Future Weapons: ?Wait a minute, this is the future. Where are all the phaser guns?? ? Simon Phoenix

[Jack Action]

Canonically, they can be blocked I believe, just not deflected back. This is actually a very common argument because we never see it happening in the films.. kind of like a certain other franchise where this "plot hole" often comes up.

I know lightsabers are borderline magic, but come on, they can't possibly block solid objects.

Edit: and a molten splatter of metal would be even worse than a regular bullet hitting you.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Edit: and a molten splatter of metal would be even worse than a regular bullet hitting you.

Not sure about this...if you are wearing armour (or thick clothes), it might not penetrate.

If the armour/clothes was suitable resistant to heat, or if you could get it off you fast enough, you might not get burnt either.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I know lightsabers are borderline magic, but come on, they can't possibly block solid objects.

Well.. technically if we assume they are lasers, they shouldn't be able to block anything. The beams should just pass straight through each other. The fact that they don't suggests some kind of "surface pressure" which would be able to block solid objects.

 

[J Tyran]

There is more to future weapons than power, efficency and ease of use/maintanence/manfucturer are all factors too. If you think about it many of the greatest innovations in firearms where how to make them cheaper, easier to manufacture, lighter and easy to use and keep in the field.

Which is why...

I think the laser weapons from Warhammer 40K did somewhat solve the "if they aren't better, why bother?" problem a bit. They're not that much better than ordinary firearms, but the batteries can be recharged when they are drained. It's probably a bit more economic than to supply vast hordes of conscripts with real rounds that must be transported and accounted for.

The WH40K Lasrifle is one of my favourite sci fi weapons, in the fluff its been in service for over 30,000yrs and always done the job. Its easy to make and can be made with a variety of materials with cultures with varying degrees of technology, worlds with real world levels of development can be given the plans and be churning out millions of them within a few weeks. More advanced worlds or forges can make them from higher grade materials with respective increases in their performance, higher end custom designs can be built and with the very best materials and design upgrades they can be turned into Hellguns which are outright powerful by most sci fi standards.

They can be dropped and left in the mud for weeks and still fire, anyone intelligent enough to pick it up and fire it can keep it maintained and its easy to keep firing too as the best forgeworld models fire nearly 100 "rounds". The power packs absorb energy so they can be charged from local power grids, vehicle batteries or even by leaving them out in the sun or for one last charge throw them onto a fire.

 

[Jack Action]

Edit: and a molten splatter of metal would be even worse than a regular bullet hitting you.

Not sure about this...if you are wearing armour (or thick clothes), it might not penetrate.

If the armour/clothes was suitable resistant to heat, or if you could get it off you fast enough, you might not get burnt either.

True, but when was the last time you saw Jedi wearing armor, aside from Kenobi?
Never mind helmets.

I know lightsabers are borderline magic, but come on, they can't possibly block solid objects.

Well.. technically if we assume they are lasers, they shouldn't be able to block anything. The beams should just pass straight through each other. The fact that they don't suggests some kind of "surface pressure" which would be able to block solid objects.

I think at some point they could only block eachother (because lasers are magic), then KotOR came up with Cortosis blades (and retconned Cortosis to bounce off lightsabers instead of shorting them out).

The wiki has some weird-ass explanation about it being a plasma beam (iirc) kept in a field that forces it back into the grip to prevent it from wasting power unless it's currently cutting something. How this stops lightsabers from wasting energy when in an atmosphere is never explained.

The fact that in the movies they're only shown dealing with blaster bolts and other lightsabers isn't helping. There's that scene in Menace when Jinn has to cut through the blast door on the Trade Federation ship, and his lightsaber looks like it's getting stuck in the door, but he could just be going about it very slowly to melt it properly; any other time lightsabers have to cut through stuff, mostly Battle Droids, they don't seem to offer any resistance, they just go right through and leave holes.

If they don't resist when trying to cut through stuff, it stands to reason that there's no surface pressure, and they just block eachother and blaster bolts because it looks cooler that way.

Or maybe it's their containment fields that bounce off eachother, which would kinda sorta explain why they can only block other sabers and blaster bolts.

Lightsabers are a complete mess, and the lore writers are tripping over themselves trying to figure out how they're supposed to work.

 

[j4c0b1]

The Bolt Guns are more interesting because they not only unfeasibley large in calibre, but also have self-propelled rounds, weaponry that, although it has been experimented with, hasn't been done right at this point in time aside from large rockets/missiles and RPGs.

