A strike from a space-based blaster cannon drills through an incoming missile, sending sparks flying.
A laser blaster is a weapon that emits a rapid train of many dozens of nanosecond pulses of laser light, each with the energy of a firecracker, and delivered within less than a millisecond.
Each pulse is so intense it causes matter it is incident upon to violently explode, blasting out a small crater.
Each subsequent pulse falls within the craters blasted by previous pulses, allowing the beam to achieve high penetration.
The closer the range to the target, the more tightly focused the blaster beam will be when incident on the target. This allows better penetration of hard materials at closer ranges. At less than half the 1/2 D range, apply a (2) armor divisor. At less than one quarter the 1/2 D range, the armor divisor increases to (3). At less than one-tenth the 1/2 D range, the armor divisor jumps to (5).
This Armor Divisor only applies to DR due to material toughness, strength, and general resiliance; not to sheer mass getting in the way.
Hence, do not apply the armor divisor to cover DR determined from an object's HP.
This is summarized in the table below:
Fraction of ½D range
Armor Divisor*
1
(1)
0.5
(2)
0.25
(3)
0.1
(5)
* DR after applying armor divisor is never less than the mass-derived cover DR.
Blaster pulses are so intense they will catastrophically self-focus in transparent solid or liquid matter. After the first meter of transparent material, treat the material as no longer transparent. Consequently, blasters have difficulty firing through water - treat each meter of water after the first as cover DR 40.
The extreme intensity of blasters also makes ultraviolet blaster beams practically unusable in an atmosphere, since two-photon absorption eliminates nearly all the beam. Ultraviolet blasters are still used for space combat.
