EVE Fiction

I wouldn't say one is more advanced than the other. They're just two sepparate roads in the weapon technology development. It's like saying, "what is more advanced, a sword or a shield?"

The main issue both have is the power problem. The technology to generate an energy beam isn't hideously complex; neither is the technology to use electromagnets to fling a block of iron or to accelerate some ionized particles across the room.

The real trick is figuring out how to generate, then dump a sqintillion jiggavolts of power into the system over a very short period of time to weaponize it without generating enough waste heat to turn the unit into a small sun in the process.

Projectiles use stored chemical energy; explosives can hold a LOT of power and dump it out quite fast, even if their theoretical maximum velocity is actually slower than an interceptor. I just assume that projectile ammo has internal guidance and such in the ammo, since the much more gentle (to the bullet) action of being accelerated by an expanding gas wouldn't scramble gimmickery in the bullet like the EMP experienced by a railgun or coilgun. (which work under completely different principles) We see that, I think, in the variability available in projectile ammo.

the power density problem is also, by the way, a reason why electric cars are seen as a problem by many transportation scientists; the fact that people power their car by pouring explosives into it, and nothing else, means that people don't have a good concept of just how much energy they use driving around. There is no region anywhere in the world with an electrical generation capacity anywhere near to enough to withstand transferring the modern car driving demand onto the grid.

When railguns were looked at during WWII, it was concluded that they were feasible, but would require more electricity to use a single railgun effectively than was available if they tapped all the power generating capacity in London, and they couldn't come up with a cap that could handle it. That is, the power requirements per shot for a single small railgun were bigger than the maximum capacitor for the entire U.K, let alone trying for cap stable.

Yeah i understand where you are coming from on the final point. Cheers.

It is amazing that Humans have not yet developed the units to create such massive amounts of power. I thought about the weapons question when I was watching Stargate, in the show there is a race called the Asgard whose most advanced weapons are similar to blasters, but the difference being off course that their turrets fire a steady beam of plasma and not the separate bolts the Gallente race do.

Even the projectile weapons in New Eden are highly advanced. The principles behind them are simplistic, but the weapons themselves are not. They're probably not as "advanced" as hybrids, but they're still pretty advanced.

I'd actually probably declare missiles to be the most advanced weapon system, because there's a missile which deals ONLY kinetic damage. How does that even work?

http://forgifs.com/gallery/d/207098-1/Boxing-glove-rocket-launcher.gif

rocket science

Hmmm... You've made me uncertain now. Can't remember where I got it from.

While i agree to the whole sentence there is one major flaw in it: the choice of units. Volts are a units for electric potential or electromotive force, and not for power. For power we use the other units, named in honorary of a guy called James Watt and are related to energy as speed is related to distance (i.e. energy per second). Although technically, dumping energy with certain amount of power into system over a certain amount of time will result in what you have described.

This, however, can be (and is and will most likely still be in any foreseeable future) solved with the use of capacitors. Capacitors are the things that can store the energy till it is needed. And generally you can charge them much slower than they can be discharged, thus requiring less power to charge them with the expence of much longer charging time, hence eliminating the need for mega-powerful energy generators. Also, while you can use a hamster-powered generator to charge railgun's capacitor, one would require an enormous amount of either hamsters or time to accomplish this feat. And it does still leave the problem of delivering the power from capacitor to the weapon itself.

The particular problem is partially alleviated with the laser designs where the laser medium can act as a capacitor for itself, railguns as we know them today do require a separate capacitor to power them. And yes, there are working prototypes for lasers, railguns, particle blasters and many-many other sci-fi weapons, but the main issue with them is the sheer size of those things.

There are also some theories floating around that we actually may not be able to weaponize the laser to the point described in sci-fi works where one can be used to cut up a ship into smaller pieces over great distances due to limitations to laser beam strength as stated here and you can find more here.

Sorry for the double-post, i just didn't fit into a single one...


To be purely purely technical, there are kinetic, thermal and EM. Thermal energy can be transferred by means of thermal radiation, convection and/or direct contact, but there are no medium for convection in space, that only leaves radiation and direct contact. And thermal radiation is a subset of the electromagnetic spectrum along with radio waves, microwaves, visible light, x-ray, gamma rays and etc. And there also can be EM effects that affect and damage electronic components.

In my opinion, the damage type specifications in EVE universe are most likely based on the damage effects, not what caused it.

Explosive damage are most likely based on pressure shockwaves generated by an explosion (with or without shrapnels) that can result in shattering, deformation of and/or spalling on armor surfaces and must be analogous to the HE (high-explosive) weapons of real-life, such as gun/tank/artillery shells, bombs, grenades and many more. And yes, explosions in space do generate pressure shockwaves, albeit smaller to a degree, due to absence of media such as gas or liquids, but nonetheless dangerous in close proximity.

Kinetic damage, on the other hand, looks like an armor-piercing effect, also employed widely in real life weaponry.

Thermal damage is also pretty-much straight-forward. It heats up the surfaces to melt through/break away the structural parts and cause damage by this. This would be the main damage effect of modern combat lasers and thermite compouds.

EM damage would be most likely the result of very high intensity electromagnetic fields that can cause significant amount of damage to electronic components within a ship, and since most EVE ships use nanite strcutures to repair armor on the go that can get easily damaged after exposure to such EM fields.

If we were to apply the real-life analogies to ingame armor tanks, the damage effects and their ability to damage armor in particular actually make sense if we're to take the armor's base resistances to such damage types. One point, however, must be mentioned, the HE vs AP effects on armor. It's widely known that AP is the stuff you go for if you want to cause damage to the armor, however, if we're to take the whole system in consideration, a proper explosion can actually cause more damage to internal systems that lie just below the armor than a similarly-powered AP shell due to deformations, internal shockwaves and/or spalling.

Now, i didn't mention ship's shield because there are no modern analogs to systems like that at the moment, so i leave it all to your imagination, though since shields are most likely based on electronic components, they should be most susceptible to EM damage.

As for purely kinetic missiles, that's easy: imagine a two-stage missile that deploys a second stage in close proximity to a target, and that second stage is actually nothing but a big shell round on a powerful yet simple engine that can accelerate the said shell to high velocity needed for an AP impact within a matter of few miliseconds, burning all fuel in the process. Such missile would actually cause damage similar to AP shells, but with benefit of being fully-guided for a guaranteed hit.
update: or what Katran Luftschreck linked

on topic: I agree with CCP Eterne, missiles are the most advanced weapons of EVE universe.

I was looking at it the other way, but I suppose that makes a lot more sense. EVE has a lot of different ways of killing each other. HE-AP rounds, plasma-ladened warheads, antimatter charges...it's all pretty good stuff. I just wish they'd let use use space-mines in nullsec.