Development of Weaponry

[Tifi]

This has probably been covered many times already, but I'm at a bit of a loose end....

 

Laser Weapons

 

Lasers have seen widespread use since the latter portion of the 20th century for just about every concievable use *except* weapons.

Most notable were the industrial lasers based on gaseous amplifier materials which could cut through just about anything, although they were usually resticted to almost zero range to achieve maximum cutting power by minimising atmospheric dispersal. This was the first, and greatest stumbling block to creating a useful laser weapon.

 

This hurdle was overcome (to a certain extent) at the turn of the 21st century as advances in semiconductor materials made the theory of Magnetic Lensing a practical reality.

These first semiconductor lasers used the same CO2 exciter medium as the industrial lasers they were base on, and they could be used to reliably damage a target several metres away, there were however 2 further problems to solve.

Firstly these devices were incredibly power-hungy and rerquired enough energy to run a small building in order to reach useful ranges with any degree of damage potential, obviously a more efficient exciter medium would be required.

And secondly, a CO2 laser is invisible to the naked eye and it thus incredibly difficult to aim without a large amount of time and effort spent aiming it.

 

An inspiration to the project came when one of the scientists (a native of England) made a chance remark during a random conversation mentioning that he remembered how the old street lighting made him feel ill with its sickly yellow glow which never seemed to die.

On a hunch, the scientists dug up information reagrding the ancient lighting apparatus described as Sodium Arc Lamps and found at least a partial answer to the efficiency problem, as atomised sodium has a low base energy state it takes far less energy to excite it to produce useable emissions.

But this low-energy light cannot be lased easily on its own, so silicon (which can) was added to produce the desired results.

This also solved the aiming problem as the sodium/silicon exciter produced a vivid yellow beam, however it had slightly less damage potential than the original CO2 laser, but required a tiny fraction of the energy to operate.

 

The power problem was solved when the development team managed to fabricate a lightweight betavoltaic cell small enough to be held easily in the hand, yet provide enough power to operate the new laser, even if only for short bursts.

Betavoltaics uses a small beta radioactive source (usually Tritium) to bombard specially designed plates which then convert the energy from atomic to electrical. This process gradually damages the cell over the period of a decade or so, during which time its output gradually decreases.

 

The pistol incorporates a single exciter tube of approximately 12" with one power cell built into the handgrip, this makes it rather bulky for a sidearm but the lack of ammunition concerns and recoil make it far more useful than its conventional counterparts.

 

The rifle has and extended tube of 22" and is powered by a pair of cells mounted in the rear of the one-piece body/stock.

 

The heavy model uses the same 22" tube as the rifle but has an additional magnetic lens on its barrel with its own power cell, while the laser itself is powered by 3 cells making the weapon somewhat of a handful.

Note: Because the laser must pass through 2 mag. lenses its firing time is increased to allow for proper aiming, however this severly limits the ability of the weapon to fire rapidly due to overheating issues.

 

The craft and HWP adapted versions use a twin 36" tube arrangement, each being powered by 10 cells.

 

 

Talk about tl;dr

[NKF]

Sounds like something that'd fit well into the Field Manual - current working model stored in the Data Canisters on the wiki. Hint hint.

 

Just an observation - I once decided to challenge myself (which should be read: I wanted to mess around and have a bit of fun) and launched the game in a language other than English. Did okay I think... In any case, one thing I noted when I was using Francais was that the name for the Laser Pistol was something like Rayon Revolver.

 

The word 'revolver' conjures up the image that the barrel of the laser pistol contains several smaller revolving barrels inside of it. Every time it is fired, it revolves the barrels around and brings a new one in place, allowing the last one some time to cool down a bit before the next time it's needed.

 

The heavy laser probably only has a single firing tube, whereas the pistol has several smaller tubes.

 

I haven't got access to the game at present so I could be wrong on this and this was really the description for the laser rifle. In either case it doesn't matter, since both weapons are very fast.

 

- NKF

[Tifi]

Well, 'revolver' is French for 'gun'.

So 'Rayon Revolver' is simply 'Laser Gun'.

 

Although the revolving barrel idea could be rather fun, insomuch as modifying an Auto-cannon with multiple laser tubes, even if you probably would have to mount it on a HWP to carry the weight.

Not that you'd really need to do that for rapid fire of a laser as they already cycle at the picosecond scale, which is I think adequately fast

 

I'll start piecing together my bits on Plasma ,Gauss and Sonic weapons soon(ish).

[NKF]

Heh, I'm not terribly familiar with the French language, but I just worked on the assumption that it's the same as the English/American name for guns that used the revolving bullet loading mechanism. Do they call the old musket rifles and pistols by that as well?

 

Just as an aside, the game does have unused data for a very heavy laser weapon that uses the autocannon for its battlescape graphics - with some mighty impressive stats to match up with it. Of course, it's very probable that it was just rubbish data rather than a prototype for some sort of 'heavy machine gun' laser.

 

- NKF

[Kret]

It's like the japanese word "Katana". Nowadays it simply translates to 'sword' or 'japanese sword' when in fact it was a certain type of sword. It's use gets generalized and thus is used for anything like it. The word 'revolver' for the french seems to be used for any type of pistols instead of the word 'pistolet'.

[Tifi]

Indeed. Theres a LOT of crossover where English evolved from French.

Eg: Fusil tranlates to Rifle - which in turn gives us the English military title of Fusilier, which would equate to Rifleman or Marksman.

Languages are weird, but oddly fun

 

Anyway...

 

Plasma Weapons

 

After extensive study by our technicians we have gained enough understanding about the theoretical and practical functioning of these weapons to enable us to adequately duplicate them in workshop conditions.

