Fixing the Magrail Gun (and other madness).

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

(Retired Eldar Farseer speaking...)

The parallel that I see is the Warhammer 40k "Shuriken Catapult" broken down into a Pistol, Rifle, Cannon, etc. it uses a large bit of "psychic" bits in its construction, but the end result is a type of railgun that fires discs.
"razor sharp" discs, if I remember correctly.

Railgun is to Gaussgun is to Magnetogun, etc. etc. I see this thing as a variant VRF Gauss Weapon (which can put a world of hurt on targets) and scale it accordingly. No big deal. Is it a terror weapon because of its ammo? Nah. Not when you have Fusion Guns around, and Battledress Troops. Even fancy bullets start to take a back seat to that.

One that shoots HEAP or TDX discs might be nice tho...

 

[atpollard]

One that shoots TDX discs might be nice tho...

Which 'direction' does a spinning disk of shaped explosive direct the blast?

 

[ganymede]

Magrail Hoopla

I'd say except for plain ol' HE rounds, TDX only for the disc rounds. How's this for style, we've (my group and I) have always envisioned something called a magrail as more of an artillery piece, you know if it's man portable it's probably longer than its operator is tall. Picture it as a space platform, firing rocks at things. Sure, high iron content rocks, but rocks nonetheless.

So a man-portable one would hurl spikes, like marlin spikes for you salty dogs out there. Maybe call them bolts... hey! WH40K!

 

[far-trader]

Which 'direction' does a spinning disk of shaped explosive direct the blast?

Same as a non-spinning disk of TDX, if I had to guess. TDX is one of those gravitron magic inventions where the explosive force is contained to a narrow plane parallel to the local gravity plane. Which has always raised interesting questions.

If you mean conventional explosives that might be trickier to set up but you could choose a direction. Down would be good for attacking ground targets or soft top vehicles, up for flying targets I guess. Of course then you have to make sure you load your ammo "this side to target" for the situation.

Who wants to "put a frikkin laser on it" and launch them off to burn a line down a column of troops or vehicles? :smirk:

Just me? o:

:rofl:

 

[far-trader]

So a man-portable one would hurl spikes, like marlin spikes for you salty dogs out there. Maybe call them bolts... hey! WH40K!

Bolt guns have been around longer than WH40K I'm sure. I know I had some early on in Traveller, as a tool (ship fabrication) for riveting hull plates, conscripted into a makeshift weapon. Just remove the contact safety and BLAMBLAMBLAM! Sure it wasn't accurate, but it totally ruins your fancy of suit of BattleDress by punching nice neat holes clean through it at a respectable range.

 

[veltyen]

Bolt guns have been around longer than WH40K I'm sure.

Meh. Boltguns are just gyrojet weapons with a bunch of fancy extra pointless words thrown in.

 

[tbeard1999]

Bolt guns have been around longer than WH40K I'm sure. I know I had some early on in Traveller, as a tool (ship fabrication) for riveting hull plates, conscripted into a makeshift weapon. Just remove the contact safety and BLAMBLAMBLAM! Sure it wasn't accurate, but it totally ruins your fancy of suit of BattleDress by punching nice neat holes clean through it at a respectable range.

The term "bolt gun" was first used (AFAIK) in Laserburn, a sci-fi tabletop RPG by Bryan Ansell. It, and its supplements, could be seen as "proto-WH40K", as many WH40K concepts appeared in them. The rules are still available from Tabletop Games in the UK.

Regardless, I find it hard to take a game company seriously that adds ridiculous weapons like shuriken catapults to Traveller.

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

Matter of personal taste, I suppose. Some tend to see Traveller as a Science Fiction game rather than an extention of just earth technology and earth military technology. Sure there's realism, but I have a feeling that by the 57th century, They won't be fighting Wars and running Merc ops with bows and arrows. But don't try to come between me and my Auto-GL.

Rockets, Subs, Tanks were all thought rediculous. Personally, I think bringing a slug throwing weapon to a Fusion gun fight is also rediculous, but it makes for easy victories.

Traveller has always seemed to have this large scope, except when it comes to this sort of thing. One "hole" overall is Gravitics.

