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Blasters were ranged weapons of varying size and design, and could range from handheld pistols to rifles. From there and in-between, the blasters could branch off into even more detailed groups. Blasters used plasma as their main ammunition and way of working, much like how lightsabers used plasma to make their blades, however a blaster fired said plasma as bolts. Blasters were rarely called guns, and some mistook them as laser weaponry, despite the two being quite noticeably different.
Description[]
Blasters generally operated by using magnetic induction to propel and form a solid plasma matter beam from an energy rich gas that came as ammunition for the blaster. While there were some outliers, the general operation of this was that the gas was inserted into the weapon, condensed and formed into the plasma beam before being discharged at high velocity out the barrel of the blaster.
Blaster variants[]
Plasma blasters[]
Plasma blasters were the most common form of handheld blasters, and the thing that came into most people's mind when someone mentioned the word 'blaster'. Over ninety percent of the blasters available both on and off the public market were plasma blasters, or 'the standard' form of blasters. They operated with the plasma bolts and were the most widely available and most widely manufactured type of blaster. Large, well known companies such as BlasTech Industries were giants within the plasma blaster industry.
Laser blaster[]
Laster blasters operated on a similar build to blasters, however they created laser bolts instead of plasma bolts, which had similar properties to the latter. Very few companies manufactured laser weapons over blasters, and so finding a laser blaster was very difficult. Laser technology was usually reserved for ship based weapons, where the properties of lasers were far superior to that of plasma in the vacuum of space. Very few companies produced any form of laser based blasters, though a notable exception was BlasTech Industries' DLT-18 laser rifle.
Ion blasters[]
Ion based blasters were the rarest of them all, using a highly concentrated stream of ion particles as a bolt rather than any form of plasma or laser. Ion blasters were usually reserved to short-range, mechanical disabling, non-lethal technology for disabling things such as droids or wrecking electrical equipment. They were also usually used for non-lethal stunning of living beings. However, isolated companies such as Ionix Combat Systems did produce full ion blasters.
Bolt color[]
Blaster bolts came in various colors based on the quality of gas used. The most common was red, as the gas to produce red bolts was the cheapest to buy and import/export, and so most blasters produced red bolts as a result. Blue bolts were formed from an ionising gas that specialised in disabling droids and machinery, though this did not mean it was not effective against living beings. Green bolts could be produced from a more expensive gas that was of a high quality, though its increased cost meant it was used far less. Orange and cyan bolts were formed from a low powered gas that produced non-lethal bolts that were generally used for training recruits in various armies. Other isolated colors were produced by certain civilisations, likely from a special mixture or type of gas that produced a different colored blaster bolt. Most notably was the yellow Mandalorian bolt and purple Geonosian bolt that was also seen used by Magna Guards and the Octuptarra tri-droid.
List of blasters[]
There were many types of blasters available in all shapes and sizes. Below is a list of all blasters arranged in categories.