Tri-beam Laser Rifle (Broken Steel)

super mutant overlords carry them

The  is a weapon which is added to Fallout 3 with the Broken Steel add-on. It is carried by super mutant overlords.

Characteristics
The Tri-beam laser rifle has the appearance of a "sawed-off" laser rifle, missing the tube on the bottom length of the barrel and having a new emitter aperture and attached wires. The new emitter fires three laser beams with each shot. Unlike the Metal Blaster, and Protectron's Gaze, it also expends three microfusion cells per shot. Because each shot depletes 3 microfusion cells, it has an actual magazine size of only 8.(24 ÷ 3 = 8)

This weapon is smaller than a normal AER9 laser rifle, yet it's one pound heavier.

This weapon has an object effect that allows it do 40 additional HP of damage when the target is the player. The +40 damage is for EACH beam, thereby increasing its damage potential by 120 per shot, and this value is not mitigated by your damage resistance.

A fully-repaired tri-beam rifle can fire 334 shots, which is 1002 microfusion cells worth of energy, before breaking.

Variants
Variations of the AER9 exist in Fallout 3 and its add-ons:
 * Laser rifle
 * Wazer Wifle - This unique variant of the AER9 has higher damage and durability, as well as a larger magazine. It is obtained from Biwwy in Little Lamplight for five hundred caps or free with the Child at Heart perk.
 * Metal Blaster (The Pitt add-on) - This unique variant of the AER9 fires nine beams at once, using one microfusion cell similar to the Protectron's Gaze laser pistol. This feature, coupled with its remarkably high damage-per-shot makes it a devastating short to close-range weapon, though its effectiveness greatly diminishes at a range with the "shotgun effect". It can be obtained by bringing fifty steel ingots to Everett in The Pitt.


 * Operation: Anchorage add-on includes an unused DLC-specific version of the laser rifle. It is identical to the normal laser rifle in both statistics and appearance.  Its intended purpose in the DLC is unknown and it was cut from the final release, rendering it accessible only through the use of console commands.
 * A "demo" version of the Laser Rifle is included in Fallout 3, presumably left from the game's E3 demo. It does one point less damage per shot and less than half the critical damage than the standard variant, but has a much higher critical chance percentage.  It is not used anywhere in the game and is only accessible through the use of console commands.

Locations

 * Super Mutant Overlords