Re: [HoE] More confusion on Junkers

[DarrinBrig@aol.com]

In a message dated 9/20/98 11:14:15 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
afterburner@erols.com writes:

> I kinda get the feeling that when this section was written, the folks
>  writing it said "Oh, well *obviously* lasers are better than bullets, so it
>  should cost more."  But either they didn't really think about *why* lasers
>  are better than bullets, or they thought about it, came up with something
>  that hasn't yet occurred to me, and wrote it down only to have it left out
>  of the rulebook for whatever reason.  In any event, it's got me scratching
>  my head in foncusion.

Well, lasers don't use bullets, thats the only advantage I can see.  If you're
out of bullets or don't want to bother buying any, then lasers would be the
way to go.  But then what kind of ammo do lasers use anyway? No one ever
answered my question.  I'm beginning to wonder if anyone is reading the HOE
ML. But then weekends are usually pretty slow, and Shane doesn't answer
anything until monday or tuesday.  Where is the rest of the PEG folks, though?
I haven't seen Hal fielding anything.

Ok, here's the problem I was having with the junker rules.  I want to make a
two-fisted junker and outfit him with two hand-held lasers.  I thought about
just taking a plasma pistol and then trying to buy a second plasma pistol but
two major stumbling blocks prevented that... first, I thought the area-effect
on the plasma pistol was too messy and the scatter rules would be a headache,
and second, there is a huge disparity between the belonging/dinero edges and
there is no way to tell how much an extra plasma pistol would cost anyway,
since there are no prices or acceptable rules-of-thumb given for various
belongings.

Ok, so two weapons for 150 points, that gives me 75 for each.  I started with
3d6, 45 points.  +25% for energy, -25% for baseball-sized, +20% for speed 1,
+10% for range 10. I added ROF 2 for +20 for kicks and wound up with 68 points
per pistol. Then I ran into the "ammo" problem, I couldn't squeeze a +50% in
there anywhere without dropping the damage.

So the question I need answered is, what kind of ammo do energy weapons use,
and if you don't want to use anything, do you HAVE to take the +50% for lasers
and whatnot?

What I wound up doing was dropping the damage to 4d4, Speed 1 ROF 1 Range 10,
and it generates ammo.  Uh...I dunno, it's solar powered!  Points came out to
72 per gun.  I figure the average damage is somewhere around 3d6 anyway. It's
a mini-laser with not much cutting power or whatever.

What else could I do?  Add a chuck of ghost rock, as with the plasma pistol,
and call that "ammo"?