What's new
Star Army

Star ArmyⓇ is a landmark of forum roleplaying. Opened in 2002, Star Army is like an internet clubhouse for people who love roleplaying, art, and worldbuilding. Anyone 18 or older may join for free. New members are welcome! Use the "Register" button below.

Note: This is a play-by-post RPG site. If you're looking for the tabletop miniatures wargame "5150: Star Army" instead, see Two Hour Wargames.

  • If you were supposed to get an email from the forum but didn't (e.g. to verify your account for registration), email Wes at [email protected] or talk to me on Discord for help. Sometimes the server hits our limit of emails we can send per hour.
  • Get in our Discord chat! Discord.gg/stararmy
  • 📅 January 2025 is YE 47.1 in the RP.

Potential Weapons?

Alrighty then. Heres my first draft of the Xaser Rifle

No-XAR-01

NovaCorp Xaser Assault Rifle

This weapon is the most recent advance in EMR laser technology, an advancement from the Maser design. It operates on the same basic principle as a maser or a laser but uses high powered X-rays. The resulting beam is one of much greater power than earlier maser designs, capable of dealing great damage to metallic and in-animate materials. However it specialises in penetration: it is capable of firing through armour and can penetrate walls without destroying them while still dealing a powerful blow to the opponent behind. In this way it takes away all advantage scenery might yield. It is also extremely damage to organics, not least because its great penetration means the burn wound goes all the way through, even if it didn't have enough power to cut a hole, and even if it doesn't kill leaves horrible burns, kills most tissue it touches and can easily make cells that survive cancerous. The shots are also invisible and silent, and if on a low enough power setting don't leave a mark on the target (if targeted at the head, a low yield shot can kill without leaving an external mark).

The XR-01 uses a high yield battery a Noc-01. It's rechargeable and holds enough power to fire 50 blasts. The amount of shots remaining are shown roughly by a LCD on the side. It can be fired in three different power modes: normal, low (leaves no mark as detailed above), and high (deals more damage, takes up two charges, extra heat often causes explosions through rapid heat change). There are three separate buttons to press on the side to change between power settings. The rifle comes with a sniper scope.

The gun is made of a tough but lightweight composite with the barrel and other metal parts made out of Andrium. The grip is made of easy to grip plastic.

Any advice on changes? I do have an idea of how it creates the X-rays, so ask and I shall post. And I'm still intrested in what a exawatt-level is.
 
Whats Exawatt-level?
Click to expand...
A watt is one joule of energy (work) per second, so an exawatt is equal to 1x10^18 (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) joules per second, or the equivalent of about 23,809,523,809,524 kilograms (26,245,507,403 tons) of TNT exploding, or 1/38270th the energy output of the sun.
 
OK so what does that mean for a Xaser or Graser rifle? Is that the needed imput (I found something that might disgree with that) or the out put of electromagnetic energy?

Also what do you think of the rifle?
 
Output, of course. But, to produce such a laser requires a LOT of power, too.

The rifle seems okay. I'm not an expert on these sort of things, so I don't know if it's feasible or not, but from what I do know, it seems like it could be.
 
So with that sort of output what sort of damage would you be expecting a Xaser rifle to be doing (of course the penetrating nature of the weapon makes this more difficult to say)? If it needs more power can you think of a good source?

So would anyone buy one of these Xaser rifles as they are? Are there any changes to it you'd like to see?
 
I wouldn't have thought so as the Xaser is a directed radiation weapon. I'd have thought that the NovaCorp engineers had made sure that the only way X-rays can get out is through the barrel, However if something went wrong with the gun radiation could be a consicuence. I sugest anyone who uses Xasers a lot would go to see a doctor every now and again to see if their is any damage and to fix it. But I don't think firing the gun would put you in any risk.
 
In an enclosed environment, you'd still get a little bit of radiation just from being close to the radiation source, which might be from the weak reflections from the walls, or the beam not being perfectly focused. Getting many small doses of radiation is still harmful. (Which is why X-ray technicans set you up on the machines and then run like the dickens.)

Not sure if it's a problem outdoors.
 
I suppose it would be impossible to escape all the radiation, given X-rays great penetration ability and imperfection in the device. Well all I can say is this radiation is likely kept to a minimum and probably only slightly higher than normal background radiation.

All the same someone that uses it might try giving themselves a shot of an anti-rad serum now and again, just to be on the safe side. A capsule of this which can be taken orally will come with every battery. There I think that should take away all the problems that the user has.

Of course whoever you hit is not going to be so lucky. I would be surprised if any unarmoured human based creature could survive a direct hit, the burning, penetration and radiation would just be too high. Anyone that did surive any form of hit from this weapon (even a glancing blow) should probably find a doctor or they'll begin to have tarrible radiation burns (have you seen the pictures, if not I'll post some), probably develop multiple sever cancers, and the wounds will heal very slowly if at all. You would not surive any wound on the head, the neurological damage would just be too imense, permenant brain damage would follow. However if you got hit and some stray X-rays hit your eyes you could develop cateracts (which would be the least of your worries).

So just as a small question, would anyone buy one of these, or use one of these? It is the basic model, more advanced versions are being designed.
 
You mentioned phasing tech as a reason why their hadn't been much progress along the lines of Electromagnetic radiation lasers. What is phasing tech?

Oh and would anyone buy one of the Xaser rifles if their put up for sale?

*prod* anyone going to answer? Oh and before someone says that I have waited for a responce it has been a week.
 
While I am still in labouring in the possibly futile hope that somone will answer my earlier questions regarding phasing technology and whether anyone would by Xasers (see earlier posts), their is a matter that I came across while going through some of NovaCorps now rather out of date sub-site: the reaver.

The reaver put simply is a maser rifle that fires 10 packets of maser every second, each independant hit not doing much damage but the shear number of blows making it a dangerous weapon.

I don't know if anyone really knows of this weapon as, as far as I can tell, information about it was never posted and it was only ever used by Rob's old character (who unfortunatly died under unpleasant circumstances). Although it is the weapon he used to hold of a large horde of Mishu-zombie beings on Neplesia around the time of the skyscraper collapsing. The fact is I can only find it mentioned is in the NovaCorp site, which I theorise that not to many people look at. However more details around the weapon can be found here:

http://www.stararmy.com/m/novacorp/index.html

Along with some other weapons, which haven't been updated for some time.

Well after you've perhaps looked (if you feel like it), could you tell me what you think, whether it might be widely used (or even used by a character) and whether the basic idea of a rapid fire electro-magnetic weapon could be streteched to the other parts of the spectrums (Xaser for example)
 
NovaCorp No-TG-1a "holey"
NovaCorp Rotory Cannon (NRCT)

the novacorp rotary cannon has a total of 50 barrels in two layers (30 on the outside layer, 20 on the inside). the cannon fires polarised energy packets that fry electronic components and biologicals nervous systems.

Primary Purpose: Anti-Vehicle, Anti Mecha
Damage: Cannon energy packets will destroy most light vehicles and armours.
Range: 10'000 miles(space), 500 miles(planetside).
Rate of Fire: Cannons fire 20 energy packets per second.
Payload: Cannon ammunition is effectively unlimited while generators are functional.
Click to expand...
Isn't the planetary range a little long? I suggest 100 instead of 500.
 
Energy weapons aren't always superior to projectile weapons.

Even with shielding, physical weapons have a pecuilar advantage because of the fact that for every action there must be an equal, but opposite reaction.

Energy weapons functionally put out more energy than your standard-slug thrower, but momentum can over come energy in some cases. For example, if I was to shoot a Mindy with an energy rifle, her shields could easily hold against that because while the energy rifle fires high-energy bolts, the bolts have almost nonexistent momentum. However, if I was to fire a bullet from an NDI pseudorecoiess rifle, even if the shield could deaccelerate the round to zero velocity, the round's momentum still could deal significant concussive damage simply because of the unit's structural limitations. Remember - it is the weakest link that will be your downfall.
 
Thanks Wes I'll talk to Rob about changing that.

Derran, what you say is very intresting and has brought up an entierly new way of how to damage shields for me, thanks. On the subject of projectile weapons you may be intrested to read the discussion on Gyrocs that was had earlier on this thread, which where deemed to not be very effective overall for several reasons. I'd like to see your opinion.
 
UHV Projectile weapons are nice.

