So what are small arms like anyways?

[Diveguy]

Following a lively and educated discussion in another thread on carbines, I thought I would share my thoughts on small arms (specifically slugthrowers) IMTU:

General trends - While certainly not all-inclusive the following three elements are common to my small arms. Caseless ammunition has become standard with certain exceptions - allowing a reduction in cost, an increase in magazine capacity and smoother feeding/ejection. This is combined with a general trend towards some sort of electrical priming/ignition, removing the mechanical component from the sequence and accuracy. Finally, ammunition (particularly given the thoughts of space travel and enclosed environments dirtside) have generally become frangible blends of whatever sort - designed to damage a soft target, but break up rapidly on a hard surface.

The "body pistol" - these generally come from various government covert agencies of your choice, thus the high-tech and subtlety over a regular "Saturday night special". Formed of synthetics and designed for concealment and effectiveness. Often referred to as "chillers" in vernacular (h/t to Dean Ing), for both the quiet round and the effect of putting a target at room tempertature. There are two trends in this type of weapon - either the large caliber/slow velocity (think a .45 with integral suppressor); or the small/fast crowd (think something like the FN 5.7 pistol). These will generally have some sort of integrated suppressor; possibly a fingerprint ID system, and be designed for concealablity. Earth-now equivilents would be the micro-glocks, or something like the Kahr-concealables with tech enhancements.

"Snub pistols" - run the gammut. Can be anything from the 2x century "Saturday night special" to a ship's officer gun designed for minimal bulk but displaying a position of authority. My thoughts generally run to the mid-sized auto pistols these days (Glock 23/SIG 229/Colt Commander). Designed to be somewhat concealable, simple, reliable and work - or else to be cheap and go bang at least sometimes (think your High-point pistols if you want to get that diverse).

"Revolver" - depending on the day depends on my thoughts on these. On the one hand I feel the tech is too outdated even in a "Firefly" type setting. On the other hand, it has the advantage of being mechanically run, meaning it always goes bang at some point if other physics don't intrude. Right now I'd lean towards a ship's locker weapon and work from there - but I'm open to suggestions. My thoughts today ran towards the scouts favoring them, but not sure yet..

Auto pistol - the generic semi-auto loader. Still figure some sort of box magazine even if caseless, and I see the trend IMTU to big slow rounds with better terminal energy.... Choose your modern autoloader and it should fit.

"SMG" - two primary roles in my thoughts. either a PDW for those space/ground crews who don't need a full long arm, or covert/criminal acts wanting to put a lot of rounds downrange quick without a big weapon. My two "platforms" of choice for this right now are the TP9 or the Magpul PDW in my mental images. Ammo though interchangable with the generic "autopistol"

Carbine - designed as a weapon for those between the SMG and the ACR, or as a spec-ops type tool. My thoughts go to either the FN FS200, or the Masada/Bushmaster ACR with a short barrel. Think short & light, but still better than "spray and pray". In game terms I want something that players would say "ok that's good if we run into trouble but is still subtle" instead of being a catch-all midrange weapon.

ACR - This should be the "catch all" infantry weapon. Reliable, accurate and easy to teach. My current thoughts run towards something like the Masada ACR with a 16" barrel; but of course that is open. No real shocks in game terms here.

Rifle - currently bouncing between thoughts here.

Shotgun - Originally I had the whole "shipboard use" argument here - which is still valid, but things like frangible ammo limit it. But I also added my Scout Service thought here & can see them favoring it. A number of simple thoughts - pump action is totally user dependant, as opposed to environment, grip etc - so the scout can always control from 50 g to zero g (exageration noted). It's a large caliber round, so you have the kinetic energy transfer issue addressed despite the life form. Finally, a pump action gives said scout a variety of choices in ammo without much user drama, which again fits the image I have of the lone explorer addressing things.

Thoughts & comments welcome.

 

[aramis]

IMTU, for comparison:

Body Pistol: your basic CZ-50 or PPK type small frame light auto small caliber. Easily concealed because of the small size. (I used to carry a CZ-50 concealed. EASILY hidden in many ways; a decent pocket gun.)

Snub Pistol: Large Cal short barrel and short round, low velocity. Designed not to damage consoles nor penetrate partition walls. A spacer's shipboard gun. Beats you up inside your vacc suit, probably not going to actually breech it. 100j or so, but on a 10-15mm slug instead of a 5mm.

Revolver: Still around because it's danged reliable. Not significantly different from the 1930's, 1960's, or 2000's era revolvers, a stable and mature bit of tech, that can be made almost anywhere you can mill steel. Reliable, rugged, and cheap.

Autopistols: the basic military pistols. Not as reliable as revolvers, but more ammo, and often better power.