I draw your attention to gyrojet rounds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrojet, so the bolter is a perfectly feasible weapon as the initial muzzle velocity is pretty low, as is the recoil.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I think at some point they could only block eachother (because lasers are magic), then KotOR came up with Cortosis blades (and retconned Cortosis to bounce off lightsabers instead of shorting them out).

Well.. cutting is just blocking with a hard, sharp thing.

Lightsabers are a complete mess, and the lore writers are tripping over themselves trying to figure out how they're supposed to work.

No complaints on this point.

They are samurai movies in space rather than science fiction though.

I have to run I can answer a few of this later if I remember as I think a couple more can be explained. One last one quickly is the "Starship Troopers" movies are nothing like the books, in the book they use Massively powerful powered armor, and the odds are entirely different (one trooper can easily take out hundreds of bugs... but there are lots and lots of them, not to mention the bugs have servant races if I remember).

On that note, a lot of people think the Starship Troopers movie is just an unfaithful adaptation, but it's actually kind of a deliberate insult to Robert Heinlein.

Starship Troopers was written as a response to anti-nuclear activists in the wake of the second world war. It's this big, bombastic ideological defense of American military power and superior technology and the right of the USA to defend itself from the faceless, conformist 'red menace' by whatever means necessary.

Paul Verhoeven, the director of the movie, spent a chunk of his childhood in the Netherlands under German occupation during world war 2. His neighbourhood was hit by Allied strategic bombing and a lot of his neighbors were killed. So it kind of makes sense that his film is a deliberate mockery of the ideals presented in the source material.

Spoiler

Actually, the most gratutious thing is the character of Carl. Carl is a pretty minor character in the book and actually dies, but there's a theory that he's an author insert for Heinlein (in the books, he's a military R&D guy, which is what Heinlein did during the war). In the film, Carl is aiming to get into R&D but actually becomes an intelligence officer.. and this is just just my interpretation, but he seems to have been deliberately set up as a human counterpart to the brainbug. They both have the same goal - learning about the enemy, they both manipulate events from behind the scenes and both sacrifice the lives of those under their command, seemingly without remorse, to achieve the goal. They also both have psychic powers. Symbolism!

So yeah.. I'm pretty sure Paul Verhoeven was calling out a dead science fiction author by suggesting that ideologically he was closer to the thing he hated than he would like to admit.

Sorry, I kind of love that movie.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Star treks are absolutely atrocious! They spend so much time faffing about with shields and phasors and all that crap.
And a simple pistol or rifle would take down the most lazor proof enemies.
If they just put some ballistic missiles or nukes on the starships the fights would be over fast!
A pipe or a police baton would do more damage in some cases!

The whole, 'oh no, the borgs shields have changed to deflect our lazors, what will we do', thing, would be quickly solved by a ballistic gun.
The entire time they were trying to fend off borg in Star Trek: First Contact, I thought, why don't you just use a ballistic gun? Bullets. Sit in a high area while cloaked, and snipe them.

But no, they keep using feeble weapons in the worlds slowest and most stupid and boring fights.

I'm amazed the Klingons and Andorians hav'nt taken over. They use melee weapons that are effective.

I swear, a modern soldier would be able to take the people in star trek.

Star wars is nothing but stupid. It goes without saying that everything sucks in that!

In boarding actions, sure, in ship battles, no...phaser beams travel at light speed, which is much faster than projectiles. Also, shield can stop projectiles as well.

But, yeah, modern weapons would do well in Star Trek. Against the Borg, you'd be better off with Napoleonic era weapons then trying to club Borg drones with your phasers.

 

[Verlander]

Didn't rate the film, but the Sonic Guns and Sick Sticks in Minority Report. I see futuristic weapons as being less lethal, and more sophisticated.

 

[Syzygy23]

-snip-

The problem, though, is that it's exactly the fact that the beam spreads out over an area that makes it useless at longer ranges. It's less 'shotgun' and more 'sunburn instead of explosion'.

See, with a laser you've got two options:

1. Pump enough power into it that it flash-fries the outer layers of whatever it hits into a small amount of plasma (instant long-range explosion, very killy); this requires very precise beam focus -or a truly ridiculous amount of power, if you want to brute-force it-, and god help you if there's any distortion in the atmosphere between you and whatever you're trying to blow up.

