Fictional Firepower: M240 Incinerator Unit (Aliens)

Aliens is an awesome movie, I don't think I'll get to many counters to that statement (and if you do; hey! It's a free country, you can be wrong if you want to :P). And, it had some amazing looking guns and tech. From the pulse rifle, to the power loader, to the Sulaco (a design that launched a thousand HALO ships), it pretty much set THE standard for that gritty 80's sci-fi look we all know and love. And this is before diving into the Colonial Marines Technical Manuel which expanded on that considerably! 

Well, it's just dawned on me that I have zero posts on any of the tech from it! How the heck don't I even have stats for the PIG when it's me, THE GURPS plasma gun guy?! So, what sparked me to realized that I had a lack of Aliens content? 

Two things. 

First was getting asked for some help with TL 8+ flamethrowers on Discord. Then I saw this video on Youtube that ran through an Aliens themed game of Space Hulk (which also had liberal usage of a flamethrower). What do these two things have to with each other? Welcome to how my brain works! You see, helping with those flamethrowers had me thinking about stating a flamethrower for my blog already, then that video made me realize that I had 0 Aliens content. My first go too, of course, was the pulse rifle, buuuut, Douglass and Hans have already beat me to it... dang... Then I was like, "Oh right,flamethrowers were a pretty big thing in the movies (except for III buuut... we don't talk about III) AND the game I just saw.". That and I already had someone tickling my tism' about stating up flamethrowers. Which brings me to now... the thing you actually care about and not my questionable state of mental heath: Liquid propelled war crimes!

Ultra-Tech Ultra Quickie: Experimental Melee Rules Part II: Power Weapons

Ok, looks like my last post is getting some traction. I'm in inspired mode so let's keep this content train ah-chuggin!

Power Weapons (TL 10)
Power weapons use some form of force field to increase their impact force, be it gravitational, electromagnetic, or some other energy herein unknown to modern science.

Power weapons let off a glow that can provide some light but also give their users position away when activated. They will act as a light source that is bright enough to give a modifier of LOG₁₅(damage adds) -3 or if you want more details they will be as bright as a light with a lux of 5 × LOG(damage adds). See GURPS Powers: Enhanced Senses p. 13 for more information on how light levels translates into light level modifiers. 

For weapons that do cutting, impaling, or piercing damage they increase the weapons Armor Divisor by one step (to a max of 10) and add TL -3 points of damage adds, crushing attacks only get the damage adds. +13CF.

They also worsen the odds breaking for  a non-force weapon on a parry by 1.

This can be increased to TL -2 for +1 CF, TL -1 for +4 CF,  TL for +9 CF, or TL +1 for +19 CF.  
 

Power weapons need a power source to function, usually power cells.

A standard C cell will power a power weapon for TLp/divide by weapons weight in seconds. TLp is 75 at TL 10, 150 at TL 11, 225 at TL 12.

A +1 power weapon halves this duration, a +2 one cuts it by a 1/3 , a +3 one cuts it by  1/5, and  +4 one cuts it by 1/8th.
 

Legal class worsens by 1 to a max of LC 2.

DR Steps

Find your weapons base Armor Divisor (AD) on the below table and for each step your modifiers adds, move down one step on the table. For example if you have a base AD of 2 and have one step worth of AD modifiers you will move down one step and your weapons now has a AD of 3.

 

Step AD

0 1

1 2

2 3

3 5

 

Ultra-Tech Ultra Quickie: Experimental Melee Rules Part I: Updated Vibrobalde Rules

Update: Formatting issue fixed. I guess you just can't copy your text over from Google Docs and need to paste it in a simple editing tool like notepad first >.>. Like Google owns both Docs and Blogger.... you'd think they'd be integrated... but then again Google is utter trash trash. 

Update 2 Electric Boogaloo: Fixed a typo. The cost factor for upgrading damage to TL -3 was wrong (have no idea why I had it at +3) and has been changed to the correct +9 CF.

Another quick one since the inspiration hit me out of nowhere. Here's a experimental reworking of the rules for Vibroblades found in Ultra-Tech p. 164 that cleans it up a bit and makes it more modular. If you like this I'll  make other posts covering this stuff and update other options such as Super Fine and Hyper Dense and even add some new options.

Vibro/High Frequency Blade (TL 9)
Only available to weapons that do cutting, impaling, and or piercing damage (though optimized for cutting weapons). Vibro and High Frequency (or HF) technology are two means to reach the same end; to vibrate the blade at ultra high frequencies to better slice through objects. Vibro weapons use ultrasonic waves while HF weapons use high powered alternating current but otherwise their effects are identical (though HF tech has uses outside of just making blades effectively sharper).  

A downside is the vibrations make an audible humming sound when activated. Make a hearing based Per roll to detect. See below to figure out the base range that someone can hear the weapon but in most cases the sound level will be that of a normal conversation for detection purposes.

To find out the exact range you can hear a vibro/HF weapon first find out its decibel rating.

