((sorry about the double post here, accidentally hit post rather then preview.))
Arena...
"Let's try in an archaic earth-type ruin. The one with level ground, flourishing with life, and platforms of marble that connect with each other.
Floating in the air by the magnetic field. Yes.
Um, Steve. That would be the general setting. Stable ground, foundations are not likely to crumble to explosives...even opponent weaponry, or at least a realistic AI on the armory master. You pick the rest. I'd bet an amalgam of thoughts and intellect from the past teams in you would give an...appropriate decision.
Just not anything...delicate, if you catch my drift."
The black screen fades and a new world forms in its place. You seem to standing on a very large hovering platform over a tropical forest. There are other platforms hovering not far from this one and it looks like you could probably make a jump to one.
On the other side of the platform is the armory master, looking slightly younger and with longer hair. She's wearing some sort of bodysuit, it doesn't look like armor, it looks like some sort of interface suit or something, a black skintight thing covered in hundreds of circular, raised metal nodes. She doesn't seem to be holding a weapon.
"I'll let you have the first move, it's only fair." she yells.
Hmmm... Now that cutlas batteries work twice as long as lasrifle batteries AND are only twice as expensive AND cutlas probably consumes quite more energy per second of firing than lasrifle on 'intensity=1' does, those seem quite better a source of power than standart ones.
Try installing the cutting laser power connector to the laser rifle, then test the cutting laser battery capacity plugged into that laser rifle.
Then try making the hand laser into a laser pistol (held in hand, bigger and more powerful, but still smaller/better suited for using in a single hand than the laser rifle).
Also try changing the design of the laser rifle to better accomodate for one-handed firing - change the stock, swap the grip for the pistol one and try shortening the barrel and making the design overall lighter (with as little decrease to efficiency as possible - scrapping those self-detonation parts, for one).
((As for the armor master, I'm definetly going to ask her some questions - I believe it would not be IC for me to ask Steve behind her back - but only after a mission or two. That way, hopefully, the chance of going through the airlock would be somewhat lessened.
Also, as for that simulation, I'm expecting +3, +4 and +5 roll modifiers. ;- )
Oh, and maybe she is an ingenious mechanism created by the GM to divert our attention from something seemingly less intresting, but much more important. *narrowing eyelids*))
You have the computer check the cutting laser's battery in conjunction with the laser rifle. It warns that it is too high powered to function as is, but that it seems to have 90 seconds worth of charge in the smaller rifle.
Converting a hand laser into a laser pistol seems relatively easy, simply a matter of taking the preexisting parts and stuffing them into a pistol body and changing it to fire from an electronic trigger. Increasing it's power however would be tricky; hand lasers are cheaper then dirt and designed to work at their preset power and nothing else. You might be able to jury rig it, but it would be like jury rigging a soup spoon to be a combat knife.
You look into making what amounts to a sawn off laser rifle. Stripping it down, lightening it and generally adapting the body to a smaller design wouldn't be hard. You could shorten the barrel as well, but doing so would require the removal of some of the focusing systems, effectively meaning that it wouldn't be able to reach as low a diffusion range as the normal rifle.