No, just to the common eye it looks like a microwave weapon. The technology is not 100% described, but it seems to 'melt' whatever it hits. Armor, people, whatever. As well, it really ruins things in a cone around the weapons arc too. Plants combust, the ground is scorched. On the face of it, it seems like a mult-spectrum radiation attack with a LOT of energy too.

See, that I could buy. Just didn't think stopping the damn thing was particularly feasible.

All very good points. Like all good and bad ideas, they all need to be tested, revised, tested, revised, tested, and then tested some more. Or we can pretend that someone designed one successfully in the future and publish it into a Shadowrun book! Anyway, the point of my theories is to spark some SOTA ideas that may give players and GM's some fun ideas.

As far as I know current direction will not change the change in acceleration. The rails on the slowing side of the gun will have to have full power on so as soon as the sabot touches it copletes the circuit, but you will also have to have a way to reduce the poweer just as fast as accelerating it gradually reduce the speed. But it still doesn't make since to save a sabot. I may be wrong the only electricity I work on are DC power plants and UPS(big ass batteries), which is a far cry from railguns. THe rils are tied together in the back, the sabot completes the circuit when that happens you creat a magnetic field which will push the sabot as more juice is added the fast the sabot moves because the magnetic field just increased fast. So the faster you add juice and the more you add in that short time the faster it goes. You would have to do that in reverse. Did any of that make sense or did I get it all wrong ?

A neat little tidbit I read about Maglevs, they use two Aluminum disks spinning pretty fast under the train car, each car has 2. When the disk is spinning it creats a magnet mirror, basically it shows the polarity of the magent back to it self thus repelling itself. That eliminates all the wieght of carrying electromagents to repel the tracks magnets. They just need to feed the electricity to all the cars to spin the disks.

just as a comment these must be extreamly scaled down railguns because if you accelerate a metal projectile any where near the speed of light (wich is what most people asume you want) the impact alone would decimate a small city even if the slug wheighed only 1kg the sudden impact of such a high velocity projectile stopping would instantly convert all that kenetic energy to heat energy as well as transfer kenetic enrygy to nearby objects even if the projectile didnt stop you would hit somay more targets than you intended
now im gonna assume that these railguns are not going to do that
but that kind of weaponry would be awsome ne?
but also the air friction (even if the slug deteriorates) would cause sevear burns on any thing it passed near

damn laws of physics

I think the main debatable point of man portable railguns, I know there are a lot of things with that concept. Body armor and regular car type armor istn't really that strong, so how much do you really to accelerate the projectile to accomplish what you want, you don't need light speed to pop a hole in bob the security guard? You need more to shoot through a car but how much? I understand it takes a lot but the whole concept is silly in the first place, maybe a smaller version that can fit on the MPUV or Appaloosa, as opposed to a MBT. You don't need warp speed Mr. Sulu, impulse will do fine.

why use impulse when warp speed is so much more fun?
any way i was just pointing that out to make sure that people realize that there is a limit on how fast you can make the slug go based on a usability point of view

Here is a whacky idea. Make the rails 2 rings instead of 2 straight bars. That way you wouldnt have to worry about slowing it down. Useless, indeed, but it would be interresting to see how long it would take to see it stop. Hmm wait a sec, we already have that in certain electric motors. I think this would be a more feasable portable rail gun idea. Although it would make a better grenade launcher then it would a bullet gun.

I just have a quick question about the damage code of Railgun or other things in R3V.

What does the "N" mean ? Naval ? Do you calculate it like normal damage code ? (SN ---> MN with 2 succes on resist ?) Maybe "how it's work" is the best question at last

Thanks !

Damage resistance for naval weapons required 2 success per box of damage, so if you get hit a light navel weapon you have to get 15 successes to nock damage down to zero. Gets even more hideous when you get hit moderate naval damage weapons, you have to get 21 successes to nock damage down to zero. I also ruled that if you get hit by naval damage weapons, that you get no armor for your damage roll. But to make things easier I just say you are dead, even my retired uber character hero could not survive a hit from a rail gun.

Buzzed the main problem I see with a man portable coil rail gun, among all the other things in that concept, is wieght. To meet the volt/ampere requirements you will need a beefy coil, not only that you will need a bunch of them to line the "barrel" whinch will add way to much weight. And coils burn up, you need to laquere the col strands so the current does jump from point A to Z with out going through the coil. Well that laquere will not hold up to the extreme on/off process of a rail gun. It can be done but as a weapon I think a true railgun is the best beat.