Decibels Rating equals 20 × LOG( weapon weight in pounds × TLm×Em × 10). TLm is 2 at TL 9, 1 at TL 10, 0.5 at TL 11 and 0.25 at TL 12. Em is 2 if you upgrade to TL -5, 3 at TL -4, 5 at TL -3, 8 at TL -2.

Then take the Decibel Rating and look it up on the Hearing Distance table in High-Tech p. 158 or Loudness Levels in GURPS Powers: Enhanced Senses p. 21.

Characters with Ultra-Hearing can detect a vibro/HF weapon at 10× its normal range.

If your character wouldn't know what a vibro or HF blade is then a further IQ roll is needed to figure out why you hear a humming noise. On a failure you write it off as a ringing in your ear or something similar.

If a character has either enhanced time sense or perception at 20+, they can simply see the weapon oscillate.

For weapons that do cutting, impaling, or piercing damage, when the vibro/HF function is turned on  they increase the weapons Armor Divisor by one step (to a max of 10)  and only for cutting damage they add TL -6 points of damage adds.  When turned off the weapon does its base damage. +9 CF.

This can be increased to TL -5 for an additional  +1 CF, TL -4 for +4 CF,  TL -3 for +9 CF, or TL -2  for +19 CF.

Vibro/High Frequency Blades need a power source to function, usually power cells.

A standard C cell will power a Vibro/High Frequency Blade for TLp/divide by weapons weight in seconds. TLp is 37.5 at TL 9, 300 at TL 10, 600 at TL 11, 900 at TL 12.

A +1 vibro/HF weapon halves this duration, a +2 one cuts it by a 1/3 , a +3 one cuts it by  1/5, and  +4 one cuts it by 1/8th.

Legal class worsens by 1 to a max of LC 2.

 

DR Steps

Find your weapons base Armor Divisor (AD) on the below table and for each step your modifiers adds, move down one step on the table. For example if you have a base AD of 2 and have one step worth of AD modifiers you will move down one step and your weapons now has a AD of 3.

 

Step AD

0 1

1 2

2 3

3 5

4 10 

 

 

 

GURPS Federal Agent, check this guys stuff out!

 

 Got a quick one for you guys since me next post is gonna take some work to finish

So as some of you might know, I feel that in order for GURPS to get out of its current rut it needs more positive exposure over social media by cleaver and creative people. To which I've been trying my best to find and give exposure to people I feel can best spread the word.

Well I got another one for ya and holly crap, this is the kind of content we need!

I give you GURPS Federal Agent! Not only goes he understand how to make his videos appealing to a modern audience and is quite the Dank Lord of the Meme but they are entertaining as hell to boot. 

So far he has two types of videos, short memey ones that he pumps out daily that are a good way to hook people into GURPS by showing clips of movies and shows and showing how GURPS can handle them. His other vids are longer full vids that go deep in the mechanisms of how GURPS works. Their main hook is how he uses AI voice generators to make it sound like characters such as Robert Edwin House or Simon Belmont are narrating the videos increasing their appeal and a lot of work goes into the make sure the dialogue sounds in character. 

I don't know what else to say but go check this guy out ASAP! 

 

Fictional Firepower: Seburo C-25A

Hey! Want to hear some The_Ryujin_LP deep lore that you might not know?

Ready?

This is gonna blow your mind!

I ...kinda like cyberpunk. I know, I know. Who could tell, right? But all jokes aside, next to R. Talsorian's Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0 and William Gibson's Neuromancer, it was the works of Masamune Shirow that grabbed me at a young age and never let go. While Appleseed will always be my favorite of his, there is no doubt that of all his works none if more well known and influential on popular culture then Ghost in the Shell. Hell, even before anime became a household term, there was a good chance someone you ran into was at lest aware of something by that name existed.

And its from the cyberpunk world of Ghost in the Shell where I draw the inspiration for this post here, the Seburo C-25A (been a while since I dusted off this blog topic heh). This was the main weapon of Security Section 9 in the manga and  was pretty much a not future P90 (I know, kinda redundant with how the thing looks) firing powerful, HV rounds capable of stopping even moderately armored cyborgs.

While not as famous to the general audience as the CZN M22 from the movie (which actually fired the P90's 5.7×25mm round) or even the totally not just a FN F-2000 C-26A from Stand Alone Complex (which always struck me as a bit  weird, the C-26A lost out to the 25A...); to me the C-25A will always be THE gun of Ghost in the Shell. After all, the other two wouldn't even be a thing without the C-25A to set the rules.

Follow me after the jump is you wish to download the deets on this personal favorite of mine.

High-Tech/Ultra-Tech Ultra Quickie: Have a seat while I blow you off your feet.

Blast Resistant Seating

Blast effects from mines, IED (Improvised Explosive Device, i.e. home made boom-booms) and near hits from artillery rounds have been found to have a much greater effect the people inside a vehicle even if the blast fails to penetrate the vehicles armor then GURPS assumes. 

Well, they're having a blast.

