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ShadowLogan wrote:

Hotrod wrote:There actually is a way to reflect a laser back to its source: Take three adjoining sides of a cube and make the inside faces reflective. Any beam coming in along a fairly wide angle will get reflected back to the source (depends on how deep the indentation is). This is how many reflective panels work. Convex mirrors, which is what the armor of a GB is made of, spreads out beams of light, which would reduce the effective range of the reflected beam. As for angular dependence, the art depictions of Glitter Boys don't reflect (pun) that.

I'm just saying that game mechanically the laser resistant nature of the material ONLY reduces damage by 1/2, it doesn't do the reflection thing except under very specific circumstances (ex. trickshooting). If mechanics of attacking a glitterboy (or other LR-material) said (for example something like) "you take 1/2 damage as the other half is reflected like a wild shot, roll to see who gets hit with the reflected beam" I would agree that a Laser Welder might be an issue, but as it is I am not aware of any such mechnaic that applies all the time which would allow someone to laser weld.

You can indeed make a rules-based argument for what you're describing, but there's a letter of the rules vs the spirit of the rules issue here. Combat rules are meant to model combat, and extrapolating them outside of the context in which they're meant to be applied leads to some ridiculous scenarios, like characters shooting themselves in the head with S.D.C. guns to show the bad guys how tough they are, because "it's only S.D.C."

We know that lasers can ricochet off Glitter Boy armor, and that they generally do half damage. Unless you specifically designed GB armor to reflect incident beams back where they came from, having a ricochet combat mechanic is a little silly, as the odds of such a beam bouncing and hitting anything more than a few feet away get very small, very fast, and at those distances, the convex curves of the GB armor would spread the beam out.

A mechanic using a laser torch isn't 10 feet away; he's going to be a foot or so away. He's also not firing single shots (not usually, anyway). He's using it as an industrial laser to cut and weld over a significant period of time. The hazards and risks of such a scenario aren't covered in the combat mechanics of Rifts.

Hotrod wrote:

ShadowLogan wrote:

Hotrod wrote:There actually is a way to reflect a laser back to its source: Take three adjoining sides of a cube and make the inside faces reflective. Any beam coming in along a fairly wide angle will get reflected back to the source (depends on how deep the indentation is). This is how many reflective panels work. Convex mirrors, which is what the armor of a GB is made of, spreads out beams of light, which would reduce the effective range of the reflected beam. As for angular dependence, the art depictions of Glitter Boys don't reflect (pun) that.

I'm just saying that game mechanically the laser resistant nature of the material ONLY reduces damage by 1/2, it doesn't do the reflection thing except under very specific circumstances (ex. trickshooting). If mechanics of attacking a glitterboy (or other LR-material) said (for example something like) "you take 1/2 damage as the other half is reflected like a wild shot, roll to see who gets hit with the reflected beam" I would agree that a Laser Welder might be an issue, but as it is I am not aware of any such mechnaic that applies all the time which would allow someone to laser weld.

You can indeed make a rules-based argument for what you're describing, but there's a letter of the rules vs the spirit of the rules issue here. Combat rules are meant to model combat, and extrapolating them outside of the context in which they're meant to be applied leads to some ridiculous scenarios, like characters shooting themselves in the head with S.D.C. guns to show the bad guys how tough they are, because "it's only S.D.C."

We know that lasers can ricochet off Glitter Boy armor, and that they generally do half damage. Unless you specifically designed GB armor to reflect incident beams back where they came from, having a ricochet combat mechanic is a little silly, as the odds of such a beam bouncing and hitting anything more than a few feet away get very small, very fast, and at those distances, the convex curves of the GB armor would spread the beam out.

A mechanic using a laser torch isn't 10 feet away; he's going to be a foot or so away. He's also not firing single shots (not usually, anyway). He's using it as an industrial laser to cut and weld over a significant period of time. The hazards and risks of such a scenario aren't covered in the combat mechanics of Rifts.

Get a welder with Trick Shooting.
Then he can control where the ricochet goes, and make sure it's not at him or the torch.
Since a laser welder only has a range of 10', you could weld in a large room/garage/warehouse/whatever without worrying about hitting anything.
Problem solved.

Or just use a plasma torch.

alternately, the laser torch may have adjustable range and the 10 foot setting is mainly there to allow cutting through large objects, but it also has a number of much shorter-range settings that would typically be used for welding. just like an oxyacetylene torch can be set to have a longer or shorter flame, and nobody uses the longer cutting flame setting for welding unless maybe they're extremely desperate and something is stuck.

i mean, it isn't like you want a laser welder where if you go past the piece that you're working on, suddenly you're blasting a heavy laser into the wall, floor, ceilings, etc all the time, and it wouldn't be very popular as a welder if you had to exclusively weld while hovering 10 feet in the air and far away from all surfaces except for the one you're trying to weld.

