TS-QPB-S11 Quasiparticle Beam Emitter

"The Q-Beam fires a concentrated beam of unstable particles that eventually cause a target to explode"

- Inventory description

The TS-QPB-S11 Quasiparticle Beam also known as the Q-Beam is an experimental weapon found on Talos I during Prey (2017).

Overview
The Q-Beam is a prototype directed energy weapon. A stream of volatile quasiparticles causes rapidly cascading excitations in energetic systems of matter to the point of rupture.

The weapon can be found in the Hardware Labs' Beams and Waves Lab. It's hooked up to a machine for testing. Use the nearby terminal to access it. Later it can also be found in Cargo Bay B at the Security Command Post where Sarah and the survivors are. A Q-Beam can also be found outside the station in a location marked "human corpse" near the Psychotronics exit past the breach that needs to be sealed for the sidequest Million Dollar Caulk Gun (the corpse is Mariana Arias and is hidden in a small cubbyhole with the Q-Beam floating next to her), but this one is guarded by a Technopath. An additional Q-Beam can be found in the freezer in the kitchen of the cafeteria in Crew Quarters.

Judging by a memo found by Morgan Yu, it seems that Transtar was secretly working on a way to weaponize the Q-beam and implement it in Military Operators.

Usage
While the Q-Beam does not do damage in the conventional sense it turns a portion of the targets health bar green starting from the left at a prodigious rate. When the entire bar is green the target will die. The entirety of the indicator does not have to be filled, only what is left of the bar; the effect stacks with regular damage. Users must be careful to ensure they have enough ammo and a clear shot, as the effect of the beam will slowly wear off, wasting time and the beam's rare ammunition. Despite this, the beam has high DPS when used effectively, making it ideal for taking out tougher enemies that require you to be far away to be safe such as the Telepath, Technopath, Weaver and Nightmare.

The effective range is no more than 30 meters and firing time indicates how long it can fire continuously until the ammo is depleted. Q-Beam Power indicates its output damage and handling indicate its recoil and accuracy.

Ammunition for the Q-Beam is rare and it benefits hugely from equipping the Chipset CELL REFURB 00Q-X1, which will cause about 100 Q-Beam ammo to be dropped by every destroyed Operator and Turret. The effect is retroactive: any Operator or Turret the player has destroyed before acquiring the chipset can be searched again to find Q-Beam ammo.

The fabrication plan for Q-Beam cells (and for the Q-Beam itself) is the reward for completing the side-mission The Blackbox Project.

Material Yield: 1.50,  1.00

Dismantle Results: 3 Spare Parts

Weapon Upgrades
The Q-Beam is a "non-standard tech weapon" and therefore requires Lab Tech I and II to fully upgrade.

Trivia
Contrary to the game design, Quasiparticles cannot propagate in vacuum because it's an emergent behavior of the surrounding medium (for example, phonon, the quanta of sound, is the vibration modes of the excited atoms) and thus cannot exist without a medium.

Gallery
Q-Beam