Can you set a laser sword to overcharge and blow up?

That depends on who the writer is. But a helpful equivalent might be to imagine trying to do the same thing to something like a laptop battery. It's certainly possible, and probably not all that difficult under controlled circumstances. But doing it on a whim, "in the field" is probably difficult to accomplish on purpose, and there certainly isn't a button you can press to make it happen because that would be incredibly dangerous to have on something you carry with you and use every day.

I can't believe you didn't use the p90...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjlCVW_ouL8

I guess I don't know enough about light saber physics to know what kind of modifications you'd have to make. But it's a least something a rogue could do with it; nothing's as good as a blaster at your side.

One of my least favorite tropes in sci-fi is ballistic weaponry being treated as ineffective simply because it's "old" technology. I really liked how they were handled in the Animorphs series. The Andalites and Yeerks both agreed that human firearms and missiles were "primitive, yet undeniably effective".

In Stargate, the ballistic weaponry was the most effective measure against the Replicators (until they eventually developed the special anti-replicator weapon). Asgard technology was decades ahead of our own, but they had to admit that shotguns were actually better at defending from Replicators than any weapon they had.

Sir, this a Wendy's Star Trek community.

Didn't the movie take it a step further?

Guns couldn't get thru personal shields, so they were going to use a bow or throw a spear or something.

But I think Star Wars logiced it away the best. Ballistic weapons take a shit ton of logistics, energy blasters could just be charged by anything electrical.

It's less than an AR15 is worse in a single soldiers hands, it's that a blaster is easier to get into millions of troopers hands and keep them firing.

That 100% makes sense, and once militaries made the switch, it would make ballistic ammo insanely expensive and only used by wealthy bounty hunters, and only then in scenarios where they need the narrow advantage. They'd still default to a blaster.

C4 is clearly the best choice, as a sonic screwdriver is unable to deal with wooden doors and light sabers take time to get through blast doors. Both of which C4 has no issue with.

I have not seen enough Trek to compare.

Guns couldn't get thru personal shields, so they were going to use a bow or throw a spear or something.

That's almost a trope, too. In the Dune series it is the same, so consequently hand-to-hand combat is the norm. And even in Stargate Apophis had a personal shield protecting him from both staff weapons and Tauri projectile weapons until SG1 (I think it was O'Neill himself but it's been a hot minute s8nice I watched that episode) watched his guards pass him a staff weapon and O'Neill threw his knife through the shield in response.

Also, in Star Wars projectile weapons were still a thing (called sluggers or slug throwers), for example with the Sand People. And Jedi hunters often used slug throwers since projectiles could not be deflected by lightsabers, Mandalorians used this during their wars against the Jedi.

Can C4 blast through durasteel? Are there any wooden doors in the future/GFFA? 🤔

These are very important questions

How does one put up shelves with a phaser?

a sonic screwdriver is unable to deal with wooden doors

You can't just unscrew the lock or take the brackets off the frame?

Or the "Carter Special"

Also ballistic weaponry was remarkably effective against the jaffa and human soldiers of the goauld because, despite the system lord's technological edge, they had focused on using terror tactics to cow primitive cultures and when facing more advanced civilizations stuck to orbital bombardment so never really developed personal armaments aside from their own personal shields, which they didn't give to their troops.

In Dune, yes. Shooting a shield with a laser creates a nuclear explosion equivalent.

ballistic weaponry being treated as ineffective simply because it’s “old” technology

I mean, from a supply chain perspective, it's much nicer to have a weapon that never runs out of ammo and has very few moving parts, especially when you're deep in the field.

Idk if I'd say the problem is that they're "old" so much as they're "solved" (various scifi alien shields tend to be great at blocking ballistics).

And I think that's supposed to go to the existential horror of alien civilizations. Not that guns, specifically, are ineffective. But that humans feel impotent in the face of foreign invasion.

The movie Alien 2 makes firearms ineffective with wave attacks of alien drones running the Marines out of ammunition, for instance. And more primitive weapons like knives and short range explosives risk throwing acid blood back at your face. They're very effective at first, but increasingly useless as the fight drags on.

Better than with C4

With C4 the shelves would have a higher probability to go up at least, I'd imagine.

