Well, the object the beam comes off of doesn’t resemble a lens all that much, and it sort of glows around its margins in a way that looks a lot like the beam. I’m reminded of the principles behind the scrambler pistol and rifle-- they’re Amarrian laser-based (relatively) small arms that use a laser projection to create a sort of electromagnetic channel for a plasma bolt or stream to follow. I guess they deliver better punch in atmosphere than an ordinary laser while limiting the kind of scatter and backwash you get with a pure blaster weapon, and can also penetrate and pop a cranium really nicely.
Better if the bolt penetrates and expends its energy exploding your target’s brain pan than that it splashes on the surface and gives everybody within three meters or so second or third-degree burns, I guess.
Maybe this is something similar? An electromagnetic channel with something nasty and hull-slicing running through it?
There was even an idea a while back that the Drifter doomsday strike might depend on a layer of something really unpleasant suspended between the outer and inner layers of shields-- that it’s a channeled flow from a reservoir, similar to what I just described, and that it fires when the overshield drops because it’s about to lose containment-- it has to use it then, or it won’t be able to fire at all. Maybe that corona around the sphere is something similar? A reservoir of whatever that beam, or stream, or whatever, is made of?
Sorta unrelated but brings up something worth mentioning.
I bring this up not as fact of what is happening in the reconstructed footage. But as a possible evaluation of this new threat…I’m a warrior after all, what I’m suppose to do.
We have not seen a single wreck of the enemy fleet in this footage. We’ve seen Drifter wrecks and Drifter vessels without their over shield. But not one vessel of the opposing force appears to have a dent in it.
From what we know of the Doomsday weapon first hand - The damn things are capable of turning fortified carriers into twisted scrap metal - By one or two battleships vessels (Correct me If I’m wrong about this)
Why does it appear the Drifters cant even take down one ship despite having that heavy artillery as basic doctrine? We’ve seen normal weapons fire in the footage from the Drifters, but not the infamous kill shot we know they love to use on us.
All it takes is one piece of any video currently be reconstructed to reveal the Drifters can take one of their ships down by showing a wreck…But until then; I’m led to believe a few things.
Does this mysterious fleet have some counter-measure to disable the Drifters doomsday weaponry? unable to be targeted by it? Or maybe their shield and armor technology is on such a vastly more advanced plain that the doomsday cannon is a peashooter?
The Drifters have proven themselves powerful with their tech. A fleet of damaged battleships can still cause more causalities to Capsuleer fleets than we could to them. There’s no reason why these Drifters shouldn’t be either proving an even fight in this footage, or dominating them. As we’ve seen with the damaged fleets! The Drifters are taking a beating here! They’re losing! Something we can all be thankful for - But we are continuing to see signs of the Drifters being in a state of weakness.
This new faction is thrice as powerful as we are…In the professional wrestling industry this is refereed to as “Jobbing”. Where a powerful figure is made to look weak in the face of a new threat to show-off just how powerful they are.
there is an other possibility:
their weapons are made to bypass the shields.
I recall here how works the shields:
Blockquote
Shields work by confining a volume of plasma with a magnetic field. This field, also known as a plasma window, has an extremely high viscosity, preventing normal matter from passing through. However, repeated impacts and explosive forces knocks the plasma free from within the field, while additional thermal or electromagnetic energy input disrupt the magnetic field itself, allowing plasma to leak out.
but a magnetic field can be altered. So it is possible to locally force the plasma contained in the shield to find a weaker way out : in the ship.
So even if the shield attain a state where the DD should discharge, it does, but not on the enemy ship.
the only requirements for this are:
a extremely power source
advanced calculation capabilities.
wich can be possibly found from only two factions, the rogue drones (we know that they collect isogen 5 since many years) and the yan jung, but those are nowhere to be found.