 

All the Plasma weapons function in the same manner.

Firstly the weapon itself is completly inert being composed entirely of the aliens alloy material, however built into the barrel is an array of ridged vanes connected directly to the loading port which seats the power/ammunition clip.

 

All the energy required to operate the weapon is contained in the compact clips which are composed of two major components: An equal number each of solid alloy pellets of approximately 2mm length and 1mm dia. and tiny 50mg ball of Elerium held in magnetic suspension, both of which are contained within a thick alloy casing all of which in turn are contained within the clip housing in a sealed rotary track arrangment.

This eliminates the need to eject spent casings as in our conventional AP weapons, but it also makes each clip a one-use item.

 

When the clip is installed into the weapons loading port, the first casing is moved into position with the alloy pellet being inserted into a tiny vacuum tube which is connected to the barrel, while the Elerium lines up with a pair of conducting rings connected the vanes in the barrel.

This arrangement is 100% stable (nothing we've tried so far has been able to provoke any reaction whatsoever) and will only be released when the trigger button is activated.

 

Upon activation the conductor rings are pushed into the Elerium pellet disrupting the magnetic field and producing a standing current which 'excites' the Elerium, this in turn simultaneously vapourises the alloy pellet and energises the rifling mechanism which then uses the resulting microgravity wave to draw the contents of the vacuum tube into the barrel where it is accelerated along the vanes and onwards to its target.

This whole process occurs in a matter of milliseconds, and so far we have been unable to induce the mechanism to jam or misfire in any way.

It is a remarkably simple and elegant system and one must admire the ingenuity that went into its design, reagardless of the uses it has been put to.

 

Due to the nature of Plasma it makes a devastatingly powerful weapon, being able to burn through almost anything instantaneously, and anything it can't burn through is significantly weakened by the heat and electrical stresses.

That being said, these weapons seem to have an appreiciable weakness: They have a much reduced range and power when used in an atmospheric environment, as the plasma 'burns' the air/gas as it passes thus wasting energy and dissipating the bolt.

From all appearances this family of weapons were designed to be operated in vacuum or near-vacuum conditions, however this does not detract noticably from its lethality.

I suppose we can be thankful at least that we don't have to face these weapons in its preferred environment.

[Tifi]

Gauss Weapons

 

 

At the beginning of the second alien incursion of the 40's our troops once again had to resort to fairly basic 'stock' weaponry as the two major weapons of the previous war had somewhat adverse reactions to an aquatic environment.

 

Laser weapons whilst being sealed units in themselves, thier control and power transfer mechanisms are not and are susceptible to shorting when flooded.

Also it is incredibly difficult to form a stable beam in water as the dense liquid environment scatters any emissions very quickly.

 

Plasma weapons remain functional in water but have similar dispersion problems to the lasers, but far more critically both the alien alloys AND Elerium degrade rapidly in salt water rendering them little more than fragile paperweights with as little as a few hours of exposure.

 

Clearly we were back to square one...

 

An 'interesting' possibility however was something that bored engineers and physics students the world over have recreated countless hundreds of times over for little else than thier own amusement and sense of achievement.

A simple device called an Asynchronous linear induction motor.

 

In its most basic terms an ALIM (or more colloquially a Coil Gun) is a series of solenoids, a power source and something to act as a core - or in this context 'ammunition'.

The power source was easily modified from the previous laser weapons and could provide a more than adequate peak output for the fraction of a second it would be required to energise the coil.

The coils themselves were custom made specifically for the project - although the prototype coil was ripped out of the turret of a Coelacanth SWS.

 

The first trails of these newly dubbed 'Gauss' weapons (after the mathematician whose principals form the basis of thier operation) were sucessful after only a handful of trails with no appriciable delays or setbacks - something of a fluke in any scientific endeavour.

However, these new weapons were little better than the already prevalant Gas Cannons as they were little more than glorified slug throwers - albeit rather powerful ones...

 

Originally it was intended to produce different varieties of 'shells' in much the same vein as the Gas Cannons with HE and Phosphor rounds in addition to the solid bolts thus supplanting the whole Gas family with one weapon.

However, with the ever advancing field of materials science a new previously unattainable goal was *just* within reach: Antimatter.

 

Prior to 2040 the only way to produce anitmatter was to accelerate tiny particles a few at a time through massive miles across magnetic rings to near relatavistic speeds in opposite directions and literally crash them into each other and collect the resulting anti-particles one at a time.

With the new materials processes a new means of creating antimatter was theorised, hundreds of micron thick Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) wafers are arranged one on top of the other as close as possible without touching thier neighbours and the tiny spaces are then filled with Tritium (conveniently used in the construction of the BV cells).

When this construct is compressed violently along its major axis the H3 reacts and merges with the GaAs which through some process even our brightest engineers cannot fully explain, reverses its 'spin' and 'charge' then subsequently annihilates itself and its immediate surrounding area.

 

The standard Gauss 'shells' are composed of off-the-shelf Tool Steel and are just slightly less than 1 inch long with a diameter of roughly 3/8 inch with a traditional bullet shaped profile.

The foremost 1/4 inch is then bored out and filled with the pre-assembled GaAs substrate and then capped with a protective plastic fairing.

Although quite time intensive to produce the resulting shells are quite cheap (especially now that GaAs can be mass produced fairly easily - previously it was rarer than Gold...) and the resulting antimatter event, although very crude and unrefined is able to reliably destroy golf ball sized chunks of matter - tests have indicated that this can vary upto as much as fist sized.

 

None of our current materials or armour technologies can offer any significant resistance to this kind of weapon so we can only hope the aliens are similarly constrained.