This is largely because advancements in blast protection has lead to situations where a vehicle survives where it would of been blown to scrap in the past leading to the crew being killed anyways. So now we're finding that even if the blast can be mitigated enough to prevent complete destruction of the vehicles, the shock waves can still be transmitted through the hull into the spine of the poor crew doing nasty, nasty, neurological damage. 

So if you're ok with some extra crunch and want more gritty realism, use the following rule:

 

Blast Damage Through Armor

If a blast fails to penetrate a vehicles DR, use the rules for HESH rounds found on GURPS High-Tech pg. 170 but change the cutting damage to crushing. If using the Lasting and Permanent Injury rules from GURPS Martial Arts pg. 138 (and if you're going gritty you should be heh!) use the Skull Wounds Table. 

So there you go, another way for you, the GM, to make your party dead, dead, dead!

...

Oh right... wait... *slaps forehead* We're trying NOT to kill our PC's.... what was a I thinking?! 

Thankfully after they figured out that concussive blast were turning our troops brains into scrambled eggs they quickly figured things out. If you isolate the chairs they're sitting on from the hull by putting them on a shock absorber style damping system you can can reduce the G forces being exerted on the crew member by a factor greater then 10, turning an impulse that would crush internal organs and slam your brain into the top of your skull into something that might break some ribs and bruise you badly instead. Still sucks buuuut given the alternative I know which I would choose. 

Soooo, you might be wondering, how good are these things? Take a good look at the photo below.

This Styker flipped over and rolled several times after it got hit and an IED. Despite the level of damage you see, no one was killed or even severely injured. So pretty damn good it seems. 

Mobius Protective Systems Advanced Protection System

So as a counter to the Blast Damage through Armor rules, might want to equip your combat vehicles with some of these things. So here's the rules.

Blast Resistant Seating

Blast Resistant Seat (TL 8). These seats isolate the person sitting in them from the frame of the vehicle they are in and uses shock absorber like dampeners to help dissipate the energy from shock waves and impacts. Provides DR 15 vs collision damage (see Whiplash and Collisions Basic, pg. 432) and shocks damage from none penetrating blast damage. Increase DR to 20 at TL 9, 30 at TL 10, and TL 50 at TL 11+. $1,500, 44 lbs. 

If you are adding the seats to an already stated vehicle such as a TL 8 Humvee (GURPS High-Tech pg. 242) or a TL 9 Wheeled ATV (GURPS Ultra-Tech pg. 225), add +24 lbs and +$1,300 per seat to the vehicles states. This will come out it's normal payload limits.

Ultra-Tech Firepower: Ramblings on Ultra-Tech Missile and How to Make them I Guess

Hey everyone! 

Guess what?!

It's that time once again! Time for your favorite crunchmeister to beat upon my favorite dead ultra-horse! This time trying my hardest to wack out the wonkieness behind how Ultra-Tech designed its missiles!

Yay!

GURPS YouTube Channels You Should Be Checking Out

While GURPS content is sparse on the ol YouTubes there are actually a few channels that are dedicated to our favorite system. Check these guys out. If we can help these channels spread we can help the system grow. While blogs are good, YouTube is the best way to get new blood into the mix. 

The first two channels are by fellow blogger who blogs to much, Enraged Eggplant of the Generic Universal Eggplant blog.

Enraged Eggplant and The_RyujinLP. 2022, colorized

 

 

 

Just the Parts You Need

This channel covers some deep dives into various GURPS topics covering its rules and concepts. He's been doing this channel for a few years now and has a ton of content to dive into. 

 

Dungeons and GURPS

Eggplants newest channel, this covers how to run D&D in GURPS and acts as a dive into some of his blog topics. One thing I like is that he really gets into the nitty gritty behind his decision making process on how he decides to cover D&D mechanics. 

 

        

Bill Cypher's cooler brother

 Diceyed                

Another new channel. Still in it's finding it's self stage but I think it has a lot of potential. It also had a unique angle as the channel is CG and based on the character of Diceyed which resembles a mix between Bill Cypher and a D6. He's work has been sporadic up to now do to working on a video game professionally but it seems he now has more free time to create content. I think seeing some support from the community would help booster his moral.

 

Edit! Can't believe I forgot to add this one, thanks to Enraged Eggplant for reminding me!

 

Chris Normand

One of the main guys working on the massive GURPS VTT mod for Foundry, besides showing off the amazing features they are adding he also covers general GURPS content as well. Also a good friend of The Mook (RIP my friend, RIP).

Ultra-Tech Firepower: SAA GU 384 Boomslang, 50mmCRH (TL 9)

SAA GU 384 Boomslang, 50mmCRH (TL 9)

The trend since just before the turn of the century is for light armored vehicles to get, well, not so light with each generation getting heavier  and with beefier armor. This has in turn driven the need for bigger and bigger gun armaments that they need to mount in order to keep them competitive with their pears; going from 20-25mm in the beginning to 30mm today and even some designs going for 40mm+! Of course the ultra-tech armors of the future will only compound this factor further. Though as guns get more powerful, their recoil gets worse and you start to run into issues where your near tank level firepower is starting to become to much for the platform to handle and accuracy starts to suffer and the added stress causes the frames life space starts to drop.
 

