VulpesWalker wrote:
Ahem... SPACE DUST! you see them refract and burn through SPACE DUST!



That's why you see lasers in space!

Okay, then let's make up miniscule amounts of reflecting almost indestructible dust all in space because of the huge spacefights of the endless in every known system. (So we don't have to make up filling the universe).

I think that instant laser would make it harder for the shilds.

Because yet the shilds apear and block some of this "projectils" but by an beam wich travels instant

the shilds must be there and collaps at a time and in this moment the ship is helples ans destroyes.

But this would cause the beams to be useles if the shilds hold more than the 3 battle phases.

And they are instant kill if the shilds collaps.

In that kind of game I really appreciate realism so I'd say instantaneous laser ... even thought the actually slow lasers are visually awesome!

It'd be easier to make up our mind with a video using instantaneous lasers but it probably takes time to do it :/

I think it would be really cool if they were like the beam cannons from Freespace, those things were cool and sounded like you were charging up a nuclear blast. They make more sense too, from a physics standpoint.

I must admit that even if it isn't very realistic beams, i found them kinda awesome slowly moving to their target to do their very sweet damage. A bit like missiles, but more often

murph wrote:
Hi all, I recently posted a similar thread in a group (Real Scientists!) and wanted more input.



What are your thoughts on the current, slow lasers in Endless Space? Laser weapons take several seconds to reach their target. In reality, lasers move close to the speed of light (more the case in space, a vacuum = no resistance) and would traverse the distance between ships in fractions of a second. IMO it would be more realistic to have near instantaneous laser weapons, e.g. Star Trek laser/phaser weapons. Not saying Endless Space should have total realism, just thought of it while playing.



Thoughts / Opinions ?

Don't matter if in space or not. It's still light speed, just changes speed depending on the medium it travels thru. 297Kkm/s and change in a vacuum, or is it 293, I always forget that. Would still be a decent light show, tho that technically is 'unreal' since you won't see a laser unless it shooting you in the eye. It should be showing as a beam reaching out to hit, just one long beam, flash, and gone, like a pulse. Research a tech upgrade for a continuous beam for dwell time and added damage. I truly find it annoying that kinetic bullets travel FASTER then a beam of coherent light does. (Thank you Star Wars *phpbpbpt*)

I agree that it's disturbing in this and other space games to see lasers represented as anything other than near-instantaneous weapons (depending on distance, but battles in ES look fairly close-range). Not to mention the way coherent light shouldn't have much if any side-scatter so you could see it. But not every weapon in the ES energy beam tree is a laser. Only the first ones are. After Laser, we have:



* Synchrotron lasers - use "particle accelerators."



* Pinch guns - fire a plasma beam contained by an electromagnetic field.



* Phased Plasmic - shoots a "laser induced plasma channel"



* Collapsor Beam - I dunno... your guess is as good as mine...



* Dark Energy Beam -- Likewise...



* Disruptor Beam -- Back on slightly more familiar ground, we're now hitting the target with various baryonic and non-baryonic particles.



* Gluon Disrupter -- Another "action at a distance" weapon.



At least four of those weapons seem to be firing slower-moving plasma "bolts" or particle streams. The more exotic ones that cause an effect at the target's surface, might take some time to get the effect going... maybe with an initiator beam followed by a pulse of whatever finishes the effect (I'm grasping at straws here, I know).



Anyway, if the game only used increasingly powerful photonic weapons, then we'd expect them all to be near-instantaneous. But this is a real smorgasbord of different techs here. Unless the game is going to use different animations for each weapon type, then we're stuck with one animation for all beam weapons.

I say that the slow lasers should be instead plasma bullets, while fast lasers are in fact lasers. This would give each of them different properties and aesthetics, and be somewhat more realistic. I tend to think of plasma weapons as the sort of thing that you use against heavily armored opposition, but they are slower than lasers. Their counterpart lasers are fast, and are ideal for use against infantry and fighters, because you can just wave the laser around in order to slice them.

Stargem wrote:
I say that the slow lasers should be instead plasma bullets, while fast lasers are in fact lasers. This would give each of them different properties and aesthetics, and be somewhat more realistic. I tend to think of plasma weapons as the sort of thing that you use against heavily armored opposition, but they are slower than lasers. Their counterpart lasers are fast, and are ideal for use against infantry and fighters, because you can just wave the laser around in order to slice them.

They already have plasma bullets. They are on the kinetic side of the tech tree. Plasma is ionized/superheated matter. Plasma should travel slow, relatively speaking. Lasers are light. Light moves at the speed it does, given the medium passing thru, and should definitely not be traveling slower then the kinetics.

I also prefer instant beam lasers. They do not move close to the speed of light, they move at the speed of light as they are light. I already mentioned it in another thread that I really do not like the way lasers are shown in the game. Laser is a beam. Even a pulse laser is, well, a pulse of beams. I remember when a MOD for the Sword of the Stars came, changing lasers to beams I installed it and never removed it.

But if we can not have a different animation for main guns, how about adding a laser missile defense. To be honest, I really miss any kind of animation for a missile defense. This whole tech tree should be changed. Maybe to start with basic flares, then maybe some rapid firing projectile weapons and finally laser point defense.

Zenicetus wrote:
I agree that it's disturbing in this and other space games to see lasers represented as anything other than near-instantaneous weapons (depending on distance, but battles in ES look fairly close-range). Not to mention the way coherent light shouldn't have much if any side-scatter so you could see it. But not every weapon in the ES energy beam tree is a laser. Only the first ones are. After Laser, we have:



* Synchrotron lasers - use "particle accelerators."



* Pinch guns - fire a plasma beam contained by an electromagnetic field.



* Phased Plasmic - shoots a "laser induced plasma channel"



* Collapsor Beam - I dunno... your guess is as good as mine...



* Dark Energy Beam -- Likewise...



* Disruptor Beam -- Back on slightly more familiar ground, we're now hitting the target with various baryonic and non-baryonic particles.



* Gluon Disrupter -- Another "action at a distance" weapon.



At least four of those weapons seem to be firing slower-moving plasma "bolts" or particle streams. The more exotic ones that cause an effect at the target's surface, might take some time to get the effect going... maybe with an initiator beam followed by a pulse of whatever finishes the effect (I'm grasping at straws here, I know).



Anyway, if the game only used increasingly powerful photonic weapons, then we'd expect them all to be near-instantaneous. But this is a real smorgasbord of different techs here. Unless the game is going to use different animations for each weapon type, then we're stuck with one animation for all beam weapons.

Yeah. Limitation of game resources. And only the laser weapons should be light speed, being light. But particle accelerators get the particles they are moving up to a fair portion of c. So I can still see most of them moving much faster then the kinetic weapons. The plasma ones.... not so much as those are superheated mass weapons. Yes, particles are mass, (cosmic rays are particles and move at a goodly chunk of c) but they are easier to accelerate then a mass of metal superheated in a firing chamber and shot out the barrel. An accelerated particle would have less recoil then a mass slug turned to plasma and fired, so it would have to be slower, or rip the gun firing it off it's mounts.



I'm rambling and thinking out loud. Same animations I guess, just change the speed variable so it moves faster. Nuff of this. Back to conquering another galaxy.



hmmmm. rip a gun off it's mounts.... wouldn't that be an interesting thing to have happen when using the "kinetics overload" card. Catastrophic Failure. You weapon was ripped from it's mount firing itself back through you hull and crew. Pray it didn't hit you fusion power plant, or whatever the power source is for the ships. *Boom* x]

Hi all, I recently posted a similar thread in a group (Real Scientists!) and wanted more input.



What are your thoughts on the current, slow lasers in Endless Space? Laser weapons take several seconds to reach their target. In reality, lasers move close to the speed of light (more the case in space, a vacuum = no resistance) and would traverse the distance between ships in fractions of a second. IMO it would be more realistic to have near instantaneous laser weapons, e.g. Star Trek laser/phaser weapons. Not saying Endless Space should have total realism, just thought of it while playing.



Thoughts / Opinions ?

My opinion is if it says "beam" it should be a beam. And I really like lazzzors One way we could get lasers and the plasma-looking projectiles that are currently in beams is to rename the category to Energy weapons and add true beams to the existing ones = everybody's happy

If we're in "late night, thinking out loud" mode here...



Modern space opera novels often use the idea of humans or aliens as pilots with a neural connection to the ship's computer, using drugs or implants to speed up brain function and link to the ship's computer at the same rate of data processing. The general idea is that organics might have better tactical ability if they can just think as fast as the machines. Otherwise, why have organics in the loop at all? Machines are much faster and more efficient in space combat.



As a hand-waving exercise to explain the slow lasers and other beam weapons in ES, maybe we're just seeing the display that these speeded-up pilots experience in their drastically slowed frame of reference. It's like watching a video shot at an insanely high frame rate.





But yeah... whatever the rationale, kinetics shouldn't be faster than beam weapons.

Virus wrote:
I think that instant laser would make it harder for the shilds.

Because yet the shilds apear and block some of this "projectils" but by an beam wich travels instant

the shilds must be there and collaps at a time and in this moment the ship is helples ans destroyes.

But this would cause the beams to be useles if the shilds hold more than the 3 battle phases.

And they are instant kill if the shilds collaps.

Not so much appear as it shows the hit. Shields are up, not pulled into place like a knight blocking a sword. Sensors aren't going to detect an incoming, light-speed weapon, and send the info to a computer, to then send the info to a shield projector to raise a shield to block a given shot. By the time the sensor told the first computer the shot was coming, it would be there, had it's lunch, and lit a smoke.

Of course if you want lazzors, don't forget to vote in the G2G forum: /#/endless-space/forum/29-archives/thread/13664-suggestion-poll-laser-aesthetics



I'm obviously for lazzors as well, but a few energy bolts are fine as well as long as they are realistic.

K1ller wrote:
I also prefer instant beam lasers. They do not move close to the speed of light, they move at the speed of light as they are light.

True lasers are light, but don't always move at the speed of light; sort of a max speed of c / speed of light. It would be slightly slower depending on the medium (air, space) and I believe temperature (I think light might slow down at close to absolute zero). Probably negligible, but was why I said "close"

Sleel wrote:
Not so much appear as it shows the hit. Shields are up, not pulled into place like a knight blocking a sword. Sensors aren't going to detect an incoming, light-speed weapon, and send the info to a computer, to then send the info to a shield projector to raise a shield to block a given shot. By the time the sensor told the first computer the shot was coming, it would be there, had it's lunch, and lit a smoke.

Someone hasn't seen Macross, ROFL. The energy weapons really do need to be named differently. Oh and to clarify, the Macross had a pin point shield system that was operated through direct human control. They would actually only have a shield rite where they needed, one of the craziest things I've ever seen.

Rename them to Plasma Blasters instead of lazors, fixed :P

Sins of a Solar Empire uses various laser lines to show laser firings, so I could see the same transferred over. Though if we are talking about "realistic" most of these lasers would be operating in parts of the spectrum we couldn't see anyways lol. In terms of defense it makes sense that most of the lasers used are just reflected or not allowed to build in intensity. It would be nice to see a diversification in terms of upgraded weapons in general, only problem is kinetics, unless you get slapstick sized projectiles (maybe tracer color?).

I wouldn't mind seeing an animation for flares and missile interaction before seeing anything dealing with energy weapons.