Machine Pistols: Full automatic autopistols. Officer's guns, or elite unit backup guns.

SMG: Room Brooms. Long pistols with full auto, and sometimes a stock. Think Uzi or Mach 10. Not a conealable weapon, but not too bulky either. Largest comfortably wearable holster-guns, and smallest slingables.

Carbines: Typically hunting weapons, but also used by mounted troops both on beasts and vehicles.

Rifles, hunting: samo-samo as now.

Rifles, Battle/assault/ACR: Military longarms. The ACR is a long-barreled assault weapon, bullpupped to make it's .8m that much more effective. A variety exist, and a variety are used. Sole Purpose is to hurt people.

Rifles, Sniper: Big bore, long barrel, massive accuracy. Specialist guns.

Shotguns, 1-3bbl: breech loaders are sporting arms.
Shotguns, SA or SS+IM: Things like the Mossberg 500... basic reliable weapons with repeat fire. Used for a variety of things. Big enough to launch TL9+ grenades, displaces the GL at TL9. Coax mounts available with ACR's.
Shotguns, Full Auto: Designed for throwing lots of lead into confined spaces. Purely military, and almost exclusively elite weapons.
Shotguns, general: The extensive ammo variety allows them to be the general all-around weapon of choice. Light shot aboard ship. Slug, Flare, Grenade, Flechette, HEAP, KEAP... a huge variety of warhead types in 15-25mm shotguns makes them incredibly versatile.

 

[Icosahedron]

My thoughts are similar to Aramis. Most small arms are similar to today's except for minor updating. They are designed to be built over a wide range of TLs. I have a standardisation of ammunition (partly for my own benefit as GM and partly as a cultural trend) with anything other than 4 (gauss) 5.5, 6 (acc), 9, 10 and 20mm being hard to get.
My Body Pistol was featured in the recent Freelance Traveller competition. My Snub Pistol is a larger bore, short-barrelled revolver or auto. SMGs are mini-Uzi style and I don't have full-auto shotguns (I imagine you'd need battledress to hold the thing steady, but what do I know, I'm a Brit. )
I've also used Striker to design new devices such as a 5.5mm electric gatling (Predator) and a 'Blaster' - a recoil-compensated shotgun pistol. I don't allow 'special' ammo below 10mm. (I know the tech should be possible, but I think it breaks the game when you have 5.5mm rocket-assisted target-seeking HEAPs available).

 

[samuelvss]

IMTU I follow aramis's model closest, with these exceptions.

Revolvers use cased ammo, as do most auto pistols and carbines. Caseless is used by body pistols, ACR's, and some Autorifles. There is "ImpStd," which is interstellar standard, per Icosahedron, put locally manufactured stuff can get extremely exotic. As such, if a character finds a locally produced arm, then ammo can be a restriction. At higher TL's, it can be produced at a much higher price, with locally produced dies and components.

I have used rifle grenades, lifted right out of Striker, extensively, even adding laser designation/terminal guidance. If set to "paint," a laser can shoot 5 coded (lower power) bursts in a turn. It takes a couple of turns to set up, which can be hours before, but then 1 fireteam of TLA+ troopers, can take out an armor platoon of comparable tech level in a turn.

Adapters are available to shoot rifle grenades from shotguns. The law level is a huge limiting factor on these.

 

[samuelvss]

As to Diveguy's original musings on the revolver, the various technological improvements (caseless, electrical primers, holo sights) all come with a price. The revolver, once the cased ammo is sealed (as most modern ammo isn't) against moisture, is a weapon that requires, in essence, no maintenance to function decades after it was left neglected in a mud puddle. Essentially can't jam.

It thus has a similar niche to the knife and hammer; there may be many higher tech ways of cutting and banging better, indeed orders of magnitude better, but the simple will always have a seat at the table.

 

[spank]

Small Arms

I try to use small arms as flavor; Core worlds tend to have higher tech weapons, frontier worlds tend more towards rugged simple weapons like the revolver, or chemically powered weapons.

The main point of this divide is that ammo relying on chemical power has a lot more of a shelf life, and is more resistant to enviromental factors.

Snub pistols IMTU fall into 2 Catagories, low powered IE Saturday Nite specials, and the Spacer Snubs, usually more High Tech designs.

I tend to use shotguns as a more multipurpose arm firing anything from slugs to camera/sensor rounds {that can be followed up by smart rounds}

 

[epicenter00]

I think we Traveller are trying valiantly to defend weapons choices that were drafted by weapons the writers of the game saw lying around in the 1970s. There's really little or no reasons why some of these odd weapons categories would still be used. Carbines are "short rifles" (pretty much every rifle during WW2 could be considered a carbine - even the Kar 98k is "k" for "karbine" since it was shorter than the rifle it was developed from - and now WW2 rifles are considered hopelessly huge and overpowered) are as strange of a category as you get, almost as odd as "Personal Defense Weapon" being marketed by modern gunmakers.

