[Setekh]

 

Originally posted by Shrike:
Except in space there shouldn't be a 'leakage'

Maybe 'inefficiency'?

[Shrike]

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.

[The Claw]

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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[wEvil]

so at best a beam cannon like that could only hope to depressurise a ship and kill the crew in real combat terms?

[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.

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.

[wEvil]

and shivan cannons are powered by...umm..well....the equivalent of a small supernova?



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All your dirty secret are belong to us!

[Shrike]

heh, subspace and/or ZEP taps power sources.

[IceFire]

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.

[wEvil]

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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All your dirty secret are belong to us!

[QXMX]

 

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  



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Co-Creator, GroundZero

[morris13]

 

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. =)

[wEvil]

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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All your dirty secret are belong to us!

[Shrike]

 

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.

[Carl]

maybe the beams are graphics generated by the ship's computer so you can get out of there way.

[Shrike]

Eye....CANDY!  du-duh da du!

[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)

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All your dirty secret are belong to us!

[Setekh]

 

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.

[wEvil]

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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All your dirty secret are belong to us!

[Shrike]

 

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.

[wEvil]

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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