How does the radiation gun work?
In Starsiege, the cybrid faction has a special weapon called the radiation gun:
The Radiation Gun is a Cybrid terror weapon designed to affect only living tissue. It can be used without fear of causing collateral damage to nearby structures (or other Cybrids!). A blast from a Radiation Gun can compromise a target's genetic stability. Repeated blasts will weaken and eventually kill a Human pilot. Cybrids have been known to employ this weapon to assist in recovering Human weaponry and technology left intact on the battlefield. Though short ranged, this weapon is deadly. The only real defense against this weapon is an Angel Life Support System.
It works by killing the pilot directly, ostensibly to preserve the disabled HERC/tanks and get more salvage in the single player campaigns. Although I haven't used it much, it definitely works, as I remember dying (as a human) from it once, although I've never had much success using it myself.
But how does it work? I could not find any stats such as damage per shot. Usually the in-game stats show damage against shields/armor, but since this weapon works on the pilot it's not clear how effective it is. So here's a list of related questions about it:
- How much "damage" to the pilot does each shot do? (i.e. how many hits to kill a pilot)
- Does it have to be cockpit hits or any armor hit?
- Is it affected by armor, and how? DURAC for instance has "some protection against radiation", but how does that translate to damage per shot?
- Angel life support system explicitly protects from this gun, but by how much?
- How much more salvage do you get by performing a pilot kill?
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How does a nuclear weapon actually work?
Nuclear fission produces the atomic bomb, a weapon of mass destruction that uses power released by the splitting of atomic nuclei. When a single free neutron strikes the nucleus of an atom of radioactive material like uranium or plutonium, it knocks two or three more neutrons free.How do nuclear weapons use radiation?
Gamma radiation prevails for powerful bombs. Neutrons dominate the small bombs and neutron bombs. Once the flash of gamma and neutron has passed off, the radioactivity comes from the dispersion of highly radioactive fission products and nuclei made radioactive by the flux of neutrons.How long does radiation stay in the air after a nuclear bomb?
For the survivors of a nuclear war, this lingering radiation hazard could represent a grave threat for as long as 1 to 5 years after the attack.How do neutron guns work?
Neutron Gun Physics: Neutron generators operate by first ionizing deuterium gas (2H) with a penning trap and accelerating these charged ions into a deuteriated or tritiated (3H) metal hydride target to produce neutrons with energy 2.5 MeV or 14.1 MeV (Fig. 2).Fallout 4 - How Radiation Weapons Work (Radiation Damage In-Depth Guide)
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