First pic I´ve drawn since march, unfinished.

For a first attempt, it´s okay, I guess. After such a long break, though, anything is good, really. Got scared of screwing up the feet despite having a pencil on hand, so they´re not there for now. Might turn this into a proper picture unless I can come up with something better. At any rate, enjoy.

Pic Info:

Depicted is a Csye warrioress in light combat gear, which includes a load bearing vest and armoured padding, made of high temperature and tear resistant fabrics. Groin, chest and back hold liquid core, impact hardening armour bladders. Below the suit is worn a skintight overall, which contains the heat control system, the conversion-element of which can be seen on her back. This picture depicts her during range training, so she doesn´t wear most of her rig: missing are medkit, for example, dump-pouches for spent mags and random gear, additional mags, hydration bladder on the back and pistol ammo on the leg rigging.

The weapon is a Hsari arms Laser rifle, with a red dot reflector sight on top, which is linked to a targeting cell below the sight. In laser weapons, this device computes the diameter of the laser flash on target, and dispersion by atmospheric moisture or dust, enabling the operator to estimate the effectiveness of his weapon at the target.

Hsari produces a wide range of rifles, which are used by many Csye combat priories along the border of the red pyramid. The weapon depicted here is a bullpup carbine, the HSA-95. It is a compact weapon, emitting light at low IR wavelengths. It has 43% efficiency in optimum operating condition, with the remaining 57% of energy fed into it from the battery being emitted as heat, which is directed trough vents on both sides of the weapon away from the operator. It has a fairly small aperture of 4.5 centimeters, and a sustained firerate of 1.5 pulses per second, handling a maximum of 7 shots in redline-mode in about a second.

The weapon is of the blaster variety, ie each shot contains a series of below nano-second long pulses, which cause explosive disruption of the target. Total energy of each shot is 10 kilojoule in a new weapon with fully charged magazine, with each shot containing 40 - 60 pulses depending on the setting. The weapon fires single shots, full auto or redline. Full auto fires the weapon at the maximum sustainable rate, depending on environment and weapon temperature. Redline fires a single, maximum power shot until the weapon overheats. As said before, this is about 8 shots crammed into the shortest possible time.

The weapon weighs 3.6 kgs empty, and is fed from 1.2 kgs heavy magazines, each of which contain between 120 and 350 shots worth of charge depending on the quality of the make. There is a cable-adapter which can be attached to a high-capacity backpack magazine, which contains between 1200 and 6000 shots worth of energy depending on quality and make of the magazine.

There are no known materials that can fully deflect the high-energy laser beams, while having acceptable mass. There are advanced polymer-ceramic mixed, hard shell armours that can absorb laser blasts, but they are heavy and cumbersome when not used in a powered armour, and for most frontier worlds they are difficult to make.
The best protection against laser weapons is range, and lots of rock inbetween you and the shooter.

When set to overload shooting, with a rifle with good quality, well maintained optics and a sniper scope, a good shooter can place killing shots out to about between 600 and 900 meters depending on the atmospheric conditions.

Laser weapons are not as common as kinetic weapons on the frontier, though they are in terms of tech much more advanced. The large five in the region have technology to cheaply mass produce these weapons in superior quality. Some of the cheap, crude frontier-made laser weapons lack such features as adaptive optics (limiting their effective range to very small "optimum focus" ranges.), or have woefully small efficiencies and heat management systems. Because of this, the cheaply made, and easily mass-produced kinetic weapons are still preferred by the small militias, pirates, traders and armies of the frontier, and laser weapons remain relatively rare outside the militaries and homeworlds of the big five.