I hope colour varies by individual model, independent of size, with House militaries favouring models in factional colours- not hard and fast, but a general trend; the Lushann Redbeam should probably be red, for example, despite not being particularly common in Kurita territory. I think it would be a really nice change of pace for colour to be independent so that players can make cosmetic choices regarding laser colour instead of being stuck with the colour that represents the size of laser they need, or better yet have colour reflect the territory from which the weapon originally came- I'm sure lots of Davion boys would love to show off all the red beams they "liberated" from Draconis oppression, for example.
It seems to be more inline with canon, since it looks like authors just went with whatever colour they like in any scene. Use the duration of the discharge cycle, width of the beam and/or whatever else to differentiate the different sizes, probably like autocannon and such. I'd also be fine with the MW2 scheme simply for nostalgia's sake, and as noted the concept art at least suggests that, so I am probably going to be pleased anyway.
irishwarrior, on 02 November 2011 - 06:49 PM, said:
The lasers being fired by 'Mechs would really not have any color, from what I understand - it's not in the visible spectrum, because visible light isn't going to burn through anything. The impression I got is that the color seen by the pilots is like a present-day tracer round - it lets you see where your shot is going, and how to correct if you're missing. Going with that theory, I almost wonder if the Devs could go with House colors for your lasers, to make it easier to differentiate friend from foe in combat - if you're Kurita and you see someone firing red lasers, you'd know they were on your side. Same with gold for Davion, blue for Steiner, purple for Marik, and green for Liao. Not sure how that idea would work with the Free Rasalhague Republic, though, since they share blue with Steiner...
Visible light will burn through anything if you use enough, the only qualitative barrier is using a wavelength too long to interact with your target. Shorter-wavelength phota carry more energy, which means you need more energy to generate them so it evens out. (in a vacuum, there are more interesting factors but that's not for Mechwarrior) The "strongest" frequency to use is whatever happens to be produced by the material that lets you get the most output from whatever kind of laser design you're using. Visible light is particularly likely to be the most efficient for tearing up armor, or for easy generation of laser light, BUT there's a very good reason that for all the times eyes have evolved on this planet, this narrow range in the EM spectrum is very popular. Visible light penetrates our atmosphere pretty well, without being scattered too much to let us use it for passive sensors. That penetration is useful for a weapon to operate in atmosphere, so it makes sense for a futuristic laser weapon for ground warfare to use wavelengths in this neighborhood; not necessarily visible to our eyes, so using something just out of our sight would be worth the tactical advantage at power levels too low to mess with the atmosphere enough to notice.
As for beam size, I'd like realistic beam geometry for laser weapons rather than cylindrical. The idea is that you want to generate your beam at an intensity that does not melt your optics, which means unless your beam converges some it's not gonna be very productive. Convergence also increases range, since it doesn't start diverging until it reaches optimum range and a perfectly cylindrical beam wouldn't stay that way for long if you tried to push it through air at energy levels that would superheat it. I can most easily interpret the visible effect as a "tracer," (because it's not blindingly bright) so it's not gonna bother me much; with the kind of adaptive optics a serious laser weapon needs, size-coding might even be
easier than colour-coding.
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