Poll: Railguns or Lasers: which do you prefer

[smartengine]

If I had a naval ship I'd mount it with railguns. The amount of energy those things have is unbelievable. The only problem is heating of the barrel, but I guess with that thing you won't have to fire that much

Imagine this...
I have a dozen ships with railguns and someone else has a dozen ships mounted with lasers. All I would have to do is find a nice shiny paint for my ships and I'd be fine for long enough to use the unstoppable brute power that are railguns.

And lasers don't have unlimited range. If you don't focus it right it's useless

And you need to be able to keep the laser on the same spot until it melts whatever you're aimig at. So any kind of movement is bad for you.

P.S.
Stargate is awesome

 

[wax88]

err...it's a warship right? like if it's a destroyer/ cruiser class i dont see why we cant add both? anyways, my breakdown will be something like this. Large rail gun for anti-surface strikes such as bombarding coastal areas or other ships that get too close. Lasers for Anti-aircraft/CIWS since they can respond faster to intercept fast movers such as anti-ship missiles.

But torpedoes are still a must for anti-submarine operations, and Missiles will always have the advantage of range so not surprisingly with Advanced SAMS and Surface attack missiles.

So essentially, much of what you see nowadays on aegis ships except replace theDP gun with a rail gun and replace the CIWS with lasers.

 

[loc978]

rail-scatter-guns that fire tiny laser guns.

...but seriously, railguns. They just work better. More output for less power, and (assuming extremely low friction materials) fewer heat dissipation problems.

 

[StANDY1338]

Lets not forget you could drop the railgun ammo on someones toes making it not all that safe.

 

[Deadyawn]

LASERS. Because you can have as many railguns as you like but you cannot make a DEATH STAR laser with them.

 

[MercurySteam]

Screw both and buy a:

 

[Sgt. Dante]

I'm keen on lasers personally, but both have their applications.


Lasers are coming along nicely though.
[link]www.youtube.com/watch?v=awsQs4ct0c4[/link]

 

[Averant]

Ah, there we go, I'm back. Obviously it'd be the railgun, that just sounds more badass, and... wait, what the hell? It's 3:30 already? I spent two hours on tvtropes. again. goddamnit...

 

[TriGGeR_HaPPy]

All of you people are forgetting about the laws of physics that make a laser INCREDIBLY hard to aim in atmosphere...

Lasers are beams of light, and as such, are subject to difraction in atmosphere. A laser beam tends to "bloom" outward as it travels through the atmosphere. Focusing them with mirrors is hard to do, and gets harder as the range you want them to fire increases without subsidiary mirrors. (The Star Wars laser intended for Missile defense in the '80s used a series of orbital mirrors to realign the laser, as well as guide it back onto target) Lasers also lack the punch of a kinetic weapon, so it would be hard to make it penetrate a properly shielded hull such as a Star Destroyer, or cruiser from Stargate. Your only hope to get through the simple shielding that would be required for simple navigation around a solar system (Space is by no means empty... Trust me, I just finished my first semester of astronomy) is to overwhelm the shielding, and kinetic impact delivers more power per cubic meter than any laser ever could... Especially if the impact is in the million gigaton range...

...

Well. I don't think I need to say anything else, this guy already said everything I wanted to. ^_^

 

[Sebenko]

Railguns. Why?

Because it's like punching someone ludicrously hard from a fucking long distance.

 

[vxicepickxv]

Each have their own merits and drawbacks, so there's a time and a place for both.

Both are being researched for the US Navy as a replacement to our current loaded munitions.

The advantages of a railgun over current cannons is that the ammunition is much safer to transport, as the old problem it provides is that if you drop it, you might dent it up a bit, as opposed to risking explosions. It's also going to be heavy, so you might hurt yourself a bit.

The laser on the other hand removes those problems, but suffers with issues mentioned before, diffusion, refraction, and other long range issues. At shorter ranges the laser becomes the safer option.

 

[Spade Lead]

Well. I don't think I need to say anything else, this guy already said everything I wanted to. ^_^

It helps that I intend to be a Science Fiction author who is majoring in Astronomy in college...

 

[SckizoBoy]

snip

Agree for effectively all the same reasons. Anyway, LASER (or rather light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) can only operate well with narrow beams, so they'd never be powerful enough to cause 'real' damage (they'd kill a man, sure, but blow up half a city block? nah, don't think so).

Railguns are just badass. Lasers are for show, railguns get shit done. With big explosions.

Except without the need for explosives, that's the awesome thing.

Railguns WITH lasers.

HA.

And just how's that going to work, genius?!

Lasers.
They have an unlimited range and there's no need to store ammo.
Now if only we could have a nuclear reactor to power the laser...

Maybe we should build one into a sphere-shaped space-station...

They actually require quite a high energy input, and contrary to popular belief, the unlimited range can't really be applied due to the need for beam coherence. They're actually best used at short range.

All of you people are forgetting about the laws of physics that make a laser INCREDIBLY hard to aim in atmosphere...

Lasers are beams of light, and as such, are subject to difraction in atmosphere. A laser beam tends to "bloom" outward as it travels through the atmosphere. Focusing them with mirrors is hard to do, and gets harder as the range you want them to fire increases without subsidiary mirrors. (The Star Wars laser intended for Missile defense in the '80s used a series of orbital mirrors to realign the laser, as well as guide it back onto target) Lasers also lack the punch of a kinetic weapon, so it would be hard to make it penetrate a properly shielded hull such as a Star Destroyer, or cruiser from Stargate. Your only hope to get through the simple shielding that would be required for simple navigation around a solar system (Space is by no means empty... Trust me, I just finished my first semester of astronomy) is to overwhelm the shielding, and kinetic impact delivers more power per cubic meter than any laser ever could... Especially if the impact is in the million gigaton range...

And this guy's basically beaten me to the punch.

OK, originaly comment then: railguns are conceptually much cheaper to design and produce that laser-tech weaponry. The only real expense is the fuck off massive generator required to power it.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Railguns, simply because of the name

 

[The Apothecarry]

What about laser railguns?

Nah, railguns. The idea of something sending an iron bar (for example) through six targets, a wall, and and twelve more targets is so awesome.

 

[ion496]

In EVE online, lasers are far superior in all ways except range.
In real life though, I would still choose lasers. Melting through Armour is far more satisfying than punching through it. Also, lasers don't need ammo. Only energy.

 

[blankedboy]

I love the lasers in RECOIL. The standard red one is a reflecting laser that'll bounce off any surface (so it's suicide in a contained room), and it slowly melts up the enemy with pure heat. The secondary yellow one, which is hard as fuck to find ammo for, does the same thing but it does no damage for about 3 seconds then instantly destroys whatever it's touching. But you have to keep the laser on the enemy for that amount of time.

Long story short, RECOIL's awesome and you should play it now. It's freeware and only like 300MB, there's no real reason not to.

 

[DefunctTheory]

In EVE online, lasers are far superior in all ways except range.
In real life though, I would still choose lasers. Melting through Armour is far more satisfying than punching through it. Also, lasers don't need ammo. Only energy.

/facepalm

The energy IS ammo.

And you're assuming that said lasers would be only energy (Electrical) driven, which would be false. Military grade lasers are chemically and electrically driven. And the chemicals used are typically very, very dangerous.

 

[Queen Michael]

Lasers. Because they're lasers.

 

[Toaster Hunter]

Lasers are too complicated. Railgus are simpler and do more damage, so my money is on Kinetic energy all the time.