quote:
Originally posted by JDL:
The beam/pulse weapons are the HEART of any scifi genre.
Erm, I must beg to differ. Certainly they're the heart of MANY scifi settings, but by no means all. To wit: Joe Haldman's (sp?) classic
The Forever War, Dan Simmon's
Hyperion works, and the Honor Hartigan (sp?) series (at least, that's what I gather... I never managed to stomach more than 50 pages or so of it myself). I'm sure there are plenty of others, but these were what sprang to mind.
Frankly, it depends on your view of engagement ranges and ship speeds. If we take the engagement ranges to be the paltry things they appear to be, and the speeds to be as minute as the lack of concern about acceleration and turning
implys them to be, your argument in favor of beams has some validity. However, if we assume longer ranges and/or closer to reletivistic speeds, beams become far less practical, as they can't correct their aim...