Interesting Plasma Weapon Concept

[Winston Blake]

Then I'd seriously suggest using quartz jars instead of magnetic bottles. They'd look like little lightbulbs in the magazine. Quartz jars containing uranium hexafluoride gas at ten thousand degrees kelvin have been seriously proposed as sustained-thrust 'nuclear lightbulb' rocket engines - they physics of that actually work with continuous cooling.

Cool idea, but if only there was some easy way to store all that thermal energy and then release it on impact... oh yeah, ordinary explosives.

Seriously, there are no technical reasons to go for plasma weapons. You have to make up sociopolitical ones, like making the 'plasma cannons' actually exotic drive units (that are normally stacked in packs of a hundred), that just happen to be exempt from interstellar arms control law. In that case, poor performance is a good thing, since they can say later 'Hey, we didn't really want to exterminate them, look how shitty our so-called weapons were'.

[Sikon]

A lot of the reason for the sci-fi popularity of plasma weapons may be to have a weapon that would look cool with brightly glowing projectiles going from it to the target.

Such a goal could alternatively be satisfied with a weapon corresponding more to real-world physics. Although coilguns and railguns do not necessarily fire their projectiles at high enough velocity for much ablation when passing through the atmosphere, such a velocity is possible if desired. Such a high velocity may not be optimal, given that such ablation corresponds to energy & mass wasted from losses in transit, but maximum workable velocity could minimize projectile mass needed per shot. Such could be logical if maximizing ammo capacity was the priority in some scenarios.

That would result in projectiles which could be starting to become molten during passage to the target, with glowing superheated air compressed by their passage through air at high hypersonic speed. Indeed, such projectiles could be surrounded by glowing plasma when traveling through air ... but the plasma is not the solid projectile itself, rather just superheated air and a small percentage of the projectile mass being ablated in transit, a miniature version of what happens with a spacecraft upon re-entry.

As a random example, consider a gorilla-sized battle droid or a power armor suit massing several hundred kilograms including a ~ 100 kg advanced-technology miniature nuclear reactor, practically never running out of fuel. Consider if it fires projectiles which are each to have 2000 J kinetic energy like some rifle or machinegun bullets. In that case, high velocity may allow extreme ammo capacity, allowing a devastatingly high rate of fire to be sustained without quickly running out of ammo.

If each projectile was fired at 1 km/s, each projectile must mass 4 grams. But if each projectile was fired at 2 km/s, projectile mass for 2 kJ energy drops to 1 gram. At 4 km/s, it drops to 0.25 grams, aside from adjusting for any percentage ablated in transit.

That's like 4000 rounds being stored in a 1-kilogram magazine or 200,000 rounds being stored in a 50-kg ammo compartment. And the trend continues so on with higher projectile velocity. (Incidentally, if one wonders about the relatively low ammo capacity of existing guns in comparison, such is in part due to the relatively low energy density of 21st-century gunpowder, more or less a variant of late 19th century smokeless powder). The practical velocity limit in atmosphere can be the velocity at which too much of an elongated heat resistant projectile "burns up" before traveling a sufficient distance ... varying depending upon projectile size, projectile materials, acceptable combat range, and other factors ... generally multiple km/s but not many km/s.

For another option for a cool glowing appearance based on real-world science, there's also lasers and other beams.



Glowing weapons fire can be realistic as the weapon doesn't have to fire projectiles comprised of plasma; it just needs the passage of its fire through the air to be accompanied by superheated incandescent gases ... whether it is firing hypervelocity projectiles, emitting a beam, launching miniature rocket-propelled anti-personnel missiles, or other possibilities.

[Winter]

Such a goal could alternatively be satisfied with a weapon corresponding more to real-world physics. Although coilguns and railguns do not necessarily fire their projectiles at high enough velocity for much ablation when passing through the atmosphere, such a velocity is possible if desired. Such a high velocity may not be optimal, given that such ablation corresponds to energy & mass wasted from losses in transit, but maximum workable velocity could minimize projectile mass needed per shot. Such could be logical if maximizing ammo capacity was the priority in some scenarios.

That would result in projectiles which could be starting to become molten during passage to the target, with glowing superheated air compressed by their passage through air at high hypersonic speed. Indeed, such projectiles could be surrounded by glowing plasma when traveling through air ... but the plasma is not the solid projectile itself, rather just superheated air and a small percentage of the projectile mass being ablated in transit, a miniature version of what happens with a spacecraft upon re-entry.

As a random example, consider a gorilla-sized battle droid or a power armor suit massing several hundred kilograms including a ~ 100 kg advanced-technology miniature nuclear reactor, practically never running out of fuel. Consider if it fires projectiles which are each to have 2000 J kinetic energy like some rifle or machinegun bullets. In that case, high velocity may allow extreme ammo capacity, allowing a devastatingly high rate of fire to be sustained without quickly running out of ammo.

If each projectile was fired at 1 km/s, each projectile must mass 4 grams. But if each projectile was fired at 2 km/s, projectile mass for 2 kJ energy drops to 1 gram. At 4 km/s, it drops to 0.25 grams, aside from adjusting for any percentage ablated in transit.

That's like 4000 rounds being stored in a 1-kilogram magazine or 200,000 rounds being stored in a 50-kg ammo compartment. And the trend continues so on with higher projectile velocity. (Incidentally, if one wonders about the relatively low ammo capacity of existing guns in comparison, such is in part due to the relatively low energy density of 21st-century gunpowder, more or less a variant of late 19th century smokeless powder). The practical velocity limit in atmosphere can be the velocity at which too much of an elongated heat resistant projectile "burns up" before traveling a sufficient distance ... varying depending upon projectile size, projectile materials, acceptable combat range, and other factors ... generally multiple km/s but not many km/s.

For another option for a cool glowing appearance based on real-world science, there's also lasers and other beams.

Glowing weapons fire can be realistic as the weapon doesn't have to fire projectiles comprised of plasma; it just needs the passage of its fire through the air to be accompanied by superheated incandescent gases ... whether it is firing hypervelocity projectiles, emitting a beam, launching miniature rocket-propelled anti-personnel missiles, or other possibilities.

I'm afraid that doesn't really help very much -- we already have particle beams, lasers, railguns and intelligent projectiles in the game bible. For variety's sake, what we'd like is a different concept that's also realistically workable.

I guess that a projectile generating plasma at the target is probably the best option at this. Can anyone give some info as to what would be the best way to go about this, with composition of the projectile and required tech, etc.?

Regards,
Winter

[Winter]

As an aside, what's the skinny on sonic weaponry? Any chance of using sound as a lethal battlefield weapon at any point in the future? What form would it take and what are the power scales?

Regards,
Winter

[Ariphaos]

I'm afraid that doesn't really help very much -- we already have particle beams, lasers, railguns and intelligent projectiles in the game bible. For variety's sake, what we'd like is a different concept that's also realistically workable.

Weapons are built for a purpose.

Railguns and conventional guns are used because of their simplicity. I should note that the top possible projectile speed for both is about the same, based on the theoretical limits of chemical propulsion and simple rail ablation and friction.

Most armies will consider these, with a wide variety of ammunition types, to be their stock weapons. In my own setting, they are designed to fire a special type of encased explosive round which detonates or otherwise triggers when it experiences pressure around its circumference - normal needler rounds will simply fly through the target and leave them rather functional.

Laser weapons need to be tuned to the atmosphere they're used in. They might also become a staple, if they're simplified enough along with energy storage, primarily as a weapon you simply can't dodge, but also, if attuned to the right wavelengths, a good warning weapon - they ionize ('plasmify') the air and become visible. This is being researched now for use as a wireless taser.

For getting past the speed limits of railguns and conventional weapons, you would use a coilgun, though it's more complex.

Essentially, your 'plasma weapon' is just a railgun with an ineffectual explosive round, as described.

You may want to expand particle beams - they have different uses. A neutron beam, for instance, is a great way to mess up sensitive systems deep within a target, unless they have significant amounts of shielding - beryllium would be standard on anything that needs maneuverability.

I guess that a projectile generating plasma at the target is probably the best option at this. Can anyone give some info as to what would be the best way to go about this, with composition of the projectile and required tech, etc.?

