Valen123456 wrote:It doesn't help that several book covers show visible weapon emissions from warships. Because they are actually invisible. Most warship weaponry sits in the X-ray or Gamma-ray spectrums, which the human eye cannot perceive.
They also fire for very short pulses - generally a few milliseconds, although there is textev of weapons on continuous fire for a few seconds. This immediately destroys the firing emitter through overheating, however.
The exception may be energy torpedoes - packets of plasma siphoned off a fusion reactor. Those should be quite visible. Otherwise, non-missile combat in the Honorverse probably isn't visually satisfying: Opposing ships will simply seem to blow up as soon as they get an unobstructed view of each other.
Don't worry, though. Any film/tv producer will definitely change that. Because no sci-fi movie is complete without excessive amounts of bright lasers and explosions.
Actually it might be impressive if they went with the invisible beam approach and gave the emitters a bright flash like huge camera going off, and the effect being like a massively speeded up version of wax in blowtorch or train crash applied to the target but with no visible impacter. Weapons grade lasers are described as being more like a ultra-high velocity impact since the energy transfer is so rapid it smashes through the target without even bothering to melt it first.
Alternately the ground combat versions can get the Plasma cannon, imagine a gun battle were the projectiles and impacts are too bright to even look at properly.
No! We cannot overlook the human element and Hollywood's immense responsibility to cater to said element and spend its enormous blank check of an artistic license at an alarming rate. The price of a movie ticket is supposed to have explosions, special effects, more explosions and more special effects. We as moviegoers demand it. We double-doggone demand it from our Sci-Fy.
I remember an interview regarding Star Trek that said that so many man hours went into vessels going into warp because of the nature of a very demanding audience. Just as much attention to detail accompanied the accompanying sounds of warp.
Can't you imagine how boring the Enterprise's attack on Reliant's bridge would have been had the beam been invisible? For one thing, moviegoers wouldn't have been able to see how inaccurate targeting is. *It took a moment for the laser to find its mark -- Reliant's bridge. Bullets are also invisible, but at least we are smart enough to include tracer rounds.
Aren't special effects written into the Bill of Alienable Rights?
Whereas music hath charm to soothe the savage beast. A lack of special effects will piss him off to no end.
*Cue ahead at 9:00 if you
must...
https://youtu.be/LaVIIoRKBlk