I don't like to kill people. Can I get Gel rounds for my man-portable Rail Gun?

man protable railguns wouldnt be very heavy as long as you didnt want to maintain the same velocity acheived by ther vehicle mounted ones
instead just fast enough to say punch through body armor
then you have one hell of a sniper rifle
you could even mount a bipod on it for stability while aiming

Well, concerning the energy-supply for a man-portable railgun, remember, that there obviously exist batteries in SR small enough to give a pistol-sized Laser weapon-capability...

I would give a man-portable railgun stats similar to those of an assault-cannon (esp. concerning the range-table), perhaps with less damage but in turn automatically counting it as APDS-ammo.

Extremely high power, probably automatically armor-piercing, and damage code of M or something.
Put it in the right spot and they're dead. Put it in the wrong spot and they've got a neat little hole through their torso.

~J

Which means they die slowly -- patching meat through sec armor has got to be a royal pain.

-Siege

halve the power for purposes of knockdown.

In real life one of the main limits of weaponized electromagnetic launchers is rail abrasion caused by arcing (which pits the rails and significantly decreases efficiency). Probably not an issue in SR as they already have fairly beefy emags on vehicles

Hmm. IIRC I built the SR railguns at GURPS TL8 with TL9 energy banks. You could try doing something similar, but realize the emags are going to be ungodly expensive and probably quite heavy before they start to be competitive with conventional weapons.

Now I'm not an expert in the field, but is there a difference between rail weapons and gauss weapons? I can remember hearing that one of them was more efficient energy-wise.

Anyway: I could see a wooden-steak railgun being created, but I can also see the wooden components busting into flames and disintegrating before they reach the target.

And yes: 2 more net successes on the attack roll and you stage-up from LN to MN then SN and finally DN. A well placed LN shot with a good skill behind it could quite possibly destroy any vehicle with less than 6 bullwark.

Hmm. I must try to create a bike someday with a rear-facing light railgun on an internal hardpoint.
Nothing says "frag off" like a 6LN shot from the ass. If you were a particularly skilled driver you might even be able to do a front-wheelie to get an aircraft behind you.

Also: against most targets an AV assault cannon round would be more effective.

Ah, Ok. So steak cannons are possible.

How light can you make the conductive portion of the slug? I'm just wondering if you could make a combined metal and wooden slug so you don't have to slow-down the launch-block or worry about where it goes after leaving the barrel.

Mad rambling ahead:
What about using something other than solid contact to save wear & tear on the rails as mentioned in the first link you posted cray. Something like mercury, but less susceptible to evaporation.

Possibly, to cut down on energy lost from heat from the high current, you could build an high surface-area EFC battery around the barrel of the weapon? Or incorporate a transformer into the firing mechanism?

I dunno. This page looks good for all of your home-railgun weaponry needs.

Yes, very interesting. But really, Railguns will not come into weapon range in our life, so it is just a dream

More on topic - I think that performance of railgun could be much higher if railgun would be created as multi-level accelerating device. Of course, than the problem is synchronisation of device. But possibly much smaller energies should be used and less wear of weapon. Or just bigger initial speed of projectile could be achieved.
It would be interesting to see in video how those experimental railguns shoot. Just curious, but guess it is classified information *sigh*

Edited for a couple of typos

I was thinking the sabot would have a groove on either side for the rails to guide it, but inside the grooves have a spring loaded contactor to maintain the contact, where warping and arcing would be kept to a minimum. Sort of like how a mag lev guide wheels works.They use 3 wheels, one on top, bottom and between rails to guide it while it doesn't have the maglev engaged. The rail gun would have something like a teflon strip running the top and bottom of the rail for the sabot to slid on, and a spring loaded contactor on the interior of the track to maintain contact. With a spring loaded contactor, warping will be compensated for, and the amount of pressure applied by the spring shouldn't be enough to cause to much wear.

What is the amperes/volts these guns are using? I have seen 3000 amps and more go through 1/4 inch copper, and nothing happens, in fact in your normal power systems I deal with 3000 amps is the norm, 24 hours a day seven days a week. Sure it gets warm but no real warping.

Lilt, the reason for the sabot is make the projectile even dealier. When the projectile is fired it drops the weight of the sabot but keeps the momentum, so a light object gets more power. The sabots I have seen for the railguns are designed so when the the sabot exits the barrel it has a flap of sorts to make it split in half so it falls away from the core projectil fast. Sure it will be going pretty fast for a good distance, but nothing I can see worrying about. Except maybe if you have troops standing in front of the gun when it is fired. But they'll probably go deaf after the sonicboom of the railgun fires past them also. It will probably do a lot of things to them if they are to close to it when fired. The shock wave might push them over, mat even knock the wind out of them.