A thermite-style mix involving a fluorine compound instead of oxygen comes to mind. The trick into making a proper compound like this (with say, a cesium compound) would of course be getting a slow burn a la thermite.

It's important to understand it fills a strategic / tactical need, as a blinder and dealing with certain types of armor. See part about triggering under pressure above.

Plasma is primarily a defensive tool in my setting, really.

As an aside, what's the skinny on sonic weaponry? Any chance of using sound as a lethal battlefield weapon at any point in the future? What form would it take and what are the power scales?

Humans and other biological organisms are very resistant to concussive damage. I'm sure it's possible, but the purpose of such weaponry would be more suited to bringing down sensitive emplacements, for the energy expended. There was a rumor of a Russian project which was designed to wreck the electronics in an American carrier tower, but I'm not certain if it was ever successful.

[Starglider]

A thermite-style mix involving a fluorine compound instead of oxygen comes to mind. The trick into making a proper compound like this (with say, a cesium compound) would of course be getting a slow burn a la thermite.

Alternatively a microfusion warhead. This will probably carry as much reactant as the fuel pellets proposed for use in intertial-confinement fusion power stations. It could either be D/T in a metal shell imploded by some sort of superconducting coil arrangement, or a chip of lithium deuteride touched off by a super-concentrated solid-state-laser pulse. Complicated, but packing a lot of bang for its weight while keeping the recoil and launcher complexity down.

Of course this is sensibly something you would fire out of a mortar or recoilless rifle, not a pistol, but hey.

[Sea Skimmer]

If you want a glowing projectile, then you need nothing more complicate then an everyday tracer. In fact the USAAF even produced a .special 50cal tracer called ‘M21 Headlight’ which had notches cut in the nose so that it would glow brightly from ahead on as well as from behind, with a total of three times to luminosity of normal base burn tracers. It was intended for bomber and AAA, with the extra bright glow helping to deter attacking planes.

As an aside, what's the skinny on sonic weaponry? Any chance of using sound as a lethal battlefield weapon at any point in the future? What form would it take and what are the power scales?

Lethal, no. Air compresses too much and just cannot transmit the required energy over any useful distance from a remotely practical sized weapon. The Germans actually built a sonic cannon in WW2, which required a pair of parabolic dishes 10 feet tall to work, and was claimed to be able to kill a man at 180ft though this was never tested. Thing was it took 30-40 seconds to focus the twin dishes and then build up to a lethal power level.

The Germans also built a wind cannon as an anti aircraft weapon using methane/oxygen explosions as the source of the blast. It could put a hole in stationary 1in thick piece of wood at 600ft, but the single example built proved totally useless in field trials against actual aircraft.

However while lethal sonic weapons are absurdly impractical, the USN has developed a sonic gun which causes intensive migraine like headaches on whoever it’s aimed at. Its entered production and a while back a cruise ship used it to successful repel a pirate attack of Somali. The effective range is still limited though.

If you want to kill people, the machine gun will never be beaten for efficient reliability.

[Starglider]

If you want to kill people, the machine gun will never be beaten for efficient reliability.

I wouldn't be too sure about that. Machine guns have lots of moving parts, they need maintenance and the occasional barrel change, and they still jam from time to time. Coilguns or solid state lasers may actually win on reliability, though clearly they are more complex (and presumably, expensive) to manufacture.

[Ariphaos]

I wouldn't be too sure about that. Machine guns have lots of moving parts, they need maintenance and the occasional barrel change, and they still jam from time to time. Coilguns or solid state lasers may actually win on reliability, though clearly they are more complex (and presumably, expensive) to manufacture.

Coilguns require excessively accurate timing and precision control.

As for killing people, especially between species, I imagine biological weapons would be the most efficient.

[Patrick Degan]

As for killing people, especially between species, I imagine biological weapons would be the most efficient.

Actually, they would be horribly inefficent —a weapon which is utterly out of your control the second its released and can as easily blowback on your own side, or rendered ineffective by the development of natural immunisers if the virus isn't lethal enough, or kills so quickly that nobody survives to carry the infection outside the hot zone and subsequently burns off for lack of hosts.

No, if you want efficient killers, nothing beats the machine gun against men, the atomic bomb against cities, and (in SF) a large directed asteroid against entire planetary populations.