With the first Grav Vehicles arriving at TL A, the development of the first Gravitic Weapon would begin the morning after TL A started, realistically.
There would be no nostalgia for the old snub pistol, and there would be no thought of the moral implications or the chivalry of using such a weapon if it was available. Some empire, human or alien, would take the tech and use it.

A lot of this grumbling seems to be about Powergaming, which I agree is irritating to no end to be sure. That is all player and Referee preference stuff. Younger kids will no doubt play Traveller like it was Warhammer 40k, but as they mature, they will realize that just running around blowing stuff up has its place, but so does role playing.

As far as cracking on the naming conventions of other games goes, Traveller should be the last one to crack. It has only been in recent times that there was any effort made to flesh out any of the non-baseline weapons as in:

GM:
"From out of the elevator iris, 8 Aslan Privateers prowl forward... they wear Combat Environment Suits and carry SMGs..."

Player 1: "What Kind of SMGs? Uzis? Tommy Guns? MP-40s?

GM: "Uh... Tommy Guns..."

Player 2: "Tommy Guns? Are they driving a Ford Coupe with running boards?"

GM: "Well, they're Aslan SMGs, yknow..."

Player 4: "That sounds cool! What are they called?

GM: "uh..."

Traveller needs distinctive weapons for flavor, but most likely they don't really fall outside of the same class or type of weapon as the tech.

This reminds me of a player that used to draw each animal we encountered based on its stat description. Funniest was this ape like thing with a rifle for horns...

 

[Thunderbolt]

I'm glad I'm not the only person who reached the weapons section (as I did last night), and saw these MagRail disc projectiles and thought, what the heck???

For this lapsed referee of many years, the fundamentals of aerodynamics still apply in the future. Knowing what effect those solid disc wheels on a road bicycle can have, you can imagine those discs going all over the place.

And while we on the subject of weird ballistics, when did a smidgen of superheated gas become a projectile AND radioactive. It was hard enough to imagine how a pocket of hot gas could become a coherent piece of deadly momentum, but now it's dangerous to everyone including the gunner as well!

 

[Allensh]

My understanding is that fusion guns have always superheated the plasma to a point where a fusion reaction begins, and thus radioactivity makes sense. It also reinforces the reason that you want to be wearing battle dress with radiation shielding before you try to fire a fusion gun.

Allen

 

[far-trader]

My understanding is that fusion guns have always superheated the plasma to a point where a fusion reaction begins, and thus radioactivity makes sense. It also reinforces the reason that you want to be wearing battle dress with radiation shielding before you try to fire a fusion gun.

Allen

Except that the original reason for needing to wear BD for firing the FGMP(14), like the PGMP(13) was recoil. Not the heat, or radiation, or toxic fumes, or whatever (which were never mentioned). And the next TL advance for each was integral compensation to allow firing without wearing BD.

Let's just say the MGT FGMP is not your Father's FGMP

 

[far-trader]

My understanding is that fusion guns have always superheated the plasma to a point where a fusion reaction begins, and thus radioactivity makes sense. It also reinforces the reason that you want to be wearing battle dress with radiation shielding before you try to fire a fusion gun.

Allen

Except that the original reason for needing to wear BD for firing the FGMP(14), like the PGMP(13) was recoil. Not the heat, or radiation, or toxic fumes, or whatever (which were never mentioned). And the next TL advance for each was integral compensation to allow firing without wearing BD.

And I always thought it was sub-fusing myself. "...until a fusion reaction begins to take place." At which point you want it gone gone gone so it does not blow up in your face. You want it to go fusion at the target, not in your barrel.

Let's just say the MGT FGMP is not your Father's FGMP.

 

[Thunderbolt]

Hmm, yes according to Wikipedia, it's a small matter of the release of neutrons during the fusion process, in fact, they seem to refer to this issue a few times in terms of radiological hazards - so much for all the 'greens' going on about safe green energy.

At least anti-matter is safe......

 

[far-trader]

Hmm, yes according to Wikipedia, it's a small matter of the release of neutrons during the fusion process...

