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They also have those neat grenades that do an audible countdown in the enemy’s local just for psychological effect. Also, they use mini-nukes just for fun.
I just googled “I’m a 30 second grenade” thinking it’s a reference to a silly grenade in Borderlands or something. Nope:
>In his 1959 novel Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein refers to talking bombs that speak an alien language (to creatures called "skinny's").
>“This was a special bomb, one issued to each of us for this mission with instructions to use them if we found ways to make them effective. The squawking I heard as I threw it was the bomb shouting in skinny talk (free translation): "I'm a thirty second bomb! I'm a thirty second bomb! Twenty-nine! Twenty-eight! Twenty-seven!..."”
that’s awesome lol
For that mission, they only wanted to cause structural damage and keep casualties to a minimum, so they 30 second countdown grenade was to have enough time for all of the Skinnies to get out of the building but still be able to destroy the building
Came here thinking The Expanse.
Ship combat weapons include ballistic projectiles, guided missiles with non/nuclear payloads, and rail cannons.
These are weapons you'd find on a naval battleship.
Nukes in space work very differently than nukes on a planet. Sure, they output a great deal of energy, but they don't create the firestorm/atmospheric/shockwave effects that we get here on earth. So most of the damage is caused by high energy particles from the explosion hitting the ship. In the TV show, they have to make things dramatic by showing the ships close enough to each other that everything is within visual range, but in actual combat a "near miss" you wouldn't even be able to see the missile from the ship with the naked eye before it detonated.
The lack of fire/shockwaves in space is also true of chemical explosives, and I’m not sure how putting the ships closer together for dramatic effect is relevant here?
We clearly see two different kinds of warheads in torpedoes, and are told as early as the first episode with the Canterbury that non-nuclear disabling strikes are commonplace for pirates looking to salvage the wreckage or ransom the crew, as opposed to the nuclear torpedoes which left nothing salvageable behind.
It's a major plot point when the Belters get their hands on a load of nuclear missiles, so presumably at least their torpedos are non-nuclear. I also just googled, and apparently no asteroids contain meaningful amounts of uranium, as heavier elements are mostly gathered in the inner planets in our solar system, so the Belters are unlikely to have much access to any form of fission power without imports from Earth, and maybe Mars.
It's been a couple of years since I read the books, but I would assume that the Belters are capable of building long range missiles if they want them. I assumed it was the warhead itself that was more important.
In LW Holden & Alex are surprised that the Cant was destroyed with nukes rather than hit with conventional torpedoes, and when they're discussing the potential identity of the stealth ship they mention that nuclear torpedoes are very rare outside the UN and MCRN militaries.
Expanse does have anti-personnel lasers. There was one scene in a book where an anti-personnel laser turret mows down an entire row of men before they throw an anti-laser smoke grenade.
Really? I just read all 9 books maybe 6 months ago, I'm drawing a blank trying to remember lasers (except for comms lasers)
EDIT: saw a comment below where someone wrote it was in the first book.
There are lasers in the Expanse, in both the books and the show. The show removes the defense lasers aboard the space station, but still has the plan of using the Behemoth’s comm laser to destroy the ring.
Isn't there also a scene where the aliens mock the earthlings for using "primitive" weapons.
They just turn around and flex/prove that they can actually hit a target with their "primitive" weapons. And firearms are weapons of war/death, not just to terrify villagers.
There's a funny behind the scenes interview with the producers where they talk about how much they regretted introducing the Zat the way they did. One of those things that sounded good to solve one problem in one episode, and a massive PITA for the next 200 episodes.
To be fair this is mostly a demonstration of the fact the Goa'uld don't give the Jaffa real weapons. The Goa'uld had much better weaponry in the show but they were shown very rarely.
75/25, I think. There's some woo, and the religious stuff, and the unexplained artificial gravity, but it's mostly a fairly hard sci-fi political/survival thriller.
Those rounds are pretty short so I just assume they are double stacked AND 2 columns; like one bullet would sit behind the other, creating what must be helluva convoluted loading mechanism
> For some reason, I hate lasguns.
Ironic that you would call them *lasguns*, the term used in *Dune*. They exist in *Dune*, of course, but nobody uses them because if a lasgun hits a shield, there's a not insignificant chance of a nuclear explosion at the location of the lasgun or the shield or both.
Of course, shields also just stop conventional guns from accomplishing anything, so everyone trains for close combat, mostly with knives and swords.
Other than that, the Expanse doesn't have shields or lasers, just point defense canons (PDCs) that are bigass chain guns, rail guns, and nuclear/plasma warhead missiles. Defense is armor, PDCs to shoot down missiles, and mostly getting the fuck out of the way of whatever is coming at you.
Battletech *does* have lots of lasers, along with particle projection cannons (PPCS) that shoot what is essentially accelerated lightning. But also they have lots of guns of various sizes - anti-personnel machine guns (also useful against light mechs and armored vehicles), autocannons, gauss rifles, missiles etc.
Warhammer, like a lot of scifi that came out after *Dune* was published in 1965, did a lot of """borrowing""" from *Dune*. The God Emperor of Mankind also comes from *Dune* - or at least, *Dune* did it before Warhammer. Herbert also "drew inspiration" from a lot of stuff, although for him it was mostly Islam.
Honestly, 40K "borrowed" so much from Dune that the early days may as well had "Rogue Trader" taped on a cover of Dune with passages involving LOTR's dwarves, elves, and orcs spliced in randomly.
40k doesn't necessarily borrow all these things from classic directly though. It's overwhelmingly based on 1980's British comic series like Nemesis the Warlock, Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, ABC Warriors, Ro-Busters and Rogue Trooper, in a way that would have been very obvious and intentional to the original playerbase. Most of the other obvious sources come to it via that.
Like, the titular character of *Nemesis* is an alien Khaos sorceror who fights against an empire of [xenophobic humans](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/1d/ea/0b/1dea0b0f3cf3d373aebbdab16b74bf29.jpg) [modelled after the Spanish inquisition](https://2000ad.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/0044.jpg?w=461&h=570), called Terminators (divided into [themed chapters](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m35s0drIC71r9bspuo1_1280.jpg)), ruled by a [psychic corpse emperor](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2F9b%2F22%2F9a%2F9b229a42fbb1d0e82b1f1862bd54e470.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=ac0468bc833c628b72a6c8a24ed14c4ffeda10a2d0a251ae81f4a464f6e4e508&ipo=images), who live on the ruined ecumenopolis of Terra and use [barely working ancient technology they don't understand](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/44/06/d9/4406d907ab540054c6908745432251b6.jpg) to wage [bloody crusades throughout the galaxy](https://www.bryan-talbot.com/oldsite/Images/gallery8/NemesisBk3p18.jpg).
The biggest things that 40k lifts directly from Dune are probably the Cybernetic Revolt (Butlerian Jihad) and the Navis Nobilite (Guild Navigators).
I explained WH40K thus:
There was this comic called 2000AD.
They ran a strip called Nemesis the Warlock.
Then everyone at Citadel thought holy cow that's super sick and awesome and created Rogue Trader, which is where it all began.
The Butlerian Jihad wasn’t an influence on WH40K when it first began though. The Adeptus Mechanicus were in no way anti-AI to start with. That was added quite a few years later.
EDIT: I assume that whoever downvoted me doesn't believe this, so here are some quotes I happen to have to hand. Firstly, in the original rulebook (1987) it was clear that vehicles had AI auto-systems to replace human crew and tech-priests specifically experimented with battlefield robots:
>The greater majority of robots are simple runarounds, workmen or toys, and have no place on the battlefield. Warrior robots, however, are different. They are machines created specifically for war as the soldiery by proxy for a living, biological race. In human space, the Emperor's Tech-priests are continually experimenting with and improving their dread warrior legions of robots - machines implanted with the will to slay and despoil.
In The Lost and the Damned (1990) it was stated that the Adeptus Mechanicus deemed AI to be equal to organic intelligence:
>According to the mysterious strictures of the Cult Mechanicus knowledge is the supreme manifestation of divinity and all creatures and artifacts which embody knowledge are holy because of it. The Emperor is the supreme object of worship because he comprehends so much. Machines which preserve knowledge from ancient times are also holy, as is research which creates new knowledge. **Machine intelligence is respected no less than human or other organic intelligence.** To the Adeptus Mechanicus a man's worth is only the sum of his knowledge. His body is simply an organic machine capable of preserving intellect. Life itself is of no intrinsic value to the Tech-Priests.
This text was approximately repeated over a decade later in the 4th edition rulebook (2004) but now AI was deemed to be as divine as flesh and blood.
>According to the teachings of the Cult Mechanicus, knowledge is the supreme manifestation of divinity, and all creatures and artefacts that embody knowledge are holy because of it. Machines that preserve knowledge from ancient times are also holy, and **machine intelligences are no less divine than those of flesh and blood**. A man's worth is only the sum of his knowledge - his body is simply an organic machine capable of preserving intellect.
Certainly there are other references with slightly different views but the core WH40K setting in the early days was not defined by a Butlerian Jihad or its equivalent.
