In their efforts to achieve worldwide technological supremacy, the Chinese military commissioned a line of energy-based laser weapons to compete with those being developed by the United States. Unfortunately, due to a lack of microfusion technology, the power output of these weapons was pitifully weak in comparison. Never to be deterred, a line of sidearms was put into full-scale production and assigned to Chinese reconnaissance teams as a compact and silent weapon, perfect for matters of infiltration. Developed by MEC, this is the Chinese Laser Pistol.

What Does This Mod Do?

This mod aims to fill a niche in New Vegas that goes unfilled, that being an energy stealth weapon, as well as a low-tier weapon that uses Electron Charge Pack ammunition, which is only used by mid-to-late game weapons by default.

The weapon is inspired by the Soviet Laser Pistol
 
I thought it looked pretty dorky, but also surprisingly fitting for an energy weapon developed by a country without the technology to support that kind of power.

Leveled lists are included, but seeing as this weapon wouldn't have been particularly common in the Mojave, you'll only find Fiends wielding these, as well as having it being sold by the Van Graffs. You can also find one lying around in the X-13 Research Facility at Big MT, on a table near some of the Stealth Suit Mk II experiments.

The weapon uses 2 rounds per shot and has a mag size of 18 (an "effective" mag-size of 9). It has the same damage and crit stats as the Jsawyer mod's version of the .22 pistol, except for the health which is much lower keeping in line with the experimental nature of the weapon (as well as with other Chinese Fallout weapons). It should be compatible with all vanilla perks related to energy weapons.

Also included is Rockbiter's .22 pistol animations, with the "full reload" animation removed and replaced with another copy of the partial reload animation. You can replace this weapon's animations with any other .22 pistol animation set, but I recommend replacing the full reload with the partial one as I've done to keep the player from cocking an invisible charging handle.

Installation

Install with your preferred mod manager of choice. Leveled lists are handled with a JIP LN scriptrunner, but the weapon itself needs to be loaded by the included .esp.

A Note On Lore

Only read this if you were planning on complaining about the lore accuracy of this.

Before anyone gets uppity about an Chinese energy weapon, and a mag-fed one at that, I'll say this much: Chinese energy weapons are dubiously canon, with the Liberator robots from Fallout 76 having them. The Gauss Rifle is also arguably Chinese-designed based on propaganda posters with it, and the MEC Gauss Minigun from Fallout Tactics is Chinese-designed, and was also made canon with 76. As for the magazine fed ammo, if you take a peak there's actually energy cells modeled into the magazine. I decided to do this as an homage to the Soviet Laser Pistol, and also because any other design would've made this incompatible with existing animation sets. And hell, with China's main focus being ballistic weapons, maybe they would've wanted to stick to the tried-and-true magazine reloading method. Yes, the model is energy cells and the weapon uses electron charge packs, but A: you can barely see it and B: those wouldn't fit in the grip.

I did a lot of research about China in Fallout and their technological feats. It uses 2 ammo per shot because they needed to use extra power from the cells to even achieve this little bit of damage. It uses Electron Charge Packs because I don't think there's any reason to assume they're a variant of MF Cells (even if they look the same?) and they're arguably the weakest of the energy weapon ammo types. I think this weapon is fairly fitting, but you don't have to agree.

Showcase



Credits:

The weapon's receiver is a modified version of Millenia's Borz because I already had the mesh on-hand, it was surprisingly similar to the Soviet Laser Pistol, and because Millenia has given permission to use and modify her excellently made mods.

Thanks to Sweet6Shooter for her leveled list integration guide

Thanks to Rockbiter for having open permissions so I could package their .22 anims in with this mod instead of needing to find a way to stick a good-looking charging handle onto the back of this thing.

Thanks to SHAD0WC0BRA for the colored beams resource used for the optional blue beam