Energy Weapons and Knockdown

[cosmicfish]

You are using your claimed expertise in the field to add credibility to you arguments as I am not claiming such a thing I have no reason to show prove my expertise.

No, but you are demanding personal information to accept that the information I am providing (which you could easily find yourself) is accurate. And how is that worthwhile? You are hardly impressing me as the sort of person I should be providing my resume to!

Until such time as your claims are proven on the sight stop using it as a crutch in your argument as no one can with ease validate them they have no place in a debate.

You can verify my claims any time you want - nothing I have been posting is restricted or classified in any way. You can google or wiki "lasers" and find most of what I have been posting, or you can look up specifications on any laser out there - the manufacturer's info will list all the relevant specs, including whether or not it is CW or pulsed, the pulse repetition rate, etc. You can also look up things like "lidar equation" to see how you put together an equation that starts with your transmit power and results in an energy density at the target plane. Finding information on the fast-time/slow-time is a little trickier, because you first have to understand pulse-shaping (something not normally covered at the undergraduate level) and then compare those techniques to the pulse rates of lasers, but you could still do it with a little effort.

You say "with ease" - the sheer number of posts on here indicate that you clearly have the time to do some basic research on this yourself. If you choose not to because you don't care, that's fine.

Now there are some areas where I am offering a professional opinion on issues that are still a matter of conjecture, so if you prefer your cultivated and willful ignorance to taking the time to actually investigate something that you are so willing to argue about on a message board, then feel free.

Now then what is fast may be relative but the as they say most lasers are firing blasts, and most text fire 3 simultaneous shots then the implied meaning to most people is three blast. But you claim they did not clarify if it was a CW or blast laser but they refer to lasers shots as blast in multiple books.

Then believe whatever you want to. The authors were not experts on lasers or laser weaponry, and the language they used is ambiguous. If you want to believe that Rifts accurately uses technical terminology in a manner that you can directly apply to calculations of target surface ablation, then have fun with that.

You also are making impossible demands on numbers for people to validate claims as it is outside of what was needed to make the game or commonly available when the game was originally made.

My demands have matched up with the problem. It's like asking someone to give you a price estimate on building a house, and then getting upset when they want to know things like square footage and material preferences. And I have said repeatedly that giving a real answer to this question is complicated by the very things you just noted - namely, that the game designers were not technical experts nor was this level of realism necessary or even of interest to most people in the game.

So I will say it one more time: I think it is possible to design a theoretical infantry laser weapon that would produce a knockback effect like the OP is looking for, but it would almost certainly have to be specifically designed to produce such an effect. The statements in the game suggest that laser weapons do not produce knockback, and that seems a reasonable default assumption to make. Proving whether a given laser would or would not produce tangible knockback requires making a lot of assumptions (since the required numbers are not provided in-game) and a lot of calculations that most people don't know how to do and/or don't want to spend the time doing.

If you want to ignore that because you think I am trolling you, then do so.

[Dog_O_War]

If we went around and called every idea that was dumb or at the very least poorly thought out, we'd clear out 90% of the material in all of the books.

What about the REALLY dumb ones like the original laser bow, 24 carat gold armor that is light and hard, or in this case ammo that’s made of deuterium? Because I admit yes you can nit pick almost anything but then you get some REALLY dumb stuff and that I think should at least be pointed out and in the case of the laser bow got revised.


Daniel Stoker

Yeah, the laser bow is really dumb. But I think it needs to be in there, just so I can go, "no you can't have that because it's stupid and I hate it".
Basically, I think it needs to exist as a warning to future endeavors of "what not to do when creating fictional gear". It ranks right up there with a short longsword.

[Daniel Stoker]

So it's a medium sword?


Daniel Stoker

[Dog_O_War]

...As for lasers having multiple power settings, that is not a challenge at all, and many current high-power lasers have lower-power settings so that you can perform certain tasks without melting anything. As for using the equivalent damage of projectile to calculate the energy in a laser "burst", there are far too many variables and unknowns to make that calculation with even an order of magnitude's accuracy!

