Gauss Rifle Weak?, Is it a little...underpowered? Options

[Jackstand]

Railgun muzzle flash? Answer!

And here!

And here I thought you were going to link this.

[Dumori]

any object going around 4 faster that the speed of sound will cause compression heating the effect seen on reentering space craft. The higher the objects speed the more pronounced the effect will be.

and the obligatory link when talking about high speed objects and there effects: http://web.mit.edu/jcb/humor/high-speed-ravioli

[Neraph]

any object going around 4 faster that the speed of sound will cause compression heating the effect seen on reentering space craft. The higher the objects speed the more pronounced the effect will be.

and the obligatory link when talking about high speed objects and there effects: http://web.mit.edu/jcb/humor/high-speed-ravioli

Extremely fun read.

[psychophipps]

any object going around 4 faster that the speed of sound will cause compression heating the effect seen on reentering space craft. The higher the objects speed the more pronounced the effect will be.

and the obligatory link when talking about high speed objects and there effects: http://web.mit.edu/jcb/humor/high-speed-ravioli

Umm...four times the speed of sound? That be some wussy shit! Tests as of the early 1990s were projecting these things at 10+ kilometers per second! If it was over 4.5 km/sec or so the projectile would ignite (as shown in the second video) from atmospheric friction.

Please also note that the video weapon is about 100 times (if not much, much more) as powerful as a man-portable railgun, was firing a projectile with a ballistic coefficient best described as "I like pie!", and would be designed to take such things into account because a sniper that belches a giant fireball whenever his rifle is discharged is probably a dead sniper in short order.

[Red_Cap]

I don't know about that. If I saw a fire-breathing sniper, I'd probably run screaming. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Larme]

Yeah, like the panther cannon, the gauss rifle is not a sniper weapon, which is probably why they're in the same category. However, it would be cool to see actual rifle and pistol class gauss weapons (a la Fallout 2). They could take advantage of the quieter action of a railgun, and fire a solid armor piercing slug for better penetration, but they wouldn't need to shoot at such fiendish velocities as to shatter all the nearby windows and send the HRT scrambling (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Muspellsheimr]

Gauss Pistol [Heavy Pistol]
5P
-2AP*
SS
-
10 ( c ) + Energy
N/A
8,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)
* Half armor before applying armor penetration.

Designed by Nicholas Rhys (my character - 10 Logic / 10 Armorer / 6 Hardware), the Gauss Pistol is the first hand-held Gauss weapon system. The weapon combines the armor-penetrating force of rail weapons with the portability of heavy pistols. The weapon takes an energy cell to power its magnetic accelerators (same as those used by the Ares laser weapons), in addition to its ammunition clip. Each shot consumes 1 point of energy; each clip has enough power to fire the weapons 10 shots.

The weapon uses specialized ammunition costing 200 per 10 rounds. The weapon is not available on the market, & must be obtained through Mr. Rhys.



My GM, for the last game, decided to use a random chart for (additional) starting equipment for each character (I did not like the idea, but whatever). This character ended up with 1 million Nuyen, to be spent as I desired with no limits on availability. As an explanation for how I obtained this, apparently I designed & sold a pistol to one of the worlds richest men. A few weeks later, this is what I came up with, & have been using ever since.

[Red_Cap]

You should have made it a semi-automatic (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

[hobgoblin]

meh, go FA (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[merashin]

nah, go FA with the minigun rules, and up the ammo capacity

[Dumori]

Gatteling Gauss weaponary for the win bar the fact that it would need a power plant to fire.

Also the pistol should be 6p

[hobgoblin]

or maybe a couple of power backpacks (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Dumori]

for a few rounds of fire. I lugged 100+of of power packs for less then 9 seconds of fire.

[kigmatzomat]

If you want to take advantage of the potential* of gauss weapons in a pistol, namely insanely high velocities that no propellant can achieve, with the muzzle energies a person can tolerate, that means a tiny little projectile at really high speeds. 700J (.45 +P muzzle energy) is enough to send a 1g penetrator out at nearly 1200m/s, aka Mach 3.5, which is roughly 3x the speed of a .357 slug and (assuming a .15 caliber round) with around 5x the penetration.

IMO that would be a Dam 3 AP -4 (after halving armor) firing what amounts to a dense BB. It causes a relatively small wound but it punches through virtually any armor. You can shoot up a vehicle but you've got to be a good shot to find something vital. I'd also say that it can hold far more rounds than the battery pack can power, 50 wouldn't be unreasonable for a ~ .16 caliber projectile with no propellant.

It should also use SMG range rather than pistol thanks to the incredibly flat ballistic profile.

*the other advantages of gauss weapons are the ability to store 50x as many projectiles as normal, rely on an electrical power plant, over specialized propellant, and have immense range thanks to the high velocities. The navy is the biggest gauss weapon investor because they have big electrical power plants (aircraft carriers are nuclear powerplants), space is at a premium on ships, and the bigger the engagement range the better. Oh, and a railgun could be used as an anti-aircraft weapon even against high altitude bombers.

[Muspellsheimr]

SA would probably be to powerful (sure you can get this with modifications - I always do, but it takes up Slots). 6P would mean it at least equals heavy revolvers (AP -5 or greater, vs. -6 of APDS Super Warhawk).

I don't specialize in the field, so was looking primarily at balance & attractiveness when designing the pistol. I would think that you could sacrifice some of the velocity, & thus armor penetration, for increased round size & damage - hence the 5P -2 instead of 3-4P -4. Also, after taking into account the space required for the energy clip in a pistol sized weapon, there isn't much room left for the ammunition. If its actual slugs (opposed to BB's), it isn't going to fit much. I went with 10 to coincide with the energy clips.

