Lasers have almost the exact opposite problem. They will probably be very effective against human targets, but not that great against armored ones. Lasers have two cool properties that could be used to great effect. If you narrow the aperture of the beam, you can concentrate more power on a smaller point, creating better armor penetration. But the problem with lasers against armor is that even if it has great armor penetration, it''s mostly going to cause damage against armored targets by melting the armor. There won''t be any explosive effect against metals or ceramics (though there may be some sublimation with other kinds of materials that could create an explosive effect...but virtually all armor is based on metals, carbides, plastics or ceramics). With kinetic weapons, you don''t even necessarily have to penetrate the armor to do damage...the concussion effect alone is enough to stun the crew, rattle components around, and pretty much deafen the crew. It''s even possible to kill the crew in a poorly designed vehicle on a non-penetrating hit if the crew member is touching a part of the vehicle that transmits the concussive force through the armor and into the equipment (I remember reading a story about a sailor on the Merrimac who was leaning against the bulkhead when the monitor hit the opposite side of the armor with a cannonball...a fellow sailor said they had to remove the guy in buckets). Secondly, you can vary how much power will be released with each shot and/or the how long the burst is. This can enable you to "pulse fire" the laser for lots of rapid low-power shots, or to fire a continuous low power beam.

Lasers against humans on the hand WILL have an explosive effect. Since the human body contains so much water, the laser will superheat body tissue and literally cause a steam explosion in human tissue. The trick is in getting just the right power levels. Make the beam too strong, and you make a pin prick in the human and cauterize the wounds all nice and clean. Make it just weak enough, and it''s like microwaving someone. Indeed, Lasers don''t have to be light...you can have Masers (microwave), IRasers (infra red), UVasers (ultraviolet), etc etc. The cool thing about that is that lasers can be invisible. No cool visual effect except for the damage it does to the target. As for how a laser would sound?? I dunno, although I suppose theoretically it''d be totally silent. In essence...the perfect sniper weapon. Totally silent, invisible, and if you put the cross-hair on the target...that''s exactly where it hits.

I therefore see lasers not that great at taking out armored vehicles. They will probably be able to wound them fairly well...since they may be able to penetrate armor fairly well, but once the armor is passed through, unless it hits something delicate, it won''t really do much damage. Kinetic weapons that penetrate armor cause spalling, and also tend to ricochet around inside, making mince meat out of the crew. And even with kinetic rounds, you get more damage out of HEAT rounds than out of sabot rounds (basically really long huge bullets). Railguns will essentially be firing very long narrow rods (sabots) at targets. This gives it excellent penetration, but only so-so damage.

In my game system, all weapons(and ammo types) systems will be rated for how well they can penetrate armor, and also how damaging they are. They will also be measured by inherent accuracy, rate of fire, range classes, ammunition load, reload times, and reliability. Reload times are actually an important consideration, as it basically affects the overall rate of fire of a weapon

how about a coupled system? This would fire both a laser or rail gun coupled with a conventional round, timed to hit about the same point at about the same time. The laser would weaken the armor (especially in the case of fancy stuff like reactive armor or that electromagnetic shield they are talking about putting on IFVs). Then the conventional round would strike. Since the armor piercing is done by the laser or whatever, you can pack in more explosives into your conventional round.

Either weapon could also be used uncoupled - the laser against infantry or air units (hard to hit, easy to damage), and the cannon against soft targets (APCs, other light vehicles).

I just had a thought about laser weapons....imagine if your purpose wasn''t to penetrate the armor at all, but instead really do microwave the occupants inside? In essence, if you widen the beam, and fire a continuous shot against it, you''ll basically superheat the entire structure....not too dissimilar to firing a flamethrower. Why penetrate the armor when all you have to do is roast the crew inside?

As for flamethrowers, you could create plasma guns that combine laser technology and mass driver technology. You can take a canister of of some gas, and fire a laser at it to super heat it into a plasma state in a magnetic chamber. Then you can fire the ionized plasma ball down the MDC barrel. The magnetic field will protect the barrel from actually touching the plasma, plus, it will only be inside the chamber and barrel for a few microseconds. The disadvantage is that the range will be very short. However, anything it hits is toast...literally. And if you modify the magnetic field, you can make the plasma bolt disperse more quickly versus infantry.

