Laser Rifle
- For the XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012) version, see Laser Rifle (EU2012)
One of the best weapons in the game, the Laser Rifle is the next step up from the Laser Pistol, and leads on to the Heavy Laser. Good accuracy, long range, no ammo needed, burst fire; this gun has it all. It does a lot less damage than the Heavy Plasma, but that's about it. The conventional Rifle reaches its limits with Floaters and Snakemen, but the Laser Rifle, once developed, is useful for the rest of the game.
Note that its shots will quite consistently destroy trees, brick walls, and other obstacles, but not reinforced metal like bases or ships. See Destroying Terrain for more details.
This weapon appears in UFO: Enemy Unknown. For the Terror from the Deep equivalent, refer to the Gauss Rifle.
Stats
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Note with the additional bonus from kneeling, an aimed shot provides 115% * soldier base accuracy.
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: 2 shots, 0% remaining TUs
- Snap: 4 shots, 0% remaining TUs
- Auto: Depends on maximum TUs, for 2/3 of the possible values you'll get three shots with 0/1 TUs remaining, for the remaining third you'll get two with 32% TUs remaining (sufficient for 1 more Snap shot).
Note: Since MaxTUs is restricted to a 50-81 interval, to determine whether a solder can perform two or three auto shots per turn, it's enough to calculate whether the maximum TUs your soldier has minus two, is perfectly divisible by three. If the answer is no, then that soldier can perform three auto shots per turn.
For example, a soldier with 77 TUs max will use 26 TU for an auto shot (34% of 77 rounded down), and three times 26 is 78 - More TUs than that soldier has. The list of all "unlucky" values is: 50, 53, 56, 59, 62, 65, 68, 71, 74, 77, 80.
On the other hand, at 78 TUs max he'll also be using 26 TU per auto shot, and the same is true at 79 TUs! So, loosely speaking, for every case where a soldier cannot fire three auto shots per turn there are about two cases where he can.
