Blaster

Blasters were ranged weapons that fired a pulse of coherent plasma. They were typically only used at short range, the primary weapons of fighters and as defence weapons on freighters.

They worked by moving an energetic gas to a chamber where it was heated into plasma, which was then pushed through collimators by a magnetic field. The collimators formed the plasma into a coherent pulse of energy which was then accelerated by a magnetic field to a very high velocity.

This pulse only lasted a short time, which caused blasters to have their one fatal flaw; short range.