Good ol’ plasmatic weaponry, the main reason we keep winning fights and bringing home the funds to cover stupid bullshit like putting indoor waterfalls in Frostfall and ensuring we have heated seats in every one of our bars. Now since this is important, I’ll do my best to write “formally” instead of making it fun for me. If it reads like something beyond my grammatical skills, it's because I copy/pasted from the tech docs, so get off my ass.

Plasmatic weapon tech was invented by Acris in 5015 after watching Nax create plasmatic matter with the first ever Nerve Harness. This was done by manipulating the Chaff subtypes Barlyte and Borlyte, which you’ll learn about later down the road.
At that point Acris went full obsessive and worked on it like, around the clock. All of our higher up Science Legion officers and specialists were involved with the experimentation and test trials for a couple of weeks, and that entire legion looked like the walking dead the entire time. But I mean it paid off, because eventually Acris was capable of creating plasmatic matter synthetically without the use of Chaff, which allowed it to be used anywhere and manufactured at a dramatically lower cost.

Plasmatic matter when used in GDS weaponry has two states of being: Active and Inactive, much in the same way a gun’s safety is either on or off.

Active: The plasmatic matter has the consistency of molten glass, and a surface temperature of 2300 C. PTT/PSS ammo is manufactured so that when active, the plasmatic matter adheres to the surface of the tungsten rather than flying off due to the fact it's being shot out of a fucking gun. In this state, plasmatic matter can burn through nearly any material fielded by other militaries and species. Plasmatic matter glows a bright teal/sea-green color, and resembles tracer rounds when fired from a weapon, making it less than ideal for stealth operations.

Inactive: The plasmatic matter is solid and inert, with no extreme temperature or properties. The color is an opaque, glass like sea-green/teal solid. In this state, the matter can be safely handled and transported with ease.

Ever wonder why we use tungsten as our projectiles?
Outside of the fact it has more weight and punch to it when shot at someone’s face, it’s also one of the few abundantly available metals we can use to hold onto plasmatic matter. The melting point of tungsten is around 3422 C, so there’s plenty of room for it to hold onto active plasmatic matter without deforming or whatever.
There’s a few plasmatic ammo variants that serve different purposes, but you’ll find that it commonly consists of plasmatic matter + tungsten. In some cases we can use Allog but we’re still working on making that more widespread.

Now there are two overarching classes of plasmatic weaponry, even though you’ll often hear both of them generally referred to as a “plasmatic weapon”:

Semi-Plasmatic: The weapon uses a mix of plasmatic matter and a solid projectile.

Full Plasmatic: The weapon uses fire pure plasmatic matter with no “solid” projectiles like tungsten.

For Semi-Plasmatic weapons there are two “main” types of plasmatic ammo:

PTT: Plasmatic tipped tungsten, bullet tips that have a thin coating of plasmatic matter. In flight the plasmatic matter is on the cusp of near melting point and sticks to the projectile. The impact of a PTT bullet applies both heat + force + penetration, allowing it to punch through just about any armor that isn’t something retardedly thick or heat resistant. Since most if not all PTT weapons have rifled barrels, the spin ensures both accuracy and extra potential harm. Eventually they figured out how to get the plasmatic matter to engage with the barrel’s rifling while still adhering to the tungsten projectile so it doesn’t shed off and make cleaning the weapon a massive ache in the dick. But getting that to work properly with PTT rounds was, according to the notes I’ve read, responsible for at least one person throwing a chair through a window.

PSS: Plasmatic sheathed shells, large projectiles that are fully encased within a cylinder of plasmatic matter. An example would be plasmatic shotgun shells, which consist of tungsten pellets or slugs within a plasmatic cylinder shell. Same principle as PTT rounds, where the plasmatic matter will shrink down upon activation and adhere to the projectiles. Alternatively, you have singular cannon sized projectiles encased within plasmatic matter.

