Vehicle and support weapon squad level integration

[veltyen]

Going on the light support weapon concept, most of a gauss clip is the battery to fire the needles, rather then the needles themselves. Use a backpack power source (such as one for a plasma gun) and a large ammo bin (say 10,000 needles) and multiple barrels/extra cooling systems so you could fire for longer. Sure it may weigh over 10 kg, but with a tripod or grav mount that isn't such a big deal.

Standard weapon for BD squads IMTU is a gatling gauss, with only tankhunters using PGMP's. While it is much more expensive then a Gauss rifle, it is still far cheaper then PGMP's/FGMP's.

 

[mike wightman]

I like this one.

 

[mike wightman]

Using a PGMP12/laser carbine power pack (they are the same mass ) the gauss rifle should be able to fire about 300 rounds before exhausting the power pack - assuming a similar energy density between the 40 shot 400g gauss magazine and the power pack.
It could be argued that since the PG power pack costs 2.5x the laser carbine one, and it is 4 TLs higher, its energy density is higher.

Let's say we multiply the number of shots by 2,5x that gives 750 shots for a power pack fed gauss rifle.
That would require a 3kg magazine of some type.

Total weapon "weight" 3.5 + 3.0 + 3.0 = 9.5kg for a weapon that can fire 187 four round bursts or 75 ten round bursts. Use firing rules for LMG, but with no chance of a jam

 

[BetterThanLife]

The SAW, including ammo, as I recall, masses about 10 kilos. Three Gauss Rifles with one common frame would mass about the same. Besides I like the 3 barrel effect in the series Andromeda when they go full auto with a gauss pistol, firing three barrels.

 

[mike wightman]

A tri-barreled version of the above could have a rate of fire of 30 rounds per action...

that would only be 25 bursts, which at five bursts per round would only last you five combat rounds

 

[Fritz_Brown]

That doesn't sound too bad, Sigg. The gatling on the A10 won't last terribly long, either, if you just pull the trigger and wait to run dry. Same with most any machine gun.

 

[mike wightman]

If everyone in the squad carries either a spare power pack or an ammo block then your squad could have quite a considerable suppressive fire capability.

Next thing you need is the anti-material/anti-armour gauss sniper rifle.

Something that fires heavier needles faster, but perhaps at a lower rate of fire...

 

[Tobias]

I once designed this one (with FFS2, I think, converted to Striker) for one of my campaigns. The Character was a former Imperial marine sniper, reactivated during the FFW. Ballistically, it's identical to the VRF gauss, but it's semi-auto only.

Regards,

Tobias

**************************************************
TL 14 Gauss Sniper Rifle
Length: 1520mm
Mass: 9840g
Magazine capacity: 10
Magazine mass: 260g
Price: Cr 5000
Magazine price: Cr 40
Req Dex.: 7 -2
Adv Dex.: 10 +1
The weapons fires standard 4mm, 4g Gauss ammunition at a V° of 4500m/sec. Bullpup configuration. Not capable of automatic fire. Advanced electronic sights, bipod, advanced gravitic stabilization and recoil compensation, carrying sling are integrated. Extreme Range: 3km

Close/Short/Medium/Long/VLong Damage
no/+1/+2/+2/+0 10d

nothing/Leather/Mesh/Cloth/Reflec/Ablat/Battle
+3/+3/+3/+3/+3/+3/+2

STRIKER
TL Weapon Shots Eff Long Ext Tgts
14 Gauss Sniper 10 150(21) 300(19) 450(17) 1

 

[mike wightman]

Nice design Tobias

I'll be borrowing this one...

 

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
A tri-barreled version of the above could have a rate of fire of 30 rounds per action...

that would only be 25 bursts, which at five bursts per round would only last you five combat rounds

Well I was thinking 3, 12, and 30 rounds per combat action. And I was only going to supply it with 3-6 40 round mags. (So everyone could add ammo to the cause and you could reload while the weapon was firing, though it would depend on exactly what the shape of the magazines were to determine if multiple mags would work.)

 

[veltyen]

Hmmm. Comparing the three barrel gauss to a Minimi.

