On Wed, Jun 24, 2015 at 08:16:49PM -0700, Craig Berry wrote:
> The trouble is that with multi-gee drives, real-world laser collimation
> forces combat to unmanageably close ranges.

Yes, there are plenty of engineering difficulties with long-ranged
beam weapons.

I find the thrusters that provide multi-gee acceleration to be far
more of a stretch than the beam weapon ranges, however.

There is no physical limit preventing laser weapons from remaining
highly collimated out to gigametres (millions of kilometres).  They
don't have to be LASERs in the strict technical sense of visible light
amplified by stimulated emission of radiation.  A collimated x-ray
beam is close enough to a laser weapon for science fiction
nomenclature purposes, regardless of how it is generated.
Stabilization is a problem, but seems reasonable given the canon
technology of artificial gravity fields and inertial damping.

So we need to pretty much decide for the purposes of discussion
whether we are talking about near-future beam weapon technology and
drives, or accepting the specifications for the space opera technology
we are given in Traveller.

- Tim