Suid-Afrika Bewapeningskorporasie, the South Africa Armaments Corporation, developed the SAA GU 384 Boomslang to help counter this limitation. Named after the boomslag, a large venomous snake endemic to the area, as a way to single that this was to be weapon system with a deadly bite! 

Ultra-Tech Firepower: Big Guns Never Tire

 

 

Bigger in fact does seem to be better when it comes to the future of main battle tank guns. Rheinmetall already has a 130mm tank gun model it's shopping around and the US is even looking into the possibility of going up to a massive 140mm gun in some of it's next generation MBT concepts. While the safe money is on the 130mm seeing wide spread adoption, it's not only already is a working model at this point but also it's  largely based on it's already successful RH-120 line of tank guns (and it being the cheaper options doesn't hurt either) making it easier to retrain crews to use and maintain it. The 140mm , while still in development at this point, does still have some advantages in its favor do its larger warhead giving it some more flexibility in munitions and it's greater penetration power will help keep it at over match capacity even against advancements in armor technology.

Well, if you want to seriously up the dakka quotient in your game, follow me after the jump.

Sa-bow indexed!

Tank identified, Twelve-hundred-up! On target!  Fire!

Round away!

Now You're Shunting With Power

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Welp, Star Wars Squadrons came out a while ago and it's kinda great. It not only brings us a much needed spiritual successor to the classic X-Wing/TIE Fighter PC space simulators from the 90's but shows some small degree of proof that EA can actually make a good game that isn't a thinly veiled guise to violate your wallet, intelligence, dignity, and probably you personally if they could figure out a way.   

The game also brings back the ability to shunt power from one system to another letting you prioritize  one system while taking a hit to others. This was an amazing game play feature that defined the original game. It let you adjust the ship you were were flying to not only be better able to take on the current challenge but also to suit your personal preference.  Need to chase down that pesky TIE? You can risk lowering your shields to up your speed. Need to get close to a capitol ship? You can trade firepower to up your shields to better survive the barrage of incoming turbo-lasers. It even made replaying mission more interesting as you could try out different power settings and see what works or purposely gimp yourself for extra challenge. It was also very true to the source material as angling your deflector shield and having an astromech droid divert power were a common troupe.  

Now while Spaceships already has a design switch option that allows you to angle your force screen (GURPS Spaceships, pg. 32), it doesn't have an option to simulate shunting power from one system to power up another one. Of course this is not without good reason as this does add a good deal of paper work to keep tract of and some extra math while designing ship. However if you're not afraid of a little extra crunch (and if you're following this blog there's a good chance you're up to the challenge, do you even crunch bro?) and want to add a little more more variety for the space jockeys in your sci-fi campaign to play around with then I give you a new design switch option: Power Shunting.

 

Power Shunting   

Many sci-fi series depict the heroes carefully husbanding power from one system to another in a critical moment, boosting its effectiveness at the expense of one that is less important in the current situation. This design switch lets you simulate that troupe. You can only shunt power between high-energy systems and must have at least two usable power points available. All powered system start at level 0, which is the baseline power level. Pick a system you want to boost and select a level you want to boost it to from level 1 up to level 4. Multiply that system's effects or stats by the amount shown in the column that the system you are boosting falls under. You then have to drop another system down to a negative level equal to the level you raised the boosted system to, from level  -1 to level -4,  and multiply its effects and stats by the amount shown in its corresponding column. If you have three or more boost compatible high energy systems plus enough power points to power them all and you boost a system two or more levels you can choose to spread the drained levels across them rather than just lowering the level of one system.   

If you have more high-energy systems then power points to use on them all, you can also use a power shunt to provide some level of power to these systems. For every level you drop a powered system, raise the unpowered one up one level treating level -4 as being unpowered.   

Different kinds of systems are affected in different ways when feed more power. There are three ways a system can be boosted. Systems are either affected in a linear way, by the square root of the increase in power, or by the cube root of the increase. Though there are some systems that can be affected in more than one way, for example increasing the engine power of a craft in atmosphere will increase its thrust linearly but it's top speed will only increase by the square root of it.

Because of this the shunting chart shown below is broken down into three columns with each one corresponding to one of the ways a system can be affected by a power shunt.
 

Power Shunt Chart
Power Level: This column shows the range of settings you can set a systems power level to; from a level of -4 up to a level of +4 with a power level of 0 being the normal operating level for a given system. Each level represents an power increase or decrease of 25% with a level of +4 being a doubling of power and a level of -4 being no power.

 
Colum 1: Square Root
These systems are affected by the square root of the set power level.

-Kinetic energy weapons or beam weapons if you are using the square root of destruction optional rule (Alternate Spaceships, Pyramid 3-24 Alternate GURPS, pg. 9).

-Top speed of jet and ornithopter powered aircraft.


Column 2: Cube Root
These systems are affected by the cube root of the set power level.  

-Beam weapons if you are using the standard rules.

