anti-phased plasma weapons - currently there are single phase and multi-phase weapons in use around the place, as an extension of multi-phase weapons anti-phase plasma weapons work by carefully tuning 2 phases of a 2 phase multi-phase beam so that they are "opposite". EM waves of 180' polarity cancel each other out through destructive interference work, but it might be possible (depending on how the physics of multi-phase plasma work) that both can exist, atleast until it interacts with something that is fully in the real world.
When this happens i could see one of 3 things happening 1) the beam interacts with itself, resulting in no physical damage (so boring) 2) when a (single phase) shield adapts to block the beam it either blocks one and other passes through uninhibited 3) a multi phase shield attempts to generate both phases and either destructive interference means the shield overloads itself (hence the anti-shield idea), it manages to block both (boring again), or it behaves somewhat like a single phase shield and blocks one of the phases (interesting).
If the "phase" of a plasma beam works like an electromagnetic wave, then you can't have 2 opposite phases in the one beam, so this weapon would have to be a pair of single phase weapons which hit the same shield node.
Having a weapon which basically negates shields is a bit overpowered so the downside of using this weapon is the power backlash on the ship firing it (call it power leakage due to phase coupling within the weapon, or something like that). Also the engineering difficulties of building the weapon so that destructive interference doesn't nullify the weapon energy as it is fired, creating an even larger power backlash on the firing ship.
Once again, depending on how the physics of interference within a plasma beam work the sum of the 2 phases might not leave enough residual energy in the visible spectrum for the shots to be visible - the result is shield penetrating shots, which are invisible until they hit something, so they would only be visible between the shield and the hull of the ship
-- this would be the ideal weapon for a cloaked ship.-- I have no idea where this story is going, but i'm sure at least one of the sides will unveil/need a surprise weapon boost, and the consortium, the faey and the karrine would all seem to be capable of "developing" this weapon out of a pair of carefully tuned single-phase weapons.
Andrew
--
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines
