Fictional Firepower: The RRG - Tiresia Mars Gallant H-90 Particle Beam Gun

Science fiction has given us a bewildering array post-modern firepower to marvel at. Everyone has their favorites  and today I'm gonna share one of mine.

 As you guys might of guessed, I'm a pretty big fan of Robotech and Macross (I love them both equally, just for different reasons) with the The Next Generation Saga being my go to for when I want to roleplay in this setting. To me, of the four seasons (well 4 if you count the Sentinel arc that never officially made it off of the ground) The Next Generation just has best set up for running a campaign in. It's a world occupied by totally alien hosts who can leave humanity alone one day and nuke a village or two the next, society still stands but it's broken down to the point that there is no longer a concept of nations and each city left standing is basically it's own city state creating a perfect "adventure world" setting. All the while you have the off world factions of humanity trying to slowly establish a beach head so they can finally take their homeworld back from the aliens.

This just gives so many roleplaying opportunities, you can play a team of REF spec-ops who were dropped in to gather intel or sabotage the invids or take down collaborators. You can play a team of resistance fighters, fighting a guerrilla war against the invid or any number of corrupt dictators that have cropped up. You can play a gang of tech scavengers trying to loot the ruins of the old world for any tech that the invid have band to make but loads of money. Hell, you could have a game about just trying to live in such a world!

On the tech side of things, this saga brought a lot of cool things to the table. The alpha and beta fighters are very iconic, the cyclone ride power armor is amazing and the invid's design has been lifted and copied  much in so many shows and games because their designs are just that good. There's a good reason why The Next Generation is revered almost as much as the Macross sage.

Of this treasure trove of tech, it was the modular Gallant H-90, that really stood out to me. It had a curved, ergonomic design that was ahead of its time (the show first aired in Japan in 1983, a good three years before development started on the FN P90) that just helped it stand out as well as the way it could be configured from a pistol into a full sized rifle just intrigued me as a kid.

So I figured why not stat it up and with that thought I figured, "Hey! Stating up guns from sci-fi shows that I like would make for a good blog post series!"  and thus Fictional Firepower was born!

So with out much further ado, I give you the:

RRG - Tiresia Mars Gallant H-90 Particle Beam Gun (TL11)

Deigned in 2028 and officially adopted by 2030 as a co-venture between the REF Robotech Research Group  and the Tirolian Tiresia Corporation. The Mars Gallant H-90 was developed to be a replacement for both the XI-A Owens modular PDW system and the FAL-2 Laser Carbine so that one weapon could fill both roles.

The Gallant was designed to be a modular system like the Owens but also have the power of a full rifle when assembled into it's long arm mode rather then that of a high end pistol. It was also designed as somewhat of a compromise. Do to having the ability to produce protoculture power cells, the military didn't invest in normal power cell technology and there for they lagged behind protoculture cell tech considerably. This wasn't much of a problem until contact was made with the invid who have the ability to "see" the hyper-dimensional energy discharged from a live protoculture power source. Since all REF energy weapons were powered by protoculture in one way or another, this meant that the second that even the smallest energy weapon fired every invid in the area would know were the firer was! This was an obvious problem and the REF needed an energy weapon that could be powered by a non-protocultre source but given the stat of conventional power cells that would limit such a weapon to less then rifle level performance. So the RRG decided to split the difference. To maximize penetration it was decided to to make the weapons a particle beam weapons like the Owens rather then a laser like the FAL-2 so it could get away with a slightly lower output and still meet the projects penetration goals. This let the weapon in pistol mode to be able to exceed its the 15mm of RHA equivalent minimum and still be powered by non-rechargeable conventional  power cells. A protoculture cell would then be used to power the weapon in rifle mode do to the fact that a single C protoculture cell can provide enough energy for over 40 shots while it would take a non-rechargeable conventional D cell  to provide the same number of shots. In return for this trade off the rifle mode can penetrate almost 34mm of RHA equivalent.

The complete weapons weighs 8.6lbs, costs a total of $32,000 and includes the H-90 pistol, the rifle-stock extension and the collimator-magnet barrel extension.

The base form pistol H-90 weighs 1.9lbs fully loaded and has a built in 1-5× Infrared optical sight (+2Acc) that links up with a soldier's HUD but an also be used as a normal sight via a flip up viewer (takes 1 ready action to flip up). It is semi-automatic and fire in two modes, a full power 4.5kJ mode that can penetrate almost 21mm of RHA equivalent or  a lower powered 1.5kJ mode for use against soft targets. It's magazine holds eight priority non-rechargeable powers cells, each one can power 1 full powered shots or 3 low powered shots and is loaded into the front hand grip of the weapon. After a power cell is depleted it is ejected like the casing of a conventional fire arm.

