Star Hero/TE weapons Design

[shadowcat1313]

while rummaging through TE and STK I am trying to figure why the plasma weapons have charges instead of taking ships power

 

any bright ideas?

[keithcurtis]

Re: Star Hero/TE weapons Design

 

Per Star Hero, p153, Plasma weapons are fueled by expendable deuterium pellets. Presumably, you are using these up. Deuterium shouldn't be too difficult an isotope to procure, so we may reasonably assume that the pellets have expensive or bulky containment technology.

 

Keith "Mr. Helpy-guy" Curtis

[shadowcat1313]

Re: Star Hero/TE weapons Design

 

if its just bulk, you could just build magazines for extra ammo, this also doesnt explain why lasers also use charges but thats a seperate question I should have asked

[Bismark]

Re: Star Hero/TE weapons Design

 

Man-pack lasers presumably use charges because they use expendable fuel cells or are chemical lasers (stay away from the by-products - much corrosiveness and toxicity… ); no real reason why shipboard lasers should not use ship's power though. They could run off batteries pre-charged by the ship's power plant, though, which would give the equivalent of a fixed number of charges before recharging was required.

[Silversmith]

Re: Star Hero/TE weapons Design

 

no real reason why shipboard lasers should not use ship's power though. They could run off batteries pre-charged by the ship's power plant' date=' though, which would give the equivalent of a fixed number of charges before recharging was required.[/quote']

 

Maybe they work off of a capacitor that slowly stores a charge after so long using excess power created by the ship's powerplant. Wouldn't want to put too much stress on the engines during combat so you store up enough charge to discharge the plasma cannons several times before having to tap the ship's engines and drain down on energy being used for shields, maneuvering, life support, etc.

[shadowcat1313]

Re: Star Hero/TE weapons Design

 

with the fairly high END output of most starship powerplants in SH, why have such high output powerplants when your not using nearly all the output, thats why it would seem to make more sense to have the lasers run straight off ships power without charges, or explain that the reason it has charges is due to some kind of maintenance cycle, but you would think that they have a better maintenance system at least for militart components

 

For Traveller Hero I didnt give either plasma or laser weapons charges for starship weapons, Laser Weapons just require a standard daily maintenance cycle hence the real weapon limitation

[LordGhee]

Re: Star Hero/TE weapons Design

 

in lasers to day are fueled by mixing of chemicals that gets a flash of photons that are lased. no way to get a bright enough flash from a light bulb. there is no way to get photons from ships power.

[shadowcat1313]

Re: Star Hero/TE weapons Design

 

ok, I found where I got the idea of lasers using ships power from

 

Fire Fusion and Steel for Traveller the new Era:

Free Electron Lasers:

A Free Electron Laser[FEL] passes an electron beam through a series of magnets which bend the paths of the electrons, as the electrons paths are bent, they are made to emit or absorb photons, by placing mirors at both ends of the electron beam the photons are gathered to form a beam in the usual fashion. because these electrons are free, they are not locked into quantized energy states, and therefore can absorb or emit photons of any wavelength, depending on how they are manipulated by the magnets. In this way the FEL can be tuned to emit different wavelengths. Beam dispersion is helped by the use of gravitic focusing to maintain the beam.

 

Fire Fusion and Steel, page 124

 

these weapons arent even that bulky in traveller terms, a 250 megawatt weapon takes up 14 cubic meters and weights around 60 tons

 

again this is my take on things, and this chapter also covers Direct Energy Input Lasers, Chemical Lasers, and Bomb Pumped Lasers