'smart' ammunition

[Todg]

I probably posted this here before, but has anyone written rules to deal with smart ammunition (e.g. XM29 SABR)? Smart projectiles are looking more and more viable as infantry issue items. Certainly they would be available by TL 9 or 10 if not sooner.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Just how smart are you talking?

 

[Anthony]

Which rulesets? The smart ammo for the OICW seems to be just timed-detonation, letting the projectile burst at a particular prespecified range. Game mechanics wise, it means that you can fire HE from a snub pistol and have it explode at a specified distance in midair, rather than having it only explode when it hits a wall. This is useful, but probably doesn't require much in the way of special rules, other than a note about the time and difficulty of programming the right range (no idea how hard or time consuming that is; I'd guess it's a few seconds and you probably need a rangefinder to have any realistic chance of getting it right).

 

[vegascat]

Delay fuzes for anything smaller than 20MM will be dificult to design. If it is small enough, it will be too fragile to survive an impact.
A fuze of any type requires several things; a safing device to prevent detonation before firing, a mechanism to arm the fuze during firing that will not allow detonation before the projectile has traveled out of the frag distance from the firer, and an impact sensor to begin the detonation sequence. If a delay element is added, it will have a tendency to malfunction on impact due to stresses imposed on projectiles.
Remember the problems with torpedo fuzes in 1942.
If you combine fragile porjectiles with combat and Murphey's law, disaster will happen.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

"Just how smart are you talking?"

Smarter than the PCs

Use a rangefinder to automagically program the rounds.

 

[kaladorn]

3G had some rules on this (Guns! Guns! Guns!). I recall building at least one 'smartgun' with it which gave the MT players a +1 to +2 to hit. It had separate rules for smartguns and smart ammo. More abstract than the reality of the OICW (where the real effect should just be the removal of cover as a benefit) yet less impressive than Zorg's Replay technology in the 5th element.

 

[Todg]

Originally posted by vegascat:
Delay fuzes for anything smaller than 20MM will be dificult to design. If it is small enough, it will be too fragile to survive an impact.
(snip)

Not to mention that a 10mm snub round is going pretty much worthless as a bursting round. There's simply not enough fragments. There already concern that the SABR's 20mm round is too small and it is likely that the 25mm round from the OCSW

 

[Uncle Bob]

Confirmed. The 20mm is dead, so is the term "SABR". The OICW/SABR was the XM29.

That has been back-burnered in favor of the 25mm XM25. This will use the warhead of the XM307 OCSW with a low velocity cartridge. It also replaces the 5.56mm component by adding a APERS/flechette round for close-quarters.