[Starglider]

Coilguns require excessively accurate timing and precision control.

Do you realise that the processor in your computer has millions of transitors switching at gigahertz frequencies? That's like, billions of times a second! And guess what... if there's more than a fraction of a nanosecond of clock skew in any of the thousands of internal interconnects, your whole computer will crash! Even worse, there are lots more interconnects between the different components on the motherboard, and if any of those suffers significant timing skew it will crash! Oh noes! Computers are impossible, or at least horribly unreliable!

In actual fact building 'excessively accurate' timers and for that matter magnetic position sensors is so easy we can do it on a massive scale in cheap commodity hardware. The only 'excessive' is the excessive pain the enemy is going to feel when >10kms railgun rounds punch right through their armour. You need to be teleported back in time to the 1960s, so you can get a healthy dose of why 'solid state' was so exciting when it first began to replace mechanical controllers and vacuum tubes.

[Starglider]

The only 'excessive' is the excessive pain the enemy is going to feel when >10kms railgun rounds punch right through their armour.

railgun rounds -> coilgun rounds, yeah I know I fail.

[Winter]

Railguns and conventional guns are used because of their simplicity. I should note that the top possible projectile speed for both is about the same, based on the theoretical limits of chemical propulsion and simple rail ablation and friction.

Most armies will consider these, with a wide variety of ammunition types, to be their stock weapons. In my own setting, they are designed to fire a special type of encased explosive round which detonates or otherwise triggers when it experiences pressure around its circumference - normal needler rounds will simply fly through the target and leave them rather functional.

Laser weapons need to be tuned to the atmosphere they're used in. They might also become a staple, if they're simplified enough along with energy storage, primarily as a weapon you simply can't dodge, but also, if attuned to the right wavelengths, a good warning weapon - they ionize ('plasmify') the air and become visible. This is being researched now for use as a wireless taser.

We've got a railgun and lasers researchable on the human side, needler guns for the aliens.

You may want to expand particle beams - they have different uses. A neutron beam, for instance, is a great way to mess up sensitive systems deep within a target, unless they have significant amounts of shielding - beryllium would be standard on anything that needs maneuverability.

We may do this with new alien weapons, but we'd rather not have both our major alien weapon families rely on the same tech concept, for gameplay's sake.

A thermite-style mix involving a fluorine compound instead of oxygen comes to mind. The trick into making a proper compound like this (with say, a cesium compound) would of course be getting a slow burn a la thermite.

It's important to understand it fills a strategic / tactical need, as a blinder and dealing with certain types of armor. See part about triggering under pressure above.

Hmm. Does a thermite reaction produce actual plasma, though? If not, we can always invent some alien compounds that react to a hot plasma state naturally, dubious as that may be in real-world science.

The idea would be that the compound is ignited inside the projectile as it leaves the barrel, and uses the readily available oxygen during its flight to get itself up to temperature.

Regards,
Winter

[Winter]

We've got a railgun and lasers researchable on the human side, needler guns for the aliens.

Oop, forgot to mention, we've got an electrolaser in the plans as well. As far as I know we just need a particle for the weapon fire and it's in.

Regards,
Winter

[Ariphaos]

Do you realise that the processor in your computer has millions of transitors switching at gigahertz frequencies? That's like, billions of times a second! And guess what... if there's more than a fraction of a nanosecond of clock skew in any of the thousands of internal interconnects, your whole computer will crash! Even worse, there are lots more interconnects between the different components on the motherboard, and if any of those suffers significant timing skew it will crash! Oh noes! Computers are impossible, or at least horribly unreliable!

In actual fact building 'excessively accurate' timers and for that matter magnetic position sensors is so easy we can do it on a massive scale in cheap commodity hardware. The only 'excessive' is the excessive pain the enemy is going to feel when >10kms railgun rounds punch right through their armour. You need to be teleported back in time to the 1960s, so you can get a healthy dose of why 'solid state' was so exciting when it first began to replace mechanical controllers and vacuum tubes.

