Fuel Rod Gun
From Halopedia, the Halo wiki
(PC/Mac Multiplayer Only)
Rate of fire: Average (2 round per second) Damage per hit: Very high Range: Medium Accuracy: Low-medium Magazine size: 5 rounds per clip Maximum ammo: 30 rounds
Advantages
The Fuel Rod Gun is the Covenant's answer to the human rocket launcher. In the first Halo, the Fuel Rod fired large blobs of plasma in arcs across large distances, and had no reload mechanism. In the campaign of Halo 1, it was impossible to pick up these weapons from fallen enemies as there were fail-safes that made the weapons self-destruct with the force of a frag grenade. However, in Halo PC, it is available as a weapon in multiplayer. Being an effective suppression weapon, a common tactic in CTF is to bombard the enemy base from afar, most of the time from a position obscured from view.
There were many changes to the Fuel Rod in Halo 2. In the campaign of Halo 2, the fail-safes were removed, allowing the player to pick up the weapon. Also, the gun became magazine fed, with each cartridge holding five rounds. The gun fires fairly fast, and reloads at around the same rate as the rocket launcher. Another addition to the Fuel Rod was the 2X scope, allowing precision firing.
The high ammo capacity, rate of fire, and damage of the Fuel Rod Gun makes it a force to be reckoned with.
Disadvantages
The fuel rod gun does not have a tracking device, and the projectiles are slow. It also takes many shots to kill someone. It is still capable of killing a user at short range, and ammo will run dry quickly in Legendary. The large size will often obscure your vision, making it harder to see who's there to kill you. Unfortunately, in Halo 2, this weapon is not featured in Multiplayer.
Hunter
There are the ones that the Hunters use which shoot out long beams of fuel rod. In Halo: The Flood, it is revealed that, like all other plasma weapons, the fuel rod gun can also overheat. So far there isn't a way to take the Weapon after killing a Hunter.
SpecOps Grunts
The fuel rod gun is also carried on the shoulders of many SpecOps Grunts, although Major Grunts were seen once wielding them in the level Two Betrayals. The grunt version of the Fuel Rod Gun fires a powerful blast of plasma that's fired in an arc and capable of exploding like a mortar.
