Matrix Games Forums

Currently we have Laser Guns requiring Laser Rifles to develop.

This is the wrong way around - usually we develop the big weapons, long perfore we manage to minaiturize it for personal scale. Even with redevelopment, making the personal scale weapon will be much more complicated work then building the big ones.

The pattern holds across the millennia:
Scropion to Crossbow
Cannons to Muskets
Rifeled Cannons to Rifles
Our current Railgun research

In all cases we start with the bigger weapons first, then learn to miniaturize.
Note that Plasma Weapons do follow that pattern (Plasma Gun -> Light Plasma Rifle)

But indeed, using this logic, shouldn't [s]High Velocity Guns[/s] Cannons be a pre-requisite to Carbines ?

But most important : Realism is good to have, but what about the gameplay ?

Oh, in case you'd like to have your own (gauss/coil)gun :
https://arcflashlabs.com/_accelerators/ ... bled-guns/#


Oh, also, I had no idea that "plasma guns" even existed IRL, or that you could have a railgun where the rails and/or the projectile aren't solid, but they do and they're one an the same !
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARAUDER

The ability to keep a ball of high-temperature gas together and project it at high speed opens up interesting possibilities for weapons. One of these was studied under a project called MARAUDER in 1993 at the USAF’s Phillips Laboratory8. Marauder stands for Magnetically Accelerated Ring to Achieve Ultra-high Directed Energy and Radiation – surely a prize-winning acronym. Utilising the awesome Shiva Star power system, experiments spat out toroids (donut-shaped rings) of plasma9. Other experiments have involved containing toroids (in strong magnetic fields) to produce hot nuclear fusion, but the aim of Marauder was to project a minute plasma toroid at high velocity.

As with lightning, the tiny, hot core of the toroid would be surrounded by a glowing ball of excited air. On striking a solid target, the toroids produced “extreme mechanical and thermal shock” and a pulse of electromagnetic radiation.

Oh, and one thing that was bugging me :
For "Charged Gauss Small Arms" the +50% velocity improvement says to be coming from "using a magnetic acceleration system".
But what were then the "non-charged" "Gauss Small Arms" using ??
(As a reminder, "Gauss" comes from Gauss's two laws about electric flux and magnetic flux.)

ORIGINAL: BlueTemplar

But indeed, using this logic, shouldn't [s]High Velocity Guns[/s] Cannons be a pre-requisite to Carbines ?

But most important : Realism is good to have, but what about the gameplay ?

Oh, in case you'd like to have your own (gauss/coil)gun :
https://arcflashlabs.com/_accelerators/ ... bled-guns/#


Oh, also, I had no idea that "plasma guns" even existed IRL, or that you could have a railgun where the rails and/or the projectile aren't solid, but they do and they're one an the same !
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARAUDER

The ability to keep a ball of high-temperature gas together and project it at high speed opens up interesting possibilities for weapons. One of these was studied under a project called MARAUDER in 1993 at the USAF’s Phillips Laboratory8. Marauder stands for Magnetically Accelerated Ring to Achieve Ultra-high Directed Energy and Radiation – surely a prize-winning acronym. Utilising the awesome Shiva Star power system, experiments spat out toroids (donut-shaped rings) of plasma9. Other experiments have involved containing toroids (in strong magnetic fields) to produce hot nuclear fusion, but the aim of Marauder was to project a minute plasma toroid at high velocity.

As with lightning, the tiny, hot core of the toroid would be surrounded by a glowing ball of excited air. On striking a solid target, the toroids produced “extreme mechanical and thermal shock” and a pulse of electromagnetic radiation.

Oh, and one thing that was bugging me :
For "Charged Gauss Small Arms" the +50% velocity improvement says to be coming from "using a magnetic acceleration system".
But what were then the "non-charged" "Gauss Small Arms" using ??
(As a reminder, "Gauss" comes from Gauss's two laws about electric flux and magnetic flux.)

IIRC, as far as "magnetically accelerating a projectile" goes, Gauss gun and Railgun are opposing options.

I think Gauss Guns were easier, but had a much lower maximum performance. Railguns are harder, but if you make them they are that much more powerfull.
So maybe the charged Gauss is using some part Rail?

Opposing how ? In the sense that the construction is very different, yes - I don't think that you can have part railgun / part coilgun ?

AFAIK it's the railguns that are much "easier" -
(and are already effectively used IRL to launch aircraft from nuclear-powered aircraft carriers ?)
- but for an actual gun, their rails IRL only survive a couple of shots before having to be replaced :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun


Hmm, maybe Vic confused coilguns with railguns ?
(which would be "Lorentz guns" if you wanted to use the name of the physicist / theory)
It does say in that article that railguns can have improvements to increase the magnetic force.

And then the 2nd railgun upgrade would be to go from solid to partially-solid to full plasma railguns,
like in the game with "gauss" - "charged gauss" - "light plasma" ?
(EDIT : Then coilguns/gauss can upgrades too : single stage => multiple stage and more or less (ferro)magnetic projectiles ?)
But then it's coilguns/gauss (because easier to "confine"?) that are much more suited for infantry use, not railgun/lorentz ?

Though another fun trick with railguns is that they could potentially be used in melee combat by shocking the enemy by touching him with both rails and "firing blank" ?