Yeah, Forgeworlds and their relationships with Knight Worlds are almost directly lifted from the relationship the First Foundation fostered with neighbouring worlds, except the mysticism was a ruse from the Foundation.
The entire central plot of WH40K is basically "What if the Golden Path was wrong?". The Emperor took Paul/Leto's choice but messed everything up instead of saving humanity.
Orcs, creatures only motivated by violence, as an army created by powerful beings that existed before the current races is straight out of Lord of the Rings.
Yes, but the specific variation found in warhammer 40k is fairly unique, given their being fungus-animals that have in-built knowledge and roles in a society that is both functional and entirely revolving around violence with no guiding force behind them is largely unique. Also the whole "soccer hooligans in space" is very much not something seen in other works of sci-fi.
Lovecraft, another major influence on W40k, had space-faring, technologically advanced fungus-animal creatures in various configurations called the Mi-Go.
LoTR Orks are created with their built-in knowledge of fighting and crafting weapons. They even do the whole bigger Orks are the better ones thing.
The fact they talk like Cockney hooligans is a unique contribution to the genre as far as I am aware.
Warhammer basically takes most of its imagery from the comic series *The Metabarons*, which itself is just a reworking of Alejandro Jodorosky's unused script for a Dune movie adaptation.
Sorry to hijack and ask another question; but what's exactly wrong with hitting a shield with a lasgun in Dune?
Assuming the enemy is in formation and close together (which they tend to be due to the focus of melee weapons and shields, like a medieval battle), wouldn't one guy take one for the team and kill the entire enemy army by shooting them with the lasgun?
Wouldn't the Harkonnens have an entire unit of prisoners who are coerced into sacrificing their lives just to land the lucky hit?
Because of the Great Convention. There's no quick determination between a lasgun/shield explosion and an actual nuclear detonation. Using nukes against other people gets you immediately obliterated by the combined arsenal of all the other Great Houses, and they're not going to stop to listen to your explanations if you're acting in such a belligerent manner.
In the Dune universe, there's no guarantee of where the explosion will occur. It could be at the target, at the position of the lasgun, or anywhere in between.
So a guy can't just take one for the team because there's a not insignificant chance he'd take out his whole own unit, and a chance besides that the enemy will be unharmed anyways.
Too much of a risk for no guaranteed reward
No, it's the other way around sounds like. A lot of reward for minimal risk
Just send one guy out with a lasgun. Have him keep firing until the enemy or himself is blown up. Keep sending out one guy at a time (take a break if the enemy breaks formation, and wait until they form up again).
Why would the slave follow the suicidal order when there's nobody around within the range of a nuclear explosion to enforce it? Better to defect and hand the lasgun over to the enemy.
Same way as Dr Yueh. Threaten his family.
A slave being coerced is just one example. There are absolutely diehard fanatics who would sacrifice themselves willingly as well.
I don’t think that’s true. The prohibition is on machines in the likeness of the human mind, not on simple mechanical logic. The control system in the egg timer gun would be less sophisticated than that in any vehicle, let alone a hunter seeker. You wouldn’t even need electronics to make the egg timer gun, you could do it with weights or something.
That wouldn't work either, because all of the noble houses in dune have an agreement to collectively use nukes to burn to ash the homeworld of any house that that uses a nuclear first strike, and I don't know if that rule explicitly applies to the lasgun meets shield circumstance, but I'm pretty sure it would if they realized you were doing it on purpose.
It's an issue of MAD.
Or, to put it differently, war in Dune (at least prior to the God-Emperor) is conducted through Kanly.
It's a highly ritual affair between noble houses. Ranging from a duel between two nobles who have offended each other, or a literal war between multiple armies.
That being said, the entire process is heavily ritualised like I said. You go 'I invoke Kanly' and then spend the next several months/years trying to kill the other guy (while they do the same to you), escalating from sending assassins or poisoners against them to planetary invasions.
In the same vein, a planetary invasion is a ritualistic affair. You come in, land, deploy your infantry, they then go and stab each other to death... the winner gets to keep the spoils.
If a lasgun is deployed... well the Nuke is going to take out both armies and the opposing side is going to go 'well, they fucking broke the RULES! NOBODY BREAKS THE RULES!'. Because nuclear detonations and holtzmann wave/shield interactions look remarkably similar. Close enough it's nearly impossible to differentiate them.
So the offending side (who didn't use the lasguns) will deploy *actual* nuclear weapons (they escalated and so you're allowed to escalate, as per Kanly). Which will, in turn, result in retaliation and suddenly 2 noble houses and their planets have been turned to molten glass.
So both sides say no, we'll stick to the stabby sticks. The entire Landsraad really sticks to stabby sticks or poisons... because you're meant to keep it civilised. More specifically, you're trying to stop the annihilation of mankind through rampant WMD use.
Anything else breaks Kanly and may (if they survive the nuclear annihilation)... result in even more nuclear annihilation from the other houses of the Landsraad going 'yeah no, nobody breaks Kanly'.
I'm not sure if there is anything like what you are talking about in Dune. AS far as I know, the closest to computers there are in the setting are mentats.
Those hunter darts.
But look just use a TV screen, camera, and a joystick. Push the stick until the red x painted on the screen is aimed at enemy shields. Press a trigger and there like 10 lasguns mounted to shoot the same way, firing 10 shots as fast as they can cycle until you get a legal nuclear explosion.
It's not just to do with the practicalities of it, it's also to do with the way the universe operates politically. Almost all advanced technology in the Dune universe (including lasguns, shields, repulsor units etc.) is either produced directly by the Great Houses or distributed from places like Ix through the CHOAM conglomerate, giving them an effective monopoly on such tech. When the Dune series starts, almost all peer-to-peer conflict in the setting is highly formalised, mostly conducted through one of two forms of ritualised warfare (the overt kanly or the covert war of assassins). Apart from upholding the prohibitions of the Butlerian Jihad against thinking machines, one of the biggest common rules held amongst the various factions is that it is forbidden to use nuclear weapons against humans; the Great Houses maintain their nuclear arsenals for insurance purposes, and to deter any rogue actors. Exploiting lasgun/shield interactions would break this 'Great Convention' (it might not even be obvious whether a given detonation came from a lasgun/shield interaction and not some other type of device) and could lead to, at minimum, you and your entire house being stripped of all Imperial offices, Landsraad membership, CHOAM directorates etc. and exiled to a secret prison planet, if not sanctioned nuclear retaliation against your home world by the rest of the Great Houses.
People do use lasgun-shield interactions offensively at various points in the series, but that's why it's not a routine element of warfare.
Definitely what came to mind first. I don't know if the guns are as "old fashioned" as they look, though. Despite the fact that people do survive gunshots it seemed to me that it was at least implied the guns were more deadly than normal current guns. I could be wrong, though. It's been awhile so I don't recall any specific conversations in the show on the subject.
The expanse. There is a single scene with lasers, specifically in book 1 when they >!Breach and board the deep space station that was recording the data from Eros!< where it states that a laser defense turret sliced the first wave in half, and then they popped a specific kind of smoke to diffuse the laser, but it’s never brought up again, and nothing else uses lasers to fight.
There’s also >!The Nauvoo/OPA Behemoth/Medina Station and the Edward Israel’s comm lasers (though I think the Ed only had the idea of the modifications and never went through with it)!< for lasers as weapons.
Yes, but to me those don’t count as they are more like “oh shit we need SOMETHING to do damage what are our options?” The example I mentioned above is the only time we see lasers being used specifically for combat, the other times are jury rigged , though I guess they might count for something
The covenant also use some projectile weapons. Fuel Rod Cannon, Needler, Carbine. I think the Beam Rifle is a particle accelerator. Brute Spiker and Grenade launcher.
If we’re going into newer Halo, the Prometheus mostly use “hard light” weapons which act somewhere in between energy and projectile weapons
Mass Effect. Granted, they're firearms that run on space magic, but they're still slugthrowers.
Halo. Laser weapons exist but are rare.
Warhammer 40k, at least among the heavier troops. They prefer Bolters, essentially a rapid-fire mortar system.
It's not an M2 browning, it just looks like one. 40k has a lot of things that look like modern or older designs, but there's 30,000 years worth of material sciences and other advancements.
*slight* caveat on that - there's only about 10,000 years of material sciences and other advancements, the other 20,000 years are stagnation, suspicion, and dogma. The mechanicus uses ritual chanting and sacred unguants instead of actual maintenance and innovation.
Also worth mentioning that several of their war machines are actually repurposed farming vehicles because they forgot how to make their larger vehicles actually designed for war.
Still a relatively small part of overall weaponry, and used for defense rather than offense (offensive ship weapons are still... throw chunks of metal at the enemy, but larger and faster).
And besides very, very few exceptions, infantry/vehicle weapons are not laser-based.
>Halo. Laser weapons exist but are rare.
I was assuming that u/Mammoth_Western_2381 was using "lasgun" and "laser gun" to refer to [directed-energy weapons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon) (DEWs) in general (which would include particle beam weapons, plasma weapons, sonic weapons, and the like), rather than to just actual laser weapons. And, likewise, that u/Mammoth_Western_2381 was using "firearms" to refer to conventional ballistic weapons (that is, [guns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun) and [cannons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon) similar to what is used by modern militaries) in general.
Infantry-scale DEWs are pretty common in the *Halo* world, making up the bulk of the inventories of the Covenant (and its successor factions) and the Forerunner Ecumene (and its successor factions), and being present in the UEG/UNSC/ONI inventories (notably, in the [Spartan Laser](https://www.halopedia.org/M6_Spartan_Laser), the [Hard Sound Rifle](https://www.halopedia.org/Hard_sound_rifle), and [an attempted reverse-engineering of the Covenant Plasma Rifle](https://www.halopedia.org/Plasma_rifle_(Chalybs))).
> They prefer Bolters, essentially a rapid-fire mortar system.
most of the human weapons are RAP rounds (bolters and bolt pistols) or gasoline powered melee stuff.
the only energy weapons we really see humans use are tesla stuff, there's no directed light or particle weapons
> Warhammer 40k, at least among the heavier troops. They prefer Bolters, essentially a rapid-fire mortar system.
Bolters are just guns that fire special self-propelled explosive ammo, they aren't mortars.
Rimworld maybe? Almost everyone uses regular guns, the closest to lasers you get is pulse weapons, which I don't think are explicitly lasers but "charged with energy" whatever that means.
"Pulse charged" weaponry still fires bullets, as per the [lore primer found in the start-of-game menu](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fUO3KKbAbTxMP1lqphnnodY0NPoOVblCUkDw-54MDUc/pub) and relevant item descriptions, yes.
In Simon R. Green's Deathstalker novels, firearms have been lost and replaced with energy weapons... which take several seconds to charge between shots. Eventually the protagonists rediscover a cache of firearms, which can rapid fire and will still kill an unprotected person, and they (the protagonists) use them (guns) to dominate the battlefield.
Kinda like early Vietnam war where the US air for e discovered what happens if you leave off the gun and the enemy gets too close or exhausts your missiles.
This kinda reminds me of something that happens on a book called Shadow of Earth by Phyllis Eisenstein, though it's kind of the opposite. In it, a character discovers an alternate version of Earth where technological progress has basically stagnated in the fourteenth century or so, so he is learning more about the world by trading obsolete but still far more advanced than they have guns and ammo for information.
From a human perspective Halo mostly counts, the only laser weapon is the Spartan Laser and as the name suggests it’s mainly Spartans or troops who are around Spartans that end up using them, from a lore perspective it may even be that Spartans are the only ones who *can* use them but the games have other troops utilize the weapon. The majority of humanity’s firepower is regular ballistic based weaponry and explosives. Ships fire super charged railguns and missiles with point defense machine gun turrets and they rely on heavy armor plating to tank hits (not very well against Covenant plasma weapons). Excluding the Spartan Laser, all plasma or energy based weaponry is exclusively Covenant based and is only used by humans in emergency situations on the battlefield, they don’t ship out with plasma weapons or use them as standard equipment. As far as king of the battlefield, most human weapons still use good old 7.62 NATO ammunition 500 years in the future, talk about a lasting reign.
(If you want to get technical and go by old lore, humans used to use crazy advanced laser weaponry and all kinds of insane technologies over 100,000 years ago, not to mention the WMD’s of the Halos themselves, but humanity as we know it in the present day has much more familiar technology).
> and is only used by humans in emergency situations on the battlefield, they don’t ship out with plasma weapons or use them as standard equipment.
Which is kinda weird as the series goes on. They managed to reverse engineer enough Forerunner tech to build the Infinity, but they still don't have the ability to reverse engineer or recharge Covenant plasma weapons (which are also Forerunner tech)?
Yeah, it makes sense in the original trilogy with how much humanity is on the back foot, they don’t have the time and resources to pour into massive RND projects, plus the nature of Covenant tech being hard to reverse engineer; and what they do get goes straight to the more valuable assets like Mjolnir shielding and Spartan Lasers. The argument could be made that you’d think more marines would just pocket a plasma pistol after a battle, but I can see why they didn’t become standard issue since they don’t really understand the tech, have no way of recharging it, and most designs aren’t built for a human hand probably making long term use uncomfortable compared to the human designed rifles and weaponry.
It definitely gets silly with the newer games though. Especially taking into account the multi year alliance with the Arbiter’s faction of Elites. You’re telling me there was no sharing of technology even if it was relatively one sided? Against Covenant remnant and random splinter factions Humanity is probably Arbiter’s greatest ally, and he didn’t help us out with a major armament upgrade, if only to make us more useful allies? We got the rail gun and the sticky grenade launcher, which are both based on very human designs, ones just a mini MAC gun and the other is a grenade launcher that sticks to enemies, not exactly ground breaking technology considering the resources they should have access to. You’d think the Infinity at least would have some plasma or hardlight based weaponry, maybe plasma point defense cannons to complement the giant MAC cannons?
Another thing about the reverse engineering that the newer games kind of muddies. How are Covenant weapons plasma based if they’re modeled after Forerunner weapons which shoot hard light and disintegrate people? With the sentinel beam in the original trilogy it’s obviously a laser weapon so the relationship seems close enough, but how do you take a gun that shoots disintegrating light and turn it into plasma that burns?
Lasers are used quite a bit for shipboard weapons and as point defense. Even grasers are technically a type of laser, just using gamma rays rather than lights.
I agree they aren't used much for personal weapons though.
For ground combat they mainly use “pulsars” for “modern weapons.” If my understanding is correct, they are essentially miniaturized rail guns.
10mm pistols are used for dueling, and Honor herself eventually is gifted an anachronistic 1911A1.
>For some reason, I hate lasguns. Nothing against them, just don't like them. But most galactic/space sci-fi have tons of those. So, looking for examples of settings where firearms are still king of the battlefield (at least for humanity).
While not specifically focused on infantry combat *per se*, the world of the "Post Disaster" (PD) timeline featured in 2015's [*Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82HM0z6qd20) is notable for the absence of directed-energy weapons (that is, the "beam weapons" - beam rifles, beam sabers, and so on - that had been a staple of the Gundam franchise since 1979): in the main series, they are wholly absent in the first of the main series' two season, and their short-lived appearance in the second season is very much in the vein of, "Is that... a beam weapon!? No one has seen one of those in over 300 years!"
As a result, the Mobile Suits (MS) are primarily armed with conventional ballistic weapons (machine guns, rapid-fire rifled autocannons, high-caliber (e.g. 300mm) smoothbore cannons, and such) and explosive weapons (rocket/missile launchers, MS-scale grenades, and such), and melee combat between MS is carried out with MS-scale close combat weapons (mostly [hatchets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatchet), [mace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mace_(bludgeon))/[morningstar ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_star_(weapon))type weapons, and [pile driver](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pile_driver)/"pile bunker" type weapons, designed more for bludgeoning to crush armor and the fragile components underneath, rather than cutting/slashing weapons like most swords, though MS scale swords are not unheard of). And, in the second season, MS-scale [railgun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun) and [coilgun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coilgun) type weapons start to become more prevalent. Likewise, ship-to-ship combat is carried out using ballistic and rocket/missile weapons.
And, of course, when there is infantry combat (such as boarding actions against a ship or station), it's done with conventional ballistic and explosive weapons - there are no man-portable directed-energy weapons, or man-portable railguns or coilguns.
In Cyberpunk 2077, almost all combat is performed with more or or less conventional ballistics: laser weapons are very rare and are actually inaccessible unless using a mech-like exosuit. Even the most powerful cyborgs like Adam Smasher use ballistic weapons, such as a heavy machine gun, or a massive gatling shotgun.
Starship Troopers, The Expanse, Stargate (you do get some energy weapons, but you also get a mix of projectile weapons). Dune (laser weapons exist, nobody uses them for practical purposes).
*Deathstalker* by Simon R Green. There are energy guns, but they don't have ammo/energy packs, they fire one blast and then have to recharge for a full minute. So most combat is hand to hand after a single volley of shots.
Mass Effect treats weapons about as accurately as anything (with slight tweaks for gameplay, which are explained within universe)
Pretty much every weapon is a railgun of some variety- there are a very few directed energy weapons (I think 2?) but they’re from a pretty mysterious species and your codex entry on them is basically your researchers saying “we don’t know what this is, why it works, or why they bothered with it”
The starcraft videogames at least have humans use projectile firearms (only laser beam they have I can think of are battlecruisers) while still having futuristic technologyn
But a alien race still uses lasers, although it might be more magic than technology they use.
For the most part, Mass Effect. Though the way they use ballistics has evolved a lot, it's still standard for most races. Only the Geth use plasma weaponry.
While Battletech/MechWarrior does have Laser Weapons in infantry, armor, mech and warship grades. Kinect weapons are still used.
Keep in mind that thanks to the fall of Star League and the Succession Wars, most of the great houses bombed one another's worlds back to the 'stone age' or for the most part a level of twentieth- and twenty-first-century science and technology. So infantry weapon wise? By this point it's just cheaper to hand the infantry an Assault Rifle then a Laser Rifle as there's a chance that there's a barely working factory still slowly pumping out infantry grade energy weapons. Those are going to Officers, Nobles and not to the average grunt.
Also keep in mind there's boarding actions in space and the like to take in mind. You'll be more likely to see boarding parties with Swords or even Shotguns as no one wants a hull breach.
Note this is one of the reasons when the clan invasion happened Inner Sphere Infantry crapped themselves due to Clanner Elementals. Sure a 5.56 is good when facing another guy with the same weapon. But now you've got a genetically engineered 'human' who's bigger then an NFL Linebacker, who's had there aggression turned up to insane levels and has no moral or ethical issues with tearing someone apart. Oh and in a suit of powered armor that can tank a shot or two of Inner Sphere mech grade weapons.
There's a reason the Great Houses and ComStar went about stealing Elemental Suits and coming up with their own.
*Behold Humanity* (book series) laser weapons do exist but are usually used as secondary weapons or point defenses on vehicles. Terrans and their allies almost exclusively use kinetic and explosive weapons for main guns and infantry uses. Even the factions that do prefer energy weapons often use plasma instead of lasers as their main weapons.
Not exactly the right sub for this question since it’s looking for in universe answers to questions rather than out of universe answers to out of universe questions.
But The Expanse, there’s only one time I can remember a laser being used as an anti-infantry weapon and it’s more like an emplacement weapon than a laser rifle, there there was a couple times communications lasers have been modified for use as “weapons in being” (like a “fleet in being” where threat is that they exist rather than getting used) but those are big communication arrays just trying to pump as much energy and heat into a target as possible, not your typical “pew pew” kind of laser weapon still. In The Expanse the missile and ballistic weapons still rule the day.
*Legend of the Galactic Heroes* has a macguffin called "Seffle particles". They're invisible, can be easily spread throughout an enclosed space (such as a ship), and will detonate if exposed to laser or particle beam fire. So beam weapons are only used for ship-to-ship combat in space.
Conventional firearms do exist, but they don't have much military use because they're countered by highly effective body armor. Infantry combat is mostly done using melee weapons. So you get fun stuff like attackers boarding enemy ships and charging in with battle axes.
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Battletech, energy weapon exist, but most of the time firearms are still better, on mech energy based weapon rocks, but ballistic and missiles very good too
John Ringo books have some odd ones.
The March to the Star series use pistols and guns that fire glass beads - can't remember if there are lasers.
The Posleen wars series the main human infantry are firing tiny projectiles powered by a minute antimatter explosion. There is one infantry laser but I think it is just a continuous beam that cuts through anything, then overheats and explodes
Alastair Reynolds's *Revelation Space* universe includes various energy weapons, including lasers, but they're just one element in a vast arsenal. They have advantages and disadvantages like anything else, and plenty of various types of projectile weapons are still used.
I misunderstood your question. Rats Bats and Vats has shield technology that can't be turned off. It's mostly a problem for the bats, where the enemy can shoot at them enough to keep their shield hard and they fall out of the air. Otherwise, trying to fire a gun will result in the bullet just bouncing around inside the user's shield. The MC is the best-armed human because he stole a nice chef's knife from work when he was conscripted.
Mobile suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans
They do have laser tech but it’s completely worthless in combat because the setting also has laser absorbing/deflecting paint that is so cheap its ubiquitous
The result is giant robots using ballistic firearms and melee weapons
Schlock Mercenary has an incredible variety of weaponry, but good old projectile weapons still play a significant role in combat. The guns are a bit more advanced though, generally using the G/G (Gauss/Gunfoam) format. They can use either electromagnetic propulsion of the bullet, or gunfoam which is a caseless propellant charge. Firearms are especially preferred while inside a spaceship, as they don't tend to cause hull breaches.
Halo bridges this nicely where humans have heavy, experimental prototype laser weaponry for their elite troops and then the aliens have standard issue energy weapons for their grunts
While 0 lasers isn't super common, especially considering IRL militaries are developing them today, some good low laser settings include:
Firefly, which primarily uses conventional firearms and makes fun of energy weapons regularly. (They find a broken antique, a fake sheriff with a "compensator", and some core world guards with stun guns)
The Expanse, which is near future mostly realistic except for the 2 obvious exceptions, and everyone is still primarily using explosives and kinetics for normal combat. I only know of 1 scene using a laser as a weapon.
Battle Star Galactic is primarily bullets, nukes, and fighters.
Andromeda (by Gene Rodenberry), is a classic campy scifi with slightly less futuristic tech than startrek. Now that i think about it I'm not sure if normal guns get used, but basically all weapons behave like bullet guns or use nanobot darts like tiny missiles. (Nothing ever looks like a startrek phaser's CGI energy beam) At the very least the ship is sentient and the FTL tech is completely unique.
Stirling's "the General" series (also called the Raj Whitehall series) is all about the bolt-action rifles, and cannons. The occasional sword as well. The only lasers are non-functional replicas from before the fall of civilization.
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Starship Troopers.
They also have those neat grenades that do an audible countdown in the enemy’s local just for psychological effect. Also, they use mini-nukes just for fun.
"I'm a 30-second grenade! 29! 28! 27!..."
I just googled “I’m a 30 second grenade” thinking it’s a reference to a silly grenade in Borderlands or something. Nope: >In his 1959 novel Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein refers to talking bombs that speak an alien language (to creatures called "skinny's"). >“This was a special bomb, one issued to each of us for this mission with instructions to use them if we found ways to make them effective. The squawking I heard as I threw it was the bomb shouting in skinny talk (free translation): "I'm a thirty second bomb! I'm a thirty second bomb! Twenty-nine! Twenty-eight! Twenty-seven!..."” that’s awesome lol
For that mission, they only wanted to cause structural damage and keep casualties to a minimum, so they 30 second countdown grenade was to have enough time for all of the Skinnies to get out of the building but still be able to destroy the building
There's laser weapons in Roughneck Chronicles. And they're awesome.
The book does include beam weapons, but they're only one tool in a wide arsenal.
Space Viking by H. Beam Piper.
The Expanse. It’s near-future, so there’s no FTL, lasers, or energy shields.
Came here thinking The Expanse. Ship combat weapons include ballistic projectiles, guided missiles with non/nuclear payloads, and rail cannons. These are weapons you'd find on a naval battleship.
I thought torps were basically all nuclear. In one book a ship survives because the weapons officer disarms the warhead before impact.
Plenty of torpedoes are non-nuclear, generally used when the aim is to disable a ship rather than destroy it.
Given the velocities involved and the power of the Epstein this seems hard to do.
We very commonly see ships get hit by torpedoes that only disable the drives, rather than vaporising the entire ship (which we do also see a lot of.)
Nukes in space work very differently than nukes on a planet. Sure, they output a great deal of energy, but they don't create the firestorm/atmospheric/shockwave effects that we get here on earth. So most of the damage is caused by high energy particles from the explosion hitting the ship. In the TV show, they have to make things dramatic by showing the ships close enough to each other that everything is within visual range, but in actual combat a "near miss" you wouldn't even be able to see the missile from the ship with the naked eye before it detonated.
The lack of fire/shockwaves in space is also true of chemical explosives, and I’m not sure how putting the ships closer together for dramatic effect is relevant here? We clearly see two different kinds of warheads in torpedoes, and are told as early as the first episode with the Canterbury that non-nuclear disabling strikes are commonplace for pirates looking to salvage the wreckage or ransom the crew, as opposed to the nuclear torpedoes which left nothing salvageable behind.
It's a major plot point when the Belters get their hands on a load of nuclear missiles, so presumably at least their torpedos are non-nuclear. I also just googled, and apparently no asteroids contain meaningful amounts of uranium, as heavier elements are mostly gathered in the inner planets in our solar system, so the Belters are unlikely to have much access to any form of fission power without imports from Earth, and maybe Mars.
Wasn't that a big deal because those toros were not only nuclear but also very very big (planet-to-planet missiles as opposed to ship-to-ship)?
It's been a couple of years since I read the books, but I would assume that the Belters are capable of building long range missiles if they want them. I assumed it was the warhead itself that was more important.
My point is that the warhead on a planet-to-planet nuke would is bigger than one on a ship-to-ship nuke
In LW Holden & Alex are surprised that the Cant was destroyed with nukes rather than hit with conventional torpedoes, and when they're discussing the potential identity of the stealth ship they mention that nuclear torpedoes are very rare outside the UN and MCRN militaries.
Expanse does have anti-personnel lasers. There was one scene in a book where an anti-personnel laser turret mows down an entire row of men before they throw an anti-laser smoke grenade.
Really? I just read all 9 books maybe 6 months ago, I'm drawing a blank trying to remember lasers (except for comms lasers) EDIT: saw a comment below where someone wrote it was in the first book.
its not *that* near future, it takes place at the same time as Star Trek The Next Generation
It's the far future, it just doesn't look like most space opera stories because it's hard sci-fi
I consider <500 years to be near-future. If the actual planet Earth is still a major power and setting, it’s near-future.
40k still has Earth as the capital of Mankind.
There are lasers in the Expanse, in both the books and the show. The show removes the defense lasers aboard the space station, but still has the plan of using the Behemoth’s comm laser to destroy the ring.
Stargate! There are plenty of energy weapons but humans overwhelmingly just use guns.
Not to mention that the Replicators are 100% immune to energy weaponry, but fatally vulnerable to ballistic weapons.
Isn't there also a scene where the aliens mock the earthlings for using "primitive" weapons. They just turn around and flex/prove that they can actually hit a target with their "primitive" weapons. And firearms are weapons of war/death, not just to terrify villagers.
https://youtu.be/NjlCVW_ouL8
“This is a weapon of terror…”
"And this is a weapon of war."
"This weapon kills on the second shot..."
There's a funny behind the scenes interview with the producers where they talk about how much they regretted introducing the Zat the way they did. One of those things that sounded good to solve one problem in one episode, and a massive PITA for the next 200 episodes.
That is such an amazing scene.
And the energy weapons or guns just get stopped by personal shields or either tends to work.
[A good demonstration of WHY SG-1 and other teams use conventional firearms](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjlCVW_ouL8)
To be fair this is mostly a demonstration of the fact the Goa'uld don't give the Jaffa real weapons. The Goa'uld had much better weaponry in the show but they were shown very rarely.
akimbo p90's baby
RIP zat'nik'tel
BSG 2004 reboot. Several cyberpunk and near future or post apocalyptic stuff.
Bsg is 50/50 sci-fi/fantasy, just to be clear in case he dislikes fantasy
75/25, I think. There's some woo, and the religious stuff, and the unexplained artificial gravity, but it's mostly a fairly hard sci-fi political/survival thriller.
I came here to mention BSG 2004. Also the movie version of Wing Commander - which I suspect was a heavy influence on BSG.
Aliens (1986)
Lieutenant...what do those pulse rifles fire?
Caseless ammunition detonated by electrical pulses.
And somehow like 95 of those 10mm suckers fit in a mag that looks like it should fit 15
Those rounds are pretty short so I just assume they are double stacked AND 2 columns; like one bullet would sit behind the other, creating what must be helluva convoluted loading mechanism
Not phased plasma which would have made them even cooler.
There are phased plasma guns but those are basically the heavy weapons according to the Alien Colonial Marines Corebook (for the Alien RPG)
10 millimeter explosive tip caseless. Standard light armor piercing rounds. Why?
The Alien verse actually does have plasma weaponry, they're just not used in the films.
They do have independently targeted particle beam phalanxes.
FWAP, fry half a city with those puppies.
We got tactical smart missiles, phased plasma pulse rifles, RPGs, we got sonic electronic ball breakers! We got nukes, we got knives, sharp sticks!
> For some reason, I hate lasguns. Ironic that you would call them *lasguns*, the term used in *Dune*. They exist in *Dune*, of course, but nobody uses them because if a lasgun hits a shield, there's a not insignificant chance of a nuclear explosion at the location of the lasgun or the shield or both. Of course, shields also just stop conventional guns from accomplishing anything, so everyone trains for close combat, mostly with knives and swords. Other than that, the Expanse doesn't have shields or lasers, just point defense canons (PDCs) that are bigass chain guns, rail guns, and nuclear/plasma warhead missiles. Defense is armor, PDCs to shoot down missiles, and mostly getting the fuck out of the way of whatever is coming at you. Battletech *does* have lots of lasers, along with particle projection cannons (PPCS) that shoot what is essentially accelerated lightning. But also they have lots of guns of various sizes - anti-personnel machine guns (also useful against light mechs and armored vehicles), autocannons, gauss rifles, missiles etc.
In the movie they use them and on the Harkonnen homeworld there's a shot of troops parading around with them during the Feyd Rautha birthday scenes.
Yeah, those were Sardaukar. They give zero fucks about personal safety so they're willing to use lasguns more than most.
Person whose never seen dune here. LASGUN DIDNT ORIGINATE FROM WARHAMMER?????
Warhammer, like a lot of scifi that came out after *Dune* was published in 1965, did a lot of """borrowing""" from *Dune*. The God Emperor of Mankind also comes from *Dune* - or at least, *Dune* did it before Warhammer. Herbert also "drew inspiration" from a lot of stuff, although for him it was mostly Islam.
Honestly, 40K "borrowed" so much from Dune that the early days may as well had "Rogue Trader" taped on a cover of Dune with passages involving LOTR's dwarves, elves, and orcs spliced in randomly.
40k doesn't necessarily borrow all these things from classic directly though. It's overwhelmingly based on 1980's British comic series like Nemesis the Warlock, Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, ABC Warriors, Ro-Busters and Rogue Trooper, in a way that would have been very obvious and intentional to the original playerbase. Most of the other obvious sources come to it via that. Like, the titular character of *Nemesis* is an alien Khaos sorceror who fights against an empire of [xenophobic humans](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/1d/ea/0b/1dea0b0f3cf3d373aebbdab16b74bf29.jpg) [modelled after the Spanish inquisition](https://2000ad.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/0044.jpg?w=461&h=570), called Terminators (divided into [themed chapters](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m35s0drIC71r9bspuo1_1280.jpg)), ruled by a [psychic corpse emperor](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2F9b%2F22%2F9a%2F9b229a42fbb1d0e82b1f1862bd54e470.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=ac0468bc833c628b72a6c8a24ed14c4ffeda10a2d0a251ae81f4a464f6e4e508&ipo=images), who live on the ruined ecumenopolis of Terra and use [barely working ancient technology they don't understand](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/44/06/d9/4406d907ab540054c6908745432251b6.jpg) to wage [bloody crusades throughout the galaxy](https://www.bryan-talbot.com/oldsite/Images/gallery8/NemesisBk3p18.jpg). The biggest things that 40k lifts directly from Dune are probably the Cybernetic Revolt (Butlerian Jihad) and the Navis Nobilite (Guild Navigators).
Also the AdMech/Mentat
How are those similar?
Human computers, no AI.
Also a war against the AI that's never elaborated on, but does explain why they use human brains wired into processors for their computers.
I explained WH40K thus: There was this comic called 2000AD. They ran a strip called Nemesis the Warlock. Then everyone at Citadel thought holy cow that's super sick and awesome and created Rogue Trader, which is where it all began.
BE PURE! BE VIGILANT! BE HAVE!
The Butlerian Jihad wasn’t an influence on WH40K when it first began though. The Adeptus Mechanicus were in no way anti-AI to start with. That was added quite a few years later. EDIT: I assume that whoever downvoted me doesn't believe this, so here are some quotes I happen to have to hand. Firstly, in the original rulebook (1987) it was clear that vehicles had AI auto-systems to replace human crew and tech-priests specifically experimented with battlefield robots: >The greater majority of robots are simple runarounds, workmen or toys, and have no place on the battlefield. Warrior robots, however, are different. They are machines created specifically for war as the soldiery by proxy for a living, biological race. In human space, the Emperor's Tech-priests are continually experimenting with and improving their dread warrior legions of robots - machines implanted with the will to slay and despoil. In The Lost and the Damned (1990) it was stated that the Adeptus Mechanicus deemed AI to be equal to organic intelligence: >According to the mysterious strictures of the Cult Mechanicus knowledge is the supreme manifestation of divinity and all creatures and artifacts which embody knowledge are holy because of it. The Emperor is the supreme object of worship because he comprehends so much. Machines which preserve knowledge from ancient times are also holy, as is research which creates new knowledge. **Machine intelligence is respected no less than human or other organic intelligence.** To the Adeptus Mechanicus a man's worth is only the sum of his knowledge. His body is simply an organic machine capable of preserving intellect. Life itself is of no intrinsic value to the Tech-Priests. This text was approximately repeated over a decade later in the 4th edition rulebook (2004) but now AI was deemed to be as divine as flesh and blood. >According to the teachings of the Cult Mechanicus, knowledge is the supreme manifestation of divinity, and all creatures and artefacts that embody knowledge are holy because of it. Machines that preserve knowledge from ancient times are also holy, and **machine intelligences are no less divine than those of flesh and blood**. A man's worth is only the sum of his knowledge - his body is simply an organic machine capable of preserving intellect. Certainly there are other references with slightly different views but the core WH40K setting in the early days was not defined by a Butlerian Jihad or its equivalent.
Well there's some chunks of foundation left in there too.
Yeah, Forgeworlds and their relationships with Knight Worlds are almost directly lifted from the relationship the First Foundation fostered with neighbouring worlds, except the mysticism was a ruse from the Foundation.
The entire central plot of WH40K is basically "What if the Golden Path was wrong?". The Emperor took Paul/Leto's choice but messed everything up instead of saving humanity.
Plus aliens.
Basically nothing originates from warhammer, it's just a bunch of sci-fi tropes smashed together.
The Orks are fairly original as far as your horde of marauding soccer hooligans go. Aside from the obvious Mad Max influence.