Ultra-high-velocity ballistics has been exploited perhaps the most by a nation named the New Terran Sovereignty on another RPG forum. Having a house-sized projectile (launched from a dedicated space artillery platform) hitting your ship at speeds just below that of light will inflict devastating damage to your ship, providing you don't have any multi-phased trans-dimensional shielding crap that places the ship out of dimensional phase. x_X

Trust me. UHV Weapons could be considered parallel with energy weapons classified as heavy (ie. those with outputs in the petawatt, if not exawatt range). I lost an entire invasion fleet in a matter of minutes due to NTS defense satellites totting massive UHV batteries.
 
Raillaunchers and mass drivers on ships can indeed be a devastating weapon, indeed I am actually designing a new weapon which will bring the power of ship based projectiles to an even higher level of power. More about that later perhaps.

What I have been concentrating up to now has been hand held projectile weapons, the Gyroc design for example, trying to create a non-energy based but still effective design. I would like to see peoples opinion on it now that some people that haven't been around for a while seem to be back. I will gladly listen to any criticism and advice over any of my ideas.
 
I would like to say that I shouldn't have dropped any hints and that I didn't want to talk about this for some time since it is at a very early developmental stage, but Uso you shall get your wish.

Tachyon rail launcher/ Mass Driver:

This central weapon works upon the same principal of a rail launcher, using very powerful magnetic field to launch a projectile and near the speed of light. However once it reaches close to this speed it is wrapped in a coherent tachyon field that makes the projectile leap over the speed of light without going at the speed of light itself (which is impossible). After an object reaches above the speed of light the laws of relativity work in reverse: as the object lose power and momentum, it actually accelerates faster and faster over the speed of light. Thus the further the object goes the greater the speed. Now the massive speed of the object and the warped laws of physics means that when it hits something all of it's mass and a good deal of whatever it hit's is immediately converted into energy, as well as a massive amount of kinetic damage from its velocity. This reaction is similar to an anti-matter reaction, but the entire object is converted into energy, and all the kinetic energy is either brought for unimaginable impact or is converted into additional energy for the explosion. The weapon actually deal more damage per 100g than anti-matter since the object it hit's is also converted somewhat into energy and the kinetic damage is larger than any other known kinetic weapon since the object is travelling faster than the speed of light. Due to the fact that the projectile gains more speed as it loses power, it actually deals the most damage when fired from a distance, but even at relatively close range is devastating.


To show that I am not making up the whole speeding up while slowing down theory here is an extract from the Encyclopaedia Britannica:

Tachyon

hypothetical subatomic particle whose velocity always exceeds that of light. The existence of the tachyon, though not experimentally established, appears consistent with the theory of relativity, which was originally thought to apply only to particles travelling at or less than the speed of light. Just as an ordinary particle such as an electron can exist only at speeds less than that of light, so a tachyon could exist only at speeds above that of light, at which point its mass would be real and positive. Upon losing energy, a tachyon would accelerate; the faster it travelled, the less energy it would have.

The other facts about reversed relativity are in another book that I read a while back and can't remember the name of.

Feedback will as always be appreciated but can people please try and make it somewhat positive, as this is in the development stage in my mind.
 
it is wrapped in a coherent tachyon field that makes the projectile leap over the speed of light without going at the speed of light itself
Click to expand...


Attaching a FTL device to a projectile can't increase the amount of damage that the weapon does by moving it faster than light. While the projectile does indeed travel at FTL speeds towards its target making it harder to dodge the FTL speed does not transfer over to momentum as the mass is not really moving at FTL speeds. You would have to convert the entirety of the weapon into tachyons in order for this to work but I'm unshure how you could achive that.


If you were to try and convert between the two you would run into an asymptote problem. In order to convert the weapon into tachyons it must be moving faster than light otherwise the tachyons (Upon conversion) would be moving slower than light and have negative mass so they wouldn't be able to form, dissipating instantly. The same thing works in reverse, tachyons would need to be moving slower than light to be converted into matter. You can get closer and closer to being able to preform this, requireing more and more energy, but you would never be able to reach it.

A conversion could occur at the speed of light but neither tachyons or normal particles could can reach this speed.
 
RPG-D RPGfix
Back
Top