Except (I think) if you can make it Hydrogen fusion (no neutrons = no neutron radiation I'd think). And Traveller uses Hydrogen for everything

But my solution (for much of the PG and FG description/mechanics) is none of that happens in the weapon. My take on it is around here somewhere. In brief it's an energy grenade weapon. The bad stuff happens when the "grenade" reaches it's target and the magnetic shell is broken.

 

[Icosahedron]

Most sci-fi weapons defy the laws of physics somewhere. It depends how much disbelief you are prepared to suspend. Nuclear reactions produce radiation. Some are 'cleaner' than others, and fusion tends to produce much less radiation than fission. However, in reality any fusion weapon will produce dangerous radiation in their immediate vicinity.
EDIT: Sorry, tbeard, in it's immediate vicinity.

I see the weapons working in an opposite manner to Far Trader; I see the fusion taking place entirely inside the gun, and a more energetic plasma being released, but that plasma will no longer be fusing when it leaves the barrel and will not be emitting the associated radiation. The fusion reaction will last milliseconds at most and the majority of the radiation is absorbed by the superdense casing of the weapon.

Soldiers using a fusion gun will not suddenly lose all their hair and teeth and drop dead on the battlefield, but they may retire early and suffer from 'Rift War Syndrome' before a premature death, and/or their children may spend half their youth in hospital and not see their second half-century. They will not be calculated as 'casualties'.

If my players ever got hold of a FGMP, I'd start aging rolls after its first use... :devil:

 

[Tim Soholt]

Just visualizing someone kicking a door in to a crowded room and firing one of these things and having spinning discs ricocheting all over the place like a pinball machine, doing lots of collateral damage to "soft targets" (like hostages).

That may actually be where something like this would be genuinely useful: chewing up lightly-armored infantry or noncombatants.

Let's just say the MGT FGMP is not your Father's FGMP

I could *swear* I've seen somewhere prior to Mongoose that fusion guns leave residual radiation. It's not the original Mercenary, though.

 

[Allensh]

I have no issue with the residual radiation thing, even if it is a retcon...because I don't run games where the characters would ever need a Fusion Gun and so it makes a conveinent way to prevent them from having one. And someone ALWAYS asks if they can have one. Now, instead of just saying no, I can say "See the part about the radiation? You don't have Battle Dress so having the Fusion Gun would just mean new character time...still want to have one?"

The scary thing is..some of the people I game with would probably say yes...

Allen

 

[far-trader]

I could *swear* I've seen somewhere prior to Mongoose that fusion guns leave residual radiation...

Very possible. T4 maybe? Emperor's Arsenal?

TNE only mentions heat and a requirement for protective clothing from the high temp ejected power cartridge and exiting plasma/fusion stream. Seems to me they again don't imagine actual real fusion taking place in or near the weapon itself.

Even if you have fusion taking place entirely inside a shielded weapon you still end up with a radioactively contaminated weapon the first time you fire it. Better to make it an expendable round imo.

 

[Klaus]

Even if you have fusion taking place entirely inside a shielded weapon you still end up with a radioactively contaminated weapon the first time you fire it. Better to make it an expendable round imo.

No, it won't be contaminated. It's not gamma rays or neutrons that are radioactive; they are the radiation itself. It's not a material that is radioactive here, it is a process. Fusion guns will not be scattering radioactive fallout around; they will be pumping the vicinity with neutron bursts.

The barrel of a gun firing DUC rounds would probably be more radioactively contaminated than any fusion gun.

I think it's pretty cool actually that fusion guns give out a radiation pulse when they fire. It means the Imperium will only commit fusion troops when it is really serious. For less important situations, there's always the plasma gun.

 

[far-trader]

Ack, that's right, thanks for the catch. I was thinking absorption of neutron radiation by the material, but that's only cellular material (like peoples). Hence the "nice" quality of neutron bombs killing all the people but leaving the infrastructure (largely) intact and clean.

I'd never heard it described as a neutron beam weapon before. That makes it sound a rather different beast. In fact I'm sure it would be a totally different weapon. There'd be no plasma involved at all in that would there?