What makes up a beam weapon? [Universal Century]

[Chavelo]

The only things I've been able to surmise is that an I-field chamber is required to contain and direct mega particles once they're fully charged and a focusing mechanism along the barrel. One of the wikis refers to a "focus coil".

I'd also be curious to know how it is they achieve a "machine gun" affect. Whether it's some kind of I-field manipulation or charging the mega particles at a fast rate.

[battletech]

It might help if you give a series and a time frame with in the series. I do believe in most series it's different and tech with in a series changes over time as new tech is developed. Like in Original Gundam the RX-78 uses something called an E-cap that stores Minovsky particles.

[Chavelo]

Herp'derp. I totally forget about the universe. I spent the morning discussing it with friends so I was locked into Universal Century mode. ;o

Well the E-cap is pretty well known. But I'm more curious with the less known mechanics of beam weapons. How they achieve different effects like the continous long range beam rifle shown in 08th MS, the Mega Launcher first seen in Zeta (assuming that hasn't been retconned), and of course beam machine gun affect.

[PowerdGNFlag]

Herp'derp. I totally forget about the universe. I spent the morning discussing it with friends so I was locked into Universal Century mode. ;o

Well the E-cap is pretty well known. But I'm more curious with the less known mechanics of beam weapons. How they achieve different effects like the continous long range beam rifle shown in 08th MS, the Mega Launcher first seen in Zeta (assuming that hasn't been retconned), and of course beam machine gun affect.

The most baffling UC beam weapon for me has to be both types of the beam saber/gun: the beam saber hilt that functions as a gun when docked (e.g. Zeta/ZZ beam sabers) and beam rifles with beam saber modes (again, Zeta/ReZEL line). Won't the former be essentially a double-sided tube with some stuff in between? How can the gun work at all? The other one may be more plausible; there can be mechanisms in the interior that switches depending on the mode used.

I vaguely remember having a discussion on this some time ago, but if not, what's the best explanation that we have?

[MythSearcher]

Herp'derp. I totally forget about the universe. I spent the morning discussing it with friends so I was locked into Universal Century mode. ;o

Well the E-cap is pretty well known. But I'm more curious with the less known mechanics of beam weapons. How they achieve different effects like the continous long range beam rifle shown in 08th MS, the Mega Launcher first seen in Zeta (assuming that hasn't been retconned), and of course beam machine gun affect.

Easy Answer:
They only gave us the basic Beam Rifle and Mega Particle Cannon design, and never said a word about the machine guns and continuous firing mechanisms.

I can kinda imagine charging Minovsky particles into the chamba when the last batch just degenerated into Mega Particle and fired out, this can be a machine gun type.

The continuous type would need to have a mechanism to reduce the flow rate of the Mega Particles, I guess, and thus you still compress a lot at the same time, but the flow rate(not the speed) would be really slow so you limit it to a tiny beam.(which goes with the setting about the Beam sniper rifle has a low power beam for aiming, a lower power beam still hurts, but got much less particles)