Help with Lasers

[Rednax]

Alright, so i'm building a mech and am almost done. It can hover in the air, is fully electrical ( i'm always paranoid about fuel so i mostly use RTG's + i suck at building compact fuel engines ) and move around quite well. I've then build a cannon arm, and wanted to make the right arm a Laser arm, which i did.

But it didn't work -> it barely did any damage.

then i went to look at other designs. I went ahead and tried to use my unfinished mech to fight against the twin guards titan ( which is of simular size, only 2 / 3 ish times more expensive ) and my mech got completely wrecked by its laser even before he had his chance to fire his misiles.
I was really impressed by that laser system, and wanted to see how it worked.

so i spawned in the titan and completely gutted it, safe for the outer hull and the laser system.

then i rebuild a laser system using the same amount of components the titan uses in his system ( and i've counted:

17x4 laser frequency doubler
2x4 storage laser cavity
24x4 laser pump 3 m
24x4 laser pump
12x l laser q switch

and a whole bunch of stuff to connect it all up to the actual gun in the turret arm )

and by all accounts, it should work.

it has trouble even burning through wood.

no idea why, i have enough energy in bateries, i even tested the system when i added about 8 more large rtgs to see if that would fix it but it doesn't. It fires 3 beams in rapid succesion ( it almost looks like a continues beam ) but they don't do any damage.

so basicly my mech now has a complicated expensive flashlight.

Anybody knows what i'm doing wrong? i apreciate all advice

[Rednax]

It says that it has ( while firering at a stationary target ) a pulse damage of 1000 and an armour penetration of 1 -> but both vallues should be waaaaay higher right? i have 68 laser frequency doublers :/

[breakthrough]

The laser you describe requires 38,400 engine power to run. I find myself skeptical that you actually have that much in pure RTG power as it would take upwards of 60 of the largest RTGs for just the laser and more for shields and other stuff.

edit: Just saw your second post. The lines with the frequency doublers need q switches matching the cavities you want the AP on

[Rednax]

Originally posted by breakthrough:

The laser you describe requires 38,400 engine power to run. I find myself skeptical that you actually have that much in pure RTG power as it would take upwards of 60 of the largest RTGs for just the laser and more for shields and other stuff.

edit: Just saw your second post. The lines with the frequency doublers need q switches matching the cavities you want the AP on

It probably needs that much engine power, however i right now have an electric engine with a bunch of bateries, and i thought :"Alright, let's look at the energy and if it drains really quickly then i probably need a bigger engine"

but the thing is; the battery's do not get empty ( they don't even get close ).

Is your laser damage tied to your engine power, or is it tied to your total energy? If it's the former, then that's probably what is wrong.

also: does the placement of the frequenty doublers and q switches matter?

This is the first time i've build a laser and i'm not sure how it all works. I have filled in everything in a way that it's connected to the laser system ( nothing says:"this is not connected to a laser system") but i've also kinda filled it in a way to make it all fit inside the hull -> meaning it isn't really structured that well. Does that matter for the performance? ( even though the amount of components used is identicall to the amount of components used in the Titan )

[breakthrough]

Laser Pumps draw engine power and convert it into laser power that is stored in the cavities. If your electric engine drains the batteries slower than the RTGs fill them then the battery capacity will not go down but the laser's DPS is no greater than the engine power going into the pumps.

Q switches are kind of like guage, multiple laser couplers will join together only if the couplers all have the same number of Q switches.

Frequency Doublers can be anywhere, even alone attached to their own couplers, but will only give AP bonuses to things with the same Q switch count.

[Doombringer]

Electric Engine max power is 4% of battery storage, so you would need at least 960000 of batteries to fully power a 38400 power req laser...

[Rednax]

Originally posted by Doombringer:

Electric Engine max power is 4% of battery storage, so you would need at least 960000 of batteries to fully power a 38400 power req laser...

ah, so in other words: i need a huge fuell engine

[luxon001]

Originally posted by lieve poepie:

Originally posted by Doombringer:

Electric Engine max power is 4% of battery storage, so you would need at least 960000 of batteries to fully power a 38400 power req laser...

ah, so in other words: i need a huge fuell engine

Or a simply unusable steam one.