One last thing about railguns. Mass driver cannons (railguns) typically fire very narrow sabot like rounds due to mass constraints. It''s the age old tradeoff in ballistics. If you make a round heavy, it has better ballistic characteristics (not blown around by the wind, carries kinetic energy better, etc) but it requires more power to accelerate the mass.

Key points to remember:
Force (or Kinetic energy) = mass x acceleration
Pressure (or penetration) = force/area
Light weight projectile = worse ballistic characteristics (throw a wiffle ball or a light weight ball to understand)
Heavier weight projectile = better ballistic characteristics
Weight of gun proportionate to Force of projectile to handle the power required to accelerate the projectile.

So ideally, you want to create a gun with a heavy projectile that has a narrow diameter and has an extremely high velocity. Trouble is, the more Force a gun has (mass x accleration), the heavier the gun will weigh. That''s why railguns and modern tank guns fire sabots....which are very long narrow rods. In modern tank guns, even though the bore size is 120mm, they surround the sabot with a discarding core. When the round fires, the jacket falls away, leaving the sabot on to its target. That allows you to trim the total mass of the projectile, but with the same powder charge a regular round gets...meaning the accleration is improved, though the overall Force calculation basically remains the same And since the sabot is very narrow, you get good penetration. That leaves only one problem...the mass of the round. This is why American forces have a limited supply of depleted uranium rounds...which is extremely dense. Lead would be great...if it didn''t deform on contact...which is why you have Full Metal Jacket rounds (which is lead surrounded by a harder metal jacket). Unfortunately the rigor of being fired out of a hig velocity tank gun would strip the metal jacket...meaning that tank gun round can''t do that and instead uses different alloys. Technically, there''s nothing stopping a designer from creating a large bore railgun, but there are some advantages to designing a small bore design only. The main advantage is that you can develop extremely high velocity rounds (since having a small diameter round is that it has less wind resistance, allowing it to reach even higher speeds...like about 10 kilometer''s a second). The disadvantage is that it''s limited to firing only sabots. A large bore design may not be able to achieve the same velocity as a small bore design (even with a dsicarding sabot design), it has the advantage of multiple ammunition types. It could have HE, cannister, seeking weapons (yep, we have cannon launched guided projectiles now that can attack the top portion of armor), as well as quite a few other types. Some weapons designers are even advocating using mortars on tanks thanks to our new smart weapon technology (and since tank top armor is very weak...it''s not a bad idea)

Imagine this for a second. A M-256 120mm smoothbore cannon (the gun on the M1A2 abrahms) fires APFSDS (armor piercing fin stabilized discarding sabot) at 1700m/s. Acceleration of gravity is 9.8m/s^2. So, you fire at a T-90 target which is 2.25m tall at 1000m (this is a good range for a tank battle...most tank guns have a range of about 5km).

Time to impact = 1000/1700 = .59 seconds
Fall of round from gravity = 9.8(.59^2) = 3.41m
Angle of correction = tan theta(3.41m/1000m) = .19 degrees

That means that unless the gunner shifts his angle by about .2 degrees, the round will plow into the ground. Now let''s see what a railgun can do versus the same target at 2000m with a muzzle velocity of 10,000m/sec.

Time to impact = 2000/10000 = .2 seconds
Fall of round = 9.8(.2^2) = .392m
Angle of correction = tan theta(.392/2000) = .01 degrees

So even if the gunner doesn''t correct his aim at all, the round only falls .392m and instead of hitting the turret, will hit the glacis instead. Do the same for calculations of lead time against moving targets, and you see a couple of reasons why railguns would be very nice weapons to have.


Just a few thoughts to get anyone thinking about weapon''s creation some balancing characteristics on weapon design. Nature already has the perfect balancing system. I think it''s far easier to look at how a system would realistically work than just try to fudge numbers to make things cool, and trying to artifically create balance

Sweet your a quake fan? All I do now is play Quake 2 running on open gl. I always used to play the massive railgun arenas but now im into azboks leet jumping. You heard of that? My nickname on quake 2 is koopathequick say hi if you see me!

