RE: Laser Focussing

[email removed] (Stephen Camp) says:

>I just picked up Challenge 71 and read 'Brilliant Lances Design Notes'
>by David Nilsen.  I have a few gripes I want to throw out to the list for
>discussion.
>
>My gripe or gripes mainly has to do with 'gravitic focusing' of lasers.

 <snip>

>I dunno, by breaking the laws of optics, it seems to throw their whole
>system out of whack...

  Only if you know too much.

>If gravitic focusing really throws their system out of whack, I guess I'd
>rather have beam weapons restricted in range to tens of thousands of
>kilometers.  Then you'd have to get close to do some damage, or you'd
>have to rely on missiles more.
>
>I dunno, what do you guys think?


  Frankly, I think I don't care.  Having watched too many of these
"falling damage in D&D" discussions to count, I have adopted an attitude
of "if the _rule_ works, who cares what reality does".  From my point
of view, the rules work.  Reality can go hang.  The intense-gravity-
focusing explanation isn't important to how the rules work in practice,
so it's not important at all.  It is sufficient that lasers can reach
extreme distances at the higher tech levels, and that they can deliver
a great deal of damage when they get there.

  To address the power problem specifically, it has already been
established that a scoutship can be placed under a 1g internal gravity
field for a mere 7 megawatts (Brilliant Lances, pg 19).  That same 7 MW
is sufficient to compensate for 6g of maneuver thrust, provided the
Scout had such engines.  Obviously Imperials know something about
artificial gravity generation that we don't.  The generator capable of
these feats is all of 14 cubic meters in volume.  I have no trouble
believing that a smaller device could generate much higher gravity
fields in much smaller areas for brief instants of time (the discharge
time of a laser turret, in this case), given the "super-capacitors"
that laser turrets have in them and the increased volume of said
turret.
  As for why they don't use this technology for drive purposes, my
answer is that they probably are.  the HEPlaR drive in standard use
in TNE is mighty efficient for mere heat-exchange technology, and
frankly I wouldn't be surprised to find high gravitic fields involved
there as well.  I feel more comfortable with my super-gravity generator
working in a specially prepared chamber _BEHIND_ me than I would if
I were being pulled along by the gravity itself, implying a high-G
field directly _IN_FRONT_ of me.  Alan Dean Foster can keep it.


 James Kundert [email removed]
               [email removed]

 "It's a monkey thing. You wouldn't understand"