Originally posted by CTH2004:

Any Suggestions for this mod?

Please, put them all here!

Well, if you insit...

First, I would Like it if there was no limit on throughtput, but, that's just my suggestions! (Some people want to make a Super-Laser on the front of their ship, just for destroying stuf! (Especialy voxels once it can do that!))

Also, I think the super weapon Could be in this mod, just, make it very exensive, (But, this is just a suggestion!) (Maybe a new ore? Special Properides? User your imagination!)

Perhaps you could add more utility to the mod with things like laser drills. I know lasers dont work like that so it could be assplained away by making the theoretical laser drill require grav generator components, and it mines by melting resources and drawing them in with a gravity well.

Of course taking away the dangers of close-in drill mining needs balancing, so I'd reccomend making the laser drill large and a wide-area tool, but very expensive and power hungry.

Take it further with hyper powerful laser-assemblers and laser-refineries!

Originally posted by RJ:

Perhaps you could add more utility to the mod with things like laser drills. I know lasers dont work like that so it could be assplained away by making the theoretical laser drill require grav generator components, and it mines by melting resources and drawing them in with a gravity well.

Of course taking away the dangers of close-in drill mining needs balancing, so I'd reccomend making the laser drill large and a wide-area tool, but very expensive and power hungry.

Take it further with hyper powerful laser-assemblers and laser-refineries!

That was what I was planningon putting here later... good thought!

What might work for mining lasers (and just alternate laser firing modes in general) is having a laser pulse mechanism as an option rather than just having a steady beam. The idea being that, rather than gradually ablating the surface with a lower, constant power (which might explain why the constant-beams can't damage voxels due to heat dissipation through the material), it instead relies on higher-energy repeating pulses to deliver more energy per hit.

Also, laser drilling is totally a thing IRL! It's not generally used to make large holes, though, but I imagine that if you have a collection mechanism for the ablated material, you could deal with it somewhat decently. Of course, you could always just make it so that the pulsed lasers just destroy voxels, then maybe add in some sort of mining explosives that cause voxel materials to drop - Which might not be the most ideal gameplay solution, but it'd work within realism. Alternatively, you could mutter something about ablation, energizing a medium, and using 'gaseous' ablated material to fracture the surrounding materials to generate resource rocks.
Might not work too well with ice, though, hmm..

Some time ago I wrote a comment with my ideas under the mod but nobody answered. So I thought I would write them here.
If you add color sliders you could write "nm" (nanometers) which is the wavelength on real lasers. (650nm - red, 589nm - amber, 532nm - green, 480nm - cyan, 460nm - blue and 405nm - purple) There are also some different types of Lasers like Diode Lasers or DPSS Lasers. It doesn't have to be that complex but the colors would be nice. But you can find everything on the internet. It would make the mod more realistic.
Adding a feature that lasers don't destroy glass but pass through it would make the mod even more realistic.
Sorry if my English is bad, I usually speak german.

A way to change the colour of the beam perhaps?

Here's a crazy idea, use this system to transfer power between grids. You would have to have a block that instead of being damaged by the beam it converts it back into electrical power, probably at a loss. You could power a station from the ground.

Great Mod!

Suggestion: I think an additional Block / something that modifies the range of the laser would be nice. To balance things out you could make it so that it works like a trade off: for instance you sacrifice power for range and the other way round.
Or you create some kind of cooldown mechanism.
Mechanics like that would make this mod all the more interesting, as weapon systems would me much more customisable. For example you could have a sort of "sniper" ship with increased range but high cooldown or less immediate damage. Or a ship that has to get up close and personal but packs an even bigger punch..

Perhaps, if you could find a way to do it, you could have the option of having damage fall off over distance, similar to what happens with real-world lasers? It'd probably mess with the targeting a fair bit, but it'd mean that there would be a good reason to have high-powered lasers beyond just for damage. Which could be tied in to a pulsing system in order to have that sort of 'sniper' beam where it fires in short, high-energy, long-range pulses.

Plus, you could put a soft cap on laser power where more energy is put into 'coherence' or somesuch after a point, which would affect the falloff in some way. I dunno.

Would it be posible to switch gimballed and fixed lasers max ranges - By my logic - fixed ones should have longer range because they have larger lenses, and gimballed one are already OP well - because they are gimballed, also they already have internal power source and on top of that - can be powered by the same source as fixed one. 10 for fixed, 3.1 (3) for gimballed. thanks :)

My Two Cents on the Mining Laser:

The laser could vaporize and ionize the the metals and then draw in the Ionized vapor with a magnetic field. A bonus could be no stone collection, due to it not having an ionic charge.

My Two Cents.

As for a new concept: Laser energy Transference. So you could send Power to a receiver that has a limit. Overload the receiver and it takes damage until it is destroyed. Kinda like the way Tesla inteded his coils to do. Not just amuse us.

Originally posted by FifthPegasus:

My Two Cents on the Mining Laser:

The laser could vaporize and ionize the the metals and then draw in the Ionized vapor with a magnetic field. A bonus could be no stone collection, due to it not having an ionic charge.

My Two Cents.

As for a new concept: Laser energy Transference. So you could send Power to a receiver that has a limit. Overload the receiver and it takes damage until it is destroyed. Kinda like the way Tesla inteded his coils to do. Not just amuse us.

Power transfer:
That's what I was thinking, wireless (or in SE's case blockless) power. You could even set up a recovery system where you beam power into depleted ships to recharge their batteries.

I think it would look really cool to have one power station on a planet beaming power to various buildings and orbital platforms, may be even to the nearest moon (but that might be getting carried away).

I like the idea of being able to change the color of the lasers.

A mining laser would be a nice bonus.

Could create a power recieving block that if struck by a laser is able to convert the recieved energy into electrical power. Would need a way of specifically targeting that block for a laser. Perhaps a energy transmisison attachement/upgrade for a gimble laser which provides the ability to lock onto a specified target similar to how the laser antenna is able to be locked onto another laser antenna.

Which brings me to another idea. A version of a gimble turret that is ultra long range that is low power (non damaging) communications gimbal.

Originally posted by Krahazik:

I like the idea of being able to change the color of the lasers.

A mining laser would be a nice bonus.

Could create a power recieving block that if struck by a laser is able to convert the recieved energy into electrical power. Would need a way of specifically targeting that block for a laser. Perhaps a energy transmisison attachement/upgrade for a gimble laser which provides the ability to lock onto a specified target similar to how the laser antenna is able to be locked onto another laser antenna.

Which brings me to another idea. A version of a gimble turret that is ultra long range that is low power (non damaging) communications gimbal.

I suggested the power block idea earlier. The communication laser is already implemented. It's called The laser antenna, it's vanilla.

As regards to specifically targeting, I feel that would make things too easy for the player and too hard for the modder. Now if he was able to code it that instead of damaging friendly blocks it would convert it into power then you wouldn't need a new block. Just fly into the beam or line up your station and enjoy the feed.

wouldnt it just be easier to copy how the laser antenna aims and then use the power transfer that way maybe have a laser power transferer and laser power reciever and you can chose how much power to send