Laser Pistol

The Laser Pistol is the first weapon in X-COM's laser weapon series, researched prior to the Laser Rifle. Like all lasers, the Laser Pistol features an efficient miniature power plant built into the gun that provides limitless firepower for the duration of any ground skirmish.

Despite being a considerable step up over ballistic firearms, the laser pistol is unfortunately highly inadequate for precision attacks. Even crack marksmen have trouble hitting their mark with Laser Pistols.

The Laser Pistol's effectiveness does not stem from its accuracy or its moderate stopping power. Instead, it excels by superceding every other weapon as being the fastest automatic-fire weapon available, be it of human or alien origin.

To cast the Laser Pistol in a better light, X-Com commanders are recommended to think of the laser pistol as the machine gun of the laser family instead of merely being a weaker variant of the Laser Rifle.

Stats

Power: 46 Laser Size: 2 high x 1 wide Weight: 7 TUs: Auto: 25% (Accuracy 28%) Snap: 20% (Accuracy 40%) Aimed: 55% (Accuracy 68%) Manufacturing: $8,000 for parts, 300 Engineer Hours Sell Price: $20,000

Recommendations

The Laser Pistol excels primarily with two modes of attack - attacks of opportunity or auto shots. However, the Laser Pistol works best when combined with other weapons or non-combat tools.

Early in a campaign, the Laser Pistol are much more effective at defeating enemy Cyberdisks than conventional Pistols or Rifles.

With enough persistence, the Laser Pistol will defeat any foe in time. The only enemy units that will not easily fall to the Laser Pistol are the Sectopods. This becomes much more apparent on harder difficulty levels. In particular, you should never attempt to engage a Sectopod with superhuman class armour.

Laser Pistols are recommended for soldiers with specialised roles such as grenadiers, heavy weapon specialists or scouts, to name a few. New recruits can employ the Laser Pistols to good effect as short range combat weapons, or, like the standard Pistol, use it as a tool for training both firing accuracy and reactions at the same time. Veterans, on the other hand, can weild Laser Pistols with alarming efficiency.

Usage Notes

The following lists how many times a soldier can fire the gun by shot type continuously in any given round and the remaining percentage of any left over TUs that cannot be spent as a shot.

• Aimed: 1 Shot, 45% Remaining TUs
• Snap: 5 Shots, 0% Remaining TUs
• Auto: 4 Bursts (12 Shots), 0% Remaining TUs

General Pistol Warning

This note covers the regulation Pistol, Laser Pistol and the Plasma Pistol.

Pistols-class weapons are prioritized so that they will always be the last weapons to be selected by your soldiers. In addition to that, there is also a rather unusual culture amongst X-COM troops regarding pistol-type weapon distribution in general. Sometimes everyone gets the weapons, as normal. At other times, only one person will be armed with the pistol and will be carrying all the clips if applicable. This can prove to be a minor annoyance.