How do you describe Energy Weapons in your games?

[LostOne]

Here's how we go in our games, just curious how people treat them in theirs.

Plasma: Bolts of orange-white light, almost like enlarged tracer rounds, hot enough you can feel the heat from them even if they miss you by a wide margin.

Ion: directed lightning (I go with the theory that an SDC laser is fired to ionize a path through the air for the lightning to travel down).

Particle Beam: We never have settled on this one, usually gets lumped in with ion.

Laser: invisible to the naked eye, but pretty much all modern optics can see it. The naked eye can see it impact with various effects depending on what the material it hits is.

[glitterboy2098]

usually it doesn't come up, but i've always saw the following:

Plasma weapons: like the Jaffa Staff weapons from Stargate. complete with sound effects and explosions on impact. fairly reasonable given the nature of plasma.

Ion Weapons/Particle beam weapons: practically invisible streaks, with small explosions and cherkonov radiation when it hits. (pull trigger, target goes boom. the beam moves too fast for the eye to see any time lag.)

lasers: just an afterimage left on the eye, caused by scattered light from the beam passing through air. the impact results in explosions as the beam super-heats the matter, leaving a ragged hole with burns/glowing hot material at it's edges. (go watch the original BSG, and look at the pistol lasers. same basic idea. pull trigger, target goes boom. no visible beam or time lag.)

in all three cases, the imapcts are not clean (they basically flash-boil organic matter on impact from heat causing it to blow like a balloon, and cause concussive damage from flash-vaporization explosions on most everything else)

the bolts/beams move too fast to be tracked by the eye, the best you can do is see the afterimage left on the retina (sorta like a camera flash).

this is why it's so hard to dodge energy weapons. you can't dodge the beam/bolt, you have to dodge the guys aim before he pulls the trigger.

[LostOne]

Intense. Why are we, IRL, trying to invent these things before we invent the armor that will protect me from them?

What good is having armor to protect against it if there is nothing to protect against yet?

But rather than derail the thread, why don't you share with us how your game handles these energy weapon descriptions?

[Jefffar]

Flash lights with an F/X budget.

Railguns are the real killers.

[Shadyslug]

I make funny sounds when energy weapons fire...

[Shiva7]

excelerators or accelerators?

[Dog_O_War]

I like flash and effects and such, so weapons fire will have them.

Lasers~ These are visible to the naked eye, and offer a fading red line of light from weapon to impact-spot. With a blue/green mod. the beam is blue or green (fresh or salt, heh). These give off a very low hum, which builds slightly in volume when fired.

Ion weapons~ This type of weapon fires a thin white light(laser) which carries a line of yellow/purple lightning in its wake, similar to dust being caught in the concussion wave of an explosion. This is an audible weapon, offering a low, localized "thunder" clap. Truely the weapon of the gods.

Plasma~ Screw the Babylon5 effects, This is a bluey-purplish-white mote of energy with a dissipating "tail" of heat which is actually various particles being burned up as it travels. The sound is that of a near-viscous ejection of materials (which falls in line with most of our "primitive" human plasma weapons being labled "ejectors").

Particle Beams~ An extremely quick build-up of blue-white light, often from a wide beam becoming narrow, or focused (think SOL. from Akira, but obviously magnitudes faster). Sound is similar to that of a laser, but louder.

Rail-guns~ (because they're covered under heavy energy WP) The effect is dependant on the manufacturer. For myself, Northern Gun and other non-coalition/non-Triax/NGR offer the same visual effect as the gun from Eraser - a green-smoking dull-silver metal sliver that looks like a javelin in length it is travelling so fast. CG/NGR rail-guns offer the same dull-silver metal sliver, but do so with half the smoke (and not green); this is due to the composition of the metal the various rail-rounds use. All are accentuated by a satisfying bang and kick from the blasting charge used to give the round its initial accelleration. Obviously there is a sonic boom attached; these are going far faster than the speed of sound!

[runebeo]

my group has it that most energy weapon make no noise unless people want the noise upgrade, but large energy weapon make noise as their generators power up with a large hum. We have laser fire look like the way the do in star wars. I got to say I find it hard to think of laser fire without the movie noises thou.

[Shadyslug]

Well...what I usually do is say "Dude's shooting at you." Then I roll the dice. Then I say "He hit you for X amount of damage."

