Explaining Laser Weapons in Space Combat

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Wow, never thought I would see our game NEBULOUS: Fleet Command in a Spacedock video, what a cool feeling. The clip you showed is actually of our anti-ship particle beams, but we do use traditional lasers for anti-missile point defense. Thanks for including us!

In Nebulous:Fleet Command (one of the footage sources of the vid), in-game descriptions place emphasis on that the big, anti-ship things aren't lasers, they're beam weapons that siphon off material from ship's reactor cores. They emit a very fast plasma beam that ablates material. In-Game, they're the shortest range, highest engergy intensity and deadliest weapons, shewing through most ships in literal seconds but needing dedicated strategies and ship builds to work.

Glad to see Children of a Dead Earth getting even a short bit of exposure on this channel.

Space engineers! Less gooo

Laser weapons are the primary space combat weapon in the Kris Longknife book series. Earlier in the series most warships use a layer of ice as ablative armor against laser attacks. Ships engage while rotating at 10-20 RPM to prevent burn-through down to the hull, causing most hits to carve long spirals into the ice instead of substantial damage. There are even some instances of ships intentionally melting their own ice armor as emergency cooling to give their lasers a higher rate of fire.

As far as heat is concerned, I once read lasers described as furnaces which happen to produce coherent light as a byproduct. The exact quote is on Atomic Rockets.

"A tiny bit horribly toxic" is one of those golden deadpan joke moments I love.

Even the one used in the Expanse wasn't a weapon. It was a comm system that they ramped up to eleven in order to get through the barrier and it nearly burnt out.

Absolutely love the inclusion of Space Engineers clips. Fantastic game for scratching your creative star ship itch and then blowing up the result. Praise Lord Klang!

I'd be very interested to see a Spacedock episode on the Starship Operators anime. It's a show with a much more "hard sci-fi" look at space combat than a lot of other shows.

Love seeing Legend of the Galactic Heroes being shown off. The show needs more love and the books are great.

When energy weapons you use and sensors that can detect their use work on same velocities, it creates an interesting "dark forest" scenarios for every encounter.

i really like what Timothy Zahn did with the Chiss “Spectrum Laser” weaponry in the Thrawn: Ascendancy trilogy. He understood how the main benefit of the weapons were heat exchange, and one thing that the Chiss would do would be to launch “Breacher” missiles at a target, loaded with strong acid that would have an effect of darkening and pitting the armour of an enemy warship so that the Lasers would be more readily absorbed by the target. elsewise, the Chiss would adjust the frequency of their lasers so that they would be better absorbed by the target depending. really more felt like a more thought out take on Star Wars weapons than seen elsewhere

Ahh, can't believe two of my favourite space combat games, Nebulous and COADE, got featured at once in a Spacedock episode. Today is a good day.

I love seeing Legend of the Galactic Heroes getting more coverage, its such a fantastic sci fi show with a great setting, great characters, and a very well written plot. I mean hell, both sides of the war actually have competent leaders, which means more often than not, battles are very close affairs with both sides conducting well thought out strategies in order to gain just the tiniest advantage and turn the battle.

Love that you used the Omega class destroyer for the thumbnail. One of my favourite starships.

Nice legend of the Galactic Heroes opening

Great explanation of Lasers. Exactly like the post I did some time ago. Nailed it. Also, i like the "Smoke Screen" Effect like it was used in Gundam. But not Gas, small foil and metal would do the trick for a short time. Then depending on the Universe you can use it for maneuvering or dogging behind it and make the space fight more tactical. Also you forgott the Option to Use a Laser to "Cook" an enemy Ship. The beam does not need to be focused. My Physic Prof told me Laser do heat transfer 2 to 1. So if you could cool two times more than your opponent. You can cook him in his tin can.

Can we get some breakdowns for the war vessels of in Legend of the Galactic Heroes series? Love that series and happy to see them used as examples here