Poll: Railguns or Lasers: which do you prefer

[The_root_of_all_evil]

I know this is a bit late, but it wouldn't stop bothering me. http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png

Duty Calls is above my computer, from Randall himself.

1) Speed: Reaction Time - Railguns still have to lead their targets.

2) Penetration: Kinectic Energy can be deflected, ablated, redirected though. Heat is far more powerful Joule for Joule.

3) Range: Bouncing, dear boy

4) Utility: Because railguns produce stupid amounts of heat from the kinetic wind-up. Unless you can run them on (half), then every shot is putting the gun under full strain.

5) Adaptability: There are underwater lasers. They just have to be coloured to not interact with the water.

6) Energy: Railguns aren't conventional weapons and don't rely on air pressure or gunpowder to shoot the projectile. (Magnets, how do they work?) Railguns would use much less energy to propel a greater destructive force.

7) Ammunition: No problem really, ammunition would essentially be loads of metallic weight.

8) Reliability: "Bullet" in gun. "bullet" goes slightly off...railgun is torn apart in the resultant blowback. Even a piece of paper loaded into a railgun will tear off the front of the barrel if it flaps.

9) Weight/Recoil: For personal weapons - or mech based - Weight/Recoil is incredibly important.

10) Stealth: Railguns leave a huge path of disrupted space, and if you can spot that laser, it's already shot you.

We're also much closer today to developing railgun technology than we are lasers.

Won't argue with that, but we fell behind with needlers, which would be equally useful.

 

[Nairang]

Railguns since they lunch slug at extreme velocity thereby having a much much higher damage potential then a thermal laser, and with kinetic weapons you also have the option of shaped slugs so it has many more possible uses

 

[Revolutionary]

Lasers...try doing eye surgery with a rail-gun.