I don't know if it was intentional, but I find it very funny that you intend to arm our soldiers with BB guns.
"Come on trooper! Grab that BB gun, walk up to that 50 foot alien monstrosity and shoot it!"
Yes, and you caught on faster than I thought people would.
@ sean: thanks for the feedback. Note that I was also a bit iffy on the ammo and prices, but that was what pw gave me, so I went with that.
More shots for the pistol might be possible. Don't know how high pw would value the cutting ability from continuous fire, but since that is the one thing where a laser rifle can be used as a not direct combat tool (eg cutting holes in walls to move through) it might work out. I'd think an overcharge shot with an entire battery should still be about cutting laser power. not like the exact power ratios were ever defined anyways. In case of discrepancies, mumble mumble efficiency waste heat.
Reason for lowering the bazooka ammo cost was that, well, this thing was meant for anti-armor duty. So, even though PW allowed the smaller shots for it, I scrapped that in favor of lowering cost per shot (PW was also ok with this, by the way, I could find the irc chat logs if needed). Because other weapon might also have expensive ammo, but there you always do get more than a single shot for it.
Either way, I don't think your idea for the bazooka is at all bad, though it's certainly different. I'm not sure if pw will want a weapon of that power in that price category though. Hmm. Your system is cheaper up until 10 shots or so are fired, after that my system is cheaper (total cost, ammo+weapon cost). I'm still afraid though that people will be put of by the thought of paying 2 tokens (almost half an exoskeleton) for a single shot of something. And if something's a good deal on paper, but nobody wants it because it sounds like a lot, that's no good.
A middle road might be something like 7-8 token cost, but 2 shots for 3 tokens (aka 1,5 token/shot). That doesn't sound ideal though, and 3 tokens is still a lot for a single clip.
I think I might like your system a bit better overall, but we'll have to see what the others (and pw of course) thinks about it.
Gonna have to find some way of stopping people from buying the Bazooka clips to power their Rifles, if you go this way.
"I hook up this bazooka clip to my rif" *ZAP*
Another way to do it, is say that the bazooka shard is build to discharge all energy at once always, and that hooking up a bazooka clip to a rifle will always melt the rifle, because a shard at that size isn't built to give energy below a certain amount. And due to that, you won't get all that much more power from your rifle shot, the max output of the rifle will still be about 1 full rifle clip discharge. Hooking up a bazooka clip just means you end up with a shot of about same power, a melted rifle, and maybe an explosion due to the extra energy.
Now, taking into account that blueshards aren't necessarily cheaper per unit storage, and these are going for compact rather that efficient, balancing game mechanics and fluff is going to be tricky. Bear in mind, production costs don't factor as much into token costs, and while we would like to phase out the old Laser weapons on the battlefield, doing so within the token economy is probably not what we want to do.
I do think that, for the same size and power, a shard is cheaper than an equivalent regular battery. Not sure, but it makes sense I think, since pw always said about generators and batteries that cost increases as size decreases for the same output.
Hmmm. I really like Sean's take on it, but alternatively we could lower the blasrifle (blifle!) blueshard battery cost down to 1 token as well - decreasing the number of shots somewhat (to 6, maybe), but keeping its ammo price in line with other blas-batteries.
That'd mean you get 12 shots for the same 2 tokens. I can live with that certainly, though it would diminish overcharge function a bit.