Things that are cool about Alien Wars

[DrTemp]

Well, while there is this certain problem with the setting I mentioned earlier , there are lots of cool things about the setting. One thing I just wanted to point out: Laser rifles.

Now there is a real reason why a modern army should have those. The Laser rifle is a large military's wet dream: While it is not as efficient as a conventional slugthrower, its ammo ist just a few hundered thousand times easier to obtain. That was an idea I had never encountered before, at least not for infantry weapons and it is the most plausible reason for using personal energy weapons I have seen.

Just reread that part and felt the urge to say that. Thank you for your attention, citizen.

[Metaphysician]

Gotta agree there. Logistics arguments are often forgotten when thinking about sci-fi technology.

[Nyrath]

IIRC that was the main motivation behind the development of "caseless ammo," to reduce the logistics requirements. It's amazing how much all that brass weighs.

[Curufea]

However - there is a HUGE drawback.
How much smoke is there on the average battlefield? It's a bit much to assume that both sides don't use combustion engines, explosives or smoke grenades...
I'd give everyone a projectile sidearm as well, just in case.


[warning - spoiler for players]





BTW - has anyone else noticed the similarities in origin between the Xenovores and the Daleks?

I fully expect the lead scientist Other to still be hanging around, immortal, occasionally tinkering with his creation and attempting to take over the race from the Autarch

[Zeropoint]

If you still have conventional power sources, you'll still have to haul the fuel for the rifles. Granted, if the fuel for the rifles is just more general purpose diesel that can be used in a generator, tank, truck, jet, or helicopter, it's a lot more convenient than hauling something that only works in the guns.

If you have nuclear-powered generators, then, for all practical purposes, you can use the lasers as much as you want without using any consumables.

I'm not familiar enough with that particular setting to know whether they have nuclear generators in the field or not.

Zeropoint

[Curufea]

It's not listed AFAIK (I only bought Alien Wars yesterday and have only skimmed so far) - but squad support rechargers would make sense. The big problem with nuclear is the shielding, of course - which is the majority of the weight.

I saw an interesting argument on the noise of laser weapons in an RPG book awhile ago - mainly to do with capacitor discharge, the filling of the vacuum created in the atmosphere from the passage of the beam, and the explosive expansion of whatever is hit. But then, these guns aren't bought with 'invisible power effects' so it doesn't matter.

[DrTemp]

It's not listed AFAIK (I only bought Alien Wars yesterday and have only skimmed so far) - but squad support rechargers would make sense. The big problem with nuclear is the shielding, of course - which is the majority of the weight.

Well, the setting knows "cold fusion reactors". So not much shielding required.

[DrTemp]

However - there is a HUGE drawback.
How much smoke is there on the average battlefield? It's a bit much to assume that both sides don't use combustion engines, explosives or smoke grenades...
I'd give everyone a projectile sidearm as well, just in case.

IIRC, those rifles were Xray-Lasers. So smoke is not that much a problem.

[Curufea]

X-Ray, definitely beyond our current tech. I wonder how you can reflect the rays to make them uniform? Some form of energy field?

Anyhow, the laser weapons in AW have the limitation 'not through smoke' - so we can assume there IR to UV.

On a side note - a german prototype tank design I saw in Jane's in the early 80's was for a carbon-dioxide laser. Gas was forced under pressure through a small space until it lased, then was reflected witha parabolic mirror. Looked disturbingly like a Martian weapon from the illustrated War of the Worlds

[DrTemp]

X-Ray, definitely beyond our current tech. I wonder how you can reflect the rays to make them uniform?

A lense from a material that works for X-rays like crystals work for visible light. X-Ray lasers were considered in the US 1980's SDI project, so the technical problem seems to look solvable at least to some people, without using rubber science. Since AW is in the 24th century, I assume they were solved at some time.

[Curufea]

I vaguely recall that scifi story (SDI that is )...

It was a one-shot laser using a nuclear explosion and somehow focusing most of the x-ray range radiation into a beam.

I found Footfall more believable.

[DrTemp]

I vaguely recall that scifi story (SDI that is )...

Well, those technical problems don't seem to be unsolvable by principle:

http://repairfaq.ece.drexel.edu/sam/laserioi.htm#ioixrl

[Nyrath]

I vaguely recall that scifi story (SDI that is )...

It was a one-shot laser using a nuclear explosion and somehow focusing most of the x-ray range radiation into a beam.

You are thinking about the SDI project called Excalibur.
It did not use x-ray lenses nor x-ray mirrors because for all practical purposes they don't exist. Instead it used an incredibly crude and wasteful method of selectively using any x-rays in the flood from the nuke that just happened to be going in the desired direction.

Other scientists looking at the design concluded that the specs were optimistic, and the project was killed.

[Basil]

Another thing I liked about Alien Wars was the well detailed military hierarchy and structure. Firmly based on common current-day hierarchy and structure, to make it believable, simplified some to make it easier to play. A definite for that.

[Nyrath]

I saw an interesting argument on the noise of laser weapons in an RPG book awhile ago - mainly to do with capacitor discharge, the filling of the vacuum created in the atmosphere from the passage of the beam, and the explosive expansion of whatever is hit.

Yes, there are some notes here, scroll down to "What would it sound like?"