These are great, even if they don’t fire solid projectiles.
Eh, solid-ish.
The fuck do these actually shoot? Like technically speaking? It has some kinda application of force on other objects, so is it a solid or what? _{Pressure and sonic waves are not physical solids, no.– Dr. Baddarick}

Okay as far as my understanding goes, pulse weapons cause damage through intense blasts of pressure and sonic force. The harm comes in the form of flattening or breaking apart the target with an excessive amount of violence, so think of it as an extremely loud invisible hammer. Or with the rapid fire ones, a really fast swinging loud and invisible hammer.
If I had to describe the weapon firing, it’d be this “BWARRRRRRRRRR GRRRRRR” sound followed by the sight of someone or something exploding alongside the terrain they’re standing on, all within a large circular radius. The radius of harm it causes in the X, Y, and Z axis is the closest thing we have to a “caliber” we have with these kind of weapons.

We tend to pull out pulse weaponry for situation such as:

• Destroying armored targets.

• Destroying large swarms of targets.

• Destroying and disorientating enemy formations for follow up bombardments.

It’s great cause like with high explosives, you don’t have to be precise, just gotta land it in the same postal code as your target. For threats such as Chaff Wraith swarms, the gunnery crew just has to flick off the safety, point the pulse cannons towards the horde and then hold down the trigger.
Y’don’t wanna be on the outside of Glacier when that happens unless you’ve got a helmet on or you have absolutely zero love for your sense of hearing.

Far as ammo goes for pulse weapons, there’s two sources:

• Magazine style ammo supplies called "burners".

• A dedicated external or built in energy unit.

Which ammo type you use is entirely dependent on the operational requirements of when you’ll be using the weapon. Which is a long winded way of saying, are you gonna be carrying the gun or not?

If you’re using pulse weaponry on foot then you’re gonna rely on the magazines, or burners.
Burners work like Charged Shells and provide the energy required for the weapon to fire a shot. Difference is that burners take on a whole lotta strain and heat generation when they do this since it’s such a large power requirement, to the point that the interior of each one burns up.
I dearly hope you understand the name now.

They’re designed around this, so the insides of a burner will blacken and then crumple up into this lightweight chunk of toxic shit when they’re spent. You’ll be fine so long as you don’t lick it, and I can safely tell you that someone tried to make a game out of that once.
C’mon y’all, don’t make me give another “Don’t lick or eat the tangy popcorn inside spent burners.” safety brief.
Once a burner is spent, you either send it off for recycling with the other trash or have Fabrication refurbish it by swapping out the guts. Usually we just collect all the spent ones in a crate and send it off every few months, so I guess we’ve turned into the pulse weaponry equivalent of a brass goblin on the range.

We implemented burners since they’re relatively lightweight and provide the energy necessary for a pulse weapon to operate and fire, albeit at the cost of the burner itself.
Because the alternative is your ass gets to haul around a pulse weapon that has either a built-in power source, or an external one you throw on your back. And you will NOT be having a good time in that scenario unless you’re in the Celestial Throne with a Nerve Harness and tons of practice under your belt.

Pulse weaponry mounted on something, or used in static defenses, always use built in generators. This has immense heat buildup and requires coolant systems + radiators, but when we aren’t worried about it being man-portable there’s no huge issue.
Unless the generator/powerplant is incapacitated, runs out of reactive material, or overheats, then these type of pulse weapons have basically limitless ammo. At least until the weapon’s mechanisms wear out and explode from overuse because some fucktarded gunner glued his finger to the trigger’s firing position.

Upsides to pulse weapons is they really don’t care if you’re wearing body armor or not, these things will nail your ass to the floor regardless of whatever plate level you’re rocking. We updated the Tungsten Skin armor you’re all issued in response to the effects we saw when using pulse weaponry on our opponents, hence why you’ll have a far easier time tanking sudden lashes of physical forces. To test that out, get your gear on and try to throw each other off a balcony or something taller than 10 meters, you’ll quickly notice how you receive far fewer bone breaks this way. _{Don’t encourage this behavior Nahli. – Hansuke}
When you use pulse weapons on let’s say an enemy tank, it can cause the tracks to just completely sink into ground, shears stuff that isn’t ready for that level of force application, or can downright smash it like a soda can.
Even against aircraft it’ll absolutely fuck them up, but hitting them with a pulse weapon is a little on the tough side.

If you’re smart, or passed the VAAST exam, you’ll probably recognize the issue with pulse weapons.
They make use of physical forces, and sonic waves. Meeeeeeeeaning? Anyone? Eh? Ehhhh?
Correct, pulse weapons can’t be used on worlds with low gravity, no gravity, underwater, or in a vacuum.

That’s not a problem back home, but it certainly is a big ol goddamn issue when your walking fortress that trundles on through all kinds of interstellar phenomena makes use of pulse weaponry as part of its defenses.
Lower gravity? We have to up the power output for built in generators, but burners can’t handle it.
No gravity? The force of the pulse blast is so pathetic you might as well throw dirt at them.
A vacuum? Jack fuck all happens.
Underwater? Doable with a far greater higher level of power output or if the target is at point blank range, but the energy consumption to actual harm caused ratio is just so damn pathetic.

Buuuuuut think of the opposite sides to that shit sandwich.
The higher the gravity of a world, the more damage pulse weapons do, right?
And Koris can be red shifted to increase the gravity scale of something, right?
And Gray Conduits can handle that for us automatically, right?
Meaning even before firing, you can saturate a target with red shifted Koris to enhance the damage a pulse weapon can inflict, even in low gravity situations. Using Chaff on a target in this manner is called priming, when you do your damn best to ensure whatever harm you’re about to cause is magnified by an order of ten.

We did manage to infuse plasmatic energy into pulse weapons but it’s kinda weird.
The way it works is you saturate the target area with Borlyte to stage everything for a breakdown into plasmatic matter. When the pulse gun hits the target, the debris, fragments of any surroundings, or parts of the target are immediately converted into plasmatic matter to create an absolute shitstorm of immense heat, sonic assault and devastating physical pressure within the radius of the blast.

Pulse weaponry is picky on the situations it can work best in, but goddamn when it works it produces a horizon of debris, shattered ground, raining limbs and enemies that exploded where they stood.

-FrW Nahli Lok-Riveria