The Useless Laser

	It is my understanding from the MT rules that laser weapons (other
than a one-shot integral laser) require this large backpack to power them.
This puts rather a damper on their use as a personal weapon. If someone
out there who knows the power consumption for modern lasers cross-references
that with the battery/fuel cell/micro-fusion outputs of the Traveller sources
then it would be interesting to see what size this would have to be.
	In my own campaign only special squads/comando units use laser or
plasma weapons. They are just too expensive (don't forget the cost of
maintaining them) to kit out your entire armed forces with. Unless your
potential opponent is going to be dressed in (expensive) combat environment
suits of (prohibitively expensive) battledress a good, simple rifle will
do just as well. Does anybody have a counter-argument I haven't thought of?

				j^2