Compared to Lasers, Energy weapons have a very hard hitting power, cracking open armour and knocking targets flying with a single shot and they do with out having to use an expendable projectile like that of projectile weapons. This section of the Price Guide deals with creating your very own Energy Weapons for use in Dark Thaum PBeM's through easy to follow steps like projectile and laser weaponary.

Step One: Choose size of weapon

Choose what size weapon you wish to create from the following table. This will determine what the base cost of your weapon will be.

Step Two: Choose Weapon Modes

To begin with, an energy weapon is considered to have a Single Fire (SF) mode. This basically means the weapon fires a shot and then takes about a second to recharge itself before firing again. However, energy weapons are capable of far more than this.

From the list below, you may choose to add the following modes to your weapon. If your weapon has more than one mode, your weapon will have a switch that will enable it to flick between modes. The cost to add to you weapons base cost is noted beneath the size of each weapon.

Step Three: Choose Number of Powercells

At this stage it is considered that you weapon holds only one powercell from which it takes energy from. However, for some weapons, especially in some modes, this means one is going to need to constantly change the battery (the power usage is explained below under powercells). To ease the trouble of this during battle, some weapon are capable of holding more batteries. This costs an additional 10 credits per powercell to be held and the maximum number of powercells a weapon can hold depends on it's size as follows:

Heavy Weapons: Because of their size, heavy weapon require a larger power cell called a Heavy Power Cell. A Heavy Weapon comes with the ability to hold one of these already and hold an additional one for the cost of 50 credits.

Artillary Weapons: Like Heavy Weapons, Artillary requires larger batteries. In the case of Artillary, this is the Artillary Power Cell which the artillary piece can already use one. It can have an additional Artillary Power Cell added for 500 credits.

Step Four: Work out Availability

To work out how easy it is to get hold of the Energy weapon that you have designed is, use the following rules:

Super Rare Energy Weapons: Any Energy weapon that is off Heavy or Artillary size or has the modes Full Automatic, Extended Fire, Wave Fire or High Charge.

Rare Energy Weapons: Any energy weapon that does not fall into the Super Rare catogry.

Common Energy Weapons: There are no common energy weapons outside of the nation of Resque.

However, if you are purchasing energy weapons inside the nation of Resque, then use these rules instead to work out the availability of the weapon as Energy weapons are pretty much common place in the nation of science:

Common Energy Weapons: Any energy weapon that is of auxillary, pistol or rifle size and does no have the Extended Fire, Wave Fire or High Charge modes.

Super Rare Energy Weapons: Any energy weapon of artillary size.

Rare Energy Weapons: Anything that doesn't fall into the above two catogries (i.e. all Heavy Energy Weapons and lighter weapons with Extended Fire, Wave Fire or High Charge modes).

Step Five: Abbreviate your weapon

The final step now is to summerise you weapon into a short description for use in game. Begin this by giving your gun design a name and then putting in brackets after the information about the gun, using the slash/ mark to seperate details and keeping it in this order: Size, Modes, Number of Powercells, Cost and Availability. Here's one example already worked out for you:

Thi information tells us that the Forcefire Rifle is a rifle sized weapon, can fire in the Recharge shot, wave fire and stun charge modes, has space for 4 powercells and costs 630 credits. It is classified as being Super Rare, though note that if it had been purchased in Resque it would only be classed as Rare.

Power Cells and Power Usage

Powercells are the batteries that Energy Weapons use to provide energy. As powercells are used for a variety of items, not just Energy Weapons, they are covered more indepth in miscellaneous items in the pricing guide. However, here we shall deal with the energy usage of a typical Energy weapon.

Your standard Powercell is assumed that once fully charged to hold a charge of 100%. Everytime you fire your weapon though, that charge will drop, depending on the size of the weapon and what mode it is being fired in. Use the following table to work out how much charge is lost everytime the Energy Weapon is fired: