• @[email protected]
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    1128 months ago

    Laser tanks are impractical. What if the enemy wears mirrored shades? That laser goes right back and kills you instead. You don’t want your 100 million dollar tank to be taken out by a pair of Ray-Bans.

    • @BraveLittleToasterOP
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      928 months ago

      We can put shades on the tank to bounce it right back

    • @Pirasp
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      128 months ago

      That’s when you go back to explosives, you don’t even need shrapnel anymore, they are already wearing it!

    • @[email protected]
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      58 months ago

      The moment those mirrors stop being perfectly shiny they begin thermal collapse. Which is the real reason mirrors exposed to the atmosphere can’t be used as targeting optics.

    • @xantoxis
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      28 months ago

      deleted by creator

    • @[email protected]
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      38 months ago

      The US military has in the past used some large vehicle mounted beam weapons that make your skin burn like all hell, such as the Active Denial System, and I wonder if those could be deflected as well or if they’re the part of the spectrum that needs more sophisticated shielding?

      • knightly the Sneptaur
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        28 months ago

        Those aren’t lasers, they’re millimeter-wave radio beams.

        Yes, they can be deflected pretty easily, but you’ll need metal shield that’s big enough to entirely hide behind.

  • Norgur
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    398 months ago

    I only we had something we could fire that do almost the same arc as that. That would be ballin’! So I’d call it ballistics

      • Norgur
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        168 months ago

        Dangit! We won’t find that anywhere on Earth!

    • @[email protected]
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      58 months ago

      That would work if the earth wasn’t flat. As it is, you need to transport the artillery below their position and shoot them from there. Like Ender shooting through the ice clouds.

  • polonius-rex
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    328 months ago

    the tank is confused by its own reflection and attempts to fight itself

  • @Hobbes_Dent
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    308 months ago

    Sigh.

    Because good lasers are red.

    • Seraph
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      338 months ago

      …the color of a blaster bolt (character-scale or starship scale) is determined by the quality of the gas used in it - higher quality gives you green, lower quality gives you red. The Rebellion didn’t have access to the highest quality gas, and had to make do with the lower quality ammunition.

      Huh, I guess I wondered but never looked it up until now.

  • bufalo1973
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    278 months ago

    If you fire a laser against a mirror, it bounces but raises the heat of the mirror so you end up melting the mirror and destroying the drone.

    • @[email protected]
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      248 months ago

      I may risk being too credible here, but a $80 drone is a lot more expendable than a $40m laser tank. The drone can be considered a consumable. Hell, mark the drones down as ammo.

    • @[email protected]
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      98 months ago

      Depending on how long you do it, how powerful the laser, and how quickly it can cool off at the same time.

      And like the other guy said, you can make really good mirrors if you only care about one wavelength.

    • @BigMikeInAustin
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      88 months ago

      But the drone stays in the air by making wind, which would cool down the mirror?

  • @Pirasp
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    138 months ago

    Laser artillery!

  • verity_kindle
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    138 months ago

    We don’t need Sky Ranger, mirrorbois or lasertank, we have shitballoons.

    • @[email protected]
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      198 months ago

      Inverse square law is just a geometric limitation, focus your lasers more, problem solved.

  • @doingthestuff
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    128 months ago

    This is also how you check if your ass is clean.

  • @[email protected]
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    98 months ago

    This was a real concept for the anti-ICMB 747. The idea was to loiter it outside air defense range and then send drones in as reflectors to target the lasers much closer to the threat.

    • @[email protected]
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      8 months ago

      Interesting! Yeah, I think in the right atmospheric conditions this could absolutely work.

      Why it’s NCD, as drawn, is that shells already exist and do exactly this when fired on an indirect arc.

  • @BigMikeInAustin
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    78 months ago

    I actually do this with my TV infrared remote control.

  • @Maggoty
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    28 months ago

    Because Still Lasers aren’t lethal, duh!