2. Use a laser that slowly heats up the target until it can punch through the outer shell and fry something important inside (which is what the US did). Useful for shooting down missiles, possibly against fuel tanks, less so as an actual weapon, because you have to keep the beam focused on the same spot for a few seconds, if not more.

...don't even get me started on plasma weapons.

Hmm, that is true. Lenses are one of those things that don't react well to battlefields in general, aren't they? It does sound like the only real application for lasers would be large turret structures, at best. Perhaps to destroy incoming space torpedoes.

Nah. Gauss it is, boys! Don't put them too close to the tape reels.

Kinetic Weapons Master Race.

Problem with plasma is it disperses too fast. You're lucky if you can get it to work at video game-shotgun levels. You might be able to make a short range "lance" if your man portable plasma gun has a magnetic field focusing array, but that just ups the power requirements for the gun so bleh. Fusion bombs/missiles are pretty much the only practical way to get that shit to work. Hell, fire a railgun round fast enoug and hte friction the projectile creates with the air around it will turn it into plasma so you get 2 weapons in 1 right there!

Nobody seems to be addressing electrolasers or lightning guns though. Use a medium powered laser to ionize a path of least resistance through the atmosphere and then unleash 10k volts along it. ZAP MUTHAFUCKA! They work great in a lab setting.

 

[j4c0b1]

Nobody seems to be addressing electrolasers or lightning guns though. Use a medium powered laser to ionize a path of least resistance through the atmosphere and then unleash 10k volts along it. ZAP MUTHAFUCKA! They work great in a lab setting.

The LAER (laser assisted electrical rifle) in fallout NV - Old world blues was one. Thats the only time iv seen the concept used though.

 

[Jack Action]

Nobody seems to be addressing electrolasers or lightning guns though. Use a medium powered laser to ionize a path of least resistance through the atmosphere and then unleash 10k volts along it. ZAP MUTHAFUCKA! They work great in a lab setting.

The LAER (laser assisted electrical rifle) in fallout NV - Old world blues was one. Thats the only time iv seen the concept used though.

There was also the DLC chain laser thing from Mass Effect 2. They never explained how the lightning chains from one target to another if the path's only painted towards the first target.

 

[Poetic Nova]

Killzone 3 has a weapon that's a obvious nod to Doom's BFG, kills multiple targets aswell.
Which is something considering the rest of the arsenal in the Kilzone games (not talking about the titles released after 3 though) consist of guns that shoot bullets instead of lasers or something.

 

[BiscuitTrouser]

On a similar note, why does your Harry Potter or Twilight rip off Urban Fantasy series not have guns? Especially when it's invariably set in the US, where even people not charged with defending the world from monsters often are armed. If magic stops gunpowder working, fine, nobody uses gunpowder these days anyway, there are new propellants. If no propellants work, fine, people can make quite decent air guns, it's just firearms are better for most mortals. If airguns don't work, fine, flamethrowers are a good bet.

I saw a discussion on tumblr to this effect and the general explanation was:

Wizards are kinda stupid, stuffy, conservative and stuck in their thinking. Wizards arnt creative, or imaginative, or curious in the same way "muggles" are. DURING harry potters life at school muggles invented fuck tonnes of stuff. Wizards have magic, and are so cocksure of it, that no one questions that muggles might have something they dont. The second humans understand something or learn about something we conquer and master it or die trying as a general rule. The reason wizards in these things or vampires or whatever never reveal themselves is because regular humans would systematically think of ways to utterly dominate their stuffy and singular methods. Its just what we do. Theres a latent superiority complex working there that its best we dont know for our own good but really if we knew the "power complex" the author is using the fantasy to represent would be shattered. Did no one ever think to ask muggles or normal humans for help? Of course not, they have wands and magic is awesome.

Theres a scene where Dumbledore, after learning harry is in the goblet of fire asks "Did an older boy put it in for you?" Like Fred and George learned ancient arcane secrets to age themselves and that failed because wizards know magic but, implied from what he said, something that fucking basic would have worked. Every day people would think if that in half a fucking second. Authors write wizards and such so they cling to their powers like a man lost at sea clings to a log. If the powers dont work it generally doesnt feature.