Lasers having multiple power settings wasn't "the challenge". I mentioned it because it's a viable method to directly calculate the energy that is supposedly stored in an eclip, which in-turn gives us a viable method of determining the energy used in an MD laser attack, which is likely going to be far more or far less than what would realistically be required.
Also, lasers don't "burst" in this game, unless otherwise described as "micro-pulsing", which somehow makes shooting accurately with one tougher.

(I'll address the first part of your post I edited out later)

Yeah no.
I stated that it was only a possible justification or possibility as to why such a thing might exist. I never asserted it as a fact nor implied that Palladium did either.

You clearly stated that lasers worked differently in Rifts, I was trying to figure out where your evidence for such a statement came from.

I assumed (perhaps wrongly so) that people have read and digested both the entries for the various lasers in the game as well as the rules (like the micro-pulse one) governing them.
Basically, I figured that simply mentioning "Rifts lasers" was evidence enough considering all the rules that govern them.

[Dog_O_War]

No. I'll give you a link here for some background.
So looking at the timeline in the link, they have all these different subatomic particles, some of which were theorized, and then discovered, but there are some there that were never theorized and simply discovered by accident. All the discovered were [discovered] within the last 150 years.

Here is another link. This is a timeline of discovery regarding chemical elements.

Why am I posting these things? These things are the (currently) considered basic make-up of our known universe. But they existed before we discovered them; they were there whether we were seeing them or not. That isn't "magic".

And the purpose of me posting timelines and histories? To show evidence that the future holds discovery and new understanding of the "known" things today.

Before I go any further on this line of discussion, do you mind if I ask the level of your scientific education?

It's just high-school, with extra-curricular learning on my own time (above and beyond simply reading a wiki article or two).

You are superficially correct

I know; what I wasn't doing was arguing the science itself; it's the process that my education is more specialized in. That is, I deal with and process facts and factual information. a lot. As well as flexible truths. I work in a law office.

that there is always a possibility that our current understanding of light is incorrect in a meaningful way... in the same way that there is a possibility that I am simultaneously God, Adolf Hitler, and a small rutabaga. The issue is simply that you are positing that the most pervasive and possibly most studied type of energy in the universe is nonetheless monumentally and fundamentally misunderstood, and you are offering it as an explanation without any supporting evidence for why it would be so.

My evidence is history though. Thousands of years of understanding by millions of people. That is, thousands of years of evidence can be rendered wrong by a singular discovery. For instance, the sun was a god far longer than it was a burning ball of gas to humanity. But we know this newer information to be true based upon evidence presented. In Rifts, this applies by being able to see the 'future' (re: Rifts is set in our future), and seeing that our modern understanding of technology differs from the [fictional] facts of how these items work in Rifts.

So we have been presented this new evidence of how things work in the [fictional] future, therefore we know (even if we do not know how) our modern understanding is incorrect - fictionally speaking.

That process I went through is reasonably scientific in nature (reason, deduction, use of facts), and is also the process I went through previously; we know how these items work in the future; if it differs from our present-day facts, then we must differ to the most 'current' set of facts, even if we do not know how these new facts have come about.

[Dog_O_War]

Wait I took into account for discovery of some unknown property changing the way things work and you are taking points away for not taking into account accidental discovery? Would that not be covered under some unknown factor added later?

I'll have to ask the panel of judges.

[Dog_O_War]

So it's a medium sword?


Daniel Stoker

Heh, that was always something that bugged me about D&D 3.5; they added that weapon size category, making "small longswords" and "large short swords".
Hackmaster took a wonderful, satirical jab at this; for Gnome Titans, they called short swords just "swords" and longswords "very long swords" and would fight a guy who said otherwise

[cosmicfish]

Lasers having multiple power settings wasn't "the challenge". I mentioned it because it's a viable method to directly calculate the energy that is supposedly stored in an eclip, which in-turn gives us a viable method of determining the energy used in an MD laser attack, which is likely going to be far more or far less than what would realistically be required.

That lets us know how much energy is consumed from the e-clip. The proportion of that energy that reaches the target, the structure of that energy when it reaches the target, and what happens to the rest of the energy are all unknowns needed to determine whether or not knockback could occur.

