Exhack
Inactive Member
MoonMan said:I'm a bit iffy about this VT blade thing; the way its described makes it sound like it can perform hot-knife-through-butter action against even the toughest alloy, which to my knowledge only the magic of aether-blades can do under proper circumstances.
Unless, of course, the space-warping effects are negated by distortion fields or distortion shielding.
Is this the case with the VT blade system?
Exhack said:That was more or less the point, but there are already analogues being produced by other nations, such as the Lorath's plasma saber technology. The DR of that device at its mecha scale is the same as the VT Blade System.
Exhack said:Arguably, anybody with any sort of shield up stands a better chance than someone without one. Although a GM is free to interpret distortion shields as being more effective than electromagnetic shields against this weapon, it doesn't really break the DR system.
Exhack said:Unless you count having intimidating fluff as a way to do that.
MoonMan said:DR aside, a melee weapon with the ability to, if I'm understanding these descriptions, pass through several inches of thick armor as easily as it passes through thin air sounds much more powerful than a Lorath plasma saber...and several other weapons currently in circulation. Even if it is melee-only.
I just want to know if this method of protection is going to be viable and how the blade would react if it were to come into contact with something that negated its space-warping properties.
There is intimidating fluff, and then there are descriptions of properties and effects and seem to outweigh the proposed DR rating given to the weapon. If this stuff can pass through armor that the DR equivalent (a tactical nuke or a Mindy 1H aether cannon) cannot, then I can see a potential for abuse.
Exhack said:It's also larger scale than most PA weapons, Moonie. This is to SARP melee weapons as anti-ship missiles carried by fighter-bombers are to the AIR2's mini-missiles.
The issue is still one of scale. The same way that it's silly for a tiny handgun to be as strong as a starship's main cannon, it is also silly for a three-meter blade projecting a distortion field to have the same power as a PA's vibrosaw knife.