In all these fantasies the "elder powers" or whatever are extremely fragile. It would ruin the fantasy if regular humans knew about them because by definition regular humans would find ways to invalidate/beat them as soon as possible. Its not a fantasy if our ingenuity is better than the fantasy and the author out and out states it. And it almost always is so they find excuses in the narrative to sweep it under the rug.

OT:

Xcom actually did a really good representation of how humans would react to encountering higher tech, we steal it, reconstitute it and master it as soon as possible. Like we have throughout history. Theres a reason gunpowder wasnt a secret forever The tech ranges from slight upgrade to monstrously powerful which is good, in xcom the stuff you discover not only IS better stat wise but LOOKS better and causes lots more collateral damage. One plasma shot explodes the side of a house easily.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Nobody seems to be addressing electrolasers or lightning guns though. Use a medium powered laser to ionize a path of least resistance through the atmosphere and then unleash 10k volts along it. ZAP MUTHAFUCKA! They work great in a lab setting.

How do you complete the circuit, though?

But yeah, interesting idea, though problems with getting the laser to work efficiently, and takes lots of power.

Oh, also...wear goggles, or you will get arc eye...everyone forgets this when throwing lightning around at people.

 

[Jack Action]

I saw a discussion on tumblr to this effect and the general explanation was:

Wizards are kinda stupid, stuffy, conservative and stuck in their thinking. Wizards arnt creative, or imaginative, or curious in the same way "muggles" are. DURING harry potters life at school muggles invented fuck tonnes of stuff. Wizards have magic, and are so cocksure of it, that no one questions that muggles might have something they dont. The second humans understand something or learn about something we conquer and master it or die trying as a general rule. The reason wizards in these things or vampires or whatever never reveal themselves is because regular humans would systematically think of ways to utterly dominate their stuffy and singular methods. Its just what we do. Theres a latent superiority complex working there that its best we dont know for our own good. Did no one ever think to ask muggles or normal humans for help? Of course not, they have wands and magic is awesome.

Theres a scene where Dumbledore, after learning harry is in the goblet of fire asks "Did an older boy put it in for you?" Like Fred and George learned ancient arcane secrets to age themselves and that failed because wizards know magic but, implied from what he said, something that fucking basic would have worked.

In all these fantasies the "elder powers" or whatever are extremely fragile. It would ruin the fantasy if regular humans knew about them because by definition regular humans would find ways to invalidate/beat them as soon as possible. Its not a fantasy if our ingenuity is better than the fantasy and the author out and out states it. And it almost always is so they find excuses in the narrative to sweep it under the rug.

While yeah, the wizards are amazingly stupid, this is addressed in the book. Someone mentions that older students took bribes to add younger students' names to the Goblet before Fred and George do their thing, iirc.

 

[BiscuitTrouser]

While yeah, the wizards are amazingly stupid, this is addressed in the book. Someone mentions that older students took bribes to add younger students' names to the Goblet before Fred and George do their thing, iirc.

Weird that the most powerful wizard of the age instantly presumed this was the method used then.

Im still a little staggered that they apparently pay some moron to discover the use of a rubber duck. The tube amazes them Wizards just seem so hilarious impotent after that scene.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Theres a scene where Dumbledore, after learning harry is in the goblet of fire asks "Did an older boy put it in for you?" Like Fred and George learned ancient arcane secrets to age themselves and that failed because wizards know magic but, implied from what he said, something that fucking basic would have worked. Every day people would think if that in half a fucking second.

Heh, yeah, always remember that bit.

In all these fantasies the "elder powers" or whatever are extremely fragile. It would ruin the fantasy if regular humans knew about them because by definition regular humans would find ways to invalidate/beat them as soon as possible. Its not a fantasy if our ingenuity is better than the fantasy and the author out and out states it. And it almost always is so they find excuses in the narrative to sweep it under the rug.

Eh, I don't see why this has to be the case, though. Nothing stopping the magic people learning from humans...which presumably they did until they suddenly stopped in the Middle Ages or whatever.

 

[Ambitiousmould]

The Bolt Guns are more interesting because they not only unfeasibley large in calibre, but also have self-propelled rounds, weaponry that, although it has been experimented with, hasn't been done right at this point in time aside from large rockets/missiles and RPGs.

I draw your attention to gyrojet rounds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrojet, so the bolter is a perfectly feasible weapon as the initial muzzle velocity is pretty low, as is the recoil.

I was aware of them, but the fact that they fell far short of catching on shows that they weren't overly successful. Although I may of course be wrong on that count.