but whichever works as long as there's progress.
Report composed, messages shot.
About new shard lasers: anyone a particular opinion on how they'd like to see that come about? Right now, I'm leaning towards a blaster-type thing, meaning no continuous sweeps, but individual shots of higher power. Loses some suppressive ability (and ammo, perhaps), wins power. For the pistol, I don't think sweeping is that important, but fof the infantry rifle it could be good. I guess I could try to go for a weapon that can do both, but that might increase cost, and I wanna keep it cheap. Right now, I'm thinking of the following variants:
-'Laserpen': looks like a pen, contains a tiny shard to fire a one-time laser. For black ops teams.
-'pistol': a decent sidearm, to replace the handlaser (which nobody ever uses). Cheapness important, range much less, laser rifle power would be nice.
-replacement for laser rifle, gauss rifle sized or so (could also go for a smaller design, but will mean less power/battery due to smaller size). Wieldable by regular human, price important factor (no more pricey than current laser weapons if possible, or only a token more).
-exoskeleton/battlesuit version, would be blaster type (suppressive fire isn't as needed against battlesuits I'd think). More like an energy bazooka perhaps. Will need cooling, will add quite some weight, might also need cooling plates. Depending on size and weight, might not be usable by regular exoskeletons.
For some of these, an 'overcharge' option that uses all the energy of the shard but melts to slag could be considered, but might also increase price.
If sharkmist robots work out, we might be able to use them to replace robosods for own use. We can still make those though, since those would be much safer to export to allies than sharkmist lifeforms that are more potent beyond just armor. Anyone comments on this admittedly preliminary idea? Next tot that, it might have some interesting applications for Sword peeps.