Blaster/Legends



"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid."

- Han Solo

Blasters were ranged weapons that fired hyphens of deadly energy, known as bolts from a replaceable Power pack. The most commonly used weapon in the galaxy, their intense beams of light can kill or stun. Ranging from compact pistols up through heavy rifle versions, they assume their largest form as starship-mounted blaster cannons. Almost every being in the galaxy has owned a blaster at some time, even Anakin Skywalker owned a small ion blaster in his youth, and Leia Organa owned a Sporting blaster when she was just a teenager, where as Mandalorian children are given blasters when they are little.

Technical Information
The term "blaster" was often used interchangeably with the term "laser" in everyday conversation, both denoting the same type of particle beam weapon. Technically, however, the laser was a more ancient weapon design than the blaster, being superceded by it throughout much of the galaxy. Unlike lasers, blasters had high fire cycle rates which enabled them to multifire: a mode of fire in which the rate of discharge increased at the cost of accuracy. Also people could use the blaster to mine and drill rock, which was pretty much all the laser could do, aside from defense.



Laser Mechanics
A laser beam was a coherent shaft of light. When referring to light (or any other wave pattern for that matter), coherence was the "sameness" in multiple waves. In other words, each light wave emitted from the laser device had the same wavelength and amplitude as all other waves emitted from the same device.

Lasers were generated by introducing energy to the lasing medium. The lasing medium was the substance used to generate the laser beams. Tibanna gas was a favored medium. When an atom of the medium was excited by energy, one or more of its electrons would "jump" to a higher energy level. When the atom stabilized (e.g., the electron(s) returned to their original energy levels), a photon was released. A photon was a "packet" of energy that traveled in both a wavelike, and a particulate manner, giving it a high energy level, and a high damage rating.

Blaster Mechanics
Blasters were a considerable improvement on the laser design. The bolt fired from a blaster was not just light. The type of energy that made up the bolt depended on the type of blaster being used. In plasma-based blasters, a high-energy gas (Tibanna gas, for example, in the BlasTech DC-series) would move from the gas chamber into another chamber where it was enhanced into a plasma state, then released from a magnetic "bottle" effect, through the collimating components in the barrel, which, in turn, released it as a coherent energy bolt of light and plasma. This combination of light and plasma formed the deadly bolt fired from a blaster. In particle-beam based blasters, like the E-11 used by stormtroopers, a small amount of high-energy gas moved from the gas chamber to the chamber commonly called the XCiter. In there the gas was energized by the power pack, then passed into the actuating blaster module, which when assisted by the components in the barrel, processed the now extremely high-energy gas into a compressed beam of intense energy particles coupled with high energy light. In these blasters the combination of high-energy light and a compressed bolt of intense energy particles formed the deadly bolt. Because the bolt traveled at nearly the speed of light, in some cases, targets could show signs of damage before the visible portion of the bolt hit. This was because the visible portion was a side-effect of the actual, lethal bolt.

Most personal blasters had two kinds of ammunition: a gas cartridge, and a power cell. Very weak weapons, like the Drearian Defense Conglomerate Defender sporting blaster, relied on the power cell and used only a small quantity of gas. Immensely powerful weapons, like the illegal Tenloss DX-2 disruptor pistol, used abnormally large amounts of gas, Han Solo's illegaly modified DL-44 blaster pistol, held a fair amount of tibanna gas, and the power pack had a fairly good energy level, making Han's blaster one of the better blaster variants in the galaxy. Not to mention the CDEF blaster, which was one of the lower-quality weapons in the galaxy, useing a small amount of blaster gas and a low enegy power pack, that is why this weapon is widely used by amateur merenaries and bounty hunters throughout the many planets in the known galaxy.

History and usage
"So uncivilized."

- Obi-Wan Kenobi

Among the oldest and most venerable example of blaster technology was the triple blaster which dated back to the Galactic Republic. It worked by using three separate blasters connected to the same targeting system, often coordinated in sets of two or four, and fired simultaneously on a target. By the Rise of the Empire, triple blasters became exceedingly rare. Before this was invented, blaster tubes were used. They were backpacks with a hose coming out of the side, and a tube sticking out of the hose. All of the equipment that made the blaster bolt was contained in the backpack, and was fired out of the hose. Needless to say, these lost popularity quickly when triple blasters came around.

An updated version of blaster technology was the autoblaster. Designed for the B-wing fighter, it had an even higher rate of fire than other blasters but was not available to other models until after the Battle of Endor.

Blasters were allowed on civilian vessels except for heavy blaster cannons during the Galactic Empire, when they were restricted to corporations through the purchase of Imperial licenses.

The most common manufacturer of blasters during the Galactic Civil War was BlasTech, which had contracts with both the Imperial Military and the Alliance to Restore the Republic. It also manufactured the Protector civilian fighter-grade blaster line.

Blaster variants

 * Hold-out blaster
 * Sporting blaster
 * Blaster pistol
 * Heavy blaster pistol
 * Blaster rifle
 * Blaster carbine
 * Repeating blaster
 * Autoblaster

Appearances
Most Expanded Universe stories
 * Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
 * Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
 * Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
 * Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader
 * Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
 * Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
 * Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
 * The Truce at Bakura