Equipment Locker: New Beams for Blaster and Laser Design

I think I've talked about and teased my expansion to David Pulver's Blaster and Laser Design system for too long. So rather than keep you waiting even as far as the "Read More" button, here are the important numbers!

These were made from reverse-engineering energy weapons in GURPS Ultra-Tech. Pulver's system doesn't gel perfectly with them; some have non-exact focusing arrays or have slightly varying costs or shots. A lot of this can be put down to rounding errors; when you build a weapon that costs $4,956 you round up to $5,000, and when your power cell gives you 45.8 shots you drop the fraction and get 45. That makes working backwards a little trickier but not impossible. The bigger issue was holdout weapons, which almost uniformly had too many shots, too long range, and too little weight for their damage. This is the main caveat emptor for my expansions to the system: weapons smaller than a pistol won't work the same as the ones in Ultra-Tech.

There are some more specific things you'll need to know in addition to the numbers above. Those are continued after the jump.

Beam Weapons with Afflictions
Many of the beams here inflict an affliction rather than damage. For these, choose the penalty you want on the resistance roll, then treat this as dice of damage (don't use adds). For example, if you want to create an electrolaser pistol with HT-3 aff, go through the calculations as if you were designing a beam that inflicted 3d of damage.

Accuracy
The original design system uses a table for finding a weapon's Acc based on it's beam type and configuration. With an expanded number of beam types, it's simpler to use this equation:

Acc = Ca×Ab

Ca depends on configuration. It is 0.5 for beamers, 1 for pistols, 2 for rifles and 3 for cannon. Ab depends on the beam. It is 3 for sonic screamers and sonic stunners; 4 for electrolasers and plasma guns; 5 for blasters, neutral particle beams and pulsars; and 6 for all other beam types. Round down. Plasma flamers are jet attacks, so don't have an Acc statistic; write "Jet" in the Acc column instead.

Shot Capacity
The number given in the Shots column above is for a single C cell at the TL of the weapon's introduction. For earlier TLs, divide the number by 4 for each TL difference. For later TLs, multiply by 4 for each TL difference. For example, a TL10 plasma gun gets 16,500÷4 = 4,125 shots. A TL11 electrolaser gets 2,300×4×4 = 36,800 shots.

Beam Types

Electrolasers (TL9)
Electrolasers have two linked attacks. The first is an affliction attack resisted with HT and a (2) armour divisor. The second is the priming laser, which deals tight-beam burning damage. Damage depends on the HT penalty of the main attack: 1d-3 for -0 to -5, 1d-2 for -6 to -7, 1d-1 if -8 or more.

Sonic Screamers (TL9^)
Sonic screamers inflict corrosion damage with no armour divisor. They are cone attacks, with a maximum width of 1 yard. Use Beam Weapons (Projector) to hit.

Sonic Stunners (TL10)
Sonic stunners have an affliction attack resisted with HT and a (5) armour divisor.

Neural Disruptors (TL11^)
Neural disruptors have an affliction attack resisted with HT. They are ranged contact agents, so ignore DR unless the target has the Sealed advantage, in which case there is no effect. They are cone attacks, with a maximum width of 1 yard. Use Beam Weapons (Projector) to hit. You must choose the effect: agony, death (+1 TL), ecstasy, neural stun, paralysis, or seizure. A neural disruptor may have more than one setting: +0.5 CF per additional effect.

Mind Disruptors (TL12^)
These act identically to Neural Disruptors (above), except that the affliction is based on Will and the available effects are: hypnogogic, death, or insanity. Normal DR, including Sealed DR, has no effect.

Plasma Flamers (TL9^)
Damage is non-tightbeam burning. Flamers are jets; treat as a melee attack with a very long reach.

Plasma Guns (TL11^)
Plasma guns inflict non-tightbeam burning damage with a (2) armour divisor and the explosive damage modifier. Plasma guns have recoil, so increase to Rcl 2 and multiply the final ST requirement by 1.5, rounding to the nearest whole number.

Disintegrators (TL12^)
Disintegrators inflict corrosion damage with a cosmic (∞) armour divisor. Force screens protect with 1/10 DR. Disintegrators require cosmic power cells to function. Optionally, a disintegrator using non-cosmic power cells may divide it's number of shots by 1,000.

Further Expansions
I highly recommend using TheRyujinLP's expansion in addition to these. His addition allows you to have weapons of varying TL, make weapons cheaper by using heavier components, or use chemical power packs. For example, you could make TL12 electrolasers for your far-future but conservative safe-tech setting, or plasma flamers using chemical power packs for low-TL9 plasma weapons. I've already demonstrated upgrading sonic screamers to TL10^ using his additions and I've also done some testing with TL10^ plasma guns that turned out very well.