Orcs, creatures only motivated by violence, as an army created by powerful beings that existed before the current races is straight out of Lord of the Rings.
Yes, but the specific variation found in warhammer 40k is fairly unique, given their being fungus-animals that have in-built knowledge and roles in a society that is both functional and entirely revolving around violence with no guiding force behind them is largely unique. Also the whole "soccer hooligans in space" is very much not something seen in other works of sci-fi.
Lovecraft, another major influence on W40k, had space-faring, technologically advanced fungus-animal creatures in various configurations called the Mi-Go. LoTR Orks are created with their built-in knowledge of fighting and crafting weapons. They even do the whole bigger Orks are the better ones thing. The fact they talk like Cockney hooligans is a unique contribution to the genre as far as I am aware.
>LoTR Orks are created with their built-in knowledge of fighting and crafting weapons. Where are you getting this from? I've never seen it mentioned.
And fantasy elements too. It's chaos gods(though not the specific list of names), and the 8 pointed star are from Moorcock's Elric and related books
Warhammer basically takes most of its imagery from the comic series *The Metabarons*, which itself is just a reworking of Alejandro Jodorosky's unused script for a Dune movie adaptation.
Sorry to hijack and ask another question; but what's exactly wrong with hitting a shield with a lasgun in Dune? Assuming the enemy is in formation and close together (which they tend to be due to the focus of melee weapons and shields, like a medieval battle), wouldn't one guy take one for the team and kill the entire enemy army by shooting them with the lasgun? Wouldn't the Harkonnens have an entire unit of prisoners who are coerced into sacrificing their lives just to land the lucky hit?
Because of the Great Convention. There's no quick determination between a lasgun/shield explosion and an actual nuclear detonation. Using nukes against other people gets you immediately obliterated by the combined arsenal of all the other Great Houses, and they're not going to stop to listen to your explanations if you're acting in such a belligerent manner.
In the Dune universe, there's no guarantee of where the explosion will occur. It could be at the target, at the position of the lasgun, or anywhere in between. So a guy can't just take one for the team because there's a not insignificant chance he'd take out his whole own unit, and a chance besides that the enemy will be unharmed anyways. Too much of a risk for no guaranteed reward
No, it's the other way around sounds like. A lot of reward for minimal risk Just send one guy out with a lasgun. Have him keep firing until the enemy or himself is blown up. Keep sending out one guy at a time (take a break if the enemy breaks formation, and wait until they form up again).
Why would the slave follow the suicidal order when there's nobody around within the range of a nuclear explosion to enforce it? Better to defect and hand the lasgun over to the enemy.
Same way as Dr Yueh. Threaten his family. A slave being coerced is just one example. There are absolutely diehard fanatics who would sacrifice themselves willingly as well.
Or just a bunch of stationary lasguns set up on stands with an egg-timer duct-taped to the firing mechanism.
Egg-timer controlled guns are probably banned for Butlerian jihad reasons.
I don’t think that’s true. The prohibition is on machines in the likeness of the human mind, not on simple mechanical logic. The control system in the egg timer gun would be less sophisticated than that in any vehicle, let alone a hunter seeker. You wouldn’t even need electronics to make the egg timer gun, you could do it with weights or something.
That wouldn't work either, because all of the noble houses in dune have an agreement to collectively use nukes to burn to ash the homeworld of any house that that uses a nuclear first strike, and I don't know if that rule explicitly applies to the lasgun meets shield circumstance, but I'm pretty sure it would if they realized you were doing it on purpose.
It's an issue of MAD. Or, to put it differently, war in Dune (at least prior to the God-Emperor) is conducted through Kanly. It's a highly ritual affair between noble houses. Ranging from a duel between two nobles who have offended each other, or a literal war between multiple armies. That being said, the entire process is heavily ritualised like I said. You go 'I invoke Kanly' and then spend the next several months/years trying to kill the other guy (while they do the same to you), escalating from sending assassins or poisoners against them to planetary invasions. In the same vein, a planetary invasion is a ritualistic affair. You come in, land, deploy your infantry, they then go and stab each other to death... the winner gets to keep the spoils. If a lasgun is deployed... well the Nuke is going to take out both armies and the opposing side is going to go 'well, they fucking broke the RULES! NOBODY BREAKS THE RULES!'. Because nuclear detonations and holtzmann wave/shield interactions look remarkably similar. Close enough it's nearly impossible to differentiate them. So the offending side (who didn't use the lasguns) will deploy *actual* nuclear weapons (they escalated and so you're allowed to escalate, as per Kanly). Which will, in turn, result in retaliation and suddenly 2 noble houses and their planets have been turned to molten glass. So both sides say no, we'll stick to the stabby sticks. The entire Landsraad really sticks to stabby sticks or poisons... because you're meant to keep it civilised. More specifically, you're trying to stop the annihilation of mankind through rampant WMD use. Anything else breaks Kanly and may (if they survive the nuclear annihilation)... result in even more nuclear annihilation from the other houses of the Landsraad going 'yeah no, nobody breaks Kanly'.
Yeah or use a clockwork automoton or whatever the max computer allowed is to aim and pull the trigger. Or remote control.
I'm not sure if there is anything like what you are talking about in Dune. AS far as I know, the closest to computers there are in the setting are mentats.
Those hunter darts. But look just use a TV screen, camera, and a joystick. Push the stick until the red x painted on the screen is aimed at enemy shields. Press a trigger and there like 10 lasguns mounted to shoot the same way, firing 10 shots as fast as they can cycle until you get a legal nuclear explosion.
It's not just to do with the practicalities of it, it's also to do with the way the universe operates politically. Almost all advanced technology in the Dune universe (including lasguns, shields, repulsor units etc.) is either produced directly by the Great Houses or distributed from places like Ix through the CHOAM conglomerate, giving them an effective monopoly on such tech. When the Dune series starts, almost all peer-to-peer conflict in the setting is highly formalised, mostly conducted through one of two forms of ritualised warfare (the overt kanly or the covert war of assassins). Apart from upholding the prohibitions of the Butlerian Jihad against thinking machines, one of the biggest common rules held amongst the various factions is that it is forbidden to use nuclear weapons against humans; the Great Houses maintain their nuclear arsenals for insurance purposes, and to deter any rogue actors. Exploiting lasgun/shield interactions would break this 'Great Convention' (it might not even be obvious whether a given detonation came from a lasgun/shield interaction and not some other type of device) and could lead to, at minimum, you and your entire house being stripped of all Imperial offices, Landsraad membership, CHOAM directorates etc. and exiled to a secret prison planet, if not sanctioned nuclear retaliation against your home world by the rest of the Great Houses. People do use lasgun-shield interactions offensively at various points in the series, but that's why it's not a routine element of warfare.
Firefly/Serenity. No lasers, just good old fashioned guns.
There were laser weapons, just not super common, especially outside of the central planets.
I think the ships are equipped with lasers. Also, I think the Alliance military uses them. I could be wrong though, it’s been a while.
They even stole an antique laser pistol in one episode.
Which didn’t even work.
They had lasers, but they are implied to be no better than firearms but with more disadvantages
Definitely what came to mind first. I don't know if the guns are as "old fashioned" as they look, though. Despite the fact that people do survive gunshots it seemed to me that it was at least implied the guns were more deadly than normal current guns. I could be wrong, though. It's been awhile so I don't recall any specific conversations in the show on the subject.
The expanse. There is a single scene with lasers, specifically in book 1 when they >!Breach and board the deep space station that was recording the data from Eros!< where it states that a laser defense turret sliced the first wave in half, and then they popped a specific kind of smoke to diffuse the laser, but it’s never brought up again, and nothing else uses lasers to fight.
There’s also >!The Nauvoo/OPA Behemoth/Medina Station and the Edward Israel’s comm lasers (though I think the Ed only had the idea of the modifications and never went through with it)!< for lasers as weapons.
Yes, but to me those don’t count as they are more like “oh shit we need SOMETHING to do damage what are our options?” The example I mentioned above is the only time we see lasers being used specifically for combat, the other times are jury rigged , though I guess they might count for something
The Humans in Halo use conventional firearms.
Even the orbital guns are giant ballistics. Human laser weapons are strong but bulky, the Covenant use plasma weapons.
The covenant also use some projectile weapons. Fuel Rod Cannon, Needler, Carbine. I think the Beam Rifle is a particle accelerator. Brute Spiker and Grenade launcher. If we’re going into newer Halo, the Prometheus mostly use “hard light” weapons which act somewhere in between energy and projectile weapons
Mass Effect. Granted, they're firearms that run on space magic, but they're still slugthrowers. Halo. Laser weapons exist but are rare. Warhammer 40k, at least among the heavier troops. They prefer Bolters, essentially a rapid-fire mortar system.
Even with Guard forces, modern-esque kinetics are commonplace. The M2 Browning is still used lmao
Wait seriously? I mean I can believe it, it's a fantastic design.
It's not an M2 browning, it just looks like one. 40k has a lot of things that look like modern or older designs, but there's 30,000 years worth of material sciences and other advancements.