A minimi weighs 7 kg unloaded, or 10kg with a 200 round box. It can fire at 750 rounds per minute, giving approximately 16 seconds of fire on full auto from each box. It has a quick change barrel and multiple options including the ability to take M16 magazines. Doctrine would generally include a couple of spare barrels, and several additional ammo boxes spread over the squad/platoon.

A tribarrel gauss certainly seems to fit a similar role. With 3 ammo feeds per barrel it certainly might end up a little finicky (two magazine ports, and a ammo box/belt distributor as well) and option of a standard energy link to connect to laser weaponry power packs. It has the advantage that potentially if one barrel dies you could bypass it, reducing effectiveness but still having something. IMTU it would weigh 14 kg unloaded, relegating it to pretty much battledress troops or extremely strong infantry (Spetnatz anyone?).

I would also see the double-magazine feed being back propogated into standard infantry Gauss weaponry. Especially if there was alternative ammo available. One clip loaded with Armor Piercing, one with something nice and soft.

 

[Pickles]

Originally posted by veltyen:
I would also see the double-magazine feed being back propogated into standard infantry Gauss weaponry.

You haven't done that yet?!

 

[Tobias]

Originally posted by SgtHulka:
After posting that it just occurred to me...if everyone's running around in Battledress carrying fusion guns, maybe you should just save money and give everyone PGMP-14's with no armor, anyway? I mean, it doesn't really matter if you're wearing battledress or not -- a fusion gun will kill you just as dead no matter what you're wearing. So save all that money you would have spent on armor to buy a ton more plasma guns. For each suit of battledress you get three PGMP-14's, and it's even easier to train troops to use them because they don't need Battledress skill. It's even got the exact same range as the fusion gun.

Battledress is just too useful, since it offers fairly complete protection (using STRIKER... with the CT combined roll BD is ridiculously ineffective) against most things that threaten squishy infantry. Small Arms, Artillery Shrapnel, Cluster Bombs, Chemical Warfare... all things that the BD wearer need not worry about.
That said, there probably *are* lighter troops around even at high TL, but even those are going to have CES or combat armor, which already goes a long way in protecting them from small arms.

Regards,

Tobias

 

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by veltyen:
Hmmm. Comparing the three barrel gauss to a Minimi.

A minimi weighs 7 kg unloaded, or 10kg with a 200 round box. It can fire at 750 rounds per minute, giving approximately 16 seconds of fire on full auto from each box. It has a quick change barrel and multiple options including the ability to take M16 magazines. Doctrine would generally include a couple of spare barrels, and several additional ammo boxes spread over the squad/platoon.

A tribarrel gauss certainly seems to fit a similar role. With 3 ammo feeds per barrel it certainly might end up a little finicky (two magazine ports, and a ammo box/belt distributor as well) and option of a standard energy link to connect to laser weaponry power packs. It has the advantage that potentially if one barrel dies you could bypass it, reducing effectiveness but still having something. IMTU it would weigh 14 kg unloaded, relegating it to pretty much battledress troops or extremely strong infantry (Spetnatz anyone?).

I would also see the double-magazine feed being back propogated into standard infantry Gauss weaponry. Especially if there was alternative ammo available. One clip loaded with Armor Piercing, one with something nice and soft.

Keep it simple. There is no real reason to have a complicated feed mechanism. Stick to two ammo feeds per barrell but don't distribute them. So the feeds are dedicated per barrell. If you take 3 loaded gauss rifles combined they only weigh 11.7 Kilos, 3 additional mags takes you to 12.9 Kilos, remove the redundant parts, like the extra stocks, reduce the weight of the frame, depending on which version of traveller, remove 2 of the three grenade launchers/adapters, it would be fairly easy to get it down to 10 Kilos.

The standard mode of fire being the 12 round burst, instead of full rock and roll 30 round bursts, (After all M60, MAG, M240 and M249 are supposed to be 6-9 round bursts.)would allow decent length engagements and suppressive fire. Suppressive fire, to be effective is not full rock and roll all the time. Mostly what you are doing is firing a few bursts in their direction and daring them to pop their heads up. You wouldn't need extended magazines, especially if you could drop a magazine without having to stop firing.(For that trick you would need an AG, but it would be effective.)

Under T20, a move action to replace a mag, a 30 round burst as a combat action, repeat, you never run out of ammo, until you ran out of magazines, and can actually move one round in 4.

