Classic Traveller Weapons: Lasers

My Auzhan Sector setting uses LBB 1-3 almost exclusively, with a few elements from later materials. 

 

Lasers: Traveller appears to have two basic types of lasers, Pulse lasers and Beam lasers. The former do more damage because they fire bursts of energy, achieving multiple hits, while the latter achieves hits more easily, due to the ability to wave or walk the beam across, or onto, the target. 

 

    Since the shipboard pulse laser has a -1 to hit but gets two damage roles, (Book 2 errata) I regard it as being sort of a laser autocannon, also since the laser carbine and laser rifle are stated to fire bolts of energy (not beams), I've assumed that they are pulse weapons, which have been limited to single shot to avoid overheating and possible overload problems.

   

    I originally posited the use of beam carbines and beam rifles (stats below) but realised that a visible light beam weapon very clearly gives away the firer's position, making them impractical upon the modern battlefield. X-ray laser versions would be viable options, as the light would be invisible to the naked eye. Visible light beam weapons, would probably still exist but more as tools, or perhaps as jury rigged weapons used in desperate situations. 

 

    Note: Supplement 4 states that the mining laser on the Type J Seeker functions as a pulse laser -1 in combat. This implies that the equivalent hand held or vehicle mounted version would be a pulse laser -1 also, and not a beam laser.

 

    Personal beam lasers (X-ray or visible light) use a lower power setting and therefore are lighter weapons, but the addition of the cooling system brings the weight back up to the same as the standard laser weapons. The beam uses the equivalent of four shots worth of power, but since it is at a lower power setting the carbine power pack can support 20 beams and the rifle power pack can support 40 beams before needing a recharge. Beam laser power packs are not interchangeable with standard power packs.

                                                    Range Matrix

                             Close    Short    Medium    Long    Vlong    Wounds

Beam Carbine            -1        +2        +2            +2        +1            3D

Beam Rifle                 -3        +3        +3            +3        +2            4D

Dex Mods and Armour Matrix are the same as the standard (pulse) laser carbine and rifle.

   Use the Group Hits by Shotgun rule to implement “waving/walking” the visible laser beam onto nearby targets, as it would likely incur no penalty for doing so, and should also have the +2 to hit flying creatures/vehicles as well. 

    X-ray beam lasers use the standard Autofire and Group Hits by Autofire rules instead.

 

  

Since I've used the premise of overheating and overload being an issue, a different approach to autolaser fire would be to design a gatling style laser, with each barrel having it's own capacitors. This would reduce the risk of overheating. The weapon could be designed with either the barrels rotating to connect to the power supply, or the power connection rotating to connect with the barrels. Either way their would be considerable drain on the power pack, (Book 2 Double Fire overload rule may apply). Such a weapon would probably use the Laser Rifle (length: 1000mm, weight: 6000g) as a base. Assuming that everything but the stock of a laser rifle is used as essential components, we remove the stock (either the equivalent of the shoulder stock or folding stock) which gives us either Length: 650mm & Weight: 5000g or Length: 700mm & Weight: 5500g. Multiply the weight by the number of barrels you want, to find the base weight of your gatling laser. Then add the equivalent length and weight of the stock you removed earlier to represent the trigger assembly and handgrips, etc. To find your gatling laser's range and armour mods, apply the difference between the rifle and autorifle's mods to the laser rifle mods. Why rifle and autorifle? Because the only difference between those weapons is that one of them can fire on auto; so the difference in mods represents the difference between single shot and autofire only, without any other considerations. You may discover that your gatling laser is far to heavy to be used as a personal weapon (except for battledress equipped troops) and needs to be crew served or vehicle mounted. A lighter weight version could be constructed using Laser Carbines and the same procedure described above.

    Crew served and vehicle mounted versions would be able to avoid the issue of overload, (Book 2 Double Fire rule, page 39), by using multiple powerpacks, one for each barrel of the weapon.

    Gatling type lasers use the standard Autofire and Group Hits by Autofire rules.

 

The Overload Rule (modified from Book 2, page 39)

    Each combat round that a laser weapon fires more than one shot a throw must be made to determine if overload has occurred: For the first combat round of such fire, throw 1+ to avoid overload; for the second round, throw 2+ to avoid it, and so on. DM -1 for each turn in which the laser does not fire at all. If the dice throw is not achieved, the powerpack has overloaded. If the dice throw to avoid overload is half or less than that needed (i.e. 1 or 2 when a 4+ is needed) then the powerpack must be replaced as it is no longer functional. (Referee: the results could be more spectacular with, sparks, melting metal, and/or an explosion, be creative).  

    If the dice throw is above half that needed and below the target number, then reduce the powerpack capacity by the difference time 10% (i.e. rolling a 3 when 4+ is needed, reduces the capacity of the powerpack by 10%).

    Using multiple power packs avoids the overload problem altogether.