Equpment and Skills for a Heavy Weapons Spec, Call in the Artilery! Options

[Leviathan]

Ok, what skills and weapons are the best setup/'ware for a heavy weapons spec? I'm talking about the person who walks in with a gyromounted pather cannon, or gets people to radar-tag targets and mortar them from a distance, that kind of thing.

Now, heres the aside. Make this person also have some use in close-quarters, building raid type situations as well.

[Austere Emancipa...]

What you need is an SPH.

[Crusher Bob]

You are not trying to level city blocks here; get several fast/flyable drones with magazine fed 60mm mortars. The drones move in set up, then you call fire. The drone empties the magaine, the relocates/goes home. Assuming you are feeding from a magazine of 6 rounds and the auto-mortar can empty that in 3 seconds. If you can afford 3 drones thats up to 18 rounds of 60mm, right on target, within 3 seconds (plus flight time). Not too shabby. Sure you can't kill anything with armor with those (that's what your ATGM bearing mini blimps are up for, but it's still quite handy.

The 60mm tube with legs listed in Fields of Fire goes for 6K Y, a magazine fed 60mm would go for around maybe, 25K Y? and weigh maybe 2-4 times as much. Come to think of it, I'm not sure there are any flyable drones with a 200 to 300 kg payload you'd need. But you could probably fit the mortar on most of the 'heavy' drones like the steel lynx.

[Kagetenshi]

A Small fuel-cell rotary-wing UAV can be built that will carry 400 kilos.

~J

[Birdy]

Redleg skills include:

+ The necessary weapon skill (Heavy Weapons and/or Launch Weapons)
+ Spotter subskill (Launch Weapons/Spotter)
+ Small Unit Tactics/BattleTac (IRL that is Radio Operations but SR lacks that)
+ Survival:Navigation/Land[1]
+ Stealth/Hiding
+ Praying/Fast prayer[2]



[1] Hint: If the guys at the battery answer your coordinates with a "Are you sure" better check that you did NOT transmit YOUR coordinates instead of the enemy ones

[2] Average survival time of a ForwardObserver in case of WWIII was around 30 seconds

[Austere Emancipa...]

Unfortunately a small rotor UAV, with BOD 1 and Max CF 1, cannot carry anything heavier than LMGs. You'll have to go Medium for heavier fire support. Such as:

RQ-31 Firefly
Body: 2
Armor: 3
Cargo: 0
Handling: 2
Autonav/Pilot: -/3
Sensor: 6
Seating: -
Entry: -
Load: 0
Speed: 60
Accel.: 5
Signature: 8
Fuel: 300PF EFC
Economy: 0.5km/PF
Chassis: Rotor Craft UAV, Medium

Street Index: 3

Availability: 3/72hrs

Cost: 44,572 :nuyen:

Other Features: ED-1, Power Amps-4, Remote-Control Encryption Module-3, Remote-Control Interface

That's baseline for a spotter drone capable of being a fire support platform. You'd still need at least BattleTac FDDM and a Fixed External Hardpoint with the weapon of choice. That hikes up the price of the drone to ~80k, Street Index to 3+, Avail to 4/4d, etc.