Ultra-Tech Ultra-Quickie: What the Heck is a Payload Rifle Anyways?

It's always kinda puzzled me why I keep seeing people who just don't understand what the Payload Rifle from Ultra-Tech is supposed to be... Then I realize, oh yeah, most people don't quite have my level of unhealthy obsession for obscure next gen weapon technologies (if the FBI ever saw my harddrive.... I'd have some questions to answer). Then I take a look at the WPS of the ammo it fires... JEBUZ! 1 pound?! That's roughly the weight of a modern full sized 25mm autocannon round like the Bushmaster fires! Then I look as the stats, only 10d of penetration when a 25mm should have almost 2.5 times as much. And it kind of makes sense this weapon baffles people.

Of course it doesn't help that the same ammo used for it is listed under machine guns as a 25mm assault cannon (it's... it's not, not even close to an assault cannon buuuuuuut we'll get back to that).

Well I can tell you THAT there is a typo. The weight of the round it fires is nowhere near 1lbs. How do I know? Well, for one the so called "assault cannon" has a magazine weight of 12lbs but holds 34 shots. That's a thing. Guess TL 9 is the era we become Time Lords. Neatto. Then there's the fact that the ammo the payload rifle uses has stats in another book, High-Tech. Hell even the "assault cannon" has stats in that book as well (though even in High-Tech they're slightly off, but we'll get back to that). 

So just what in the seven hecks is this thing then? Follow me after the break to find out! 

So what is the Payload Rifle? Well, it's this thing blow:

That's what the payload rifle is based on, right down to the name and prominent muzzle break that the description in the book even calls out. So yeah, this means that the Payload Rifle is actually just a funky grenade launcher.

And the round it fires? It's the 25×59B, the same round as the XM307 fires which is stated in High-Tech, pg. 144 and 145. Though the range is off. 2,200 yards is only the effective range. The actual ballistic range is 3,900 yards, though this data might not of been as readily available in the early nought's when the book was being written. This of course means the 8,500 yard range in Ultra-Tech is also off. Oh, right. I should also probably point out that the so called assault cannon is actually just the Ultra-Tech version of the XM307. There's just the fact that the modern days XM307 only weighs 59lbs fully loaded while the Ultra-Tech version weights a flippin' 75lbs (though this might just be a copy pasta mistake from the 15mm chain gun).

So I guess I got some fixin' to do. 

First let's start with the round it's self. The real world round has a projectile that weights 141g and is fired at 400m/s². This gives me 9d of penetration, which isn't that far off from the listed 10d. Let's just say Ultra-Tech advancements lead to a slightly higher powered round. This would of course increase range. The 750 yards half damage is not that far from my back of the envelop calculations (I got ~730 but close enough for government work) so that works and with the slight boost in velocity to get it up to 10d (450m/s²) would also increase it's make range to about 4,400 yards. For the weight, following Ultra-Tech's conventions, grenades aren't caseless but instead use a ploymer case wich reduces the weight of it by 20%  so the 25×59B would weigh 0.3lbs. Let's call the Ultra-Tech version the 25mmPCL. While not RAW, all Ultra-Tech grenades should have the same smart fuse options at the M29 OICW (High-Tech, pg. 144).

So that's:

Grenade and Mortar Ammo
TL Ammo    WPS   CPS LC
9    25PCL    0.3    $7.50  1

Now for the payload rifle.

GUNS (GRENADE LAUNCHER) (DX-4, or most other Guns-4)
TL  Weapon                              Damage     Acc   Range       Wt.        ROF  Shots  ST      Bulk  Rcl  Cost              LC     Notes
9     Payload Rifle, 25mmPCL  5d×2 pi++   4     750/4,400  31.3/3.3  3        8+1   13B†   -6      3      $8,000/$27    1

I left its empty weight alone since I didn't see any problem with it, nor the guns price. The big weight savings came from the magazine since each round no longer weight almost half a kilo. My numbers gave me a Rcl of 3 rather then 4 but despite that ST sill went up to 13 (of course this is all do to the fact that the numbers in Ultra-Tech were all more guesstimated then designed with a dedicated system). Otherwise I just adjusted it's range and changed it's damage to 5d×2 to better line up with later books. I also changed the skill to Guns (Grenade Launcher) since that's what this weapons actually is. And as the name suggests, the real point of this weapon is deliver high-caliber payloads to the target rather then use raw KE to kill targets. This weapons works best when loaded with exploive rounds. And idea round for this kind of weapon would be a HEDP round (High Exploive Dual Poupose, it's a HEAT round that trades some penetration power for a greater blast effect making good agsint light armor and infratry) which really isn't stated up in Ultra-Tech (They instead use HEMP, which is just another term for it, to cover TL 10 HEAT rounds), a TL 9 25mm HEDP round should do  6d×2 (10) cr inc with a linked 3d+2 [1d+1] cr ex. A round costs $28. I will be going over a more indepth look at Ultra-Tech warheads in the future, creating new options and cleaning up things I feel were handled wrong or oddly in my quest to effectivly create an unoffical second printing of Ultra-Tech for 4th ed heh.

 No on to the hot mess that is the "assault cannon".  

As I said before, this really is just an Ultra-Tech version of the canceled real world XM307 with what is probably a copy-paste error for it's weight and double the ROF.  Because of this I decided not to lower the weapons base weight compared to the XM 307 to account for its ROF doubling. The only reason the EWt is lower here then what is listed in High-Tech because this version doesn't come with the almost 10lbs computer sight that the real world version was to have. This is also part of the reason for the price drop as well (along with the weapon coming into common service). Other then that I just adjusted the stats listed in High-Tech a bit an now we got a much better take on the weapon.

GUNNER (MACHINE GUN) (DX-4 or other Gunner at -4)
TL     Weapon                              Damage     Acc     Range     EWt.     ROF  Shots   ST     Bulk   Rcl   Cost     LC     Notes
9    Automatic Grenade Launcher,  5d×2 pi++ 3       750/4,400  30/13    8       34      16M    -7       2      $12,000/ 1  
                                     25mmPCL

An Ultra-Tech version of the computer sights would weigh 1.9 lbs, have a 8× magnifaction IR scope (+3 to Acc, ), and a Dedicated Tiny C5 Computer (Dedicated is from Thinking Machines, Pyramid 3/37, pg. 20) running a dedicated Targeting Program giving +4 to Gunner (Machine Gun) skill when using this weapon (Uses the opitonal rule for reducing the complecity of Targeting programs if only used for a speficic weapon by two levels form Future Soldier, Pyramid 3/55, pg. 31). The scope costs $350, program costs $5,000. 2B/10hrs.

See More Ultra-Tech Guns and Heavy Weapons from Pyramid 3/37 for two examples of what 25mm autocannons should actually be like.