Rifts Up Close: TX-11 Laser Sniper Rifle

By Tim Willard

Triax has long claimed to be the originator of the JA series of rifles, and the announcement of the release of a laser sniper rifle by the same company that produced the astounding JA series of rifles was looked forward to by most weapons enthusiasts. When the weapon was released in early 102 PA, every weapon's developer and enthusiast ran right out to get their hands on several to examine the inner workings.

The weapon's casing is made of molecularly bonded duraluminum with gray powder coating flash bonded to the metal. The forward handgrip located halfway down the barrel is made of deformable black plastic to allow ease of use by armored firers. The pistol grip is made entirely of black duraplast with a durafoam grip to allow the operator to easily mold the grip to their individual grip style. The bstock is a single, foldable minimal wire stock made from duraplast rather than the more durable and reliable macroplast. The magazine well is loaded within the pistol grip, and the weapon was designed to handle standard NASEM or extended magazines. The mounted scope is a standard passive infrared scope with 1X/3X/5X/10X magnification.

The weapon's lasing matrix uses a narrow focus lasing aperture, and an artificially grown tubular quartz crystal lazing matrix. The weapon uses a barrel length tubular crystal, with an artificially grown forward lattice to allow the laser beam to travel easily forward. The lasing aperture can be removed by unscrewing the rear housing and withdrawing it from the weapon.

However, despite the weapon's hype and aggressive advertising campaign, the weapon is an inferior snipers weapon, and suffers from some serious flaws.

The trigger is a simple pushbutton trigger, engaging at less than a 1/2 ounce of pressure. In addition, the trigger guard is too small to easily fit environmental body armored fingers, much less cyborg or power armored fingers.

The stock breaks under field use, with the simple screw hinge connecting it to the body of the weapon often failing after the stock is deployed a few dozen times, requiring the replacement of the entire stock. In more than 70% of field tests, an augmented human would shatter the stock when pulling the weapon tight to their shoulders.

The scope is often misaligned, and requires serious work by a dedicated shootist to realign, often over 2 hours of firing and sighting. In addition, the scope uses inferior electronic magnification molycircs, resulting in a grainy picture at the 5X setting, and the 10X setting to be little more than a blur. Finally, the passive infrared is standard red-shift sight picture and has no flash compensation circuitry, allowing the infrared scope to be overloaded by something as simple as the target lighting an infrared signal flare. In one instance, the scope was permanently blinded when someone activated an infrared chem-light in order to give the test operator infrared light to get the weapon ready. The infrared chemlight was slightly behind (0.25m) and to the right (1.2m) of the scope at the time.

The crystal lasing matrix uses old age technology of tubular smoothed crystals, and has shorter range than cheaper Wilk's and Northern Gun laser weapons, and even standard Coalition C-12 laser rifles show longer range and higher accuracy. The lazing aperture and matrix are substandard parts at best, and offer suffer from misalignment should the weapon be treated roughly. A sharp knock on the rear withdrawal screw has shattered the aperture lenses and the crystal matrix in over 60% of tests. In addition, the quartz crystal has no shock dampening mechanisms surrounding it, resulting in the crystal shattering 40% of the time if dropped from waist height onto a concrete floor, and 55% of the time when dropped from shoulder height to a concrete floor, and 100% of the time if thrown against a wall at a 3m distance by an unaugmented human.

Laser output is extremely short ranged for a "sniper" rifle, and does slightly less damage in both laboratory and field tests than the Wilk's 457 Pulse Rifle on single round setting, and is comparable in damage to the NG-L5 Laser Rifle, which has better range and is much studier.

Most professionals avoid the TX-11 Laser "Sniper" Rifle, preferring Wilk', Northern Gun, or even stolen Coalition equipment to this obviously substandard weapon. Many consider it the sign of an easily conned "wannabe" if a person is carrying it.

None of the innovations shown in the JA series of rifles, in modern or Golden Age sniper weapons, are present in the TX-11. This fact alone has shown that if Triax did invent the JA series of rifles, they seem to have forgotten how to build sniper rifles, or at least are not exporting any sniper weapons of note to the North American continent.

Weight: 3 lbs
Length: 28", 32" with stock deployed
Caliber: 2.25cm
Maximum Range: 650m (1950 ft)
Maximum Effective Range: 550m (1650 ft)
Typical Combat Range: 250m (750 ft)
Magazine Capacity: 10 shots from a NASEM, or 20 shots from an extended magazine
Manufacturer's Cost: 1,250 Cr
Wholesale Cost: 15,000 Cr
Manufacturer's Recommended Price: 20,000 Cr
Black Market Price: Will try for 25,000 Cr, but will settle for 16,000 Cr
Wilderness Price: 3,000-9,000 Cr, depending on if the buyer believes the hype of the advertising campaign.