Rail guns are not exactly useless in CE. Even though projectile weapons will not scratch PS armour, the momentum of the shells can be strong enough to cause a concussion to the pilot or even knock the entire MS away from its path. Kira shot the Abyss in the water using the railguns, beams would have dissipated underwater. Don't forget that even though PS blocks physical attacks, the sheer mass and momentum of a weapon such as hammers would be able to overwhelm and break the joints of a MS.

I didn't say rail guns CAN affect beams, I'm just asking a hypothetical question. Looking at the fictional physics of beam sabres, Minovsky particles held together in a blade-shaped area confined by magnetic fields. So it means that a strong enough magnetic field might be able to affect the spread of M-particles. My question was whether this concept can be used in beam shot railguns or not.

And in Gundam (UC at least), beam rifles are not exactly "light" weapons like lasers are. Beam rifles fire concentrated M-particles which are stored in e-caps/e-pacs, and a fixed quantity of particles are fired in every shot. So it's easier to imagine beam rifle shots firing individual bursts of energy (shots) rather than a typical laser/light weapon which fires a continuous stream of light energy. GM snipers in 08th MST fire those weapons though, yet they are not the typical beam rifles we see.

the best examples i can find in regards to beam weapons are from the mechwarrior series. if you've played the games or watched the animations/cartoons, you'll notice that all the beam weapons are instant hits. excluding mechwarrior 4 from microsoft that bastardized pulse lasers by creating travel times (but then again old pulse lasers are worthless shits)

I have not enough Gundamness to talk about beam weapons....so i'll take your word for it about not being light weapons. And IIRC, beam weapons can be used underwater i thought?

But about pulse lasers in Mechwarrior 4, i think you thinking of Mechwarrior 2 with the travel time. IIRC, Mech 3 to 4 onwards, pulse lasers were exactly the same as ER lasers except they have faster firing rates. ER lasers take 1 shot per second whereas pulse lasers take 2 shots per second but its still a concentrated beam. In Mech 2 they were rapid firing pea shooters.

mech 2-3 pulses are "hold-down" instant contact pea shooters. you can just equip ur entire mech with pulses and draw f words on enemy mechs, or on their cockpit, for the cool glass breaking sound effects and annoying your opponent to hell.

mech 4 = tri-shot "pulses" that has a travel time unlike normal lasers. or the previous pulses.

ER = extended range btw

This discussion was held before in mechatalk, but in the end no real conclusion was made since it's all pretty much a fictional thing anyway.
Some of the points made back then in mechatalk was that M-particles "should" travel in lightspeed or at least near lightspeed (since we don't have anything other than real light that can travel that fast), so there shouldn't be any lag time between the firing of a beam shot and the impact of the round.

What I found interesting while reading 0079 novel is that mechas duel each other in a large distance radius. What we see on screen is that the two mechas are pretty much within each other's reach, or the very most few hundred metres; but the actual distance is actually few kilometres away. This means that two mechas exchanging shots at each other are usually shooting at a target which is virtually a tiny dot on the screen. Of course, a few km shouldn't make any difference to a beam travelling at light speed.

My opinion on this is that beam shots, i.e. M-particle rounds, don't necessarily travel at light speed... maybe the magnetic repulsion or whatever that projects the round itself causes so much friction that it slows the beams down; or possibly the beam rounds themselves lose so much energy (as it ionises the air around it) the moment it leaves the gunbarrel that it only travels at sub-light speed. Still, it's definitely ultra-fast compared to normal shells or bullets; that's why only newtypes can sense incoming beams before it hits them

Yeah i know what ER is.

Ok...i have little to no recollection of Mech 4 actually. Lasers suck anyway. PPCs and Gauss rifles ftw.


In MS Igloo, it was depicted that long range battles were ineffective and totally inaccurate due to distortions caused by Minovsky particles. I no idea how come minovsky particles also cause visual distortions since they just make radar useless (as shown by that guy firing the experimental giant cannon through the scope) but generally that means long range combat was useless and fleets had to fight it out through firing randomly in a large firing arc, or engage in MS warfare which was to get up close and personal with each other and shoot each other.

lol more OT:

PPC is too energy ineffecient
and gauss rifle is too heavy, and if you play single player that involves money (eg: mercenaries), too expensive.

best weapons for mech 2-3:

the monkey missle lamer-
pack your entire mech with LRMs. take out 3-5 targets with an insane missle barrage that even with full AMS couldnt even stop unless they have fast jump jets and strafe back buying time for AMS to take out incoming missles. Once payload depletes, self destruct and respawn.

only work in multiplayer setting, and its an extremely noob way to play mechwarrior and expect RL pvp to happen.

