Rimmer... your life is over. You will travel with me to the-"
#knees death in the groin#
Rimmer:"Remember matey, it's only the good that die young"
"Do not fear the chickens. Become one with the chickens. Respect the chickens and... #BOK!# LEG IT!!!"
The Claw- Project Coordinator and modeller of Alternate Reality ("http://members.tripod.co.uk/sPaZm") and official spare wheel of The Perfect Storm...
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there's a another niggle...
why are antimatter bombs in the FS universe so poxy?
I mean...if a nuke is about 7% Mass to energy, and matter/antimatter is 100%...
any comments?
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Ah yes, sorry I was getting charge (ie electrons) confused with energy. What I said still stands tho, only I mean energy, not charge (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)
Well, Anti matter bombs were the most powerful in Freespace IIRC, the weakest anti-capship being salted fusion (basically a hydrogen bomb in that it uses a fission warhead to detonate the fusion ones, if i read it correctly), and the most powerful in FS2 Meson... it doesn't mean their weak. It means they are coming up against targets with higher hull integrety, and are only weak compared to the next generation of warheads.
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"Supernova, ya supernova, supernova goes pop
supernova, ya think it's over but the supernova don't stop" PM5K
Death:"Arnold Judas Rimmer... your life is over. You will travel with me to the-"
#knees death in the groin#
Rimmer:"Remember matey, it's only the good that die young"
"Do not fear the chickens. Become one with the chickens. Respect the chickens and... #BOK!# LEG IT!!!"
The Claw- Project Coordinator and modeller of Alternate Reality ("http://members.tripod.co.uk/sPaZm") and official spare wheel of The Perfect Storm...
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matter/antimatter reactions converte every reacting particle into a photon, with an energy of E=m*c² I once calculated this value for an electron, and this photon has really enough power to run right through ANYTHING, hardly interfering at all. Just think about it, gamma rays are very hard to block, because they don't cause much ionisation, compared to alpha or beta radiation. A M/AM weapon would probably only do damage at the impact itself, while the photons emerging from it would pass through the ship as if it wouldn't be there at all, without doing any signficant ionisation effects.
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If you only had a couple sheets of paper, yes... but the Gamma rays released by a M/AM reaction are so powerful that while each may take a lot of materiel to stop, when they hit, they release an inordinant amount of energy.
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Yeah, good point... so in theory the exact energy given to the beam would have to be varied between ship to ship... for example, what might have maximum effect on a juggernaught would have little to no effect on a cruiser, because it would pass straight through it.
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"Supernova, ya supernova, supernova goes pop
supernova, ya think it's over but the supernova don't stop" PM5K
Death:"Arnold Judas Rimmer... your life is over. You will travel with me to the-"
#knees death in the groin#
Rimmer:"Remember matey, it's only the good that die young"
"Do not fear the chickens. Become one with the chickens. Respect the chickens and... #BOK!# LEG IT!!!"
The Claw- Project Coordinator and modeller of Alternate Reality ("http://members.tripod.co.uk/sPaZm") and official spare wheel of The Perfect Storm...
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You'd have to find out the absorbancies versus high energy gamma rays for each materiel..... far too many variables and unknowns for us to figure that out from what we have in FS2.
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Or simply make it low frequency radiation. Heat has the strange habit to be absorbed to a very high degree...
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You don't have to make it that low.... 'soft' X-Rays or UV would do just fine.