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Original post by Dauntless
Just a few thoughts to get anyone thinking about weapon''s creation some balancing characteristics on weapon design. Nature already has the perfect balancing system. I think it''s far easier to look at how a system would realistically work than just try to fudge numbers to make things cool, and trying to artifically create balance

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Which is why I adore finding specialised books on topics, it makes for so much more interesting designs when you base them of real stuff. But try finding a book about ship *design* that''s affordable for the non professional...
guns on the other hand is slightly easier. Just look up the massive database that the American army leaves open for the public. Just the field manuals are absolutely brilliant resources.

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Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !

I''m not sure if rayruok was looking for a "realistic" type of setting, but I think that if a vehicle based game will be made, I think one thing that could distinguish it is by having more realistic distances.

If you make the distances very close, it feels alot like a FPS instead of a tank style game. One thing I like about Operation Flashpoint, and to a lesser degree Ghost Recon were the distances that battles could happen. I got pretty decent at taking out soldiers at 250m+ where the target was literally no bigger than the letter ''r'' at a resolution of 1280x1024. It''s a different style of gaming than point-blank style slug-fests.

I remember playing M1 Tank platoon ages ago when it was a DOS game and having a ball trying to kill Russian tanks at about a mile away. It wasn''t easy, but it could be done. I wish more futuristic style vehicular games (ie.e MechWarrior) had more realistic distances in them. I mean, why create 30'' tall giant robots that will be attacking other targets at extreme ranges of 1200m? To me, that''s almost close-combat for modern day tanks that are less than 10'' tall. Having realistic distances also means having better usage for terrain features. Woods can be used for cover, both in terms of line of sight and for cover. Elevation differences would also be very important, as the vehicle on higher ground will have a very definite advantage (he gets protection from the ground, has a better target profile, and also has a much higher chance of hitting the softer top armor of the target).

Sorry about not replying for such a while - been having some problems of late!?!

I tend to agree with Dauntless and his idea of weapons being sorted by their effectiveness against armour.

But, I''m looking at to two types of armour - PHYSICAL TANK ARMOUR & ELECTRO-MAGNETIC SHIELDS.

PTA will absorb physical damage i.e. bullets, delpeted slugs, rockets, flames(don''t so much about this one), etc. EMS will absorb EM energy i.e. plasma, laser, EMP''s, etc.

The idea of the simultaneous shooting of two weapons is cool, but I''m thinking of having only two guns mounted at a time.

No this is where another problem arises - buy ur guns & ammo at the start of each round(CS) or pick up(Quake or UT)???

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Original post by rayruok
[...]No this is where another problem arises - buy ur guns & ammo at the start of each round(CS) or pick up(Quake or UT)???

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I like the buy system from the half-life FireArms mod. At the beginning of each life, you can either choose to custom config your character or pick a predefined one (or you can pick to use the previous config you used if you''ve already played one round). The predefined ones are just text files you create with the list of stuff you want to pick.
You get so many points to buy stuff with, depending on the armor you pick. IIRC, if you pick light armor, you get 30 points, 25 with medium, and 20 with heavy armor. Then you can spend points on getting arm/leg armor, a helmet, various guns, grenades, etc. After you pick all the items you want, you get to pick skills. You get 1 skill point by default, and then one skill point per 10 kills. The skills were things like Marksmanship(increased accuracy, there wer 2 levels of it), Battlefield agility (never break leg from falls, take 50% damage from non-lethal falls, get up from prone faster), First Aid (gives you ability to heal people {can only be healed once per life}), Field Medic (heal more than first aid, must have first aid, can fix broken legs), Artillery 1 and 2 (1 lets you place markers, fire mortars, and carry mortar ammo, 2 lets you build mortars), nomenclature (reload faster), etc.

Here''s an idea about your shielding...The EMS (if strong enough) may trigger a missle thats locked in. Making it detonate prematurely, then you pray your PTA holds. This helps against armor piercing missles and such. Besides if the missle has some sort of special energy that is released then the EMS might help prevent some of that too (plasma grenades, plasma missles, etc).

Listen Dauntless, don''t diss Mechs!

Death Smiles Upon Us All... All We Can Do Is Smile Back...