Electrolaser questions...

[Tallor]

Electrolasers are a very cool... but I don't think I fully understand them...

1. DR protects at half, giving a bonus... but does that include metal armor?

2. Can UV lasers be linked with electrolasers to boost the ionization, making it resist rain and fog better..?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Tallor

Electrolasers are a very cool... but I don't think I fully understand them...

1. DR protects at half, giving a bonus... but does that include metal armor?

Unless otherwise specified, yes. Realistically metal armor should make you immune to electrolasers.

Originally Posted by Tallor

2. Can UV lasers be linked with electrolasers to boost the ionization, making it resist rain and fog better..?

No.

[Tallor]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Unless otherwise specified, yes. Realistically metal armor should make you immune to electrolasers.

Doesn't metal armor typically count as DR 1 only in GURPS...?

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Tallor

Doesn't metal armor typically count as DR 1 only in GURPS...?

For magical electricity like lightning spells. But electro-lasers are realistic tech, so have more realistic limitations.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Tallor

Doesn't metal armor typically count as DR 1 only in GURPS...?

Only against magical electric attacks. Realistic electric attacks tend to suck horribly against metal.

[Bruno]

Quick break for physics!

Core principle: Some metals are really good conductors of electricity, which means electricity goes through them pretty well without wasting energy heating the object up.

In the world of comics and fantasy, the following things derive from that point:

• This is true of all metals, and never true of non-metals
• If electricity "goes through" it really well, it means it's like an arrow "going through" jelly really well
• Therefore all metal is crap armor against electricity
• Nobody remembers most metal armor has padding as an integral part of it anyways.

In the real world, the following things derive from that point:

• It's a broad statement, but "pretty true" for real armor materials and it's equally "pretty true" that non-metal materials used for armor are bad conductors of electricity. So "good enough" agreement here.
• Electricity flows to wherever will ground the charge along the laziest route to do so (more or less)
• The electrolaser or other thingamy makes a low resistance path to you so we don't worry about the electricity grounding early
• Changing media is harder work than doing what you were doing, relative to the resistance of the media.
  • Going into the conductive metal from your conductive laser path thing is pretty easy
  • Leaving the metal to a relatively nonconductive material (armor lining), then leaving to go to another relatively nonconductive material (the air gap) and then leaving to go into a moderately conductive material (the bag of salt water that is you) is more "work" than continuing going along the metal, which is "easy".
  • And electricity is lazy, and will take the lazy route.
• Assuming you are, in fact, grounded, the electricity is likely to go "sideways" through the armor
• then it goes to the next piece of conductive armor towards ground (if there is one) until it runs out of armor
• if it hasn't grounded yet, it probably goes into your body at this point, and now travels through you to ground, which probably no longer means "through important parts of your nervous system".

Meaning the metal armor is at the very least totally screwing up the hit location, and quite possibly diverting it entirely away from your body.

(FYI The above is intended to be a lay-person-language first-order-approximation, not an essay question answer on my physics test :P See also: Electricity wants nothing, isn't actually like water at all except for where it's convenient as a teaching aid, and I may have confused some of sound transmission in a fluid medium with electricity)

But this is with devices/powers that provide one great conductive path into the target, and leave the electricity to its own devices to ground itself. Lighting-throwing effects is this because that's what lightning (basically) does, and by all accounts the electrolaser is too.
It gets different if your device/power instead creates a closed circuit, in which the victim happens to be embedded - but that can still result in it just going along the armor from the negative contact to the positive contact, because that's still the path of least resistance.

A taser-like weapon can get around this problem by firing the little harpoons with enough force that they get through problem surfaces and into the meaty center. Now you've got a circuit that definitely goes into the target and out of the target (That's why there's two wires). If one goes into the target and one gets caught in armor/clothing, you still are probably OK, (you're likely using alternating current). In GURPS terms it's a follow-up attack, and impacts against the outside DR if the carrier hits but doesn't penetrate.

Real tasers, obviously, can't get through armor because if you have enough force to do that, you have a regular gun firing some weird ammo, and you're back to doing severe or lethal damage in most cases.

Like the real tasers, the electrolaser can't blow a hole through the armor to get in.

[Anthony]

I suspect electrolasers are using two beams to form a complete circuit; otherwise there would be a strong tendency to electrocute the wielder.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Anthony

I suspect electrolasers are using two beams to form a complete circuit; otherwise there would be a strong tendency to electrocute the wielder.

They need a little ^ then, because I can't see how that wouldn't end up in a short circuit between the two beams instead of going into the target.

[Ulzgoroth]

Are electrolasers really one-way rather than a two-beam circuit? That could pose a number of significant problems.

[Bruno]

So, electrolasers "work" by using a laser to ionize a path through the air and make it conductive enough to be worth firing a big ol electrical whatever down.
Setting aside how the ionized path is created with sufficient conductance without burning the target, and maintained long enough to zap the target without the atmosphere doing what gasses do and messing your tidy path up... and somehow keeping the business end of your weapon on the end of that path before it degrades, despite your pulse and breathing and such.

That path is necessarily "one way". You can't set up a closed circuit down it, because that's not a circuit.

You could do two side by side, but then you have two basically uninsulated paths close together. Somewhere between you and the target you're going to get a spectacular short circuit as the negative charge arcs to the "positive" path.

So you have to explain how you get the air between your two slightly dubious ionized paths to be resistant enough to do that. The best explanation I can make is "force fields", which is a ^ solution that probably requires TL 11ish. (field jacketed laser pulses also makes the ionized paths easier to swallow, but that's a separate thing)