Laser range/effectiveness

[Starstrider42]

Hello, nerding out again, this time over lasers and their ranges. If you define a laser's effective range as the distance at which armor has normal effectiveness, the early-game lasers look like:

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| Name               | Aperture | Wavelength | Armor @ 200 km| Eff. Range |
|--------------------|----------|------------|---------------|------------|
| 60 cm IR Laser     |    60 cm |    1080 nm |         1318% |      55 km |
| 60 cm Green Laser  |    60 cm |     540 nm |          358% |     105 km |
| 120 cm IR Laser    |   120 cm |    1080 nm |          361% |     105 km |
| 120 cm Green Laser |   120 cm |     540 nm |          121% |     180 km |
| 240 cm IR Laser    |   240 cm |    1080 nm |          124% |     180 km |
| 240 cm Green Laser |   240 cm |     540 nm |           64% |     250 km |
| 480 cm IR Laser    |   480 cm |    1080 nm |           66% |     245 km |
| 480 cm Green Laser |   480 cm |     540 nm |           51% |     280 km |

Naively, I'd expect diffraction to become significant at a range of about D^2/λ, with the beam intensity almost constant at shorter ranges and following an inverse-square law at longer ranges. But the in-game ranges are much shorter than that formula (fortunately for balance!), instead being an (almost) pure function of D/λ with quickly diminishing returns and following an inverse-square law everywhere.

So I'm curious how the armor effectiveness scores are actually computed from the laser's base specs. So far I haven't been able to find any function that reproduces that steep leveling out at high D/λ.

(Also, are all these measurements really in cm, and not mm? These lasers seem rather... big compared to conventional and magnetic guns.)

[neilwilkes]

(Also, are all these measurements really in cm, and not mm? These lasers seem rather... big compared to conventional and magnetic guns.)

A very good point - shouldn't be in cm either - surely it's nanometers (nm)
https://www.gentec-eo.com/blog/the-lase ... -explained

[PAwleus]

Surely it's NOT nm - it's NOT the wavelength but the aperture. It's clearly labeled, isn't it?

[johnnylump]

One note that 60cm etc. is the radius, not the diameter, of the optics.

[Starstrider42]

Ok, so my math is a factor of 2 or 4 off. But seriously, what's the reasoning behind how lasers work in the game? I'm sure the dev team's put more thought into it than my quick order-of-magnitude stuff.