-Top speed for helicopters and surface water and underwater craft.


Column 3: Linear
These systems are affected by a one to one increase in the set power level.  

- Contragravity lifters.

-For any types of propulsion and FTL systems not covered in other columns.

-Shields.

-Factory and Mining/Refinery output.
 
 
Power Level       Square Root      Cube Root        Linear    
-4                       ×0                      ×0                      ×0
-3                       ×0.5                   ×0.6                   ×0.25
-2                       ×7                      ×0.8                   ×0.5
-1                       ×0.9                   ×0.9                   ×0.75
0                        ×1                      ×1                      ×1
+1                      ×1.12                 ×1.1                   ×1.25
+2                      ×1.22                 ×1.14                 ×1.5
+3                      ×1.32                 ×1.21                 ×1.75
+4                      ×1.4                   ×1.25                 ×2         



On a sheet or paper or spreadsheet write down the power level column as you see above and set up a different column for each high powered system that can be power shunted then under them multiply their base effects by the multipliers under the column the column that corresponds to the given system.

For Example: Let's say you have a SM +5 space fighter that has two linear systems, a hot TL 11 reactionless thruster and a TL 11 deflector screen and one cube root system, a 10MJ major battery. It's stats would be be affected as below:

Power Level      Hot  Reactionless    Deflector Screen     Major Battery       
-4                       0                                      0                            0                     
-3                       0.5G                                5 dDR                    2d+2 (2)                  
-2                       1G                                  10 dDR                    3d+1 (2)                  
-1                       1.5G                               15 dDR                    3d+2 (2)                 
0                        2G                                   20 dDR                    4d (2)                      
+1                      2.5G                               25 dDR                     4d+2 (2)                     
+2                      3G                                  30 dDR                     4d+2 (2)                
+3                      3.5G                               35 dDR                      5d-1 (2)                
+4                      4G                                  40 dDR                      5d (2)             


Longer Term Effect
While in most combat situations keeping track of how long you shunt extra power into a system is not needed; however if you are doing this during a long chase or similar situations you do risk straining or even blowing out a system if you run it a higher output then i';s normally rated for for too long.

You can run most systems for a minute or get off 10 shots in succession (at a weapons full ROF) without any issues but for every minute or 10 shots afterwards you need to make a HT roll. On  success the system is fine.  On a failure, the systems safeties kick in and shut the system down for 1d minutes per minute/10 shots the system was used. On a failure of 5 or more the system is damaged in the shut down procedure and will not work again until repaired (see Damage Control, GURPS Spaceships pg. 64). On a critical failure the power was too much for the system to handle and it blew out completely. It is a total wash and needs to be replaced.

If you let the system rest for 30 seconds per minute/10 shots it is boosted it cools back down to normal uses and can be used for 1 minute/10 shots without needing a HT check again.


Hotshotting and Power Shunting
If used, these rules also replace the normal hotshot rules (GURPS Ultra-Tech pg. 133). It is assumed that the more robust power supplies as well as the fact that the weapon can tap into the vehicle's cooling system allows it to fire at a higher output far more safely then you could with a small arm.

Ultra-Tech Firepower: Wolden & Hawks PDW-7P, 8mmAADR (TL 9)

Note: Slight update

 GURPS forum user Kale made the great suggestion of allowing the forward grip be swapped with a tac light which I should of included from the state. Good call man. He also suggested adding the option of adding a small 20 gauge shotgun in lieu of an idea I had off adding in a really small grenade launcher earlier in my concept phase for this gun. I was looking into maybe adding something like the S&W Governor but then it dawned on me that 15mm gyroc was about the same size as a 20 gauge so I went with that idea instead. Also another forum user by the name Say, it isn't that bad! has said that my stat lines are coming in weird for him. Well I looked into ways to fix it and it looks like Blogger has made it easier to add tables (the last time I tried it was so finicky that I gave up and have been hand adjusting stat lines since) so I have updated the PDW-7P's stat line to have a proper table. It's still wonky AF but hopefully it's more stable.

Wolden & Hawks PDW-7P, 8mmAADR (TL 9)

The PDW-7P was the first fully in-house developed firearm designed by Wolden and Hawks, a very successful gun modding studio run by Greager Wolden and Carter Hawks. With furthering social unrest and increased attacks and kidnapping attempts on high value corporate exec, research engineers, and politicians the team saw a chance to fill the growing need for a compact and easy to conceal high rate of fire weapon that can also defeat most forms of soft body armor to sell to the growing private security firm sector.

