Volt Disruptor icon

Volt Disruptors channel PWR to disrupt the Noosphere around a target, incapacitating them for a time.

Volt Disruptors are non-lethal melee weapons which cost PWR to use, but have no cooldown. Agents can use Volt Disruptors to attack human guards and knock them out. There are four “tiers” of Volt Disruptor that are generally available.

	Damage	Armor piercing	PWR cost	Cooldown	Availability
Volt Disruptor	2 KO	—	3	—	Buy from a Nanofabricator for 500 credits.
Volt Disruptor II	2 KO	1	4	—	Buy from a Nanofabricator for 700 credits. Buy from Monst3r for 560 credits.
Volt Disruptor III	3 KO	2	5	—	Buy from a Nanofabricator for 900 credits. Loot from a Security Dispatch.
Volt Disruptor IV	4 KO	3	5	1 charge per mission	Buy from a Nanofabricator for 1100 credits. Loot from a Security Dispatch.
Nika's Volt Disruptor	2 KO	—	2	—	Unique to Nika.

Found in the Contingency Plan DLC.

Nika carves a notch out of her Disruptor each time she takes down someone with it. It's gotten noticeably lighter over the years.

Nika's Volt Disruptor is a unique weapon. It is equivalent to a Volt Disruptor I, except it costs only 2 PWR to use; its resale value is 250 credits.

Volt Disruptors are an alternative to Neural Disruptors, which you might prefer if you want to attack more often than a Neural Disruptor's cooldown allows, and if you have enough PWR to attack with them. Otherwise, you might use a Volt Disruptor simply because you need a weapon and a Volt Disruptor was what you could find. However, in the majority of loadouts, a Neural Disruptor is a better option overall.

The only benefit of Volt Disruptors over Neural Disruptors is that you can use them more frequently — but they consume rather a lot of PWR if you do. For example, a Neural Disruptor III can be used every four turns, but using a Volt Disruptor III that often costs 1.25 PWR per turn. Given that you also need PWR for programs, using a Volt Disruptor frequently will require an efficient generator (such as Dynamo) and another good source of PWR, such as a Portable Server III or Archive Internationale's Network Siphon — or very PWR-efficient hacking, such as Parasite and Buster Chips.

In practice, it is usually better not to attack guards frequently, because you can't pin many of them, but they become alerted if you let them wake up. Still, being able to use a Volt Disruptor with no cooldown helps in an emergency when you need to attack two guards in two turns.

Since Volt Disruptors have no cooldown, Nika can use one to take advantage of her Adrenal Regulator, which gives her two attacks per turn; and she starts with one that costs only 2 PWR to use. Nika's Volt Disruptor is one of the better unique weapons, although it becomes less useful later in the campaign once most guards have armor. Its useful life can be extended by installing a Penetration Scanner, so it can be used to attack some armored guards such as Elite Security, Elite Enforcers and OMNI Harbingers.

The Volt Disruptor IV's single charge per mission rather defeats the point of having no cooldown, making it almost strictly worse than both the Neural Disruptor IV (which costs no PWR to use) and the Thermal Disruptor IV (which costs less PWR and has higher armor piercing). Technically, the Volt Disruptor IV can be used more frequently than the other tier IV disruptors if you recharge it during missions, but this is a waste of Charge Packs, considering it only pierces 1 more level of armor than a Volt Disruptor III. Unless you can find no other way to pierce high armor levels, the Volt Disruptor IV should normally not be bought, and should be sold if you find it in a Security Dispatch mission.