One of the nicer justifications for revolvers came about in T4 (at least that's the first place I saw it) where Miller pointed out that revolvers were basically dead weapons by that time, but were revived as ceremonial weapons of ranking Sylean nobles. As the lower classes ape what nobles do, I could see revolvers reappearing as weapons on that merit.

Myself, I had different reasons why revolvers and shotguns exist in Traveller. While shipboard shotguns exist in layouts which are familiar today because they can be made on lower-tech worlds (ie; backwards or frontiers), at higher tech levels, both revolvers and shotguns are treated as "projectors" and have something in common with grenade launchers, especially "smart" ones like the proposed OICW. Imperial-issue shotguns and revolvers are sort of gadgety weapons, with shotguns having revolving feeds as well. They also feature electrical cylinder overrides (though if unpowered they default to mechanical feed). While they can fire things like ball, slug, carbide penetrator, and similar rounds familiar today, they can also fire things like signal flares, tranq rounds, electronic tagging/tracers, grenades (smart and dumb), and similar rounds. As they're revolver weapons, there's no need to worry about lack of pressure not working the actions - you can load in very low power rounds for specialized applications (like non-lethal). The rounds are manufactured so they can be identified by the gun and the shooter can choose which cylinder he or she is going to fire next.

Obviously such weapons aren't assigned to every trooper. You'd see them most commonly in the hands of ISS guys or used by Imperial Marine specialists.

 

[aramis]

Carbines, in hunting parlance, are weapons designed to be useable mounted. They trade power for barrel length, and use rifle ammo as a general rule.

Rifles, in hunting parlance, are for foot use, and maximized power by maximal barrel length.

Almost every assault weapon is short enough to be a carbine, but the rounds tend to be smaller, and have excess powder, to make up for the short barrels, plus have other optomizations... and generally are not civilian weapons. (Except the mini-14 and the AR-15... which are civiian versions of their respective battle and assault weapons.)

 

[veltyen]

Carbines, in hunting parlance, are weapons designed to be useable mounted. They trade power for barrel length, and use rifle ammo as a general rule.

Mounted also in the modern sense. Far easier to use a carbine from inside a HUMVEE then a full rifle.

I have seen some very nice 9mm carbines. They do trade the power of a rifle round for lack of kick, reasonable range (compared to the pistols they share the ammo with) and intimidation factor.

Kel-tec 2000
Beretta CX4 storm

Both of these also have the advantage of looking futuristic (in a "that will look horrible dated in 10 years" way).

 

[aramis]

I was actually thinking snowmachines, 4 wheelers, and trikes, but yeah, inside hummers works, too...

And I'd forgotton about "pistol-caliber" carbines... essentially, tho, they are SS, SA, or LA SMG equivalents... that is, aside from ROF and Action Type, they are directly comparable to SMG's more than rifles. They really turn into SMG's with the Thompson... the transitional form between carbines and SMG's.

 

[spank]

Frontier VS Civilized

I think the real divide between weapons is where they are intended to be used, Shipboard weapons weapons will tend to be lower powered, and shorter barreled weapons. Both because they are easier to point quickly in tight quarters and because of the risk of over penetration.
The same is true of urban weapons, they tend towards pistols, SMGs and {less often}carbines.

The environment also plays a role in determining what weapons will be used, Frontier worlds are less likely to see caseless weapons used, {the ammo not being as well protected, and more sensitive to moisture, and other contamination}. Energy weapons are less common as well, because they require a power source to maintain charge. Revolvers also find a niche here as well, mostly for their simplicity. Full size pistols and Rifles are much more common as well; due to the extended ranges encounters occur at.


So really every small arm has it's place, but which ones you will use depends on your location and circumstance.

 

[zonk]

Caseless ammo was in vogue when TNE (and T2K) came about. What about binary liquid propellant?

Computerized sights allows the gun to fire a round at higher or lower velocities (depending on round type). You don't worry about moisture or crumbling of the propellant (sure it should be in a sealed magazine but... ) so the ammunition should be easier to produce and better protected.

 

[epicenter00]

I'd actually think that binary or even caseless would be too finicky for a Vilani-descended technological tradition. That's more of a cheeky Solomani thing.

The Vilani would more favor cased ammo, I think where the propellant could be sealed away from the elements and concentrate on a mechanically robust weapon that could face not just months or years of neglect, but decades. They'd concentrate on stabilizers in the propellant where you could just toss ammo in a shed in a backyard for a century or two and it'll be just as reliable and safe as the day it was made.

