Weapon mounts can hold 250 shot of ammo for mounted belt fed weapons.

So, my question is - what about power points, for say, energy weapons like lasers and pain inducers?
Would you allow a weapon mount to contain a battery with 250 power points?

wouldn't stuff like that more or less get the power from the same parts that grant power to light and other electronics in vehicles?
aside from that, how does one measure such points? how big is an energy cell with 20 of such points? why should one not be able
to simply install one or two additional car batteries in there to take care of that problem? 250shots of ammo will probably take up
more space than one or two car batteries would . . at least for bigger weapons like HMG's and Minigungs and the such . .

I would say so, just add the extra pp to the weapon's capacity and consider the total the new capacity to avoid useless questions about what battery you're recharging.

In Arsenal the Ares Firelance description at p.123 state that a single consumes 10 pp and a vehicle can recharge it (if it isn't recharging anything else) a the rate of one pp every six seconds (1 shot/minut), the weapon has an energy capacity(table p.124) of 100 pp (10 shots) and has a rate of fire of SS, which means that if you fire it once per turn (3 seconds) you are going to run out of energy in 30 seconds (Ok in that time the vehicle might have recharged half shot); extra 250 pp means extra 25 shots (not 250, that IS too much) for a total of 35 shots, not bad (+250%).
For the dimension of the battery it can depend on the capacity and the ammount of power relised for unit of time (hard to tell it's completely fictional), probably the extra batteries are Ammo Bins modifications (Arsenal p.131) that add other 250 pp.
Than if the GM allowes it the firelance can be modified as per firearms modifications rules with additional clip (considering the batteries an internal magazine) 3 times (firearms have 6 modification slots and additional clip takes 2 slots) granting an energy capacity of 400 pp without the weapon Mount and Ammo Bins.

A power backpack holds 80 pp, so I'd say you could fit 100 pp into an installed power pack of comparable size.

Multiple batteries means redundancy. If you take a good shot in one battery you don't lose all your ammo. If you want redundancy, I'd make you keep track of it separately. But hey, that's just me.

I think it is telling that a backpack holds 80pp, while a backpack full of belt ammunition(assuming it is packed well) could hold over 250 bullets, hell some machine gunners have been known to carry up to 1,000 rounds with them(though that would be quite exhausting), while you could only realistically carry two backpack sized batteries, and even then that would get pretty tough.

Basically, considering the size of the batteries, I would say a vehicle weapon mount could only hold 100 pp without mods.

which is kinda dumb, if you think about it . . shadowrun as ship based fusion power plants for example . . there's grid-link . . cyberware runs on the biological energy of the host body alone . . RFID Tags get their energy through induction from the earths magnetic field . . Lasers can be built into human eyes and still, the batteries for the damn thing weight as much as a dwarf . .

Shooting the battery would require a called shot, called shot that could be used to take out the gun (which probably is more exposed than the battery as well).

That's a good point. I was thinking about it in RL terms instead of game terms, I guess, because I was thinking of random internal damage in addition to structural hits. I intend to run my games that way, meaning, that a certain amount of damage to your vehicle results in having a few of your vehicle systems destroyed/shut down as well. Given the added detail of the way things are in my head; I keep wondering if I wouldn't have been better off with 3rd edition. Oh well, to late now.

As technicaly-minded as anyone that knows what his speaking of, Tachi.
People could almost think you're a military weapon technician!

250 rounds just isn't enough. When you have weapons like miniguns that will tear through 50 rounds per second, you can see where this ammo capacity is a bit on the small side. Even a standard GPMG only gets 15-25 seconds of fire before it runs dry with this capacity.

http://www.patriotsherald.com/content/blackhawk.php

This link describes Blackhawks reloading six times each and blowing off an average of 70-80 thousand rounds of ammunition through the night each and a 30 second firing spree tearing through 1600 rounds.

A bit more than 250 per gun? I think so...

The majority of Army ground-vehicles utilize the same general setup when it comes to slapping a fully-automatic firearm onto their roof. There is a large, rotating ring (powered or hand-cranked) with what is known as a "stovepipe" affixed to it. To mount a weapon, you drop the appropriate mount into the stovepipe, and then affix the weapon to the mount. In addition, you attach an ammunition carrier to the mount and then place a can of ammunition into the carrier.

The cans of ammunition themselves are not overflowing cornucopias, and this usually is only made apparent during firefights of any sort. Regardless, when the gun spits that last casing out, all you need to do is kick out the expended can of ammunition (or use it for a lunchbox for that military-chic look!) and grab a new one from your (the gunner's) feet.

Essentially what I'm getting at is for an energy-based weapon system you could, in theory, store all the appropriate power cells and perhaps some sort of charging assembly in the portion of the vehicle typically relegated to ammunition storage. As for keeping the the battery on the weapon itself (say in a light vehicle lacking such accommodations for ammunition storage) you would probably be restricted to one or two power cells. I am assuming at this point that these power cells are approximately backpack sized.

For comparison, a large can of automatic grenade launcher ammunition (approximately fifty rounds) can (if you really needed to) fit inside of a rucksack (though I will hate you for this decision). About eight spare cans of AGL ammunition is what will fit in a HMMWV stowage area for immediate access.



In summation, you have plenty of room for a shitton of batteries between the passenger compartment, turret mounted, and the trunk. All you have to do is run some cabling.

I think you underestimate how much energy it takes to power a laser that can fry through a vehicles armor and kill the occupants inside. Comparing an eye welding laser to a laser cannon is like comparing an airsoft gun to a barett light 50.

Actually, it takes a lot less energy than you think. The problem lies in the fact that gunpowder is a more efficient energy source per gram than capacitors and/or batteries. Also remember that a laser doesn't have the same ammunition mass/diameter ratios to worry about as a firearm, that you can get pretty good penetration with very thin beams, you never have to worry about leading your target, and that the steam explosion at the impact area still ensures a pretty good terminal effect (and quite difficult wound treatment) to a living target despite it's small beam diameter.

I'm a gunsmith (still in training), but, the only experience I have with military hardware comes from when a friend of mine (who has no family) took me to a "bring your family" day at Fort Carson. I got to play with: M16A4, M203 , Mk 19 AGL, and a M2 .50 HMG, but they only let us watch them fire an AT4, I really wanted to try that one. I must say, however, that being near an AT4 while firing is better than 5 pots of coffee when it comes to waking you up in the morning.



You mean the spaul (SP?) from molten metal?

I do remeber that thread in which I've asked you about clip and magazines, at the time I though you were being trained by the army.
Anyway I was just pointing out that you have a certain degree of competence in the field.
And oh yeah, a rocket launcher for breakfast is realy going to wake you up.

I guess I should rewrite my profile to specify that I'm a civilian gunsmith. Quite a few Europeans keep assuming I'm in the military.

They're even worse pointed at you.

Tachi, how much trigger time did you get on the mark? One of my preferred "fuck it, shoot everything" weapons.

I was just outside the backblast.

Unfortunately, I only got like 10 rounds. They were gone REAL FAST.