Aighty so here’s how the weapon actually works.
The firing sequence for plasmatic weaponry largely relies upon the Charged Shell component, think of it as a bullet casing of sorts that sits within the weapon’s firing chamber.

The inert plasmatic ammo is loaded into the Charged Shell, with the Charged Shell subsequently activating the plasmatic matter and providing the energy to fire the projectile from the barrel. Each weapon’s Charged Shell differs on the amount of shots they provide, depending on the weapon’s requirements.
A Charged Shell isn’t universal, but certain models fit within a range of different weapons. Then, that model is tuned to match the firing requirements of the weapon’s caliber and performance. So the energy output for a Charged Shell in a 5.56 rifle that has an operational range of 900 meters, will not be the same as one that’s firing 7.62 at 1400 meters.

In the case of an SPR-1 Frostpick, a fully juiced up Charged Shell will provide around 1500 shots before needing to be replaced and recharged.
For another example, the HPSR-3 Bolt Stucker Charged Shell can only handle 250 shots before needing to be replaced and re-powered.

And on the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got one of my personal guns which uses multiple Charged Shells in its firing sequence. Why? Cause they’re burned out beyond recovery within the span of a few minutes.

Now step by step, let’s have a look see at the firing sequence of a Frostpick so you get yourself a better understand of this shit.

1). The en bloc clip of inactive 7.62 PTT ammo used by Frostpicks is loaded into the top of the rifle, the bolt is pulled back and the first round is pulled from the clip and loaded into the gun’s Charged Shell. Remember that the Frostpick uses a clip, not a magazine. Don’t confuse the two or you’ll look particularly stupid.

2). The Charged Shell activates the plasmatic matter on the PTT round. The ammo is kept contained within the Charged Shell to prevent the extreme heat from damaging the weapon or user.

3). Once the user pulls the trigger, the Charged Shell opens and a massive discharge of energy from the Charged Shell propels the round outwards and through the barrel towards the target.

4). The rifle’s bolt is blown back by the force of the Charged Shell’s energy burst and a gas tube that makes use of the heated air generated by the discharge, akin to a traditional gas system, and as it goes forward it loads the next round into the Charged Shell to be prepared for use. Think of it as both a direct blowback and a gas reload system working in tandem. Unless the gun has a built-in coolant system, the chamber opening during the course of the bolt’s travel is often how excess heat is vented, so keep your face and fingers away.

Outside of the “does good at killing people” aspect, plasmatic weaponry also enables us to issue highly efficient load outs for infantry, vehicles, Wyroks, aircraft and any weapons platforms in general. Since the ammo of a semi-plasmatic weapon consists only of the plasmatic matter coated projectile with no attached propellant, ammo capacity is nearly doubled if not tripled due to the savings on space and weight. What this lighter weight and storage requirements means, is that Vanguards who get issued a Frostpick will typically carry 750 rounds of 7.62 PTT ammo in addition to a spare Charged Shell.

If you ever want to see why this is such a big deal, come see me and I’ll have you ruck around the perimeter of Hammershell with an M490B and a backpack full of .50 FMJ rounds.

Take all of that above info, and understand that we can do the same with Allog instead of tungsten if required. Y’know, that stuff we can pull out of thin air in certain places. What this means is that while being incredibly lethal, incredibly lightweight, and incredibly cheap to produce, we’re also guaranteed to never be in short supply of PTT or PSS rounds.
Plasmatic weaponry fulfills the requirements of high quality, high quantity, and low cost, while allowing us to scale it up to whatever idea we’re capable of conjuring up.

That’s why it’s our mainstay weaponry tech, and why we immediately sold our entire arsenal of IFA-2 rifles to the military of Lushwindia. So, if you’re ever on the receiving end of some cartel hitman with an IFA-2 that has a sticker on it that shows a 5.56 round with “Spit first” in purple text, you’re welcome.

-FrW Nahli Lok-Riveria