 

[Renaissance Man]

Body Pistols

The body pistol should be designed to defeat the sensor technology of the same TL.

So at TL 8 or 9 a synthetic glock type weapon might cut it. But as sensors get more advanced, the "body pistol" becomes less like a conventional firearm. They will need to use the most advanced materials tech of the TL.

At later TLs I could see it made completely of mechanical carbon components, extremely light and small. They might be called "glass" guns, since they could be translucent. The problem comes with the round. In order to transfer significant kinetic energy to the target it needs to have a significant mass, but that means heavier, denser materials, probably ferrous, which have a higher signature. Then you have the problem of propellant, which needs to be a volatile chemical of some kind -- also high signature. How to solve these problems?

Well the round will also be of diamond/graphene construction. A highly specialized round. Instead of relying on hydrostatic shock to do the bulk of the damage, it will rely on shearing force and multiple vehicles -- a cloud of mini-wound channels once the round penetrates into the body. Nasty wound to heal BTW -- imagine the surgeon spending days picking out thousands of tiny slivers of glass. And these are truly "magic" bullets -- because of a monomolecular edge, they travel freely throughout the body and can be found far from the point of impact.

The propellant will have to be sealed within the body of the bullet to prevent leaking out and triggering chemically sensitive "sniffers". Although not a cased round in the conventional sense, a tiny "glass" disc which constitutes the back of the bullet will be discarded after every shot. Many body pistols will be designed with a repository for these tell-tale clues.

There may be other solutions. But remember -- a high TL body pistol has to be able to defeat densometers, neutrino sensors, a whole suite of electromagnetic sensors, etc. etc. And it should also be able to break apart into components that can be easily hidden or disguised to defeat the very low-tech visual inspection.

 

[spank]

TL progessions

I do agree that at high TLs body pistols will become much more exotic I also include lower TL variants such as vest pistols, however they will suffer in terms of detectability.

 

[Diveguy]

I'd like to thank everyone for their thoughts on my post - real life has been a monster of horrific proportions lately, so I haven't even been able to try and keep up til now.

Just a few thoughts...

I like what folks said re: revolvers and shotguns. Simple tech that can be manufactured with any good machine shop, always goes bang etc. I definitely also agree on the "shotguns as multipurpose weapons" idea for things. Although, as I will continue to say, I don't want to overburden things with 5 million ammo types & combinations of things... so I will have to watch this.
I also like the idea of tech being able to be sealed for years and years & still work - so I see shotguns & revolvers being the first weapons found in many ships lockers & supply caches throughout MTU. The more "advanced" stuff available, but needing to be brought online as it were.

I agree & meant to say in my original post on the body pistols being a mix between the high-tech & the Saturday night special - I like the ammo thought Renaissance Man added though on top of things. I think that ammo goes well with my "chiller" idea stolen from Dean Ing & will work more on the same and try to post this week.

Regarding ammo...
caseless ammo IMTU - esp given the advances - really doesn't have the concerns of moisture absorption etc; particularly when enclosed in the magazine. I also see it as an ease of manufacture, packaging etc - so once you get past that base tech level I see it as the most common choice.
I also (despite being an active shooter, gun geek, and actually working in a field I know some little bit about it) refuse to let my game bog down in a "well I'm running hollowpoints in my autopistol so that is better than the standard rounds in his revolver" argument... #1 - in the real world I can say from experience that there is no "magic" round & that game terms are no different... and #2 - particularly given that it is game terms, the differences are minuscule. So I will probably allow minor variations for character color, but not much else.


I have a couple of other thoughts, but they will wait for my chance to write tomorrow or Tuesday...

 

[Straybow]

Carbines... there are really two schools of thought on what makes a carbine.

The military thought is a short-barreled rifle firing full-power rifle rounds or reduced power ammo similar to rifle ammo.

The original Henry repeating rifle fired .44 ammunition that was similar to the 45 Colt pistol round, and pistols were made to fire the same round. The barrel length was intended to give rifle-like accuracy. It's effective range was short compared to rifles of the day due to low muzzle velocity.

Today you can get carbines that fire a variety of pistol ammo, typically 9mm, 10mm, or 45 ACP. They aren't pistols with rifle stocks and grips fitted to them, their action is essentially that of a semiauto rifle. They have barrel lengths around 12 inches, just enough for accuracy out to 100 yards. The carbine of this type is essentially a semiauto version of an SMG.

 

[aramis]

I do agree with Straybow's comments on carbines. Rifle-carbines and "pistol"-carbines, for the type of round used.

An SMG is a full-auto pistol-round carbine.

A Machine pistol is a full-auto autopistol.