New Weapons

[Sirbomber]

An ion is just an atom with a positive or negative charge.  You can't hurl balls "ion energy" at people.

[BlackBox]

The last time I asked you guys what the difference between Ions and plasma was I believe it was essentially said that ions are megnetically accelerated and contain less energy hower plasma is extremely hot and contains a lot of energy... So what if you electromagnetically accelerate plasma particles? I just used what I was told here to come up with an idea.

I wish sci fi shows didn't throw scientific terms around like "ion," "plasma," and others quite so much.

There is nothing special about an ion. It is a particle that has a positive or negative charge (thus it attracts oppositely charged particles and repels like charges). There are trillions upon trillions of ions around you at all times.

Pour some table salt into a cup of water and let it dissolve. Congratulations, you now have Na+ and Cl- ions in the solution in the cup.

It is true that electromagnetic fields can be used to change the speed or direction of ions. This is kinda the principle upon which a particle accelerator works.

A plasma is an ionized gas (gas made up of ions), or one containing free electrons. It doesn't need to be high temperature (we can thank high school chemistry and physics classes for giving people the bad idea that plasma is the "4th state of matter" beyond the gas phase), although plasmas are typically formed by heating (heat provides enough energy to cause the atoms in the gas to ionize).

Plasmas are present inside of fluorescent tubes, camera flash tubes, and other kinds of gas discharge tubes (like neon lights). Electric arcs also provide sufficient energy to ionize the air where the arc occurs, so plasmas exist there.

As you can see this doesn't imply extreme temperatures necessarily (a fluorescent or neon tube generally doesn't get to 10,000 degrees F).

Now, you mention accelerating ions to make some kind of weapon. Interesting idea, but this isn't that feasible for a few reasons:

1. You need a huge amount of energy to be able to produce an electromagnetic force to accelerate the ions to the great speed that would be needed to do any damage.
2. You would need a LOT of ions. (The mass of one atom is so tiny, that you hardly do any damage with one alone).
3. To get up to the speed needed would require multiple acceleration "stages" to get up to the speed required (there's a reason particle accelerators are many miles long).

Basically it sounds like you are trying to kill tanks with a tube from a TV set (a very similar principle is at work here -- electrons are emitted from the cathode inside the tube, they are accelerated and deflected (aimed) using electromagnetic coils wrapped around the neck of the tube, and hit the phosphors on the screen, causing them to glow). Scaling this idea up to a vehicle turret doesn't seem like it'd be very effective.

[Freeza-CII]

Plasma itself cant stay stable for long once out side the forces that keep it stable such as magnetic or gravitational forces.  Thus making the whole idea of a missile with a plasma core nill.  The missile would have to be so big that you might as well just hop inside it and go to the next planet.

[Combine Crusier]

Well thecnically plama exists for a short period of time in the area of a lightning strike so thors hammer is technically a plasma weapon.

[Freeza-CII]

the thor is a directed energy weapon.  Plasma may be generated but its only the cause of the damge front the lightning bolt itself.  and by short periods we are talking milliseconds nothing that would do any damage.  

[RailgunTiger]

There seems to be some sort of stigma against kinetic-kill-vehicles (mass drivers) as viable new weapons. Actually, I'm suprised that they weren't used more prevalently in the game than they were (if only for the sake of weapon diversity).

Mass Drivers (and I'm talking something on the order of tank shells and the like) seem like more logical permutations than the parhaps the Railgun and especially the RPG for several reasons.

Dense slugs would have greater punching power than the RPG and eliminate the risk of of damaging nearby friendly units of both. Another (less game-critical) reason is that the shells would be easier to store and RPG's. They would also be able to fire faster and with much simpler mechanisms than the Railgun, as it could fire as fast as the rounds could be loaded, where the railgun would need (presumably) to charge a capacitor bank before it fired. This meand the turret fire-control systems would need less power, which could be used to increase speed.

I realize that all of this could very well mean an unbalanced vehicle - and I can't think of a solution at this time - It just seemed ilogical that no one mentioned it before.

[Sirbomber]

We can't have a Mass Driver unless it's the space gun that it was in OP1.

[DarekStar]

The mass driver is basicly a giant rail or coil gun.

it uses eather to asselerate a slug or package. so in a cence we have a massdriver in the eden railgun.

[RailgunTiger]

You're missing the point - a mass driver is just any weapon that shoots a dense, unguided piece of material rally fast - in the hopes of killing something with it.

My actual suggestion would be something a little more old-school. I mean something on the order of actual, chemical-explosion-propelled, dense slugs.

[Freeza-CII]

I did suggest a bunch of Projectile weapons way back when but people didnt like them as they seem to think a laser was more worthy of there time and effor even though they could be balanced with the others.

A vulcan cannon. And a standard tank cannon that fires Sabot rounds (dubbed Big magnum) I even suggested a artillery cannon called the Puma artillery unit.

