Why do laser weapons have a recoil penalty?

[Marian]

HI

I know that the Laser weapons is a main topic here but we could see larger picture.

All weapons should be customizable: by adding/changind scope, gun barrel, weapon magazine, weapons battery.

For ballistic weapon I would like to see in the first place research which allow me to install scope on rifle, or laser scope on pistol  ... but I the second think is ammo, AP munition for armored alliens, dum - dum munition for non armored alliens. The next think should be increasing the muzzle velocity of the bullet to provide more damage and range.

Laser weapon should be huge step ahead, so first we could have prototype laser weapon, they would be clunky and primitive with no additional feactures, this stage ends when weapon will be used in combat conditions, next step should increasing laser weapon battery so we can fire more shots,  next will you give access to customization of weapons by replacing its basic parts.  Next step give us additional possibilities by replacing the barrel and battery with ones that generate additional damage, e.g. from fire or increase armor penetration or other ... .     Final step leading to maximizing the damage of a given weapon, in the case of laser weapons, they cause the laser color to change to a more energetic color from red through green to blue ? (I don't know which color of light is more energetic, so the order is probably different).    The laser should be replaced by a phaser, i.e. a multi-frequency laser.

[gG-Unknown]

double double post - delete me

Edited October 30, 2023 by gG-Unknown

[gG-Unknown]

double post, delete me

Edited October 30, 2023 by gG-Unknown

[gG-Unknown]

15 hours ago, Jeevika said:

 

In video games, laser guns usually incur a recoil penalty to keep things realistic and balanced. Lasers don't recoil physically like guns do, but it's incorporated for a challenge in gameplay and to bring energy-based weaponry up to level with conventional ballistic weapons.

 

You are saying the same, I said few post above. Then some excited forum member got seizure.

Advantage of lasers having no recoil have to be offset by other disadvantage. In case of lazy game dev, you make weapon balancing by simply keep all ballistic mechanic (recoil) just change graphical&sound effects from boom-boom to pew-pew.

When applying physicaly correct no-recoil advantage, it should be correct to apply physically correct disadvantage -

lasers lose energy by range, a lot faster than ballistic. Lets take ballistic range of a weapon ( for example pistol) then apply damage range reduction 10% per tile. It means,  on the last tile of the weapon range, laser pistol delivers only 10% dmg of the base dmg. So laser weapons have the same range, technically, but their DPS at range is low.

On top of this, laser are physically very susceptible to smoke >  every tile of smoke reduces dmg by 30%. When two soldiers stand face to face in smoke and shoot lasers, it counts as 1 tile of smoke.

Add rain or mist to some maps, then rain counts as smoke regarding laser weapons range reduction.

Result is, lasers are great in short range and clean environment.

Edited October 30, 2023 by gG-Unknown

[Komandos]

On 10/29/2023 at 8:44 PM, Jeevika said:

In video games, laser guns usually incur a recoil penalty to keep things realistic and balanced.

In the name of "realism" and "balance", a laser weapon can be an exact replica of a ballistic weapon with a ballistic trajectory. But there is no tactical diversity in this. And there are no unique properties of laser weapons in this.

[Alienkiller]

Laser Weapons normaly don´t have an Recoil or only an very light Recoil about several big advantages to normal Weapons / advanced normal Weapons:

1. they don´t use springs (Standard-Pistols, Standard-Rifles etc.), gas Spring (upgraded Standard-Pistols, upgraded Standard-Rifles etc.) or accelerated magnets (like Coil-Guns in XCOM 2 or Xenonauts 2).

2. they aren´t using an Round-Clips (like 7,62 or 9 mm Ammo-Bullets) where the Round have an drall to hit the wrong target or the wrong Body-Part (like the Head instead the legs).

3. they are with the correct Technology much lighter then the Recoil-Base-Weapons, which means they are lighter to handle.

All which have done their perforce military Year or in some Countrys Years know what I mean. There the Technology give lighter to handle Weapons over the Years then the heavy Pistols, Rifles, AT-Weapons, mobile MGs etc. with a lot of reduction to the recoil. There the Recoil could reduced a little with the Up-to-Date Gas Spring-Weapons and evtl. again with the accelerated Magnet Weapons, where get researched already. But they won´t reduce the Recoil to an Engery-Weapon-Level.

If you all have played the old X-COM-Series, new XCOM-Series and UFO 1 ET with the Laser-Weapons or in UFO 1 ET more advanced light to handle Engery-Weapons know what I mean. There the Hit-Chance raised a lot about the big Advantages to Weapons with normal Bullets / Round-Clips.

Edited November 2, 2023 by Alienkiller

[mclang]

I think all lasers should be beams, very accurate and have the damage reduction logic talked earlier.

Maybe Laser MG just has the space to have more cooling and better battery so that it can fire more powerful beam and keep it on longer so that the soldier can sweep with it thus creating burst like area suppression effect?

 

[ooey]

maybe the recoil advantage could be offset by taking a longer time to charge to fire (i.e. equivalent to more TV or action points). Or maybe a weight penalty over ballistic weapons (heavy charge coils/cooling fins or something). Or maybe both. There's always a way!

Perhaps lasers are no good against armoured targets and cause less damage than ballistic weaponry, but more accurate (as many have said).

Xen 2 has to avoid the Heavy Plasma trap in UFO: EU because once you got these you didn't really need anything else. From what I have seen so far, Chris seems to have taken this into account.

Edited November 9, 2023 by ooey