Though you are burning through serious ammo under that model. I'll have to dig out the snapshot rules and the MT rules and see how that would work under those.

 

[SgtHulka]

Originally posted by Tobias:

Originally posted by SgtHulka:
That said, there probably *are* lighter troops around even at high TL, but even those are going to have CES or combat armor, which already goes a long way in protecting them from small arms. Tobias

Well, I agree and after I posted I thought about it and came to the conclusion cheap battledress-busters would probably be wearing Combat Environment Suits, less for protection against small arms than for protection against the environmental hazards you describe in addition to cloaking their IR signature. I'd have to look up the numbers, but I still suspect you could get two well-trained CES-wearing PGMP-14-wielding troopers for the cost of one battledress-wearing FGMP-14 wielding trooper. On the other hand, as you also point out, the CES-wearing guys are much more vulnerable to artillery. But, on the other hand, wouldn't the battledress guys be vulnerable to tac missiles?

Again, this is tech 14 battledress. Tech 12 battledress is much more manageable (and more akin to the Book 1 battledress).

I also took a closer look at my martian metal tech 10-12 Imperial Troopers. They're wearing combat environment suits, and out of twelve guys six of them are armed with huge energy weapons, which I can only assume are PGMP-12s. The others are armed with slug-throwers that look like assault rifles (ACR's perhaps). I suspect you couldn't really claim that martian metals was "canon", but it at least suggests, once again, that squad automatic weapons were considered far less important than direct-fire armor piercing weapons.

Aren't there any Striker veterans on this board? What was the composition of the most "broken" fire teams in the old days? In much the way that High Guard/Trillion Credit Squadron tournaments demonstrated the clear advantage of certain warship designs, I'd think that Striker tournaments in the eighties would demonstrate a clear TO&E doctrine at each of the tech levels.

 

[mike wightman]

The CT laser rifle plus power pack is heavier than a PGMP12 (6 and 4kg for the laser rifle versus 6 and 3kg for the plasma gun). Could the figures be carrying laser rifles rather than PGMP12s?

 

[Tobias]

4mm Gauss Light Machine gun.
Length: 1000mm
Mass: 5000g
Magazine capacity: 200
Magazine mass: 2000g
Price: Cr 4500
Magazine price: Cr 200
Req Dex.: 7 -2
Adv Dex.: 10 +2
The weapons fires standard 4mm, 4g Gauss ammunition at a V° of 1600m/sec in 10-round bursts. The weapon can fire up to five such bursts per turn, using the same rules as the LMG. However, the Gauss LMG does not jam. Bipod, pintle socket, electronic sights, gyro stabilization integrated. Drum magazine in front of the pistol grip. Extreme range: 1.5km.

Close/Short/Medium/Long/VLong Damage
no/+0/+5/+6/+2 4d

nothing/Leather/Mesh/Cloth/Reflec/Ablat/Battle
+7/+7/+5/+3/+7/+7/+0

STRIKER
TL Weapon Shots Eff Long Ext Tgts
12 Gauss LMG 200(10) 60(8)+4 120(4)+3 180(2)+2 2

 

[Fritz_Brown]

As a board hint, Tobias, use the code tags if you need to line up text in table form. I can read the above pretty easily, but if you post something bigger it's handy.

 

[SgtHulka]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
The CT laser rifle plus power pack is heavier than a PGMP12 (6 and 4kg for the laser rifle versus 6 and 3kg for the plasma gun). Could the figures be carrying laser rifles rather than PGMP12s?

Laser Rifles are also actually 200 cm longer than PGMP-12's, so yes, it's entirely possible. Which would put these troops solidly in tech level 10 for the Combat Environment Suits.

Either way, though, they're carrying as many energy weapons as slug-throwers, and they're not carrying a machinegun.

On the other hand, maybe the ACR's are actually auto-rifles (in fact, they're pretty big). So maybe it's half squad automatic weapons and half laser rifles. Hm, that's a pretty funky mix.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Originally posted by SgtHulka:
Laser Rifles are also actually 200 cm longer than PGMP-12's

Yikes! They are the length of a PGMP + 2 meters!? I'm thinking the carbine's a good choice for me!