If you can find a way to make mercury stay in the railgun to take advantage of its properties, that may make things a little better, but what i the temperature that liquid Mercury turns to a vapor?

Syncronization is not really a problem, it is already being used in trains and roller coasters. It is just a computer chip to fire switches in a particular order. Getting the switches to close and open fast enough is more likely the problem. Trains and roller coasters are going 50 mph to 200 mph, a railgun is going from 3 mps upto (unconfirmed but read somewhere) 10 mps. If you ride the superman flight of steel roller coaster you will get the feel of being a railgun projectile, and yes seeing those railgun fire is awsome, I seen one shoot through 3 feet of armored steel, the gun exploded and melted as it fired, but really awsome non-the less.


@Tzeentch

Is this the thing you were referring to making?

Projectile Diameter: 8mm
Projectile Weight: .0272 kg
Projectile Velocity: ~5767 m/s
KE @ muzzle: ~450,000 Joules

These figures give us an SR damage code of 20D/AV

Before 3G3 will convert to LN a minimum KE of 4053 kJ would be required.

I think we decided that recoil could be handled internally, so there was no need to include the Max Gyro below.
So, to wrap this up:

The Thing
Conceal Ammo Mode Damage Weight
Man Portable Rail Gun - 15 SS 20D 18
Battery Pack - - - - 15

The Thing can only be fired once per combat round. Avoid firing near magnetic storage materials and pace-makers.

Just FYI - as bad as a stake railgun is, a steak railgun is even worse.

Ah, the carp puts in an appearance at last!

A Steak firing railgun would be great! If you were to freeze the steak then it may even still be rare when it arrives at the target (but it'd be nice and charred on the outside) so you'd have the best of both worlds. The high G forces could tenderize it too... Man I gotta build me one of those.

A few small issues to add into the discussion.

1. Shadowrun naval damage does not always mean and explosion or large blast radius or high velocity. The military uses high density slugs now, In 2060+ they'll still be using them. Do you know what happens if 75mm tungsten slugs goes though a building I'm in or though engine of my car? I can pretty much assume that nothing will happen to me.

2. The mass you'd be calculating for the recoil of a railgun needs to be looked at harder. The slug accelerates down the barrel. It doesn't go from 0-mach in no time. Anything large enough to mount a railgun is going to be heavy enough to absorb the recoil. As Cray said these weapons are energy hogs. That much energy is not easy to do if you have low weight restriction. So weight of the batteries, the control system, the weapon, the armor for the weapon, the armor for the vehicle, etc. Of that mass needs to be overcome by the force the of the slug being accelerated out of the barrel.

3. If you worried about recoil on an orbital platform, simple lengthen the barrel and load up on some mass packets to counteract the pushing force of the weapon. I don't the exact math but you have a 100kg crowbar shooting down at the planet at hyper speed, then you counter launch a 200kg mass packet in the opposite direction at the equivalent speed. Either that or you fire a counter thruster.

If it's still a metal, it ain't plasma. Plasma=free protons, neutrons, and electrons. If anything it's a mass of superheated Hydrogen with free neutrons and electrons floating around.

~J

In plasma, the neutrons are separated from the protons ... you sure?

Plasma acts like a metal, since a metal has that whole 'electron sea' thing. If you made (say) wood into plasma, it would then be able to conduct electricity, and maybe be convinced to carry a magnetic charge

Yes, I'm certain. Plasma is the state where everything is sufficiently energetic as to be unable to exist as atoms except insomuch as a single proton is a Hydrogen atom. You also wouldn't be able to have said mass contact anything else, as by its nature it'd fry it. You might be able to do it with a coilgun, but not a railgun; the contact would destroy the rails.

~J

I thought plasma was super heated gas? Just a question from an uninformed person. The little I now about it, showed that they superheated a gas and to move it from one spot to another they pushed it through a magnetic tube so the plasma wouldn't touch the container and burn through.

I think any type of matter can become a plasma. The matter just needs enough energy to break all of the bonds holding it together. I think it's a natural progression of eneergy states, from low(solid) to moderate (liquid) to high (gas) to very high (plasma). I'm no chemist, and not all substances can take all states, but I think that's vaguely how it works.