Doctor before BSG? Shame on you. Shame on all of you

Yes, decades. Like at least 300,007 decades.

And if that doesn't work, have your Wookie friend start tearing arms off.

Came here to say, P90. I'm so sad adoption was low; little chance of a surplus flood.

Ok, just for argument: energy weapons often also had limits. Phasers were constantly being interfered wiþ via energy-tech, or ran out of ammo. Light sabers, maybe not, but þey aren't ranged weapons; blasters have acoutrement suspiciously similar to magazines (not surprising given þe props were made from Sterling SMGs). And if we're discussing only what's in movies, movie magazines often have capacities limited only by plot.

I know of few sci-fi weapons which are canonically infinite-energy.

Kind more magic than SF when you have a supply chain for space exploration but not bullets. Low tech planets are also unlikely to have guns. We just don't like guns in SF more than pop music.

Yield depends greatly on the shield and laser settings. The only reason that one instance goes the way it does is because the shield were set to protect from a single direction, at full power, and the lasers were randomly sweeping the ground at maximum power trying to blindly roast stragglers. The single direction setting on the shield carried the most weight, usually the energy would be roughly evenly divided in all directions. In more standard fights with average shield use and laser settings, you are going to get a blast closer to a fragmentation grenade than a nuke. The biggest problem is it will happen at a completely random point along the beam, so it still isn't an attractive proposition.

Pretty sure the phaser, on a high level, can burn through pretty much anything that is not star trek tech. It can also be set to expload.

In that one scene Data blows up an aqueduct system, spanning a large hill, in one shot of his hand phaser.

I like that scene!

Trek canonically have phaser weapons which pass through walls (banned and considered war crimes to use)

Not if you want a compelling plot.

This, recruits, is a 20-kilo ferrous slug. Feel the weight! Every five seconds, the main gun of an Everest-class Dreadnought accelerates one to 1.3 percent of light speed. It impacts with the force of a 38-kiloton bomb. That is three times the yield of the city buster dropped on Hiroshima back on Earth. That means: Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space!

Now there's an oft forgotten body horror.

It was less about how effective old weapons were, and moreso the Asgard's stupid-advanced way of thinking was ineffective against the replicators and needed to dumb it down with human ingenuity

I’ve been getting into weird shit like this, and based on your comment, there’s a better than even chance you can give me some recommendations.

I’ve seen existenz and together and probably some others that count. But I’m open to whatever you think is worth it!

More Cronenberg, certainly. His remake of The Fly, Scanners, Videodrome, and Naked Lunch most notably.

Elsewhere we've got Eraserhead, Hellraiser (I'd follow up with part 2 since it works as a single story), and Re-Animator. Have yet to watch The Substance, but have heard good things.

That's the clip the person you replied to, is replying to. Carter's demonstration.

I read it years ago but I remember they try the shield with a laser on a moon and the result scares the builder of the shield. And they don't do anything fancy. Just shooting a normal military laser to an active personal shield.

It was certainly both. In the short term, to solve their immediate problem and clear the room of Replicators, they recognized that the humans' primitive weapons were simply the best tools for the job. In the long term, to solve the ultimate problem and rid the entire galaxy of Replicators for good, the Asgards recognized that the humans' dumb way of thinking would come up with a sufficient plan that they wouldn't think to come up with.

For late 80s Doctor Who, C4 and a baseball bat is also an option.

A baseball bat enhanced by the Hand of Omega.

Wasn't that a projectile weapon with a transporter attached?

I always thought they should establish in some of these universes that fabric technology has progressed to the point where ordinary clothing is bulletproof, which is why they need glowy beam weapons. They could've done that in Star Trek, but I guess it was more important to show off Shatner's chest.

In the Star Wars universe people can ignore radiation, move objects with their minds, react to things that haven't happened yet (how else do you dodge a laser or block a blaster shot???), and there are force fields and alloys (beskar) that stop anything. Bullets would only work against stormtroopers or woefully unprepared civilians.

What?

Do you think blaster bolts move at the speed of light?

How would we see them?

They move slightly faster than a quad laser...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WO04CT9N0Y

To misquote Mass Effect - „Issac Newtown is one mean sonnovabitch“

Thank you for reminding me that I need to watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force