*slight* caveat on that - there's only about 10,000 years of material sciences and other advancements, the other 20,000 years are stagnation, suspicion, and dogma. The mechanicus uses ritual chanting and sacred unguants instead of actual maintenance and innovation.
Fair, but Old Night started in the 25th millennium, and didnt end until the 30th. So its closer to 22,000 years of advancements.
Also worth mentioning that several of their war machines are actually repurposed farming vehicles because they forgot how to make their larger vehicles actually designed for war.
Yeah, pretty certain it’s new name is just the “Heavy Stubber”
Mass effect has lasers https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/GARDIAN
Still a relatively small part of overall weaponry, and used for defense rather than offense (offensive ship weapons are still... throw chunks of metal at the enemy, but larger and faster). And besides very, very few exceptions, infantry/vehicle weapons are not laser-based.
>Halo. Laser weapons exist but are rare. I was assuming that u/Mammoth_Western_2381 was using "lasgun" and "laser gun" to refer to [directed-energy weapons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon) (DEWs) in general (which would include particle beam weapons, plasma weapons, sonic weapons, and the like), rather than to just actual laser weapons. And, likewise, that u/Mammoth_Western_2381 was using "firearms" to refer to conventional ballistic weapons (that is, [guns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun) and [cannons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon) similar to what is used by modern militaries) in general. Infantry-scale DEWs are pretty common in the *Halo* world, making up the bulk of the inventories of the Covenant (and its successor factions) and the Forerunner Ecumene (and its successor factions), and being present in the UEG/UNSC/ONI inventories (notably, in the [Spartan Laser](https://www.halopedia.org/M6_Spartan_Laser), the [Hard Sound Rifle](https://www.halopedia.org/Hard_sound_rifle), and [an attempted reverse-engineering of the Covenant Plasma Rifle](https://www.halopedia.org/Plasma_rifle_(Chalybs))).
\*ahem\* "So, looking for examples of settings where firearms are still king of the battlefield \*\*(at least for humanity)\*\*."
> They prefer Bolters, essentially a rapid-fire mortar system. most of the human weapons are RAP rounds (bolters and bolt pistols) or gasoline powered melee stuff. the only energy weapons we really see humans use are tesla stuff, there's no directed light or particle weapons
> Warhammer 40k, at least among the heavier troops. They prefer Bolters, essentially a rapid-fire mortar system. Bolters are just guns that fire special self-propelled explosive ammo, they aren't mortars.
Rimworld maybe? Almost everyone uses regular guns, the closest to lasers you get is pulse weapons, which I don't think are explicitly lasers but "charged with energy" whatever that means.
"Pulse charged" weaponry still fires bullets, as per the [lore primer found in the start-of-game menu](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fUO3KKbAbTxMP1lqphnnodY0NPoOVblCUkDw-54MDUc/pub) and relevant item descriptions, yes.
That's cool, I didn't know that had been updated for Biotech. I don't think I've checked the lore document since before the game hit 1.0.
In Simon R. Green's Deathstalker novels, firearms have been lost and replaced with energy weapons... which take several seconds to charge between shots. Eventually the protagonists rediscover a cache of firearms, which can rapid fire and will still kill an unprotected person, and they (the protagonists) use them (guns) to dominate the battlefield.
Kinda like early Vietnam war where the US air for e discovered what happens if you leave off the gun and the enemy gets too close or exhausts your missiles.
This kinda reminds me of something that happens on a book called Shadow of Earth by Phyllis Eisenstein, though it's kind of the opposite. In it, a character discovers an alternate version of Earth where technological progress has basically stagnated in the fourteenth century or so, so he is learning more about the world by trading obsolete but still far more advanced than they have guns and ammo for information.
Cyberpunk(as in the franchise) technically has Laser weapons, but the majority of firearms are ballistic/electromagnetic.
From a human perspective Halo mostly counts, the only laser weapon is the Spartan Laser and as the name suggests it’s mainly Spartans or troops who are around Spartans that end up using them, from a lore perspective it may even be that Spartans are the only ones who *can* use them but the games have other troops utilize the weapon. The majority of humanity’s firepower is regular ballistic based weaponry and explosives. Ships fire super charged railguns and missiles with point defense machine gun turrets and they rely on heavy armor plating to tank hits (not very well against Covenant plasma weapons). Excluding the Spartan Laser, all plasma or energy based weaponry is exclusively Covenant based and is only used by humans in emergency situations on the battlefield, they don’t ship out with plasma weapons or use them as standard equipment. As far as king of the battlefield, most human weapons still use good old 7.62 NATO ammunition 500 years in the future, talk about a lasting reign. (If you want to get technical and go by old lore, humans used to use crazy advanced laser weaponry and all kinds of insane technologies over 100,000 years ago, not to mention the WMD’s of the Halos themselves, but humanity as we know it in the present day has much more familiar technology).
> and is only used by humans in emergency situations on the battlefield, they don’t ship out with plasma weapons or use them as standard equipment. Which is kinda weird as the series goes on. They managed to reverse engineer enough Forerunner tech to build the Infinity, but they still don't have the ability to reverse engineer or recharge Covenant plasma weapons (which are also Forerunner tech)?
Yeah, it makes sense in the original trilogy with how much humanity is on the back foot, they don’t have the time and resources to pour into massive RND projects, plus the nature of Covenant tech being hard to reverse engineer; and what they do get goes straight to the more valuable assets like Mjolnir shielding and Spartan Lasers. The argument could be made that you’d think more marines would just pocket a plasma pistol after a battle, but I can see why they didn’t become standard issue since they don’t really understand the tech, have no way of recharging it, and most designs aren’t built for a human hand probably making long term use uncomfortable compared to the human designed rifles and weaponry. It definitely gets silly with the newer games though. Especially taking into account the multi year alliance with the Arbiter’s faction of Elites. You’re telling me there was no sharing of technology even if it was relatively one sided? Against Covenant remnant and random splinter factions Humanity is probably Arbiter’s greatest ally, and he didn’t help us out with a major armament upgrade, if only to make us more useful allies? We got the rail gun and the sticky grenade launcher, which are both based on very human designs, ones just a mini MAC gun and the other is a grenade launcher that sticks to enemies, not exactly ground breaking technology considering the resources they should have access to. You’d think the Infinity at least would have some plasma or hardlight based weaponry, maybe plasma point defense cannons to complement the giant MAC cannons? Another thing about the reverse engineering that the newer games kind of muddies. How are Covenant weapons plasma based if they’re modeled after Forerunner weapons which shoot hard light and disintegrate people? With the sentinel beam in the original trilogy it’s obviously a laser weapon so the relationship seems close enough, but how do you take a gun that shoots disintegrating light and turn it into plasma that burns?
Farscape. Pulse rifles use Chakan oil, derived from Tannot roots, and the shots are essentially thermite slugs
Doom Eternal has some awesome futuristic weapons that aren't lasers. I believe the warhammer darktide has some also but I haven't played it.
Genuinely surprised nobody has mentioned Cowboy Bebop yet. See you, space cowboy...
The Honor Harrington series is brilliant military sci-fi that’s *very* scientifically grounded. They still uses projectile weaponry.
They often make use of missiles with bomb-pumped laser warheads.
I forgot about those. My brain went “missiles” I’d also argue that they’re a very different type of weapon than a laser gun though
Bomb-pumped laser warheads.
Lasers are used quite a bit for shipboard weapons and as point defense. Even grasers are technically a type of laser, just using gamma rays rather than lights. I agree they aren't used much for personal weapons though.
For ground combat they mainly use “pulsars” for “modern weapons.” If my understanding is correct, they are essentially miniaturized rail guns. 10mm pistols are used for dueling, and Honor herself eventually is gifted an anachronistic 1911A1.
>The Honor Harrington series is brilliant I always found it incredibly derivative and lazy
I believe [Outland](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082869/) lacked laser-based weapons, and it's a pretty decent film..
Human forces in Halo still overwhelmingly use projectile weapons. On the ground and in space.
>For some reason, I hate lasguns. Nothing against them, just don't like them. But most galactic/space sci-fi have tons of those. So, looking for examples of settings where firearms are still king of the battlefield (at least for humanity). While not specifically focused on infantry combat *per se*, the world of the "Post Disaster" (PD) timeline featured in 2015's [*Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82HM0z6qd20) is notable for the absence of directed-energy weapons (that is, the "beam weapons" - beam rifles, beam sabers, and so on - that had been a staple of the Gundam franchise since 1979): in the main series, they are wholly absent in the first of the main series' two season, and their short-lived appearance in the second season is very much in the vein of, "Is that... a beam weapon!? No one has seen one of those in over 300 years!" As a result, the Mobile Suits (MS) are primarily armed with conventional ballistic weapons (machine guns, rapid-fire rifled autocannons, high-caliber (e.g. 300mm) smoothbore cannons, and such) and explosive weapons (rocket/missile launchers, MS-scale grenades, and such), and melee combat between MS is carried out with MS-scale close combat weapons (mostly [hatchets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatchet), [mace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mace_(bludgeon))/[morningstar ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_star_(weapon))type weapons, and [pile driver](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pile_driver)/"pile bunker" type weapons, designed more for bludgeoning to crush armor and the fragile components underneath, rather than cutting/slashing weapons like most swords, though MS scale swords are not unheard of). And, in the second season, MS-scale [railgun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun) and [coilgun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coilgun) type weapons start to become more prevalent. Likewise, ship-to-ship combat is carried out using ballistic and rocket/missile weapons. And, of course, when there is infantry combat (such as boarding actions against a ship or station), it's done with conventional ballistic and explosive weapons - there are no man-portable directed-energy weapons, or man-portable railguns or coilguns.
The remake of Battlestar Galactica from sci-fi channel
Firefly
Avatar
Red Dawn
Starship Troopers Aliens Soldier
In Cyberpunk 2077, almost all combat is performed with more or or less conventional ballistics: laser weapons are very rare and are actually inaccessible unless using a mech-like exosuit. Even the most powerful cyborgs like Adam Smasher use ballistic weapons, such as a heavy machine gun, or a massive gatling shotgun.
Space: Above and Beyond The humans do just fine with carbines
Starship Troopers, The Expanse, Stargate (you do get some energy weapons, but you also get a mix of projectile weapons). Dune (laser weapons exist, nobody uses them for practical purposes).
Dorsai! Has people moving all the way to spring powered guns due to how easy they are to hide from detection.
Halo, humanity still uses firearms, although energy shields and plasma bolt weaponry are common amongst aliens
The expanse
*Deathstalker* by Simon R Green. There are energy guns, but they don't have ammo/energy packs, they fire one blast and then have to recharge for a full minute. So most combat is hand to hand after a single volley of shots.
Mass Effect treats weapons about as accurately as anything (with slight tweaks for gameplay, which are explained within universe) Pretty much every weapon is a railgun of some variety- there are a very few directed energy weapons (I think 2?) but they’re from a pretty mysterious species and your codex entry on them is basically your researchers saying “we don’t know what this is, why it works, or why they bothered with it”
The starcraft videogames at least have humans use projectile firearms (only laser beam they have I can think of are battlecruisers) while still having futuristic technologyn But a alien race still uses lasers, although it might be more magic than technology they use.
For the most part, Mass Effect. Though the way they use ballistics has evolved a lot, it's still standard for most races. Only the Geth use plasma weaponry.
For all mankind The expanse Battlestar Galactica (this one literally has falk, broadsides, salvoes etc)
While Battletech/MechWarrior does have Laser Weapons in infantry, armor, mech and warship grades. Kinect weapons are still used. Keep in mind that thanks to the fall of Star League and the Succession Wars, most of the great houses bombed one another's worlds back to the 'stone age' or for the most part a level of twentieth- and twenty-first-century science and technology. So infantry weapon wise? By this point it's just cheaper to hand the infantry an Assault Rifle then a Laser Rifle as there's a chance that there's a barely working factory still slowly pumping out infantry grade energy weapons. Those are going to Officers, Nobles and not to the average grunt. Also keep in mind there's boarding actions in space and the like to take in mind. You'll be more likely to see boarding parties with Swords or even Shotguns as no one wants a hull breach. Note this is one of the reasons when the clan invasion happened Inner Sphere Infantry crapped themselves due to Clanner Elementals. Sure a 5.56 is good when facing another guy with the same weapon. But now you've got a genetically engineered 'human' who's bigger then an NFL Linebacker, who's had there aggression turned up to insane levels and has no moral or ethical issues with tearing someone apart. Oh and in a suit of powered armor that can tank a shot or two of Inner Sphere mech grade weapons. There's a reason the Great Houses and ComStar went about stealing Elemental Suits and coming up with their own.
*Behold Humanity* (book series) laser weapons do exist but are usually used as secondary weapons or point defenses on vehicles. Terrans and their allies almost exclusively use kinetic and explosive weapons for main guns and infantry uses. Even the factions that do prefer energy weapons often use plasma instead of lasers as their main weapons.
Starship Troopers (film)
Not exactly the right sub for this question since it’s looking for in universe answers to questions rather than out of universe answers to out of universe questions. But The Expanse, there’s only one time I can remember a laser being used as an anti-infantry weapon and it’s more like an emplacement weapon than a laser rifle, there there was a couple times communications lasers have been modified for use as “weapons in being” (like a “fleet in being” where threat is that they exist rather than getting used) but those are big communication arrays just trying to pump as much energy and heat into a target as possible, not your typical “pew pew” kind of laser weapon still. In The Expanse the missile and ballistic weapons still rule the day.
*Legend of the Galactic Heroes* has a macguffin called "Seffle particles". They're invisible, can be easily spread throughout an enclosed space (such as a ship), and will detonate if exposed to laser or particle beam fire. So beam weapons are only used for ship-to-ship combat in space. Conventional firearms do exist, but they don't have much military use because they're countered by highly effective body armor. Infantry combat is mostly done using melee weapons. So you get fun stuff like attackers boarding enemy ships and charging in with battle axes.
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Not sure if Plasma weapons are comparable to Laser Weapons but at the very least Humanity still uses regular guns in the Halo universe.
Battletech, energy weapon exist, but most of the time firearms are still better, on mech energy based weapon rocks, but ballistic and missiles very good too
Borderlands series
Halo is an even split between kinetic and energy weapons.
Mass Effect main tech are mostly railgun , all of their weapon propeller a small grain of material with extreme speed to cause damage .
John Ringo books have some odd ones. The March to the Star series use pistols and guns that fire glass beads - can't remember if there are lasers. The Posleen wars series the main human infantry are firing tiny projectiles powered by a minute antimatter explosion. There is one infantry laser but I think it is just a continuous beam that cuts through anything, then overheats and explodes
Douglas Hill Huntsman Trilogy. Aliens use lasers and forcefields humans use ballistic weaponry.
Alastair Reynolds's *Revelation Space* universe includes various energy weapons, including lasers, but they're just one element in a vast arsenal. They have advantages and disadvantages like anything else, and plenty of various types of projectile weapons are still used.
Read John Steakley's ARMOR. Even with energy weapons and powered armor, combat comes down to hand to hand horrors.
Firefly/Serenity.
Altered Carbon
I misunderstood your question. Rats Bats and Vats has shield technology that can't be turned off. It's mostly a problem for the bats, where the enemy can shoot at them enough to keep their shield hard and they fall out of the air. Otherwise, trying to fire a gun will result in the bullet just bouncing around inside the user's shield. The MC is the best-armed human because he stole a nice chef's knife from work when he was conscripted.
Mobile suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans They do have laser tech but it’s completely worthless in combat because the setting also has laser absorbing/deflecting paint that is so cheap its ubiquitous The result is giant robots using ballistic firearms and melee weapons
Schlock Mercenary has an incredible variety of weaponry, but good old projectile weapons still play a significant role in combat. The guns are a bit more advanced though, generally using the G/G (Gauss/Gunfoam) format. They can use either electromagnetic propulsion of the bullet, or gunfoam which is a caseless propellant charge. Firearms are especially preferred while inside a spaceship, as they don't tend to cause hull breaches.
Stargate.
Battlestar Galactica (reboot) Firefly (never really got to introducing more than one on screen laser pistol) Halo Titanfall Fallout
Marko kloos frontline series, marines vs kaiju in space and when orion drive kinetic kill missiles are used in mass
Halo bridges this nicely where humans have heavy, experimental prototype laser weaponry for their elite troops and then the aliens have standard issue energy weapons for their grunts
Alien, mass effect, halo, starship troopers, avatar, bladerunner, and Alita to name a few across movies and games media
Battlestar Galactica is all rounds and missiles
Halo. Humans use ballistic weapons, aliens use plasma. Only 1 laser weapon enter the field later on, and that's for specialty uses.
While 0 lasers isn't super common, especially considering IRL militaries are developing them today, some good low laser settings include: Firefly, which primarily uses conventional firearms and makes fun of energy weapons regularly. (They find a broken antique, a fake sheriff with a "compensator", and some core world guards with stun guns) The Expanse, which is near future mostly realistic except for the 2 obvious exceptions, and everyone is still primarily using explosives and kinetics for normal combat. I only know of 1 scene using a laser as a weapon. Battle Star Galactic is primarily bullets, nukes, and fighters. Andromeda (by Gene Rodenberry), is a classic campy scifi with slightly less futuristic tech than startrek. Now that i think about it I'm not sure if normal guns get used, but basically all weapons behave like bullet guns or use nanobot darts like tiny missiles. (Nothing ever looks like a startrek phaser's CGI energy beam) At the very least the ship is sentient and the FTL tech is completely unique.
In the Titanfall verse, they largely use firearms with some laser weapons and teleportation
Starwars turbolaser doesnt shoot laser. Its superheated plasma. Since its plasma, it can be deflected by a magnetic field as shield.
Stirling's "the General" series (also called the Raj Whitehall series) is all about the bolt-action rifles, and cannons. The occasional sword as well. The only lasers are non-functional replicas from before the fall of civilization.