Beam lasers?

[Viper]

I noticed the term on earlier screenshots but forgot about it. It crossed my mind again today with the presentation of the Mauler variants. What exactly are beam lasers? The board game has four different kinds of lasers: lasers, ER lasers, pulse lasers and heavy lasers. Do the beam lasers correspond to any of those?

[(TLL) Heretic]

for translation to CBT, beam laser just means laser, to differentiate it from Pulse afaik

Earlier in development there was to be no distinction between clan and IS weapons, so you had beam and pulse lasers only, In the last few months the Devs seem to be trying out having different tech basis for the weapons, so I'd expect to see things like 4 Clan ER Beam lasers on 'mech loadouts (translating as 4CERMediumLasers). 

[Defender]

One steady shot (beam) versus multiple consecutive shots (pulse).

[Viper]

Ok thanks.
Wouldn't it be easier in that case to stick to the CBT terminology and call beam lasers just lasers? "Clan ER Beam lasers" (if there should be any) sound like quite a tongue twister, especially if there is a size indication such as "Clan ER Large Beam Laser" as well, compared to the shorter "Clan ER Laser".

[Landros Radick]

hah!

[Viper]

Care to elaborate?

[Defender]

Care to elaborate?

CERBL or CERPL

A laser is a laser, one shoots a beam, the other shoots a pulse.
It's really quite straight-forward.

[Viper]

Sure, I get the concept. Its probably just that I'm used to the CBT stuff and that this sounded unfamiliar to me .
I saw many games and mods where new equipment was added bit by bit to keep fun and variety high resulting in stuff like "Multi Heavy Hyper Rotary Plasma Assault Gun" and thats why I probably tend to keep stuff simple and stupid. Whatever...I probably shouldn't think about such details.

[KingLeerUK]

A lot of people throw around the CBT and TRO naming conventions with the expectation that all players coming to the game will just inherently understand them.  This won't be true and could potentially alienate some users who are interested in "big mech game" but perhaps have never touched a MechWarrior game or ever played the tabletop (I'm one of them).

Just as many MW/BT players would never understand what a "77-REC" or a "CUT-B" is from my Steel Battalion universe.
77 Recoiless Proximity Rifle and Cutter Boom Melee

This needs to be taken into consideration for the naming schema.

[(TLL)KitLightning]

A document should accompany the Mod (in .pdf or other conventional format), as it´s been in previous MW games, clearly explaining the different elements in the game for the user. And either use abbreviates or the full name of any weapons used. Some players (whether they have touched MW games or not) may not have any clue of what a Beam Laser is, and such intriguing elements needs to be clarified along with any other valuable information that may be attached to the different weapons, munition, etc. in the mod. That way the mod will help itsel greatly to attract more, and perhaps new players, to the franchise

[Stahlseele]

It's a Game for Nerds and Geeks.
We tinker. We figure things out.

[(TLL)KitLightning]

We are geeks and surely we will figure it out eventually. Yet if the community in general wishes to have new people getting into the franchise, some elements will have to be explained more subtle.

[Ghiest]

You see that's where things went a bit wrong with the game(s), the board game was pretty simplistic in terms of ranges and weapon types then along come the clans with a seperate weapon set and a upgrade for the original weapon set, then a upgrade to a upgrade .... then, well you get the idea.  What went from a pretty simplistic but good strategy board game went to a "hold on where did I put my crib sheet for this" all the time.

[Rally]

It's no issue really. But I think we should just go with "laser - pulse laser" instead of "beam laser - pulse laser" for a naming convention.

[CHHš Sturmadler]

I have to admit that as a Mechwarrior player as well as a battletech fan, you had me believing that there were 3 kinds of lasers.  Regular lasers, CBT style pulse lasers, and MW3 style pulse lasers called "beam lasers".