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Post by nerd1000 on Oct 17, 2016 11:21:58 GMT
Obviously they're absent from the game (odd given the dev is called Qswitched...), but how would a pulsed laser differ from the CW type lasers we use currently?
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Post by wafflestoo on Oct 17, 2016 16:35:55 GMT
Q had a blog post on this, the trouble with pulsed lasers is designing a high-speed, high-laod switching device that won't melt. Nevermind, I mis-remembered the article ( which is here if you're interested). A strange omission indeed. |
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Post by zuthal on Oct 26, 2016 6:41:15 GMT
A CW laser does damage mainly through thermal soak - it melts, vaporises, burns or otherwise gradually ablates its way through the armour plate, or damages heat-sensitive components.
A pulsed laser instead does damage by thermal shock - it explosively vaporises a thin surface layer with each pulse, and at high enough ablation rates, it can also cause mechanical damage to the armour.
In general, a pulsed laser - if it has a high enough peak power to cause instant vaporisation - would likely do more damage to an armour plate than a CW laser of equal average power, but you could probably make CW lasers of higher power in the same size/mass package.
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Post by shurugal on Oct 30, 2016 0:47:57 GMT
The biggest problem (offensively) with a CW laser is that they also ablate: Once material starts to outgas from the impact point, it gets in the way of the laser beam and now all your laser is doing is heating up material that is no longer part of your target.
Pulsed lasers, however, allow a brief moment (milliseconds or even nanoseconds in duration) for the ablated material to clear, thus more efficiently delivering power to the target.
The other advantage of pulsed lasers is that they are easier to cool. A CW laser that melts in the MW range could conceivably be pulsed in the GW range safely.
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