Handheld energy weapons

[Rynn]

I've read alot of luke campbells work, its certainly interesting stuff but I don't know whether his designs (if they were ever implemented in the future) would pass the cost/benefit analysis of a military. If OA were a regular 'soft' science franchise, that caveat wouldn't even be a problem. But since the OA is all about hard sci fi, you do have to pause somewhat. Not to be contrarian, but I find it somewhat unlikely that even mature energy weapons would be competitive with regular small arms. I honestly can't see the average soldier (whether they be human or not) a century or two from now carrying a laser into battle. Their strengths aren't enough to overcome their weaknesses, IMHO.

We don't give a date for handheld beamweapons coming into the setting but it's entirely possible they would be later than a few centuries. They may mature in a time when A) "human" soldiers aren't a thing anymore and B) machinery can be built as complex as an organism.

No offense, but that kindof feels like handwaving. Okay, energy weapons in the OA have been stated to be as reliable as anything else out there. But that doesn't make alot of sense, because great engineering (at the hands of expert systems or super brights) can only take your gadgets so far. An automatic rifle can never be as reliable as a bolt action rifle, for instance. With certain exceptions, more advanced weapons require more moving parts, which have a higher chance of failure. The simple nature of a laser weapon makes it inherently more fragile and finicky than a projectile weapon. The lens can be cracked, obscured with dirt, etc, and these failure modes are more common than what a rifle would experience.

What is more reliable: a mechanical pump or a human heart? When we talk about technology in OA we're often talking of machines as complex as biological systems with the capability to self monitor, self repair, built with a lot of independent redundancy etc. It's not always true that more complexity is less reliable.

Then theres the issue of requisite technology. In order for my beloved plasma cannon to work, it requires 1) cyrogenically frozen hydrogen, which must be 2) superheated to a plasma, then 3) forced down a magnetically sealed barrel, and 4) follow a vortice tunnel created by a laser beam. How can something like that ever be as reliable as a simple projectile weapon? Its more of a portable laboratory than anything else! I just don't see how it can be soldier proofed, even with future infrastructure.

You're also making a bit of a false assumption that even if an item had relatively more failure modes that it is of lower utility. A modern fighter plane is hideously more complex than a spit fighter but that increase in complexity, failure modes and maintenance is more than balanced out by increased performance. In the case of beam weapons (which are not the only type of handheld weapon in the setting) the near instant muzzle velocity, immunity to most environmental conditions and ability to carry a lot of "ammunition" in the form of superconductive batteries (or even a backpack conversion reactor) more than makes up for their complexity.

For the most part, I agree. Human soldiers are already showing their limitations as fighters in the 21st century. In the mid term, though, I don't think they will be replaced by drones or robots en masse. That would be prohibitively expensive, militarily unwise, and change the nature of war in an undesirable way. What I do think will happen is that soldiers will be given minor genetic enhancements and cybernetic technology to make them more competitive. But as more and more time passes, and we head into the far future, the demands placed on a soldier will become so great that they will need to replaced by creatures that are either full cyborgs or bioborgs. They will not be cheap or disposable, either.

Are you talking about real life or OA? Because OA's history spans ten thousand years. For the vast majority of it combat bots that are as adapted to warfare as sharks are to the sea have been the norm. And as for cheap/disposable OA manufacturing technology could easily pump out billions from the template and raw material. Hell most bots could be neumanns that self replicate. The ROI for using those over a greater number of simpler machines would almost always pay off.