Also, lasers don't "burst" in this game, unless otherwise described as "micro-pulsing", which somehow makes shooting accurately with one tougher.

That depends again on what you mean by "burst". You say that you work in a law office, surely you are familiar with the idea that some words have a "common" usage that is often different than what is used in specialized fields?

I assumed (perhaps wrongly so) that people have read and digested both the entries for the various lasers in the game as well as the rules (like the micro-pulse one) governing them.
Basically, I figured that simply mentioning "Rifts lasers" was evidence enough considering all the rules that govern them.

How many books are there in Rifts? And how many of those books have an actual index? I honestly cannot recall any micro-pulse rule, I may have read it but not recently enough to recall that it even exists. And I have no idea where I would find it.

If you want to reference a rule, it is always a good idea to tell people where you saw it. Assuming that everyone has your exact level of familiarity with a 100+ book game series is a little foolish.

[cosmicfish]

I know; what I wasn't doing was arguing the science itself; it's the process that my education is more specialized in. That is, I deal with and process facts and factual information. a lot. As well as flexible truths. I work in a law office.

I think your process might be a little more different from the scientific process than you might think.

My evidence is history though. Thousands of years of understanding by millions of people. That is, thousands of years of evidence can be rendered wrong by a singular discovery. For instance, the sun was a god far longer than it was a burning ball of gas to humanity. But we know this newer information to be true based upon evidence presented. In Rifts, this applies by being able to see the 'future' (re: Rifts is set in our future), and seeing that our modern understanding of technology differs from the [fictional] facts of how these items work in Rifts.

So we have been presented this new evidence of how things work in the [fictional] future, therefore we know (even if we do not know how) our modern understanding is incorrect - fictionally speaking.

That process I went through is reasonably scientific in nature (reason, deduction, use of facts), and is also the process I went through previously; we know how these items work in the future; if it differs from our present-day facts, then we must differ to the most 'current' set of facts, even if we do not know how these new facts have come about.

Here are my objections:

First, as I have mentioned before, you cannot assume that just because someone posits a series of effects that there must in turn be a consistent set of rules (such as those of physics and chemistry) that would explain them. The authors of Rifts were not technical experts and were primarily interested in producing a set of "game friendly" effects - for example, the scaling of weapons by mass makes neither logistic nor physical sense, but it matches their desire that all combatants be somewhat compatible (as opposed to the much more reasonable result that a big gun should do more damage than a small gun of the same technology). Solving the OP's question requires applying physics, and additions to the rules of physics that accommodate the effects described in Rifts are also likely to invalidate other effects of the real world that would be hard or impossible to handwave away.

Second, science is, by definition, limited by the accuracy of available instrumentation and the observability of phenomena, but is otherwise predicated on the idea that consistently repeatable results indicate truth. You talk about a future where some of the laws of physics accepted as truths today have been proven wrong. The problem with this is that such a future would also need to explain why were not able to determine the "correct" laws of physics today. Advances in science have all been because either the instrumentation was inadequate or because there were unobservable phenomena - modern research in physics is mainly focused on the study of special circumstances at very very small or very very large scales, and assuming that we are wrong about the constantly observed and consistently repeatable experiments on light over the last few centuries is like assuming that heavy things occasionally just float in the air and we've somehow just never noticed.

This second point ties in to the first - if you want to propose a new rule of physics that can explain Rifts lasers and yet does not contradict modern and repeatable experiments, then please do so. I would be quite interested to see them. Without them we cannot perform the calculations the OP needs, and I cannot conceive of rules that would work and yet would not be obviously wrong.

[Dog_O_War]

I know; what I wasn't doing was arguing the science itself; it's the process that my education is more specialized in. That is, I deal with and process facts and factual information. a lot. As well as flexible truths. I work in a law office.

I think your process might be a little more different from the scientific process than you might think.

It needs to be when discussing hard facts and not simply the most currently known facts.

My evidence is history though. Thousands of years of understanding by millions of people. That is, thousands of years of evidence can be rendered wrong by a singular discovery. For instance, the sun was a god far longer than it was a burning ball of gas to humanity. But we know this newer information to be true based upon evidence presented. In Rifts, this applies by being able to see the 'future' (re: Rifts is set in our future), and seeing that our modern understanding of technology differs from the [fictional] facts of how these items work in Rifts.

So we have been presented this new evidence of how things work in the [fictional] future, therefore we know (even if we do not know how) our modern understanding is incorrect - fictionally speaking.

That process I went through is reasonably scientific in nature (reason, deduction, use of facts), and is also the process I went through previously; we know how these items work in the future; if it differs from our present-day facts, then we must differ to the most 'current' set of facts, even if we do not know how these new facts have come about.

Here are my objections:

First, as I have mentioned before, you cannot assume that just because someone posits a series of effects that there must in turn be a consistent set of rules (such as those of physics and chemistry) that would explain them.

I wasn't assuming that. What I was doing was stating that there is a consistent set of rules with facts associated with them; because this knowledge is set in the future, then it is indisputable; citing today's explanations as factual automatically becomes false then when discussing the said time-period, because of the uniqueness of it (ie: it is that way because it will become a fact, regardless of where our current facts would supposedly lead us).

The authors of Rifts were not technical experts and were primarily interested in producing a set of "game friendly" effects - for example, the scaling of weapons by mass makes neither logistic nor physical sense, but it matches their desire that all combatants be somewhat compatible (as opposed to the much more reasonable result that a big gun should do more damage than a small gun of the same technology). Solving the OP's question requires applying physics, and additions to the rules of physics that accommodate the effects described in Rifts are also likely to invalidate other effects of the real world that would be hard or impossible to handwave away.

This is one of the reasons I refused to argue the science.
As for solving the OP's question; his question (for starters) is attempting to apply current-world physics into a game where current-world physics do not apply. You'd have to make up a math for that. Until that is done, I don't see any answer as being particularly accurate.

For the second portion, his question also assumes that energy is being converted to kinetic. We don't know that it is, or even would be, because we do not know what material reaction is occuring. It is to general to state, "what is the knock down potential of X?" when we don't have even a single example to go by, other than "lasers" are being used.

Like, if you want to use science, then use all of it - don't use some of it and then apply it to everything, because that in and of itself is not scientific.

Second, science is, by definition, limited by the accuracy of available instrumentation and the observability of phenomena, but is otherwise predicated on the idea that consistently repeatable results indicate truth. You talk about a future where some of the laws of physics accepted as truths today have been proven wrong. The problem with this is that such a future would also need to explain why were not able to determine the "correct" laws of physics today.

This task is both achievable and impossible to achieve, because magic is a factor.

Advances in science have all been because either the instrumentation was inadequate or because there were unobservable phenomena - modern research in physics is mainly focused on the study of special circumstances at very very small or very very large scales, and assuming that we are wrong about the constantly observed and consistently repeatable experiments on light over the last few centuries is like assuming that heavy things occasionally just float in the air and we've somehow just never noticed.

There is a major difference here though; we know the [fictional] future.

This second point ties in to the first - if you want to propose a new rule of physics that can explain Rifts lasers and yet does not contradict modern and repeatable experiments, then please do so. I would be quite interested to see them. Without them we cannot perform the calculations the OP needs, and I cannot conceive of rules that would work and yet would not be obviously wrong.

We can't perform the calculations, regardless of a new rule of physics. We need to know the reactions of the materials being affected, and that doesn't require new physics - it requires current physics being applied to fictional materials.

An example of such would be MDC cloth; we know that kinetic force does not simply pulp the character inside said cloth, yet it remains flexible enough for the character to move in and without penalties. We also know that MDC material has the capability to completely stop an impact, almost regardless of how much energy/force is behind it (re: the GI Joe rule).

So even if we did create a new kind of physics to explain Rifts lasers, it doesn't do us any good because the laser isn't the problem.

Also, lasers don't "burst" in this game, unless otherwise described as "micro-pulsing", which somehow makes shooting accurately with one tougher.

That depends again on what you mean by "burst". You say that you work in a law office, surely you are familiar with the idea that some words have a "common" usage that is often different than what is used in specialized fields?