[Neraph]

Please also note that the video weapon is about 100 times (if not much, much more) as powerful as a man-portable railgun, was firing a projectile with a ballistic coefficient best described as "I like pie!", and would be designed to take such things into account because a sniper that belches a giant fireball whenever his rifle is discharged is probably a dead sniper in short order.

Please note that in 60 years we'll have the technology to get something roughly this powerful easily to more handheld sizes. Imagine computers alone. Not too long ago (I think like 60 years) they were the size of whole rooms; now you can swallow them. Same thing with airplanes. Just over a hundred years ago we had the Wright Brothers' flight, and now we have super-jetliners, luxury jumbo jets, and airplanes that go to the moon.

I think that since they have a trailer-sized railgun now, in 60 years (probably much sooner) they'll have a man-portable one. And think, this is what was just de-classified. What about the classified stuff?

[Muspellsheimr]

Not too long ago (I think like 30 years) they were the size of whole rooms; now you can swallow them.

Corrected for you. Computers did not exist 60 years ago, & the ones 30 years ago (that used entire rooms) where roughly the equivalent of a modern calculator.

[JoelHalpern]

Corrected for you. Computers did not exist 60 years ago, & the ones 30 years ago (that used entire rooms) where roughly the equivalent of a modern calculator.

60 years ago would be 1948. There were effectively the equivalent of modern computers, in terms of being programable stored program machines, subject to the equivalence class of Turing machines, developed for / late in WWII, i.e. 1945. They were indeed physically monsterous, ate power, and broke often. The number of vacuum tubes needed was simply astounding.

By 1978 (30 years ago) we had hand held calculators able to do a full range of engineering calculations. While the Cray Supercomputer was pretty large, and the high end IBM of the time was substantial, there were many quite programmable, quite versatile, much smaller computers available. The Dec System 20 (based on the older 10 series hardware, and OS work done by MIT) was a thing of beauty. Even with disk packs, tape drives, etc, it still only consumed a small room. And the PDP 11, for example, could be kept in the same office with the people using it.

You can define computer in some narrow sense to change these definitions. But the definitions used by professionals, including historians, easily cover the 30 and 60 year old dates cited.

Yours,
Joel

[Muspellsheimr]

My timeline could be off a bit, but punchcards were used during the 70's - 30 to 40 years ago. Before that, computers did not exist; their predecessors where no more computers than a monkey is human.

[hobgoblin]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_history

enjoy...

and the principle problem with handheld, or even man portable, energy weapons will be energy storage.

battery related tech do not develop at the same rate as computer tech, not even 1/10 of it...

i suspect thermodynamics has a very big say in that...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamics

unless we can come up with some kind of superconducting capacitor or similar, it will continue to be a problem...

[Dumori]

Well we have made kilofarad capasiters even if they are expensive. So I guess that in a few years this tech wount be far off.

[AllTheNothing]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_history

enjoy...

and the principle problem with handheld, or even man portable, energy weapons will be energy storage.

battery related tech do not develop at the same rate as computer tech, not even 1/10 of it...

i suspect thermodynamics has a very big say in that...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamics

unless we can come up with some kind of superconducting capacitor or similar, it will continue to be a problem...

It stands a reason for humanity hating the phisics, they burst our dreams like boubles.
There is also some problems with energy sources, energy storage covers bringing the power around but it must beforehand somehow and we aready have power-related problems today (just think how energy consumption is bound to grow in the future).

[AllTheNothing]

Well we have made kilofarad capasiters even if they are expensive. So I guess that in a few years this tech wount be far off.

I didn't know of said capacitors.
You made me happy, it gives me hope for our future.

[MaxMahem]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_history

enjoy...

and the principle problem with handheld, or even man portable, energy weapons will be energy storage.

battery related tech do not develop at the same rate as computer tech, not even 1/10 of it...

i suspect thermodynamics has a very big say in that...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamics

unless we can come up with some kind of superconducting capacitor or similar, it will continue to be a problem...

I would not be so sure. It is easy to overestimate the energy density of gunpowder (which is not that great) and the efficiency of modern firearms, which is only so-so. The most powerful gunpowders only hit about 5MJ/kg, with most performing well under that. And most firearms convert that into ballistic energy relatively poorly, at about 30% or so for the best cartridges. Which gives them an effective performance of about 1.5MJ/kg (and that is actually a pretty optimistic estimate).

Those levels of energy density are not entirely unachievable for batteries. The very best batteries on the market (Zinc Air) can do a little better then 1MJ/kg and some of the high-tech ones on the drawing board can do as well as 2.5kJ/kg. Combine this with a higher efficiency you might be able to expect from a railgun (batteries are VERY efficiency, above 90%) of say 50%, and boom. You have gauss weapon that can meet the efficiencies off gunpowder. Scale the battery tech up some more (another doubling is not unreasonable) and it will become considerably superior to gunpowder.

Note that all this is much worse than say gasoline which has an energy density of ~45MJ/kg (if the oxygen is not included). Which shows why electric cars have such a hard time competing against them, but also demonstrates why applying these difficulties to comparisons with firearms is inappropriate. Firearms are not nearly as efficient or energy dense as cars.

[Medicineman]

What about HollowPoint Ammo for Gauss Rifle ?
Would this be possible ?
Would it still be +1 DV / AP+2 ?

HokaHey
Medicineman