So, I've been trying to figure out how to actually make a realistic but balanced laser. It's a laser, so it would be an expensive-high tier weapon, but it would still have to be balanced accordingly. The final result that would be ideal would be a weapon that cut actors to pieces, but didn't shred the level like crazy. Killing enemies with a high-powered weapon is fine, but instantly boring into somebody's brain vault isn't.

So, experiment one: I made a weapon that shoots "bullets" that move at a speed of 5000, has a very high sharpness (like 10000), but a low mass (0.0001 or so). I figured this would represent a laser as accurately as possible. You CAN set the speed to the actual speed of light... but the game doesn't seem to like trying to render that.

Anyway, experiment one failed because, well, it bored through the ground too much. It was the best-looking of my experiments though. I made the trail of the projectile 5000 long, and gave it a lifetime of 1. At a speed of 5000, that makes a pretty long "bar" appear from the gun. Giving it a re-fire rate of about 2000 makes a pretty nice-looking continuous laser. Still, too terrain-shredding.

Experiment two: I thought a bit about the principles of lasers. What a weaponized laser does upon impact with something is it basically violently evaporates all liquid, even the most minute molecules. This causes a small explosion at the point of impact. So, I was like "okay, what if I make the projectile something that will gib into a very VERY short-lived but forceful explosion." This seemed like a good idea. And it would have been, had I not been thwarted by the physics of the game. Any particles that gib from an already moving object carry over the momentum of the original object. So, with such a fast-moving projectile, the gib-particles simply flew out too far, even with a lifetime of 1. It wasn't very far by most explosion standards, but it was enough to where the actor firing the gun could blow himself up way too easily. Perhaps I could simply make the initial projectile fly slower, but it would be better if there were some guaranteed way to negate a gib particle's speed, no matter the velocity of the initial projectile.

Experiment three: A high-powered projectile that wasn't very sharp. This would just impart blunt trauma upon the target, which hopefully would blow actors apart but not terrain. Of course, the problem here is that this requires both high velocity and high mass. Of course, making these values high enough to gib another actor is usually sufficient enough to make the actor firing the weapon ALSO explode. I tried to perhaps figure out a way to make the gun fire a light projectile that instantly gibs into another projectile that is heavy, though I'm not sure how well that will work out.

So, this is how far I've gotten in making a realistic laser so far. I'm gonna go work on it a bit more, as writing this made me think of a couple things. But any other input would be great.

Set sharpness to -5

Uh... what does that do? And which experiment are you referring to?

Sharpness -5 means that it will do quite a lot of damage to most actors, but none at all to terrain.
It can have the usual mass and velocity of a bullet.

Huh, nifty. Does making it more negative (lower than -5) make this effect higher, or does -5 have some sort of special meaning? Also, do -1 through -4 do anything different?

Who figured this out... I'm gonna try it.

Negative sharpness ONLY hurts terrain. -5 means only hurt dirt, -35 concrete and weaker, and so on.

Nope. Wrong.
-5 hurts only actors and not terrain. Try it.

It would seem quite curieus that -5 would have a different effect than any other negative number.

http://www.datarealms.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=6280
The digger in that pack only uses negative sharpness and doesnt hurt actors.

negative five defiantly bounces off actors but kills dirt,walls,test!

That's odd.
When I used it as a gibbed particle it hurt only actors and not terrain.

Maybe it acts differently when fired from a gun?

No, minus sharpness destroy actors without harming dirt. I know, I've got a laser gun that uses them.

(The gun won't be released, it's too overpowered.)

Pm it, as words are no proof.

Click the SRC LDE link in my signature. The particles from that only hurt actors and not the ground.
I think the SRC ground bot has a gun version of that, but I'm not sure if it's set to -5

It still hurts grass and toplayer: it kills with mass, because 0.06 x 500 is 30, which is enough to crush a clone in combination with a velocity of 100. Try setting -5 to -100. So you can see it still hurts terrain.

A better example, then, it Whitty's biobomb.
All the particles released by that are set to -5.
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=8604
I haven't experimented with negative numbers, lowering it might increase the terrain damage, not reduce it.