[Herra Tohtori]

Yes, but in that case at least the outermost surface of the beam would not actually be plasma at all but rather just hot gas, since the characteristic emitting frequencies demand the presence of electron shell around the nucleus; in pure plasma the electrons and nuclei are not bound together, as you surely know... The inner parts of the beam would most likely be hotter, though.

After all, the outermost visible surface of stars (fotosphere) is not pure plasma either.

[Col. Fishguts]

Well, AFAIK your typical plasma contains free nuclei/electrons, partially ionized atoms, free radicals, and even some neutral molecular compunds. So with the addition of some handwavium one could get away with that explanation

[spartan_0214]

The Yuuzhan Vong use plasma weapons. They're extremely effective against any ship because after the plasma hits, it starts melting the hull. If you could get a weapon like that.....

[Flaser]

The Yuuzhan Vong use plasma weapons. They're extremely effective against any ship because after the plasma hits, it starts melting the hull. If you could get a weapon like that.....

More SW physics...

Plasma weaponry is pretty useless you can keep the plasma in a magnetic bottle that keeps it from expanding and rapidly cooling down....however if you can somehow throw a self containing magnetic field out just like that, it would make a lot more sense, just to send it out on its own, and let it tear up the enemy ship for you.

Going nuclear (contact, not proximity as their is no medium to tranfer the force) is probably a sensible thing...either in unguided or guided munitions (coilgun/ion-canon/missiles).
The best though would be using antimatter, preferably of neutral charge.

BTW we're slaughtering cat girls:

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Cat_girl

[spartan_0214]

BTW we're slaughtering cat girls:

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Cat_girl

bummer

[Polpolion]

BTW we're slaughtering cat girls:

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Cat_girl

So what? Sucks to be them.

[Flipside]

From a programming point of view, you'd need to set up a spline path for the beam to travel along and the mathmatics to make that beam behave in an acceptable way. The current style of beam animation is pretty much incompatible with this technique, since the bitmaps themselves, even if they repeat would show square edges where they changed direction. You can get away with it to a certain degree with missiles, because the trails last such a short time and are pretty faded to begin with, something like a Beam effect doing this would be a lot more noticeable in my opinion.

Possibly when shaders are implemented that problem could be dealt with in some way, since you can apply things like a sine value to the beam function which would make it 'waver' like the streamers from Ghostbusters, but I would think it would be very difficult to implement beams which effectively 'go round corners'.

My concern wouldn't be the physics, it would be the C++.

[Mathwiz6]

Well, you can deal (sorta) with the square edges with smaller beam patterns, repeated more often...

Though it would still be a bit square, wouldn't be as bad. (i think  )

Messy though...

EDIT: True, sounds like the optimum fix would be such a shader effect.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Well since FS2 isn't a fantasy comic I don't know if this will wipe another cat girl out of existance or not. 

Love all the theoretical physics stuff weather or not it applies to FS2.  Personally I don't care about curved beams in FS2 one way or the other.  Just like the discussion. 

OK on to the theoretical stuff.  Going with  the magnetic confinment plasma beam model here is a new drunk possibility.  Now I don't know the FS1 storyline so this may be off.  From what I have heard FS1 ships didn't have shields.  Is it possible beams are related to shield technology?  If it is possible to generate a shield around a fighter and maintain it (setting recharge to 0) could it not also be possible to maintain a "shield" around an emitted plasma beam.  The shield would disapate away from the energy source but that would coinside with the limited range of beams.  As soon as the "shield" holding the plasma together broke down the beam would loose its effictiveness.  Without digging does it say anywhere in FS2 if shields are magnetic in nature?

Yea I've been drinking again......

[Col. Fishguts]

Well, the idea seems to be that the shield generator produces the shield bubble around itself. At least that was the impression I got from the lab cutscene in FS1. So no projecting of a shield along the beam.

If you're really interested in this stuff, you might read up first a bit, since you seem to be a little confused about the nature of light.

Here's a good place to start. You might want to sober up first though

[butter_pat_head]

if you were manipulating gravity on the level where his were doable wouldn't gravity suddenly become the much more viable weapon?

Why not use gravity based weaponry?  That very same anime has tons of gravity based weapons... Graviton cannons, micro black holes, The Earth itself (http://www.jcomcp.plus.com/earth.jpg), heck, even the big moster uses the black hole that was ment to kill it as a power source!

Thats what we need in FS, gravity weapons and Buster Machines!

[ShivanSpS]

SO many physics....

I just "Put this weapon HERE", "press this botton" and everything in front of you will blow to hell.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Here's a good place to start. You might want to sober up first though

I will definately check it out.  Sober up?  Heck no.  Besides none of that stuff ever made any sense when I was sober.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

if you were manipulating gravity on the level where his were doable wouldn't gravity suddenly become the much more viable weapon?

Well it probably would in time.  There probably would be a period between the ability to manipulate gravity under controlled circumstances and using gravity itself as a weapon.   If you think in terms of something like how long it took for gunpowder to be turned into a viable weapon at a distance.  Of course it could work the other way around too.  I guess nukes would be a good example of this.  We had them before we knew how to harness the power.  Gravity weapons could be extremely suicidal at first.  Most likely it would depend on weather gravity manipulation technology was harnessed in peace or war time first.  Peace time to weapon would probably have phases.  War time would be straight to weapon and probably  take its toll on both sides if not obliterate the developer totally.  Remember they went ahead with the nuke tests even though there was a theoretical chance of setting the atmosphere on fire.

[S-99]

Gravity plasma confinement. That would be possible in the gtva level of technology. Each of the fighters operates like a herrier except with anti grav(something V spilled the beans on). Besides that, there vessels are obviously capable of artificial gravity or else you see everyone flying around the debriefing room which would be really funny.
So far the future of plasma weapons in realistic terms is still magnetic confinement, hell it still would be for the gtva tech also. Gravity technology is a complicated tech, that's if you guys have read about that old soviet scientific test a while ago where a dude used a superconductor to partially bypass gravity and remove some of the weight from say a coin.
It would most likely go along the lines of magnetic confinement for the first generation of plasma weapons, and later on relied on pretty much for the more basic of plasma weapons. Gravity confinement for plasma is a lot more advanced and difficult, but you could do so much more with plasma in gravity confinement, you could make a much bigger and destructive weapon, more specialized, etc. Gravity confinement plasma weapons would definitely be for the more destructive, sophisticated, manipulative, and beautiful show off of plasma manipulation.

[Herra Tohtori]

Or they could have a part in the beam turret which generates and fires really small black holes in rapid sequence, essentially forming a pipeline-formed gravitational field in which they shoot fiery hot plasma at really really great speed.

That would actually work, you know. It would just take loads of energy, that's all.