...every coil on a coilgun or ring on a gauss gun is another potential point of failure. They need to be placed at proper positions along a gun, or loss of efficiency occurs, because of magnetic saturation (2.2 teslas for iron, etc). The precision timing isn't just a matter of using computers - whatever is doing the repairs needs to be able to get the replacement coil in its proper place somehow. This can turn into taking longer (bad) or carrying around an excessive amount of spare parts (also bad).

For a railgun, this is easy - you have two metal rods, a pair of magnets, a power source, a trigger, a cooling system and the wires between them. If something fries (usually the rails), replacement can be made trivial.

A two-coil system might be just as simple, but there's an actual limit on the amount of acceleration you can drag out of a single coil. It's in competition with its 6 km/sec counterparts, here.

[Ariphaos]

We've got a railgun and lasers researchable on the human side, needler guns for the aliens.

Why do the sides have different weaponry in the first place? If humans can make railguns, humans can make coilguns. The two key limiters on their production and field use are energy storage and projectile ablation, the latter of which is actually simpler for a coilgun or gauss rifle.

We may do this with new alien weapons, but we'd rather not have both our major alien weapon families rely on the same tech concept, for gameplay's sake.

This is a bit like saying Japan should have been the only one with carriers in WWII, because it would have kept the sides distinct.

Hmm. Does a thermite reaction produce actual plasma, though? If not, we can always invent some alien compounds that react to a hot plasma state naturally, dubious as that may be in real-world science.

Thermite only gets to 2,500 degrees C. Some hypothetical tungsten-trioxide / tantalum mix might be able to reach 5,400 C, and would be much more energetic for its volume, but be exceedingly difficult to ignite properly. I'm not much of a chemist, however, so there may be something else limiting that beyond the insane ignition temperature.

The idea would be that the compound is ignited inside the projectile as it leaves the barrel, and uses the readily available oxygen during its flight to get itself up to temperature.

The reason why thermite gets so hot is that the oxygen is part of the compound. An iron oxide is used to provide the oxygen, while aluminum is used as the reactant. It doesn't make use of the surrounding oxygen, and neither would our significantly more energetic reaction above.

It's not that it can't, it's just that grabbing oxygen from the atmosphere is a limited process, and the desirable reactive metals - aluminum, tantalum, titanium, etc. form a protective coating when exposed to oxygen.

[Ariphaos]

Thermite only gets to 2,500 degrees C. Some hypothetical tungsten-trioxide / tantalum mix might be able to reach 5,400 C, and would be much more energetic for its volume, but be exceedingly difficult to ignite properly. I'm not much of a chemist, however, so there may be something else limiting that beyond the insane ignition temperature.

Case in point in me not being a chemist, I actually think the above is backwards >_>

Reasons to be obtuse... anyway.

[Darth Wong]

I'm afraid that doesn't really help very much -- we already have particle beams, lasers, railguns and intelligent projectiles in the game bible. For variety's sake, what we'd like is a different concept that's also realistically workable.

I guess that a projectile generating plasma at the target is probably the best option at this. Can anyone give some info as to what would be the best way to go about this, with composition of the projectile and required tech, etc.?

Regards,
Winter

The problem is that you will get very poor coupling from a device which transfers energy to the target by producing atmospheric plasma at its surface. Particularly when a sufficiently high-powered laser would turn part of the surface into plasma; a far more efficient way of doing damage.

Think of it this way: a laser transfers heat to the target like so:

A -> B

Where A is the laser and B is the target. Your proposed device would transfer heat like so:

A -> B -> C

Where A is the device, B is the plasma, and C is the target. So now you have to come up with a reason to add this efficiency-sapping middleman.

[Sea Skimmer]

I wouldn't be too sure about that. Machine guns have lots of moving parts, they need maintenance and the occasional barrel change, and they still jam from time to time. Coilguns or solid state lasers may actually win on reliability, though clearly they are more complex (and presumably, expensive) to manufacture.

How do you propose that coilgun fires at several hundred to several thousand RPM without lots of moving parts to load the ammunition? That’s what the majority of the moving parts in a machine gun do. The coilguns loading mechanism would have to be externally powered too, which is an advantage in some ways, but highly reliable externally powered machine guns already exist in the form of Gatling guns and Chainguns. Even faulty ammo wont stop them for firing, lets see a laser keep firing after you put bad fuel in the generator.

