Link Gun

The Pulse Gun is a weapon in Unreal Tournament. The Pulse Gun is replaced by the similar Link Gun in UT2003, UT2004, and UT3.

The Pulse Gun's primary fire launches plasma projectiles at a rapid rate, and its secondary fire shoots a constant beam of plasma, though this beam is of limited length. The Link Gun is different from the Pulse Gun only in that a player may "link up" with a teammate who also has the Link Gun, by firing the beam at the teammate, boosting the teammate's firepower; the new name reflects this feature. Multiple players can link up to create a chain or any other (acyclic) arrangement of links for a greater boost.

Primary fire
The Pulse Gun's primary fire projectiles are fast-moving green orbs of plasma. The usefulness of the primary fire is generally limited to close-to-medium range, as is the case with most projectile weapons.

Secondary fire
The secondary fire is much stronger than the primary fire. When fired, a straight beam of green plasma is emitted, and this beam grows in length. Though this length is limited to 810uu, the beam is much more effective at medium range than the primary fire, owing to its hitscan nature.

The "Saw Effect"
The beam is divided into 10 segments of 81uu length. Each of them does a fixed damage of 10.8 health on first contact with the player. So if you move towards an opponent and back away from him you are doing a bit more damage than usually. (imagine you got a saw in your hands, which you have to move forward and back all the time)

Note that the segments 'forget' their last target as soon as you switch to another segment, so the 10.8 damage on 1st contact always refreshes. That`s why the best method is to switch fast between 2 segments, but you'd have to know the exact segment borders which are difficult to see. But theoretically you could do an insane amount of damage with this method.

Primary fire
The Link Gun's primary fire projectiles are normally green, and while their initial speed is slower than that of a rocket, they speed up to four times that in under a second. The usefulness of the primary fire is generally limited to close-to-medium range, since their slow initial speed makes them easy to react to at longer range. However, with a fire rate of 5.5 shots per second with 30 damage per shot, at close range and especially against unmoving targets the Link Gun primary fire is one of the deadliest weapons considering its raw damage rate (165 damage per second).

Secondary fire
The secondary fire tends to be more used than the primary fire. Though the green wiggly beam is of limited length, since the beam is hitscan it is far more reliable within its range. 5.5 times a second the beam checks for a hit, and will do 15 damage to a target, which comes out to be 82.5 damage per second. While it can be hard to master, in the right hands the beam is more deadly than the primary fire, especially considering its lockdown effect: whenever the beam hits, it pushes the target slightly, making it difficult for the target to dodge out of the way, effectively locking the player down.

Linking
If a teammate is linked up to you, the teammate's link beam assumes the color of the team, and both the primary and secondary fire of your Link Gun become yellow and do extra damage. If there are n people linked up to you, the damage on the primary fire is multiplied by 1 + n, and the damage on the secondary fire is multiplied by 1 + (0.5 &times; n). For example, if two people are linked up to you, primary fire will do 90 damage per shot, and secondary fire will do 30 damage per hit for 165 damage per second. The primary projectile speed also increases with the number of links.

Unreal Tournament 2004
As with most UT2003 weapons, the UT2004 version of the Link Gun has remained largely the same, though it has received several subtle changes. The Link Gun's appearance has been altered. The primary fire now consumes 2 ammo per shot, and the secondary fire has a greater fire rate of over 9 hits per second, although the damage per hit has been decreased to 9 such that its rate of damage has been unchanged. In compensation for the increased ammo consumption rate, the ammo capacity of the UT2004 Link Gun has been increased.

In UT2004, players can also repair vehicles and Power Nodes with the alternate fire, greatly increasing the utility of this weapon in Onslaught, Vehicle CTF, and certain Assault maps.

Primary Fire
Fires white, hot plasma projectiles. The rate of fire appears to have been significantly increased, as a result it is assumed that the primary fire does significantly less damage per shot than in UT2004.

Secondary Fire
Fires a beam. It is unknown if the beam is colored based upon your team affiliation in team games or not. The beam is now curved, according to many Epic employees in order to give the user a visual aid in knowing how far the beam actually goes. It will still hit exactly where the crosshairs are aimed.