Deigning the actual firing platform was the easy part. Based on interviews with potential clients, Wolden & Hawks  only took seven design iterations to come up with the PDW-7P. It was to be handy in closed in fighting situations and with a strong emphasis on making it very easy to holster or conceal and extremely reliable (treat as Fine( Reliable)) so that it didn't jam or fail to feed in the middle of fight. This lead to the weapon being no larger then a heavy pistol (hence the 7P, seven for the seventh design iteration and P for pistol form factor) with a somewhat boxy appearance do to it having an integrated P90 style forward grip in front of the trigger guard which incorporated an ambidextrous fire control selector (which could be switched between safe, semi-auto, 3-round limited burst, and full auto) and a built in telescoping collapsible stock (one ready maneuver to collapse or pull out the stock). This let it be stored and used as readily a normal pistol but with a flick of the selector allowed it to instantly transition into a machine pistol or if better stability and accuracy was needed the stock could be extended turning it into a full on submachine gun. While the weapon only used a standard iron sight and smart gun electronics to keep the weapons bulk down, it did have a top mounted modular rail so buyers could add their own sighting options if needed. The forward half of the forward grip can be removed and replaced with either a tactical flashlight (50 yard beam, $100, 1 A/8hrs. See High-Tech pg. 52) or a under barrel Holdout Gyroc, 15mm (see Ultra-Tech pg. 144 and 145)

The hard part was what to chamber it in. Feedback had reviled a desire to have penetration levels near what the 5.7mmCL could do in a full sized SMG but given that the PDW-7P had a normal pistol length barrel there was not many round that could fit the bill and they were going to have to make their own custom cartridge. After several rounds of simulations and testing they found that a high-pressure round based on a heavily modified 9mmCL cartridge would suit their needs. The base round was necked down to 7.92mm with a 6 gram bulk amorphous tungsten cored projectile. To push for a high muzzle velocity a a higher pressure propellant block was used with a light composite coating applied to the block making it semi-caseless. This coating would briefly contain the expanding gas when the round was fired further increasing the chamber pressure bumping the muzzle energy up by roughly 9.3%. The composite coating is then burned up and ejected out the barrel with the rest of the propellant residue. Between the high velocity and dense core, this gives the round nearly 10mm of penetration of RHA equivalent. Given that the round was close enough to 8mm and its primary purpose it was christen the 8mm Advanced Armor Defeating Round. 

The PDW-7P originally only came with a conventional sized doubled stacked pistol magazine capable of holding 20 rounds to help with concealment  but W & H eventually developed a 33 round extended mag (0.5 lbs, $20) after customer receiving enough customer feed back asking for the option. A third party developed 100 round  C-mag (2 lbs, $160. An integrated A cells powers drum for up to 1,000 rounds. Worsens bulk by -1) also became available but W & H strongly recommend against its use as they viewed it as unreliable (drop Malf. to normal while loaded with this magazine) and the amount of extra bulk it added to the platform was over all incompatible with the weapons concept.

The excellent performance of the weapon however came with a high cost per round which was further impacted by the 8mmADD's production being limited to just its flagship platform. But despite this sales have been have been at lest steady with many of the major private protection firms buying at lest a limited  test of the weapon. This has also lead to other firearm manufacturers to start to take note of the round which may lead to further adoption driving costs down further.

 

GUNS (SMG) (DX-4, or most other Guns at -2)

TL	Weapon	Damage	Acc	Range	Weight	ROF	Shots	ST	Bulk	Rcl	Cost	LC	Notes

9	PDW-7P,	4d-1 (2) pi-	3	220/2,400	2.5/0.3	12	20 +1 (3)	5†	-3	2	$890/$18	2	[1, 2, 3]

		8mmAADR

[1] With the stock collapsed Acc drops to 2, ST changes to 7, and bulk goes down to -2 and can be used with the GUNS (PISTOL) skill instead. 

[2] With drum mag ST becomes 6† with stock, 8 with the stock collapsed.

[3] Accessory rail.

8mmAADR

TL   WPS   CPS

9     0.015   $0.52

Ultra-Tech Firepower: The LGIP LAA-88, 88mmRL

Note: When I first uploaded this post I used the wrong formula when figuring the ammunitions price making them cost a lot more then they should of. The listed prices are now correct. 

LGIP  LAA-88, 88mmRL (TL 9)         

Even with ultra-tech advances in missile technology many militaries still have the need for a simple, accurate, and relatively cheap man portable heavy direct fire support platform. The Belgium developed Limburg Geavanceerde Industriële Productie (Limburg Advanced Industrial Manufacturing) Light Anti-Material 88 millimeter recoilless rifle was developed to fill that niche.

The LAA-88 follows a fairly conventional shoulder launch design that took advantage of  advancements in material manufacturing to build the main body out of  composite fiber wrapped around a rifled barrel made of titanium alloy. This kept the weapons weight down while maintaining a long barrel life (rated for 1,500 shots before needing to be discarded) without major increase in manufacturing cost. Also while not a true Rarefaction Wave Gun, it does use a similar but simpler gas pressure trapping system to reduce the amount of wasted motive energy normally present in recoilless designs and increase the weapons muzzle without needing more propellant. At its rear is a proprietary advanced variable aperture venturi which helps break up the weapons backblast cutting its force by almost a third. To handle the weapon it features an ergonomic integrated forward grip, trigger assembly and adjustable shoulder rest made of high impact polymer. It also has a detachable 0.9lbs  4× IR scope with integrated targeting computer and standard smart gun electronics (+2 Acc from scope, +3 Acc from laser rangefinder, range 5,000 yards, +2 to Guns (LAW)*, 1B/10hrs). While it can be used by a single operator (doubles how long it takes to reload) it more optimally used with a two man crew with one carrying and firing the weapon and the other loading it and carrying the ammunition.

