Alternative Pulse Laser Theory

[Dulio12385]

I was contemplating buying a new mech of late and I just got to thinking about pulse lasers and why they would have an accuracy bonus.

That said a laser by its very nature is already extremely accurate, being essentially light a laser will always hit whatever it is aimed at and any inaccuracy can be firmly laid at the feet of either human error or the inadequacy of the targeting mechanisms involved, like the computer or the slothfulness mech's limbs. A pulse laser on the other hand is described as one that fires a beam with a pulse pattern rather than a single continuous beam at an object, theoretically vaporizing an object in phases rather than expending all its energy at once which would account for their increased damage output. Yet despite this description a pulse laser ultimately is still firing as a single distinct beam which could hardly account for the -2 modifier that pulse weapons receive because unlike a machine gun or a shotgun you aren't actually saturating an area with multiple shots at once but just hosing the same exact place in pulses.

To this I had a thought that a possible variant of pulse technology could instead of firing a single pulsating beam would instead function as laser shotguns or volley guns, effectively putting dozens of speed of light beams into an area with a single trigger pull, making them harder to avoid to account for the accuracy bonus but also requiring more power hence resulting in a drop in effective range. Visually this would be akin the Scattering Beam Gun in Gundam, most prominently the one mounted on the Zogg and several machines in Gundam Seed Destiny, where a single shot sprays a wide area with lasers.

Functionally and statistically its still a pulse laser, but it would just be a damn sight cooler and more distinct than just being a laser of a different color. Thoughts?

[Storywriter J. Allen]

Have you tried pulse players in Mechwarrior Online?

They are definitely more accurate, because of beam duration. The conventional lasers are one long coherent beam, and to do all the damage, you must manage to keep the beam on the same spot for the whole duration. Otherwise the damage gets spread out, or part of the beam misses.

The duration for the pulse lasers is shorter. A few flicks of light, and generally the whole thing impacts the spot you aimed for in an eye blink.

I'm not saying what MWO did and what canon did are the one and the same, I just think their line of thinking on this makes more sense than a shotgun blast.

[Dulio12385]

Have you tried pulse players in Mechwarrior Online?

They are definitely more accurate, because of beam duration. The conventional lasers are one long coherent beam, and to do all the damage, you must manage to keep the beam on the same spot for the whole duration. Otherwise the damage gets spread out, or part of the beam misses.

The duration for the pulse lasers is shorter. A few flicks of light, and generally the whole thing impacts the spot you aimed for in an eye blink.

I'm not saying what MWO did and what canon did are the one and the same, I just think their line of thinking on this makes more sense than a shotgun blast.

I am aware of that but that just illustrates my point; a pulse laser's advantage is not its accuracy, a laser is 100% accurate whether its a single beam or pulsed, but the fact that it allows time for ablated matter to boil off before hitting the exact same spot again so the beams don't waste energy cooking the ablated matter which accounts for its higher damage versus a single beam which is subject to diffusion by the airborne emanating from the target. The pulse laser's advantage in MWO is that it delivers all its damage over a shorter time frame than the standard beam which gives the illusion of increased accuracy but there is no real change in the way you score a hit to begin with unlike the tabletop game where pulse weapons are given a -2 to hit modifier.

I dare say that a pulse weapon would actually be less optimal because to reach full efficiency it has to hit the exact same spot over and over which can be difficult if you are fighting a fast moving target. If you fail to strike the same spot, you just wasted a pulse's energy on a fresh spot of armor and not one that was previously ablated.

Ultimately you can't make light any faster or smarter, its still basically point and shoot with the limitation being the skill of the wielder or the range of movement of the weapon's mount which leaves either expanding the beam itself or filling an area with multiple beams, in the same way that Warships use Bracketing Fire in Strategic Operations, to improve accuracy, hence my suggestion that some models of pulse laser might employ a volley method in the same way that various AC/20 models fire dozens of of 30mm rounds or one 203mm round.

[Storywriter J. Allen]

A laser is not pure light, moving at light speed. You are directly equating one with the other and saying that a laser beam's speed cannot be altered or controlled. That is not accurate.

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2000/jul/19/laser-smashes-light-speed-record

If you can speed up or slow down a laser, then other factors like accuracy do come into play. Just as a bolt action rifle might be less accurate than a machine gun against a moving target, assuming the former fires 1 bullet and the latter fires a burst, at the same range, and success is measured by hitting the target at all with even a single round. The "to-hit" rules of a tabletop game are dramatically simplified from real life physics, and affected by decidedly non-physics factors like game balance.

In general its also important to remember that this is a game and doesn't always conform to science anyway. Battletech ballistic weapons have crazy low ranges. Lasers don't go on forever in the vacuum of space. Etc.

You can rationalize to a point, then you gotta suspend disbelief and just roll with it. All the moreso because the universe is rooted in the science of the 1980s and 1990s.

[director]

Jons right, the Laser weapons that we call lasers in Battletech are probably more like a type of focused plasma weapon. So there is some travel time.

Also I think the reason Tabletop Pulse lasers do more damage and have more accuracy is because its a lot better than turning it into essentially a cluster laser round (ALA the LBX)