http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CN...;show_article=1

Didn't Shadowrun use to have Man Portable Lasers? I'm just getting back into it

SR has man portable lasers, although they cost a few million and aren't much more effective than a standard rifle (better penetration, worse damage code). Still, interesting!

By 2070 (SR4,) lasers aren't so expensive. You can for example get:
Ares Redline pistol for 7,500¥ which has the same damage code as a Heavy pistol, but halves impact armor.
Ares MP Laser 3 for 12,000¥ which again halves armor, and does damage like a hunting rifle or shotgun.
Ares Heavy MP Lasser for 30,000¥ which does as much damage as a Gauss Rifle and, like all lasers, goes up aginst half impact.

They make having an exotic weapon proficiency actually useful.

Also, if you want to lug around a huge mass of batteries, there's nothing in the rules saying that you can't modify one of these weapons to fire in bursts even up to High Velocity rates. So, you could hook a Redline up to a Hip Pack and fire off HV narrow long bursts for 15P -half I with no recoil. Heavy MP Laser shooting at 1.5 km ranges for 16P (on account of diffusion) at half a person's Impact armor. That is murderatious.

By the way, they only get to that power-level if they can afford to have the laser fire on full power for several seconds.
this right now, is bursts of micro seconds. you'd still need several minutes to heat up a pot of water with those, if it works at all . .

Yes, the SR Lasers are in SR4 actually usefull.
Now just to find a Cyber-Doc that can build them into Eyes/Arms.

SR3 had a laser eyeball that let you do something like 4L damage and set up radio communication (if you had all the other random gear you need to translate data into laser).

yes, but that's pitifull weak ;_;

You can supercharge it, but it requires removing your frontal lobes to put in a larger battery.

National Ignition Facility's lasers are 192 giant lasers focused into a central point, and it's used in Fusion research. It has very little to do with man-portable laser weapons or even vehicle mounted laser weapons. You can find out more useful information about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility

I don't know why you could not build a Redline pistol into a cyberlimb. Just put the hip pack on, connect the wires, and off you go.

Now I want to know why you need an exotic weapon skill to use a laser. I mean it is the ULTIMATE point and shoot. Hell throw in a smartlink and it makes it almost idiot* proof.



* == Never underestimate the power of idiots... the Universe will make better ones just to fuck with you.

Keep in mind that 4L under SR2/3 was equal to the damage of a holdout pistol. Not much, but it would hurt if you were a good enough shot. There is no reason a larger system could not be built into a cyberarm - I'd personally treat a red line equivalent as taking up slightly more space than a heavy pistol just for game balance. The battery could be connected externally.

Other advantages of lasers that a rarely mentioned -
1) Low foot print - Laser beams can be made (very easily) to operate on wavelengths outside of the visible spectrum. This can be very handy if you are firing from a concealed position.
2) No sound - Lasers make no noise when in use. Pick up that laser pointer you have at home, it doesn't make any noise. In a high powered modern system the only things that would make any noise are the cooling system (ignored in SR) on the power supply and the laser itself.
3) Ammo doubles as a portable power supply - Those batteries can be used for other things. Plus the cops don't know what all those batteries are for if they pull you over.
4) Ease of infiltration -
Minimal metal parts - The power supply is the only thing that would have to contain metal, and only the battery itself, and the connection of the power supply. Everything else can be made of plastic or ceramics. The lasing chamber would need a thin layer of reflective material, far less than in a dental filling, and would be the only other needed metal.
Won't show up on chemical detectors - No propellant, no fear of chem detectors.

These factors alone make the red line and similar concealable lasers worth purchasing just for infiltration past security (corp, police, air port...) even ignoring its superior performance.

Add to that the fact of making people who find the holes you shot into stuff going "WTF was that? O.o"
No ballistic leftovers either. One laser-scorchmark looks like the next. Not like with bullets and the barrels.
4l in SR3 meant that without Armor, you had to roll two 4's with your natural body stat to resist.
Even the whimp from next door could do that without problem. And even if you do take damage, it's probably not much bigger than being burned by a cigarette butt.
Well, of course, this is with a single success on the hit. if you can get this to 8 or more hits, you can actually come close to killing someone with this.
Building one into your Cyber-Eye and then having a staring contest with someone who you want to kill would be a good way to do this.
Long enough to set up an aimed shot at the opponents eye. circumventing any armor, hitting weak spot, at least hurting him like a bitch, maybe blinding him too.
if you are doing it right, burning through the eye and the brain behind it just like that. who says you have to be a magician to kill someone simply by looking at them?

1) Very much true.
2) I wouldn't ignore the sound of the cooling systems. If you're going to go into realism for the invisible beam, you might as well stick to it for the noise of the cooling systems.
3) I strongly doubt that the specialized power cells of a high-discharge energy weapon is compatible with more common pieces of tech. Cigarette lighters anf flamethrowers don't have fully interchangeable fuels, and neither would lasers and other electronics.
4) If you have any type of coolant that needs to be vented at all, then chem sniffers could be set to detect it, but it's certainly not going to be common and it won't help much until the weapon is fired. As for the no metal, that would require the same modifications that making a non-metallic gun would in SR - such enhancements should not be assumed.

This. Stop it with the man portable lasers, the article is talking about a house sides sphere used to make fusion power.