phavoc said:
But they aren't. Particle Accelerators don't exclusively work with neutrons. A NEUTRON cannon would be firing the literal neutron. Which, to be fair, is also a "particle". PA's aren't terribly discriminatory, however.
You are splitting hairs kinda. A Neutral Particle Accelerator is a PA accelerates a charged beam/stream then removes the charged part of the stream through use of a target at the emitter. And works well in a Vacuum. A charged Particle Accelerator doesn't have the charge remover at the the emitter, but then again it doesn't work very well in a vacuum.
I'm not really, at least I'm not trying to. A PA, a meson gun, a laser...all are energy weapons that transmit their energy to their target, but in slightly different ways. A particle cannon is indiscriminate about the particles it accelerates. Also the defense against a PA (in a lab at least, but since Traveller doesn't have shields) is a magnetic field. Neutrons are neutral and thus would pass through any sort of magnetic shielding. They are also more massive (relatively speaking) than say an electron or proton, so they have that going for them too. And that's kind of the entire point - a neutron weapon would have different results on the target, the same as a PA has different results from a meson weapon or a regular laser (or plasma) weapon.
Infojunky said:
Now you could have a NEUTRON Cannon in which you have a cannon which fires Shells made out of NEUTRONium.....