Autocannon abuser-
in pre mech 4, taking autocannon shots to the leg causes your mech to fall. the rest is up to your imagination. down side? auto cannon is hard to aim at long range, require to get into CQB or mid range for it to work, not to mention its only effective on cockpit shots or leg shots (unless you wanna torture ur enemy by disabling their hands, and all, but then again you can equip weapons on legs/torso and virtually anywhere pre-mech4)

Flamethrower flamer-
Your dmg suck, your a clown. But why is this still an awesome weapon? Upon 2nd or 3rd shot of a full flame barrage, your opponent is stuck in PERMANENT overheat situation. What comes next? he will just sit still and let you buttsecks. Only way out? coolant flush and try to score a 1 shot cockpit shot. If that fail, forget it, self destruct to save yourself time.

ER Laser mass-
BOOM HEADCOCKPITSHOT

---

Added on April 22, 2008, 4:41 pmyea AFAIK beams can be used underwater too depending on what type of beams.

because logically, light can travel underwater, and general beam is light based

This post has been edited by Quazacolt: Apr 22 2008, 04:41 PM

Lasers don't work underwater despite being light because its the "heat" caused by the laser that does the damage. So unless your laser is so hot that even the water cannot cool it (unlikely) its not gonna work.

You will need something else like a long ranged version of a plasma cutter (something like superhot blowtorch) since I know those for a fact work underwater.

LRMs are pathetic la. Never had a problem with them before actually. But yes i am well aquainted with the 20x small lasers shoot one leg = u win duels...and the autocannons "Gyro overload" of mechwarrior 3 pwnage. Too imba.

In Mech 2....autocannons are more or less insta kills its crazy. And the firing rate is ridiculous. Just very limited ammo. And in mech 2 hardpoints are not differeintiated so you can pack 50 machine guns and insta kill people at close range.

1, 2 km is considered as "close range" for the mechas. If you consider the fact that each battleship is a couple of hundred metres long and in a typical space skirmish there's usually an entire fleet present, the scale of the battle itself can be horrendously huge.

Minovsky particles are enigma since they don't exist anyway. They do all sorts of weird stuff in the gundam universe, but at least wiki has an entire entry to explain it (in fictional terms of course). GN particles and also Mirage Colloid however are not exactly well elaborated but I reckon they probably have the same uses as the M-particle i.e. a beautiful excuse for fancy tech stuff in anime.

just like how sun light filtering through the ocean causing it to be bright and pretty, and warm n fuzzy, same theory could be applied to laser underwater. You just need to have a higher output, and/or focusing lenses or similiar tech/mechanic to enhance the focus/density of the beam.

for lrm, you tried alpha strike all ur lrm packs then flush and alpha again? AMS + JJ strafe also can die cuz its like... ok, remember the hero ending scene, the one where jet li is standing there, and a whole buttload of arrows shreak through the sky, that one, cept its missles, and its homing locked. (if you install computerized targeting, you can even specify which part to target too its not even funny lmao)

Your LRM got slow refresh time la. Flush and alpha again also take time right?

Worse case, Can shutdown mech or change active radar into passive to avoid or not?

cooldown isnt long, like 2-3 sec? AMS cant keep up lol.

and no, shutting down ur mech cant avoid once your locked on. only thing to do is AMS JJ strafe. thats why LRM massers are lame as hell in multiplayers

The way you guys discuss about mecha never ceased to amazed me..

Guys does the machine gun actually works for once? I did try mounting it on my mech before, coz was trying to emulate Freedom last time, LOL. Emptied all my ammunition on a mech cockpit, but still find it running around.

Which game u talking about? 3 onwards, the Machine gun does nothing to mechs since its for anti infantry only.

LOL was talking about mercenaries. Coz thats the only one I played. But that was pretty fun. Crap I did not know it was not effective at all. Btw, mercs got infantry meh? I think they must have been too small till I missed them. Heck I just put on the machine guns just for the fun of it.

got, if im not mistaken, in merc you can eject from mech and run around with a shitty machine gun, and you die in 1 hit from almost anything... lol.

from ur mech view, the infantry looks like pixelated funny looking cardboard-like guys (almost 2d ish lulz, or its 2d XD)

If you got computerize fire control and an optical camera with zoom function, why worry about infantry, you can still hit them..

Can't remember any of the mechwarrior games where u can eject out of your mech and run around. Eject = mission failed. Self destruct also mission failed. Damn stupid la those buttons dunno put there for what.

In merc got infantry, in battle armour. The Inner Sphere uses dunno what battlesuit whereas the Clans use Elementals. They jump jet around poking u with small lasers and SRMs. They're pretty harmless in the games. But in the novels, they are very devastating! They jump jet up to the cockpit, cut it open and kill the pilot inside!! Well in Mechwarrior 2 Mercs, i remember last time through some bug or something, i fitted 2 thunderbolt IV missiles on to the elemental armour (you can choose it as a mech). I pwned ppl...with a small little battle suit. Quite funny.

did you guys play mechwarrior on the xbox?..