Shark_Force wrote:alternately, the laser torch may have adjustable range and the 10 foot setting is mainly there to allow cutting through large objects, but it also has a number of much shorter-range settings that would typically be used for welding. just like an oxyacetylene torch can be set to have a longer or shorter flame, and nobody uses the longer cutting flame setting for welding unless maybe they're extremely desperate and something is stuck.

i mean, it isn't like you want a laser welder where if you go past the piece that you're working on, suddenly you're blasting a heavy laser into the wall, floor, ceilings, etc all the time, and it wouldn't be very popular as a welder if you had to exclusively weld while hovering 10 feet in the air and far away from all surfaces except for the one you're trying to weld.

Definitely.

Hotrod wrote:You can indeed make a rules-based argument for what you're describing, but there's a letter of the rules vs the spirit of the rules issue here. Combat rules are meant to model combat, and extrapolating them outside of the context in which they're meant to be applied leads to some ridiculous scenarios, like characters shooting themselves in the head with S.D.C. guns to show the bad guys how tough they are, because "it's only S.D.C."

I agree there is a certain amount of "common sense" that is also supposed to be at play even in combat. Is there actual text to suggest that all laser blasts ricochet off as a matter of course and the beam isn't altered in anyway (we know its lost half its damage), or is it really a feature of the Trickshoot ability finding the right angle(s) to have the least impact?

Hotrod wrote:A mechanic using a laser torch isn't 10 feet away; he's going to be a foot or so away. He's also not firing single shots (not usually, anyway). He's using it as an industrial laser to cut and weld over a significant period of time. The hazards and risks of such a scenario aren't covered in the combat mechanics of Rifts.

Did it occur to you that because the laser torch isn't a "blast" when cutting/welding the laser resistant material may not work? The intensity of the torch might "overwhelm" the protective properties. (ie we are not in combat so combat rules and properties may not apply).

We know laser resistant materials (at least for the material the GB uses) are vulnerable to a specific frequency. We also know that there are different types of lasers (and operating frequencies). It may be that the Laser Welder uses frequencies that are not viable for combat and outside the protective range (ie laser freqs that are viable for combat).

Then again as others have said, you could just use the right tool for the right job. In this case you'd need a plasma torch (and I provided a list of known examples earlier so we know they are available in some forms, which opens up they could be available in others).

Considering Chromium Armor is a unique material it probably requires specialized tools due to its properties to properly bond it when removing damaged sections and replacing with undamaged material. You may be able to kind of fake it but it wouldn't be as good as using tools built to manipulate it.

RE: PLASMA TORCHES
Checkout the Weapon listing for Cyber-Snatcher OCC pg27 of Bionics SB (emphasis in text): "and Plasma or Laser Torches (typically has 4-5 settings and inflict 1D4, 1D6, 2D6 and 4d6MD)".

ShadowLogan wrote:

Hotrod wrote:You can indeed make a rules-based argument for what you're describing, but there's a letter of the rules vs the spirit of the rules issue here. Combat rules are meant to model combat, and extrapolating them outside of the context in which they're meant to be applied leads to some ridiculous scenarios, like characters shooting themselves in the head with S.D.C. guns to show the bad guys how tough they are, because "it's only S.D.C."

I agree there is a certain amount of "common sense" that is also supposed to be at play even in combat. Is there actual text to suggest that all laser blasts ricochet off as a matter of course and the beam isn't altered in anyway (we know its lost half its damage), or is it really a feature of the Trickshoot ability finding the right angle(s) to have the least impact?

Hotrod wrote:A mechanic using a laser torch isn't 10 feet away; he's going to be a foot or so away. He's also not firing single shots (not usually, anyway). He's using it as an industrial laser to cut and weld over a significant period of time. The hazards and risks of such a scenario aren't covered in the combat mechanics of Rifts.

Did it occur to you that because the laser torch isn't a "blast" when cutting/welding the laser resistant material may not work? The intensity of the torch might "overwhelm" the protective properties. (ie we are not in combat so combat rules and properties may not apply).

We know laser resistant materials (at least for the material the GB uses) are vulnerable to a specific frequency. We also know that there are different types of lasers (and operating frequencies). It may be that the Laser Welder uses frequencies that are not viable for combat and outside the protective range (ie laser freqs that are viable for combat).

Then again as others have said, you could just use the right tool for the right job. In this case you'd need a plasma torch (and I provided a list of known examples earlier so we know they are available in some forms, which opens up they could be available in others).

Free Quebec, p70: "a reflective material from which lasers harmlessly bounce off"
Free Quebec, p81: "As you can see," continued the Juicer, "I didn't even scratch any of them. My laser bounced off and blasted into the ceiling."
As for a blast vs continuous mode, the physics of high energy deposition rates are a little screwy, especially when you're dealing with lasers and highly reflective materials. I agree that a plasma cutter would be a better choice.

"Harmlessly" would appear to contradict with "half damage".