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Modular Laser

This mod introduces a modular system for lasers, which includes:

• Laser emitters: modules that convert power into wavelength-specific lasers
  
• Laser mounts: spinal / fixed mounts that fire wavelength-specific lasers
  
• Laser turrets: mounts that can aim

All components can be configured to produce or accept a specific wavelength. Shorter wavelengths have higher range but lower conversion efficiency. Laser mounts/turrets can be configured to operate at a lower input power, allowing for finer control over power management.

Current version: 0.2.10.2

These lasers are a power-hungry system with low conversion efficiency from input power into actual laser beam energy. A ship dedicated to using them is likely to be filled with reactors and plant control centers, making it more of a glass cannon the more power you want. If you optimize for getting as much power as possible, knocking out a single power generation module or laser emitter could cause your lasers to no longer fire.

• High wavelength lasers (towards red/infrared) have better conversion efficiency on the emitters, but the beams have lower range. For the same reactor power, you get more damage and less range.
  
• Low wavelength lasers (towards violet/ultraviolet) have worse conversion efficiency on the emitters, but the beams have higher range. For the same reactor power, you get less damage and more range.
  
• Lasers in this mod do constant armor damage and penetration up to the effective range, and then decay up to their max range.
  
• Concentrating laser energy into a single turret gets more range than having the same energy split across multiple turrets. You may want to bring spare turrets anyway, if you have spare power, if you want to engage multiple targets, or if you want to cover more angles.
  
• The laser mirror size changes the range of the laser beam. Larger mounts/turrets are better at damaging ships than smaller ones for the same laser energy, while smaller mounts/turrets can turn faster and work better as automated point defense.
  
• All turrets and mounts are dual-purpose, but the fire control sensor capability is restricted to smaller turrets. You may need to provide locks yourself or manually point the larger turrets at incoming missiles.

A simple example recipe to build a ship with this mod:

• Update the ship modules with reactors and drives to generate as much power as available
  
• Update the ship compartments with as many plant control centers as available
  
• Start replacing modules with laser emitter modules until the ship is consuming more power than available
  
• Bring down power input on laser emitter modules so the ship is fully powered
  
• Add laser mounts / turrets to taste
  
• Adjust power consumption and wavelengths to taste

The mod is intended to reward experimentation, but you may prefer to look at the internal formulas and build spreadsheets or models yourself. The internal formulas, as of the current version, are:


Damage is currently computed with one tick every 0.2s. So component damage times 0.2 that is lower than a component's damage resistance is not going to be able to damage that component.

- 0.2.10.2: Fix interface bug on load
- 0.2.10: Make mod compatible with game version 0.3.2
- 0.2.9: Double component damage conversion factor
- 0.2.8: Fix art asset copying from stock to work with latest version of game
- 0.2.7: Fix interaction bug with other mods with hull part resources, by clearing cache of hull parts before recomputing resources
- 0.2.6: Update asset bundle to LZ4 compression -- larger file but faster load
- 0.2.5.7: Further future-proof saving of custom XML elements in save files for compatibility with other mods
- 0.2.5.6: Simplify loading of UI elements / avoid packaging extra asset bundle
- 0.2.5.5: Improve UI appearance / add sounds, future proof XML custom serializer for custom components
- 0.2.5.4: Update how UI indicator element is loaded with cleaner + faster code
- 0.2.5.3: Update how spring icon is loaded to also work if there's both a local and a steam workshop version of the mod
- 0.2.5.2: Laser beams no long have shadows
- 0.2.5.1: Update how sprite icon is loaded to also be compatible with future testing branch
- 0.2.5: Add status indicator icon and tooltip for laser production monitoring on ships with laser emitters
- 0.2.4: Dashed purple lines also show up on non-tactical view for invisible beams if the UI detail mode is set to detailed, rather than terse or normal (default cycling through Tab key)
- 0.2.3: Change resource demand priority of laser emitters to Low. You should now be able to run systems over power and have the laser emitters take lower priority, then for example turn off your radar to have the laser emitters work again.
- 0.2.2: Further increase base armor penetration, remove crew requirement from turrets and mounts
- 0.2.1: Increase base armor penetration and component damage
- 0.2: Increase max laser power to turrets and mounts, reduce scaling factor for armor penetration and component damage
- 0.1.15: Restrict use of EO fire control system on larger turrets and mounts
- 0.1.14: Integrated fire control sensor is now EO-jammable -- that is, the OSP's laser dazzler can make laser turrets not EO-lock on targets.
- 0.1.13: Reduce laser turret rotation and elevation speeds
- 0.1.12: Make muzzles not be impacted by accuracy modifiers
- 0.1.11: Update fire control systems to not scale with turret size and instead behave as Grazer fire control system; updated stats display
- 0.1.10: Patch stock logic so spinal/laser mounts mounted on bottom or top of ships bear to target correctly. Minor graphical updates: fix depression for LM2, remove ring at the end of tactical view if beam is at max length.
- 0.1.9: Reduce laser mount model sizes (and visual beam diameter) by 16%, reducing poor mount visual overlapping on the Lemon; update laser turret elevation limits to (+90 deg, -5 deg)
- 0.1.8: Laser beams now show up in tactical view as dashed purple lines (yes, even invisible ones)
- 0.1.7: Update laser visibility wavelength range (380 nm <= wavelength < 750 nm)
- 0.1.6: Fix armor effect damage size on beams, add accuracy measurements, rename component categories (separating mounts from turrets)
- 0.1.5: Update component description of laser emitters to show actual efficiency range for each size
- 0.1.4: Fix cost of LM3 Laser Mount to 35 (instead of 75), update component short UI names/names displayed on DC board
- 0.1.3: Check custom values loaded from saved fleets to ensure they are valid
- 0.1.2: Newly placed components try to guess sensible defaults for wavelength and power (thanks Altair for suggestion)
- 0.1.1: Add laser emitter efficiency to module settings panel, next to bandname/color description (thanks ShadowLotus for suggestion)
- 0.1: Initial version