Equipment Locker: Sonic Disruptors

I've been a fan of The Generic Universal Roleplaying Blog ever since I first encountered it. A recent post on it that was part of this week's GURPSday haul was Ultra-Tech Quickie: More Options for the Blaster and Laser Design System. TheRyujinLP nicely encapsulated the chemical power packs for TL9 lasers, which I intended to do at one point, though they did so much more elegantly and simply than I probably would have. Another large part of the post was weight modifiers based on TL – prototype weapons that are heavy, mature weapons that are light. I've been considering including sonic screamers in my space opera setting but wasn't really happy about the lag in TL, since the setting is TL10^. But with Ryujin's little expansion, I can now extrapolate sonic screamers to TL10!

In the process, you get a sneak peak at my own expansion to the Blaster and Laser Design System: sonic screamers and stunners, plasma flamers and guns, electrolasers, and neural disruptors.

Sonic Disruptors (TL10^)
An evolutionary improvement of sonic screamers, sonic disruptors use "saser" technology. High-energy discharges from two electrodes are used to heat air in pulses, causing it to expand rapidly. More pulses create expansion waves to reflect the pressure pulse back and forth while building more sound waves in phase, releasing the coherent beam of sound towards the front of the weapon once it's reached a threshold of strength – essentially producing a sound laser. Since the sound beam is highly-focused, sonic disruptors are not projectors; they use the Beam Weapons (Pistol) and Beam Weapons (Rifle) skills.

  Heavy Sonic Disruptor (TL10^): A heavy weapon that might serve as a squad support weapon, or mounted on a technical. It's ability to erode armour makes it useful against battlesuits and light military vehicles.
  Heavy Sonic Disruptor Pistol (TL10^): A "magnum" sonic disruptor that can easily carve a cavity in the chest of an unarmoured human. It's bulk makes it hard to conceal.
  Holdout Sonic Disruptor (TL10^): A palm-sized disruptor, useful for boring holes in things discretely.
  Sonic Disruptor Carbine (TL10^): A compact assault weapon with slightly reduced stopping power and range than a rifle. Popular with vehicle crews and special ops teams.
  Sonic Disruptor Pistol (TL10^): A standard pistol. It's most often used for personal defence or as a military sidearm, since the erosion of armour can be useful in a pinch.

  Sonic Disruptor Rifle (TL10^): A bulky rifle capable of destroying most civilian armours in one or two shots. It's often used against heavily-armoured combatants due to its ability to chew through armour.

TL	Weapon	Damage	Acc	Range	Weight	RoF	Shots	ST	Bulk	Rcl	Cost	LC	Notes
10^ 10^ 10^ 10^ 10^ 10^	Holdout Sonic Disruptor Heavy Sonic Disruptor Pistol Sonic Disruptor Pistol Heavy Sonic Disruptor Sonic Disruptor Carbine Sonic Disruptor Rifle	2d corr 4d corr 3d corr 8d corr 5d corr 6d corr	1 3 3 6 6 6	65/195 250/750 150/450 1,000/3,000 400/1,200 600/1,800	0.4/2A 4/3B 1.7/2B 25/Dp 8/C 14/2C	1 3 3 1 3 3	17(3) 33(3) 52(3) 140(5) 57(3) 66(3)	2 7 4 11† 7† 8†	-1 -3 -2 -8 -4 -6	1 1 1 1 1 1	$400 $3,850 $1,600 $25,000 $7,500 $13,000	3 3 3 1 2 2

Under the Hood
The main disadvantage of sonic screamers was their abysmal range. Other than that, they're actually really good. Corrosion damage is resisted by so few armours that the lack of an armour divisor isn't a huge impediment – against nanoweave, an average screamer pistol gets 4 points of injury through with the added bonus of eroding 2 DR per shot, making each further shot more effective.

So rather than use the halving in weight to add raw damage, I used it to add the "extremely large" focal array. This quadruples range compared to an equivalent sonic screamer, vastly increasing the weapon's utility. I also increased most of the weapons from single-shot to semi-automatic; this increased the weight by about 25% but a side benefit of the +1 TL is quadrupled power cell capacity, which allows everything to run on fewer or smaller cells to save weight.

I changed them from area-based weapons to directional because... well to be perfectly honest I just don't like projectors. I feel it's reasonable, since sonic stunners aren't projectors either. Feel free to use them as projectors if you prefer them that way!

Sneak Peak: Blaster and Laser Design Expansion

To make your own sonic screamers, use the normal blaster and laser design system but with these beam-specific values:

• Base TL is 9^
• When calculating empty weight, E is 2.75
• Beamers are Acc 1, pistols are Acc 3, rifles are Acc 6 and cannon are Acc 9
• When calculating range, Rb is 2
• When calculating shot capacity, shots at TL9/10/11/12 are 1,780/7,120/28,480/113,920
• When calculating cost, Bc is $1,000

That's it! Super simple. Most of the other weapons are done but need a little more tweaking and testing to find average values, since they don't conform exactly to Pulver's system. They'll probably be ready for release in a week or two.