I am familiar, and what you've described is what the game defines as "micro-pulses". Because we have an example and definition of your term "burst", translated to Rifts as "micro-pulses", we know that lasers do not otherwise micro-pulse (unless stated as doing so).

How many books are there in Rifts? And how many of those books have an actual index? I honestly cannot recall any micro-pulse rule, I may have read it but not recently enough to recall that it even exists. And I have no idea where I would find it.

R:UE in the combat section, under Bursts is where you'll find micro-pulse defined.

If you want to reference a rule, it is always a good idea to tell people where you saw it. Assuming that everyone has your exact level of familiarity with a 100+ book game series is a little foolish.

I did; we're talking about Rifts, so the bookline would be Rifts. The rule I described was the Burst rule, which only exists in a finite amount of books, but generally speaking the rules for the game are in the main book. That leaves R:UE as the most current pieces of material regarding such (not that the other books differed).

[SkyeFyre]

Also, lasers don't "burst" in this game, unless otherwise described as "micro-pulsing", which somehow makes shooting accurately with one tougher.

RUE pg.361: Under "Rapid-Fire Pulse" it states that laser bursts are not considered bursts for game purposes and are instead considered one heavy blast.

...unless I misunderstood the point you were making. If so, just disregard this post.

[Tor]

If MD lasers are as powerful as we think the author intends, then MD lasers ABSOLUTELY cause explosions when they hit a solid target that absorbs their energy. That energy has to go somewhere.

I don't really understand MDC physics though, so maybe part of it is preventing that and rechanneling it somehow. Maybe it just turns it into heat or melts a bit? Maybe different reactions occur depending on the makeup of the target?

I suck at memorizing art, but finding instances of weapons being used in pictures and the type of artwork used to depict hits, if we can ID the weapons and the nature of their blast, we could get some indication of what occurs.

I know 'art isn't canon' or whatever, but I still think it qualifies as SOME kind of canon. Maybe not to the point of overriding text if in direct conflict (like with Mercs and the number of missiles that bolt could launch) but I still think it should clarify issues for us if we need some kind of answer and aren't provided it by text.

Case in point: the cover of Juicer Uprisings. Hole is drilled right through a CS helmet. I get the impression a laser did that, but not sure why. Thoughts?

most lasers the "kick" is so minuscule that you can't feel it that's not to say it doesn't exist.... but its on the scale of micro grams or less.

energy weapons that would have an appreciable "kick" would be a high energy particle or plasma weapon anything that accelerates "noticeable amounts of mass" IE railguns etc.

the reason it would take an INSANELY powerful laser to generate a "kick" is 2fold 1st ask yourself how much "thrust" constitutes a kick that you personally can feel (equal and opposite reaction rule applies) now look up the mass of a photon, and decide approximately how MANY photons you would need to be shooting to get that amount of "thrust" have fun I will be waiting for you to come back with those numbers.

Yet we know lasers do kick, since their bursts have standard strike roll deductions. My house answer: E-clips vibrate. So it doesn't matter what you shoot. Luckily for vibro-blades (which amplify it!) it's only enough to throw off ranged, not melee, attacks.

So if we have armor made out of 24 carat gold and we're told it's super light and super hard we should just shrug and assume physics is different for that too

Yup.... in fact I believe the Tarnow Kingdom in Mindwerks produces these. Albeit it's enhanced metal much like we can make Ironwood. It's still gold... but it isn't normal gold.

dumb like the original Spirit West Laser bow?

What's wrong with that? It's a cultural lasergun, problem?

Naruni thought that their plasma cartridge weapons would actually be a big hit, while the truth of the matter is that the ammunition is in itself better-suited to be used as explosives because it's more efficient than anything else anywhere ever.

Efficient in what way? Low cost? Low space? Throwing range? Blast radius?