Like all reoilless rifle ammunition the 88mmRL rounds are actually rifled cannon rounds and not rockets. This means a reoilless round leaves the barrel its peak velocity as allowing it to reach a higher muzzle velocity over all and making them more accurate then a rocket. The round further increases muzzle velocity to over twice that of earlier models not only through its launch platforms pressure trapping system but through the use of higher energy explosives based propellant. They weigh 4.4lbs which include a counter mass made of  high surface area to mass plastic flakes designed to decelerate quickly further helping to contain its backblast. The ammunition is rear loaded into the LAA-88 opening the sealing lock just before venturi and then twisting it open, sliding in the round, twisting it back down, and then closing the sealing lock.

Besides Shaped-Charge rounds (in table), it could also fired HE (7d×4(0.5) cr  with a 5d×5 [4d+1] cr ex follow up), MF-DC (Multiple Fletch-Dense Cored, 1d(2) pi-, ROF 1 × 1,100 ), SAP-E2 which is  designed to  penetrate into a target like a bunker before setting off a powerful Thermobaric explosive (Semi-Armor Piercing-Enhanced Effect,  7d×4 cr with a 5d×10 cr ex follow up. Divide crushing explosive damage by [2 × distance in yards from center of blast]), Electromagnetic Smoke (9 yard radii, lasts for 1 to 4 minutes. Takes 9 seconds to fully deploy.), and flare (900 yards radii, lasts for 5 minutes) rounds. 

 LGIP also offers more advanced version of its range of 88mmRL rounds which use an nano-optic array  and added control surfaces similar to the the type used in their range of 15 and 30mm Gyrocs which allows the rounds to make course corrections to greatly increase the weapons accuracy. These increase the rounds Acc to 7 but triple the cost.

Backblast: 1d+1 cr 

 

GUNS (LAW) (DX-4 or most other Guns at -4)

TL  Weapon                    Damage                Acc    Range      Weight     ROF    Shots   ST    Bulk  Rcl   Cost     LC   Notes 

9     LAA-88, 88mmRL  5d×11(10) cr inc     5 +2   10/2,700    13.9/4.4     1          1(4)     8†     -7      1     $2,700    1      [1, 2]

                          Linked  6d×2 [4d+1] cr ex

[1] Hazardous backblast (see description).

[2] First Range figure is minimum range, not 1/2D.

TL  Ammo                                                       WPS     CPS    LC

9   88mmRL Shaped Charge                             4.4        $280     1

9   88mmRL HE                                                4.4       $250      1

9   88mmRL MF-DC                                         4.4       $440   1

9   88mmRL SAP-E2                                        4.4       $500   1

9   88mmRL Electromagnetic Smoke               4.4       $310      1

9   88mmRL Flare                                             4.4       $280      1

*Uses the Specialized Targeting Programs optional rule from Future Soldier,  Pyramid 3-55 Military Sci-Fi. This program is specialized to work only with this weapon dropping the Complexity for a +2 to Guns down from Complexity 4 to a Complexity 2 program. $250.

Ultra-Tech Firepower: Salvo Explosively Impelled Munitions

Future War Stories is one of the many blogs that I frequent. If you already are a reader of this blog then you probably aren't to terribly surprised by this fact. If this is the first time hearing about it, it's a real good resource on speculative military science fiction and a gold mind for ideas. So go check it out.

Well, a few days ago I was looking something up and one of the sites that came up during the google search was one of the posts on this blog. I read  it over and then I come across this glorious lil' GIF below.

Ahhhhh, Elysium. Not the greatest movie but oh boi! The visuals and designs work in this movie, largely down but the undeniably talented Aaron Beck (for another example of his work see my last post). But man! Look at that shot! That is one brilliantly render blast wave. Of course... sadly, there is no way in hell you can get a blast that big with a bullet that small (in universe it's just a modified AK-47 firing airbursting 7.62×39mm rounds). Not even with Ultra-Tech explosives like TL 11 Advanced Nuclear Isomer warheads (Ultra-Tech Too, Pyramid 3-51 Tech & Toys III) can you get a blast like that! But... the idea did get my noggin' joggin'. What if instead of using the explosives as the primary means of damaging the target, the blast was instead used to enhanced and boost the effects of the projectiles kinetic effect? Well you get maybe an little over the top but cool (and probably possible with mature TL 9 tech) new toy to play with!