[dark brandon]

We never really talked about it, except for lasers IG.

Lasers: Star wars.

My personal views when I "see" in my minds eye these items firing.

Plasma: Mega man blast- Red fireball

Ion: A sharp purple-ish Flame

Particle beam: A blue mega man blast.

Rail Guns: Sound like a marine gun in Star craft.

[Pepsi Jedi]

Plasma: "PLEW----FOOSH!" Out shoots a blob of superheated liquid/gas that looks like a firy red/purple lozenge. When it hits it "Splashes" and burns though. Kicks like a mule.

Ion: "ZZzzaak!" A white beam so quick that you think you saw it more than you actually saw it. As someone above said a sort of 'after image' sort of deal. I don't see it as lightning at all. When it hits you get some static discharge. No Kick.

Particle Beam: "Zaap" (( more crisp ending than the Ion Zark")) A SOLID beam, from gun to target, in bright colors. For Particle Beams I usually see them as a deep crimson. You pull the trigger, a deep crimson beam connects your gun barrel to target for a second till you let off the trigger. Very slight kick. Not so much a kick as you can feel the push of the beam.

Laser: "click" (( Notice the lower case)). click. The sound of the trigger being depressed. Lasers make no more noise when you shoot them than your flash light makes when you turn it on. You can buy the one's with sound effects. Sure. People like them. But if you're in real battle you turn it off. And if you're using weapons that could in theory destroy an modern battle tank with one blast, you don't advertise where you are shooting it from. No kick what so ever. No more than your flashlight kicks when you turn it on.

For the visual, I'd think lasers move too fast (( well the others do too, but yeah)) If anything, at night, or in dusty conditions where the beam might be refracted you might see a bright after image in the style of a tracer round. for the "blue/green" Lasers introduced in Underseas I change this a little and have little zips of green light fly from your laser and hit the target. I know people will scream but the easiest visual would be GI Joe cartoons from when we were kids. Take those and speed them up by about 10 times. You still baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarly see it. You mostly THINK you see it. Your eyes tell your mind "I think I saw a little blip of green light shoot from me to my target" and your brain goes "Mmmmmm I don't think you did" and your eyes go "No really man! It was wicked!!" and your brain goes "Well we're in a firefight for our lives so I'm not going to think about it too terribly much. Shoot some more, yeah?!"

(( As a side note... my Character's lasers tend to all be green/blue ones. The one's that aren't my char's have modified so they are. I just like the visual myself. We've never to my memory played seriously under water and other than one dramatic fight in the Mississippi, not in the water alot period. ))


Railgun: "WHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!" I think they were described best in one of the old robotech books, like 1000 buzz saws all at once then a loud report as the flechettes break the sound barrier (( many times all at once)) you don't see them in the air any more than you see a bullet in the air, but you sure see um hit. Just like you'd see a shot gun hit an apple at close range.
Kicks like a mother fornicator. In fact you better be a borg or a juicer or in some kinda armor or just a BIIIIIIIIIG motherfraker to use these bare hand.

[The Baron of chaos]

Plasma - Pespis Jedi description fit perfectly how I envision them in my game, except that plasma is more PPPTH-chooom sound when show and FWOOSHH on impact.

Ion: Is essentially a globular lighitng shooter, like laser has no recoil, or negligible on. emit a crackling sound like a taser, and emit a white-bluish beam of energy with slight crackel of elecrictity along its line. But is damn fast and you generally miss it during battle. Is still more visible thant laser beams

Particle Beam: Disliek other energy weapons do have recoil albeit a light one, the beam is solid color albeit with some small shapeless spots of lighter color into it(the classical "kirby" beam). Sound is just a click followed by slightltly metallic screech.

Laser I want just to add that you actually see a laser blast only in case of pulse blast, with the many laser pulse coming one after another and heating the gas of atmospher as the travel. And that laser color depend from the manufacturer, on quality of the lens and the gas used in generating the light beam.

Railgun are noisy, and Pepsi Jedi described perfectly the sound, but as for laser, soudn differ slightly between railguns and expert can tell the difference between a coalition railgun and Norther Gun ones just by sound onle( Every gun has its voice...), bullet are impossible to see, but leave a trail of overheated air, due immense friction.