switchable energy weapons

[jacobmuller]

I know the option to make a laser switchable for Beam/ Pulse is in the book.
Would it be reasonable to extrapolate to RoF for energy weapons in general for a borberline realistic SF setting; grav-tech bleeding into FTL travel/ sensors/ comm.
eg a 3 gigajoule switchable RoF Particle cannon.
Or even just for lasers - switchable Beam/ Pulse/ RoF 1-10-100.
Or am I in "way out there" cinematic space opera zone?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by jacobmuller

I know the option to make a laser switchable for Beam/ Pulse is in the book.
Would it be reasonable to extrapolate to RoF for energy weapons in general for a borberline realistic SF setting; grav-tech bleeding into FTL travel/ sensors/ comm.
eg a 3 gigajoule switchable RoF Particle cannon.
Or even just for lasers - switchable Beam/ Pulse/ RoF 1-10-100.
Or am I in "way out there" cinematic space opera zone?

The pulse option is for duplicating the effects of some contemporary cutting lasers and adding a theoretically useful explosive attack option.

The explosion part isn't actually very useful. All of the explosive energy weapons in UT would be mostly useful for starting grass fires and scorching paint.

The pulse part is the duration of the energy projection and pretty much any sort of energy packed into a very short period of time ought to produce the surface explosion effect (maybe not grav) . I'm not really sure how you produce a femtosecond plasma pulse though.

[SuedodeuS]

I seem to recall reading somewhere that a phased array would allow for this. Now, in that case it would actually be more like RoF 1, RoF 1x10, and RoF 1x100 (although mechanically the effects are identical).

That's for lasers, of course. I have no idea if something similar would work for other energy weapons. Of course, with grav-tech, you could justify a "phased array" for another system (like particle beams) as using a gravitic focusing lens to focus everything back together.

[jacobmuller]

Dang, now you mention it Suedodeus, I too remember the Phased Array option for lasers. Higher tech level than I want to allow and it did mention it just for lasers. All the better anyway - switchable RoFs would be too Munchkinish.

Phased Arrays: Spaceships Designers Notes.