Both coilguns and lasers would be absurdly more expensive, and you’ve got to tote around a very large generator and fuel supply to make them work at all, and in the case of a laser a mere rain storm or cloud of smoke is enough to render the weapon useless. The machine gun works given ammunition and an operator, and it is lethal to humans at any range it can reach under all weather conditions. It costs only a few thousand dollars and can be built in any decent machine shop.

Plus a realistic coilgun is going to require a very expensive barrel change after only a handful of shots, and will be extremely sensitive to ammunition quality. Railguns would be even worse. What’s more, such weapons certainly will need maintained, and because they are so complex it won’t be possible to do it at less then depot level. With a machine gun you can change just about anything in the field, and even assemble a working gun out of the parts of several broken ones.

Nope sorry, you’re not going to beat the machine gun for efficiently killing people. Heck a machine gun is even more effective at killing people in the open then a field howitzer that weighs one hundred times as much firing HE-FRAG shells.

[Winter]

The problem is that you will get very poor coupling from a device which transfers energy to the target by producing atmospheric plasma at its surface. Particularly when a sufficiently high-powered laser would turn part of the surface into plasma; a far more efficient way of doing damage.

Think of it this way: a laser transfers heat to the target like so:

A -> B

Where A is the laser and B is the target. Your proposed device would transfer heat like so:

A -> B -> C

Where A is the device, B is the plasma, and C is the target. So now you have to come up with a reason to add this efficiency-sapping middleman.

Well, it does cut out all the problems of direct lasers -- atmospheric blooming, beam refraction by smoke or mist, etc. etc.

Regards,
Winter

[Connor MacLeod]

The problem is that you will get very poor coupling from a device which transfers energy to the target by producing atmospheric plasma at its surface. Particularly when a sufficiently high-powered laser would turn part of the surface into plasma; a far more efficient way of doing damage.

Think of it this way: a laser transfers heat to the target like so:

A -> B

Where A is the laser and B is the target. Your proposed device would transfer heat like so:

A -> B -> C

Where A is the device, B is the plasma, and C is the target. So now you have to come up with a reason to add this efficiency-sapping middleman.

Well, it does cut out all the problems of direct lasers -- atmospheric blooming, beam refraction by smoke or mist, etc. etc.

Regards,
Winter

Not really - or at least it has its own problems that will be as bad if not worse. Particle beams (the closest analogue to a practical plasma weapons will suffer from much the same problems as particle beams (they'll lose energy frfom atmospheric colliions - charge particle beams need this IIRC in fact to neutralize their charge.) but also other factors: plasma "temperature" leads to the plasma expanding (with inconsistent velocity, If I remember Mike's plasma weapon page.) even after short distances - the hotter the plasma the faster it expands. In most respects a plasma weapon is going to be WORSE because of that expansion, in fact.

here is an artticle covering particle beam weapons.

I also suggest you read Mike's plasma weapon page, since I dont remember it being brought up (probably should have earlier - if it has I apologize for the redundancy.)

There's also the excellent "atomic rockets" site which has
sidearms and weapons in general covered.

Lastly, I think you're really going to have the bite the bullet where diversity is concerned. I know you want to come up with "unique" concepts, but in reality you can only generate so many "practical/reasonable" kinds of inflicting damage without either getting too far fetched (IE like a phaser, or a gravity weapon) or by compromising on practicality (IE "plasma" weapons.) For the most part most "weapons" are going to either be "laser, particle beam, kinetic impactor, or explosive" and any other "kinds" will be variations on one of the above (railgun vs chem propelled slugthrower, conventional explosive, vs nuke, etc.)

A number of suggestions have been offered, and I think you really ought to reconsider them with greater flexibility, rather than trying to shoehorn the "plasma" brainbug into a viable weapon. Many people have tried before and failed.

[rhoenix]

Winter, it seems as if you're trying to stay true to the original XCOM games as far as weaponry scaling, while also trying to stay true to realistic physics.