The rifle-stock extension adds 5.1lbs and makes the weapon bulkier (worsen bulk by 2) but boosts the weapons output to 18kJ and gives it a three round limited burst and full automatic modes. In this mode it is powered by a C protoculture cell which provides 38 18kJ shots. Attaching the rifle-stock extension takes three seconds (three ready actions) and can be detached in two (takes two ready actions).

Both modes can attach a 1.6lbs collimator-magnet barrel extension that doubles the particle beams range but lengthens the weapon a good deal (worsens bulk by 1). Do to this, the extension is hardly ever used on weapon when it is in pistol mode. Takes about one second to attach or detach (one ready action). 

Do to the successful integration of the cyclone ride armor/power armor the H-90 quickly feel to rear echelon duty with main REF forces. Despite this it was still a popular weapon with the troops that used it and supplying anti-invid rebels on earth with it was instrumental to helping the REF finally being able to take back their home world from the Regess lead invid forces. In fact the weapon was so integral to guerrillas being able to take the fight to the invid that it became the icon "weapons of the people"  and any thoughts by REF brass of reclaiming the Gallants they gave out were quickly withdrawn out of fear that the populace would rise up  against the REF if they tried.

BEAM WEAPONS (PISTOL) (DX-4, other Beam Weapons -4, or Guns (Pistol)-4)
TL Weapon    Damage               Acc    Range         Weight        RO F   Shots   ST   Bul k  Rcl    Cost         LC
10^   H-90         3d+1(5) burn sur   5       350/1,100    1.9/0.24      3            8(3)       7    -2          1      $3,400/$9      2
- Low-Power  2d+1(5) burn sur            170/510                                       24(3)

Note: With the collimator-magnet barrel extension attached increase the H-90s weight to 3.3lbs, worsen bulk to -3, increase ST to 8 and increase range to 700/2,200 in normal power mode and 340/1,100 in Low-Power mode.

BEAM WEAPONS (RIFLE) (DX-4, other Beam Weapons -4, or Guns (Pistol)-4)
TL Weapon    Damage                  Acc    Range         Weight        RO F   Shots   ST   Bul k  Rcl   Cost           LC
10^   H-90         5d+1(5) burn sur    10       870/2,600     7/1C*         10       38(3)     7†   -4       1    $26,000/$100     2

Note: With the collimator-magnet barrel extension attached increase the H-90s weight to 8.6lbs, worsen  bulk to -5 and increase range to 1,740/5,200.
*Protoculture Power Cell, when in use Invid can detect it at -3.



Design Notes:  I tried to stay as close to fluff as possible with the Gallant but make these stats more universally useful to my readers (so you can drop it into even a non Robotech game) I had to tweak some things to make the weapons line up with the Blaster and Laser Design system. Though for the most part the changes were minor. For example fluff seems to imply that energy weapons follow a square root scaling rather then a cube root. Also I had some believability issues with the fact that in the fluff the rifle extension somehow boosts the power of the weapon to 90kJ while only adding a few pounds of weight so I down graded the boost to only 18kJ.

To stat up the weapons I treated it as a TL11 blaster. The full weapon with both the rifle-stock extension and the collimator-magnet barrel extension was figured as having a D of 5.2 dice (figured by taking the cube root of 18kJ and then multiplying by two), a S of 1 (non-super science), E of 3, a Large F and a Light Automatic G. The weight of the collimator-magnet barrel extension was then figured by stating up the weapon with a Medium F and then just subtracting the weight of the Gallant sans collimator-magnet barrel extension from that of the full weapon. The weight of the pistol mode was figured with a D of 3.3 (cube root of 4.5kJ times two), S of 1, E of 3, Medium F and a Semi-Automatic G. The rest of the stats were figured as normal with the expedition of  ST, for.... reasons.

Now for my tech assumptions,while earth's technology at this point in the Robotech timeline isss.... understandably so, a little scattered, I peg at the REF at a very mature TL10^ and it should be noted that in the Robotech universe, mature particle beam weapons are TL10^ and not TL11 as it is in GURPS standard. The protoculture energy cells used by them are treated as Cosmic (see Ultra-Tech pg.  19) TL10^ power cells. They hold 10× as much energy as a normal power cell but also cost 100× more.

Alright Guys. I hope you liked this. If you want to see any more Robotech stuff  or have any ideas for fictional ultra-tech weapons you'd like to see just let me know. Thanks for giving this read, you guys rock!