Salvo Explosively Impelled Munition (SXIM) (TL 9) 
SXIM projectiles are composed of eight somewhat sword shaped dense cored flechettes fused together around an shape charge explosive and a ladar based proximity fuse. Before firing the shooter must take a ready action to lase a target and feed ranging data to the proximity fuse. After that the weapon can be fired on the shooters next turn. The fired rounds then streaks towards the target and at a precise range (based on the amount of explosives used) the shape charge will go off  using the explosive force to both break apart the flechettes as well give them an extra "kick" boosting their kinetic energy. Do to their design this does cutting damage with a (2) armor divisor. Also against a lased target, the firing weapons has it effective ROF changed to  n×8 (with n being the number of shots fired) and it's rcl  changed to 1. If no target is designated  the round will instead point detonate when it strikes a target that gives it enough resistance (DR or HP 2+ for hard objects or more then 4HP or more resistance for most living things). When a round point detonates it does the weapons original piercing damage ×1.5 with an (2) armor divisor plus explosive damage if the round is powerful enough to cause significant effect. Also if firing undesignated, use the weapons original ROF and rcl.

Detonation Range is how far from the target the round goes off. This is unimportant for most rounds but for larger rounds the blast effect could be large enough to effect a relevant effect. A Range of C means it goes off in the same hex as the target.


__________________________________________________________________________________
SXIM Warhead Table
Warhead                Damage                                                    Detonation Range
7mmCL                   3d+1 (2) cut                                                C
10mmCL                 4d-1 (2) cut                                                 C
10mmCLR               5d-1 (2) cut                                                 C
15mmCL                 8d (2) cut                                                    C
18.5mmPC              2d+2 cut                                                    C
20mmPC                1d-4 cr ex + linked 3d+2 (2) cut                    C
20mmCL                1d-4 cr ex +  linked 9d+2 (2) cut                   C
20mmCLH              1d-4cr ex + linked 8d×2 (2) cut                     C
25mmCL                1d-3 cr ex + linked  5d+1 (2) cut                    1
100mmCL               4d cr ex +    linked 5d×16 (2) cut                  2

Add +1 per die to both crushing explosive damage and cutting damage at TL 10-12. SXIM rounds are five times normal cost. 


And here's how to stat up SXIM rounds for any gun. 

Blast Damage 

First figure the Warhead's Weight 

Weight = Caliber in mm³ × 0.000002

Blast Damage = √ (warhead wight) × 9.9. Divide the product by 3.5 to get the dice of damage. For most small arms blast damage can be safely ignored

Flechette damage = Base bullet damage × 0.53. Does cutting damage with an (2) armor divisor.

Detonation range = √(blast damage)


If target is lased the firing weapons stats are adjusted  as follow:
ROF becomes n × 8

Rcl becomes 1.  
   
Enjoy!

Ultra-Tech Firepower: Epoch Systems BE^2-HV/380 20mm Autocannon

Epoch Systems BE^2-HV/380 20mm Autocannnon, 20mmCLH (TL 9) 

Designed by Epoch Systems, the Ballistic Enhanced Effect-High Velocity Model 380 (BE²-HV/380, generally called Bee Hive) is a high powered 20mm autocannon designed for increased after armor effects against light to medium armored targets. It fires  the heavy, high velocity 20mmCLH round with an APIS (Armor Piercing Individual Salvo) warhead which is a specially designed APDS round that deploys three bulk amorphous tungsten cored penetrators in a triplex arrangement uniquely designed for this weapon platform.

The BE²-HV/380 counts as having a heavy barrel for the purposes of sustained fire and and can fire up to 2,000 shots in a sustained burst, 1,000 shots in a rapid burst, and 500 in a assault burst. See GURPS High-Tech pg. 85-86 for further information on sustained fire. 

Originally designed for light tanks and IFVs, the BE^2-HV/380 has also seen use as main arm for light mecha and cyber assault platforms. If used by a mecha or a limbed cyber platform, the weapon is set up in a "rifle form" configuration with Acc 5, loaded weight 211 lbs., and ST 19† if used with two or more arms or ST 27 if used one armed.

The BE²-HV/380 is fed from a 60 round helical drum magazine loaded at the bottom of the weapon. While designed  from the ground up to fire the 20mmCLH APIS round, it can also fire a APEP round (DMG 5d×10 (2) pi++, Range 3,230/15,000, ROF 10, Rcl 2) as well a newly developed version of the APIS round that replaces the tungsten penetrators with triplex APHEX rounds, the APIS-EX round (DMG 7d×3 (2) pi++ with 1d-2 [1d] cr ex follow up, Range 540/2,400). While never fielded in normal use, a standard 20mmCLH would do Dam 6d×5 pi++, Range 1,600/7,200, ROF 10, and Rcl 2.

GUNNER (MACHINE GUN) (DX-4 or other Gunner at -4)
TL Weapon                       Damage          Acc      Range           EWt.     ROF    Shots      ST       Bulk   Rcl     Cost                LC

9 BE²HV, 20mmCLH 6d×5 (2) pi+ 6 1,600/7,200 133/78 10×3 60+1(5) 24M -10 1 $102,000/$300 1 

TL Ammo WPS CPS LC

9  20mmCLH APIS 0.5 $90 1

9 20mmCLH 0.5 $10 2
9  20mmCLH APED 0.5 $70 1

9 20mmCLH APIS-EX 0.5 $240 1