With that in mind, since Plasma weaponry seems to be a non-starter, you have the following from what I've read so far (I'll list them in approximate order of "tech tree-ing":

- Conventional weaponry (which, really, you could go into a Counterstrike-level of detail with the different ones)
- Railguns
- Lasers (solid-state / free-electron)
- Coilguns

And about there seems to be where you're stuck, tech-wise.

A few ideas:

PROJECTILE WEAPONS
(Bad name for this section, but it includes the railguns and coilguns, as well as beam weapons. All would likely be available in pistol/rifle/heavy variants. Maybe not so much the rail/coil/flailguns, as they'd likely be available as rifle/heavy only.)

- Hybrid coil/railgun: For my purposes, I called it a "flailgun" (feel free to use that as a term, or make up your own). The purpose for it was a faster rate of fire, as well as a much stronger punch. Like the coilgun and railgun before it, you'd likely have a few different types of ammo, based on application (anti-personnel, anti-armor, etc.)

- X-ray laser: A standard upgrade to the laser, the x-ray laser would likely have more punch, and not be affected by things like smoke, mist, or mirrors.

- Gamma-ray laser (graser): Another, further upgrade to the laser; stronger than an x-ray laser and has more of an explosive effect, due to how gamma rays strip off electrons from atoms affected, and superheating. This one would have my vote for "alien tech."

- Particle beam: Travelling usually more slowly than the speed of light, yet still moving relativistic speeds, particle beams have a stronger "punch" typically.

- Taser: A non-lethal version of the electron laser that affects the target's nervous system, paralyzing the target for a few minutes.


EXPLOSIVE CHARGES
(All the below could conceivably be used as proximity grenades, as well as ordinary "set the timer/pull the pin" type of grenades.)

- Grenades (normal, chemical explosive) Your typical pull-the-pin-and-throw grenade.

- Concussion grenades: Causes greater force of damage in it's area than a regular grenade.

- Fragmentation grenades: Like concussion grenades, but also cause damage from shrapnel, and lots of it.

- Shaped-charge grenades: Typically for use in an anti-armor role, this type of grenade would only explode upon impact. This might be the first type of grenade strong enough to punch a (small) hole in the hull of a UFO.

- Warbler grenade: Made for light anti-personnel work, nobody wants to be near a warbler grenade when it goes off, because of the high-pitched and very loud "screaming" it emits. Can daze and disorient targets unlucky enough to be near it for a few minutes.

- Fusion grenades: Using nuclear fusion technology, this type of grenade would far outpace it's older cousin by an order of magnitude. This type of grenade might be another capable of punching a hole in the hull of a UFO, and have enough punch to neutralize several targets nearby as well.

- "Hell" grenades: Using a few molecules of anti-matter, this type of grenade would likely be the strongest (easily equivalent to the Alien Grenade of the original XCOM, or even the Blaster Launcher), as far as pure explosive power.

[Winter]

Winter, it seems as if you're trying to stay true to the original XCOM games as far as weaponry scaling, while also trying to stay true to realistic physics.

That's about it in a nutshell. Thanks for your list, it will certainly prove helpful -- grasers for the aliens is an idea that I'm certainly interested in -- but I can't help feeling that there must be some kind of weapon that would fire bright bolts of energy/matter/whatever. It just seems right for there to be one.

I'm still leaning towards the idea of an incendiary round that heats up on impact, or even a bullet composed of two compounds that start off a chain reaction as soon as they're brought into contact, which on impact begins reacting with the atoms of the target. This would make a pretty good armour-piercing or at least armour-destroying round.

Sorry if it seems like I'm clutching at straws here, but if I'm to change the plasma weapon writeups I want to avoid needing a change of particles if at all possible -- people would not be very happy with me in that event. And in my opinion even a distant plausibility is preferable to a non-plausibility.

Regards,
Winter

[Zixinus]

Where A is the device, B is the plasma, and C is the target. So now you have to come up with a reason to add this efficiency-sapping middleman.

Well, my mind has a strange idea. I don't know if it has any real basis, I don't know how material and heat interact.

The idea is simple: to pierce armour.

Lasers can be diffracted and mirrored, heat generated by lasers can also be conducted away. If you create a plasma shock on the armour however, the shock can go right trough the armour and cause internal damage.

That's my idea anyway.

[Zixinus]

Quick correction: Plasma-induced.