Then there is the Pipe organ.  A weapon which will never ever be used.

[DarekStar]

im thinking that artilery was shot down due to balance issues

plymouth with a artilery would probably be like modles on a sulv in case a metior defence would thwort it but eden would not have artilery cence plymouth dosnt have a defence.

same with pipe organ its too unbalanced if you can make something to balance it out(or weeken it alot) it may be accepted but the fact is its impractical and unballanced it will never be used.


games with more than 1 playable side always has a balanced unit/building structure


op2 is so fun and enjoyable because the creaters worked so hard to make it ballanced.

and ions are used as a weapon in op2 its called the Lazer.

lazers are basicly accelerated ions remember physics.

[Hooman]

Lasers are photons, not ions.

[DarekStar]

No they can be eather ions or photons it just differes  the energy patern make a big nosled laser using ions and you get ion drive. the priciples are there and all my text books and physics books says ions or photons so i dunno going with what im reading.

[Hooman]

An ion drive is not a laser. Photons and ions have very different properties. It'd be quite difficuly to make any sort of drive using photons, as they have essentially no mass. They're essentially just a bundle of energy that travels in a wave like pattern. Ions are atoms or even molecules that carry a charge, either because they've gained or lost electrons. As such, they behave like matter, and travel in straight lines (provided they don't hit something, or have some electric or magnetic field to deflect them).

[DarekStar]

hm im gona report these text books to my schools principle befor they continue giving the rong information.


thanks for catching that hooman

[Norsehound]

I, too, was surprised in hindsight that good 'ol cannons weren't present in the OP series. The RPG is the closest we get to a modern tank gun... but it isn't. It's just a rocket being fired out of a tube, essentially.

Firing a weapon by chemical explosion is a fairly simple idea. I can't see why the colonies would have considered it after hitting explosive charges.

Rather than looking for outlandish "Wouldn't this be cool!" ideas, why not look at prospective current technologies and go from there? Outpost was cool in the idea that most of the tech was (then, at least) fairly plausible. Even guided lightning bolts have been considered viable weapons, and Rail guns are looking to be implemented on naval vessels fairly soon.

[Freeza-CII]

I belive its because they might be to cliche of a weapon.  gatlin and Minigun style weapons.  I said above some where up there in this thread that it was suggested as a idea.  

And yes it is a very plausable set of weapons.  vulcans single barrel large calibur tank cannon kinetic kill missiles even a area effect concussive rocket/missile (not a emp missile thing -.-).

[Norsehound]

I was thinking more along the lines of shell-firing cannons, rather than gattling/machine gun weapons.

And given the combat units in Outpost 2, why would you have gattlings? It's not like you're fighting infantry... and the closest thing are scorpions. Lasers deal with those OK enough, as well as Acid clouds.

[Freeza-CII]

They use Vulcans/gatlings on A10 Warthogs there Tank busters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-10_Thunderb...#Weapon_systems

A Vulcan unit would basicly be the starting unit like the Laser and the Microwave.

A shell firing tank would sounds more like a artillery unit.  Which most people frowned on because of games like C&C and Starcraft where the Artillery unit tho very weak in HP when in numbers make a almost unstopable wall.  In a bottle neck they would make acid and esg cry.



 

[Combine Crusier]

About the Gauss cannon (or weapon) perhaps it could be the Maesis equivalent of the Thor's hammer err let me try to explain.
Light gauss (similar in effects as rail gun) - a single stage version of the gauss gun which would produce low heat and fire slightly faster than the rail gun while doing less damage.

Heavy gauss - a multiple stage gauss gun which would run the projectile through many magnetic coils giving it high speed and thus high armor penetration giving it similar damage to Thor's hammer however the weapon would also produce a similar amount of heat as the Thor's hammer as wall.

Both weapons would reload at a speed similar to the rail gun but the heavy gauss would take about the same time as the Thor's Hammer to fire again because of similar heat issues. Essentially it would the Maesis counter to Eden weapons. Before I read the wiki coil gun thread I thought the gauss system was what they used for particle accelerators in those giant supercolliders.

[CK9]

I'm getting bored reading this, so I'll just say what I think is on everyone's mind at one point or another:

Hadron cannon anyone?  Lol

[Sirbomber]

Hadron cannon anyone?  Lol

I thought you said "hardon" cannon for a second. :evil laugh:

[Hooman]

Wow, you're not the only one that read that wrong.  

[Freeza-CII]

why not just have a lynx with a giant Axe on it.

[Sirbomber]

Wow, you're not the only one that read that wrong.

Actually, we've had this weapon for awhile.  Or, we discussed hypothetically making it awhile back by renaming the StickyFoam and recoloring the foam white instead of green.

There's a reason some of those IRC channels are restricted and secret; they'd scare everyone else off.