Take a gauss shell, rifle preferred but cannon if need be and make it so that a Kinetic amp is contained inside and activates on impact.
You hollow out a section of a gauss shell and blunt the tip enough to allow the contact plate of a kinetic amp to be affixed to it. You make it so that the kinetic amp will activate on impact and multiply the force of the shell.
"Greetings Theodore. The African Savannah sure is a beautiful landscape isn't it?"
Raise up the Winchester Rifle and start shooting at Theodore Roosevelt.
You raise your Model 1876 rifle and take aim at the former president. He immediately draws his own weapon, though not before you can fire.
[Con:1]
[Ted con:6]
You pull the trigger and the weapon clicks impotently, jammed. Mr. Roosevelt, on the other hand, draws his pistol and puts a round dead center between your eyes.
GAME OVER
Thank armory master.
Head towards cafeteria and start welding.
You thank the armory master and head back to the cafeteria with the welding torch and attached power source. Once there you grab the long rod you had selected earlier and two smaller ones to make into handles, setting everything up on a table before you begin. [Handiwork:2-1] You attempt to connect the smaller pieces of metal to the larger one and end up simply cutting the larger one into 3 pieces. Damn it.
Third time is the charm. I would also like heavy armor while the evil one has light armor.
I hope my clone does not prove to be a better me than me again.
You start the simulation again, this time with you in a battle suit and your clone in a t-shirt that reads "Shoot me with a big fucking spear"
[con:3+1]
[clone:6]
Your shot tears off your clone's right arm and his shot ricochet's off your armor and strikes him in the foot. The pole extends from the spear in his foot a moment later and breaks his jaw with a metallic uppercut. Over all, he's had a bad day.
"Oh hey, it is the armory master's fan boy from that time. So, how are you doing? Managed to create any useless trinkets for us?"
Sort of. A couple of improvements on the gauss rifle, a close-combat weapon capable of inflicting damage on a battlesuit, a number of laser rifle variants (including a couple pistol-sized ones), and a power generator backpack. Care to test one of those? No? Well, that's a bit disappointing, but hopefully you'd change your attitude a bit after a mission or two.
Well, looks like it's been just me talking here. Good luck, comrades!
Return to tinkering. Estimate the price and the weight of the kinetic spear. Test more durable materials for the pole to be made of; look for a way to be able to detach the pole in field and see how much a spare one, made of rather cheap stuff, would be.
See how powerful the default generator installed on the high energy projector is, and compare it to the 5-token one I've tried using before.
Use the 'explode' option on the gauss rifle ammo and see if it is possible to make your own ammunition (if more crude) from various metal scraps and garbage found on a mission and/or from the raw materials obtained in the armory.
The kinetic spear, as is, would be 8 or so token. More robust materials will of course cost more. In order to completely avoid having to replace the spear it would cost something like 14 for the whole weapon. Lower then that an it will just prolong use. As per a spare...sure, I don't see why not if you really want to be carrying not one but two giant metal poles around with you. Cost is gonna vary. 3 or so is how much the one you're using costs, so a cheaper model would be like 2 or maybe even 1.
The generator seems to be more powerful then the 5 token one, but charges much more slowly.
And gauss rifles can fire pretty much anything magnetic as long as it will fit in the barrel, hence all the harpoons and stuff people are playing with. You may have to make sabots or something, but yeah, you can hand make ammo if you really want to.
Thomas goes back to the earlier model, before he experimented with the filaments, and leaves it with the metal tip. He tries to overcharge the hydraulics system, then clones it and replaces the hydraulics with an electric motor.
If you're trying to make a normal drill that can drill through Battle suit level metals and stuff, I'm gonna tell you that isn't going to work. Namely because you, even in a exoskeleton, don't have the strength to hold it in place and press it with enough force.
"Hm... if I bought a backpack generator to replace the batteries, how much do you think it'd cost? And do you think it'd be worth it?
I'm guessing there's no real way to avoid having to replace the canisters, unless I can get a pocket material reconfigurer somehow."
"Depends on how much energy you're needing. For something low power and non-lethal you could probably get away with a belt style generator and capacitor bank. Maybe 3 tokens. And yeah, you're probably better off just spending tokens on tanks."