While the cartridge does surpass plastique as a contact explosive ridiculously in terms of cost/damage, I don't think we know the weight of a round (or how much space it takes up) compared to the weight (and space) of plastique to compare them on that. Plastique might potentially be lighter, or you might be able to fit more of it into a limited area, so we need to know that before declaring it ultimately inferior. Cartridges would also need affixing materials (glue, etc) if you wanted to have it on the side or bottom of a surface, and even then you'd probably be limited in layering large amounts of them. Ideally you'd probably want to use plastique as your molding base and then seed the cartridges in the muck like chocolate chips to enhance it.

In terms of comparing N-cartridges to things like dynamite, dynamite has a blast radius and that's something I don't think N-cartridges have (least I'm forgetting a reference to how much, if it's somewhere) which means, in spite of its expense, MD dynamite could be better for taking out groups.

Also: Apoks/Inquisitors make SDC dynamite cheaper to use against supernatural beings compared to Naruni rounds (though sadly not SDC plastique, lol) Assuming that trick'd work, you could also do a lot of great selective damage.

Wilk's thought that it would be possible to actually sell their CFT guns, even though you don't actually need a gun to fire them and they're better-used as self-contained laser weapons.

Is this referring to some New West content?

I think it needs to exist as a warning to future endeavors of "what not to do when creating fictional gear". It ranks right up there with a short longsword.

I don't see the problem with this. If we look at Leviathan's sword, it's a GIANT sword for normal humans, but a short sword for her since she's a giant

Too bad the stats aren't all that impressive, exceeded by many normal-sized swords. For once I'd like to see a giant sword that's actually threatening. I feel like Kev intentionally keeps them low-tier so that we don't have a bunch of Cloud Strife wannabes.

lasers don't "burst" in this game, unless otherwise described as "micro-pulsing", which somehow makes shooting accurately with one tougher

Are you talking about some game other than Rifts?

RUE pg.361: Under "Rapid-Fire Pulse" it states that laser bursts are not considered bursts for game purposes and are instead considered one heavy blast.

False, it states that a limited number of instantaneous pulses (rapid-fire pulses) are not bursts.

It never says 'laser bursts are not bursts'. It is talking about pulses, not bursts.

Even these are really not 'one big blast' because they still suffer penalties on aimed/called, just as bursts do. The only distinction I can see from bursts is they're better in the new 'normal' shot.

Laser weapons have always been able to burst, and that has never been removed from them as a class. Even though new 'Ultimate' versions of many weapons have been changed to 'single shot only' types. I assume this is a property of the new 'Ultimate' dimension, or else it was intentionally removed to reduce property damage and conserve energy.

I mean, in the CB combat example, a CS guy used a laser burst to prevent a CyberK from parrying it. It's part of the Rifts legacy.

[SkyeFyre]

It sounds like we may just arguing semantics. A pulse is defined as "a single vibration or short burst of sound, electric current, light, or other wave" and a burst when used as a military term is defined as "a rapid sequence of shots fired by one pull on the trigger of an automatic weapon"

"Pulse" refers to each individual shot from the weapon, and "burst" refers to all of the pulses that were fired from the weapon. This is the same as if you were using a conventional rifle and said "A burst from my rifle is made up of three shots made in quick succession".

The book states "Some modern lasers and other energy weapons fire 3-4 instantaneous energy pulses at the same target. This happens so fast it is not even considered to be a burst, but a single heavy blast"

What does that above sentence tell us? Well it tells us that firing 3-4 instantaneous energy pulses would be considered a burst, HOWEVER, because the burst happens so fast it's considered a single heavy blast.

This means that multiple pulses create a burst unless the time between pulses is so small it is just considered a single heavy blast with no penalties to strike.

I think the real problem is we're trying to mix the old burst rules with the new direction RUE took the rules. It's basically Palladium's inconsistent and unclear rulings and each GM's interpretation of those rules.

[Tor]

IRL definitions of pulses don't really matter, it's doubtful the Palladium authors were very rigid in adhering to them when using the term here.

I recall hearing terms like 'pulse' used in Pilates and stuff too so it's got more flexible use.

I've seen pulse to refer to an efficienctly spread burst in palladium. It may have single-shot usage too. If so, it's all the more inconsistent and multi-faceted.

The rules in original CB were pretty clear about pulse weapons always counting as bursts and not getting the +3. Meh to the changes.