Probably just to differentiate from vehicle mounted vs general purpose.

BlasTech makes multiple blasters and plenty are listed as heavy blasters.

So I can see wanting to have different names to signify vehicle vs personal weapons. Both however use the exact same principle to work

lasers do not travel as slowly as they do in the game because lasers are made of light however plasma could.

sorry, but you're not understanding the concept of physics. these "photos", are focused, thus release high energy. it's like saying I farted really hard, but there's not gust.

Why do lasers have recoil?

Because "Physics!"

Right, so we should just drop the weapon classes, and name them 'thing that shoots red stuff' and 'thing that shoots green stuff'.

shouldn't power supply be in more terms of mega watt?

what exactly are the damage capabilities for a powered laser beam? in surgical lasers, yes these are kilowatt, but they are somewhat slow to cut. mega or giga may fit the picture better since it's instant burn/penetration damage.

As far as the laser debate goes, fallout has actually been better about portraying fairly realistic laser weapons than other sci-fi mediums, in the regards that they are a continuous, instantaneous beam. I already explained why fallout laser weapons aren't silent.

And the visibility of the beam is justfied via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_scattering.

While we're on the topic of lasers, if you have one of those really bright green ones, please don't point it at an airliner like some idiot did to me on approach into Indianapolis a while back. I kind of need to be able to see so I can land the jet. They can also cause retinal damage.

It's a crime if you get caught, by the way.

Thanks

There was a snippet in the news a few weeks back. I forget where it was but these morons were pointing one at a police helicopter. Hey genius those things have cameras on them, the same ones that filmed your idiotic face being arrested for all to see. Was great.

"That was no laser blast; something hit us!" - H. Solo, The Empire Strikes Back


They are lasers in SW, just that's not all they are. The magnetic field that contains the bolt creates all the "ballistic" elements, from recoil to spread to impact.


A neat explanation. And what we should be doing in this thread is not trying to work out why laser weapons shouldn't have recoil, but rather why they do.

Recoil is not a question of energy but of momentum or force. You can have high energy without momentum or big momentum.

PLEASE LOOK!

(I made a thing! Look at it!)

I made a video example showing the laser rifle without recoil. It looks weird. Let me know what you think.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhhGJfg8cJA


Hope this doesn't just get buried.

Nice It's like laser from Fallout 3/NV.

Nice video. I think I like it better with recoil, even if it does defy science . . . there is always Science!

Anyway, it sounds like plenty of possible explanations for why such a weapon might experience recoil have been given above.

In my opinion it looks not weird. I would prefer it without recoil. But honestly I do not care because I don't like energy weapons and never used them.

Remembering that white light is actually red-green-blue or if you prefer orange-magenta-cyan........ demonstrated that ADDING those in the right proportions, shining those coloured lights to mix together... it becomes WHITE.

Anyway, apart from that lesson, lesson over, chuckle, recoil is not caused by the equal-and-opposite effect of the laser discharge, though logically there should be some, it is the mechanics of the weapon itself, not the laser beam, the beam itself is not conducive to the human body.

Man, I'm on fire today.... with knowledge, cough.

So .... in the real world... how much recoil does a teddy bear generate leaving the muzzle of a junkjet?

Oh, and here is a real life laser rifle! Due the intense power of the beams, rayleigh scattering is in action (visible beams): https://youtu.be/iVrJUbeuG44?t=37s

EDIT: And that's with a 40 watt laser that has to be held in place to torch a piece of wood, so Fallout laser rifles would have more than enough intensity to cause visible beams.

That's nuts. So, new theory: In order to create a laser as damaging as the lasers in Fallout, the weapons use Fusion Cells to create an explosive discharge that generates a bright enough light to be focused into an intense beam, which is why laser guns can't maintain a continuous stream of laser and why there's recoil on them.

When you fire a junkjet in real life, the teddy bear remains stationary and space-time moves around it.

I mean...duh. Wouldn't make any sense otherwise.

With an automatic laser you have the three rotating elements who would add some vibration and spreed.

I have an two shot laser rifle I moded to full auto, it however has to much climb to be practical.

And what wattage is the AER-9 in game?

Double post

The closest thing I could find on the wiki - which I consider a wild guess is that the laser rifles in the old fallout games were called the " wattz 2000" the name could be totally arbitrary, but if I assume it's a 2000 watt laser, it would be 50x as powerful as the one in that video. So I'd say that would be in the right ballpark to kill someone.


EDIT: I read that 2000-6000 watt lasers are used in industrial stainless steel cutting applications, so while no hard numbers are dropped, that would be around that ballpark if you wanted realistic power output to hurt someone in hard armor.