Disclaimer: this is not about hand held rotary assault cannons or light sabers this just a way to freshin up the weapons of 2060. A progression of weapons tech not a crazy wish list. We have been armed with our Ares Predators, Ares Alphas, and Franchi SPASs for five years now and I think we could be freshing things up a bit. Thus, The exciting new Ares Product Catalog.


Two new technologies Binary Liquid Propulsion (BLP) and The Ares Cylinder Selection System (CSS) has made it possible for Ares to offer a new product line that we are vary proud of.

Thanks to discoveries by Ares Space a new propulsion system uniquely suited to caseless firearms has been developed. Two stable liquids that when mixed in aerosol form instantly ignites in to a large volumes of gas at relatively low heat. The Binary Liquid Propulsion (BLP) Firearms system. This Propulsion system has been paired with the Ares Cylinder Selection System (CSS) to provide arms with unparalleled ammo capacity, flexibility and control.

Ok if you are still bearing with my thank you, if you gone strait to what kind of munchkin crack is he smoking thats fine too but continue to read just a bit more.

So what dose this new combination of technologies mean to you the man or woman in the field? How about an assault rifle that carries 12 round each of five different types of ammo and allows you to switch between them at will. Thats right just slam the cylindrical clip in to the butt of you new Ares Alpha Strike assault rifle and have all your needs covered.

Five tubes in this clip load with your choice of discarding sabot rounds in all your fumilure types. The Cylinder Selection System (CSS), a spinning cylinder like an old fashion revolver just in front of the clip picks up your choice of ammo and brings it up to the barrel for firing.

Just picture it. You respond to an apartment complex riot. You are fired upon from across the street. You respond with bursts of glazer rounds so not to penetrate the walls of the family homes they are standing in front of. Then you are rushed by an enraged troll and change to EX Explosive rounds for the extra stopping power. Next someone opens fire from behind a car. You shoot through the bulk of the vehicle shielding your attacker with APDS. Finally you are rushed by a teenager caring a bat. You just change up to Gel rounds, or even better an Narcojet dart round that your Ares Alpha Strike can safely fire because it automatically changes the amount of BLP it uses. The right round at all times, and 12 rounds more then our last model.

Starting to get the picture the gun is not more power full just more flexibility, and I think this represents a logical progression in Areas Arms.
I have a few other ideas, but I will save them for now .

The first impression I have of this it the multiple ammunition system will have too much additional weight and complexity to make it much more than a novelty item. If, for example, you could use a conventional magazine that could hold 72 'regular' bullets instead of the 60 multiple bullets, most organizations will go for that instead.

Too many fidly bits on your weapon will get you killed. Either when it stops working, you can't figure out which one you want, or you discover you lack some other bit of gear you could have afforded if you didn't buy/design all those fiddly bits.

Binary propellant may have some applications in larger weapons (especially artillery, where variable charges are used all the time), but a rifle sized weapon may not justify the extra cost.

When comming up with something new, you have to decide:

How much advantage does thig provide over the old system?

It this advantage worth the extra cost?


So, what conceptual advantage so the binary propellant system offer over 'conventional' caseless weapons?

Then, is the ammo selection system worth the extra cost, jam chances, and hassle?

[edit]
Throw up your toher ideas, this one isn't bad it just need some in game justification other than 'shiny new gun!'.
[/edit]

The hole BLP thing is mostly just fluff. A back story involving Ares Space. They are fairly vague on cassless ammo in SR so I thought I would add my little bit.

as to weight and little bits I don't think it any more complicated then a normal gun just complicated in other ways. The whole firing pin and bolt are replaced by fuel injectors. The action replace with five solenoids and a spiny bit. ^shrug^

as to ammo capacity. Bullet loaded end to end assault rifle bullet .5" long 12 per tube 5 tubes, center and 6th tube to hold BLP, and give space for breach. Give a 6" clip sounded like a good number.

as to why it just seemed as if fire arms hadn't really changed in since 2055. I thought that something new in this area would be nice, but wanted to avoid higher damage codes, cyber system, or faster ROFs.

I could only see LS or similar wanting a rifle like that.

Next to that, the propellent would be liked by snipers as it would mean that thermal would track them less easily.

Most military scientists will tell you, give a soldier too many steps and he'll choke on the choice. The obvious exception is special forces type units, such as SEAL or Rangers. But, the US military at this time is actually trying to simplify weapon choices and ammunition usage. They want one round type if possible for as many weapons as possible, so that in the field, it will become more likely that a soldier can find suitable replacement ammunition in the field. (sort of like why there is an assault rifle design that allows for NATO rounds and will accept AK-47 rds (the AK-97 is in the works))

why do i feel like screaming "blue planet ripoff"?

I can see a few practical problems with a concept like this.

1) A binary propellant that ignites without any form of primer other than its mixing together seems to me like an extremely unsafe product. If those reservoirs get smacked by an incoming round and mix, it's over with. Other than that, not having the ability to load and fire single rounds in a pinch doesn't seem like a very good idea to me.

2) Like Nikoli said, having too many choices is really not such a good thing for a device that is intended to be used during particularly stressful situations. Honestly, I think that militaries would scoff at the idea of on-the-fly ammunition selection in a small arm. Police lawyers won't trust it. Whenever the KISS principle is abandoned in the development of small arms, things tend to go badly. I also agree with Bob that it would be unnecessarily heavy and mechanically complicated.

For informational purposes, the kinds of bullets used in modern assault rifles have a diameter-to-length ratio from about 3.3 to 5. For example, a US M193 5.56x45mm FMJ bullet has a d-to-l ratio of 3.3. 0.224 x 3.3 = 0.7392. And that's about the shortest assault rifle bullet used today. The M855 5.56x45mm bullet is NATO-standardized and is therefore much more common. Its ratio is about 4.2. .224 x 4.2 = 0.9408. The latest 5.56mm load to see operational use is the Mk262 load, which uses a 77 grain Sierra Matchking bullet with a ratio of just a hair over 5. That's a 1.12" long bullet, about as long as a 5.56mm bullet gets. So, in order to utilize a bullet like that in a twelve-round stack, you're talking about a magazine that would have to be about 13.4" deep. Way too big.

In short, the idea is sci-fi fantastic, and that seems to be how a lot of people like to play this game. There's nothing wrong with that. If you like it, great. It can work perfectly fine in your game. But from a practical stand point, the concept seems superfluous and unnecessarily complicated to me. The BLP thing is just not my cup o' tea. I'd go with Metalstorm before I went with something like this.

The Raygun has spoken.

...Personally, I have to agree with him, though. If anything, two types of ammo at most should be all you go with. Both clip-fed so you can swap out clips of different types of ammo.

A similar weapon along the same lines you might want to take a look at would be...

[raygunplug]

http://matrix.dumpshock.com/raygun/firearm...n/neostead.html <---------This.

[/raygunplug]

I think that a new set of firearms would be great. Tust try A) not to break the game B) not to cripple the new stuff by trying to do A and C) Don't just make it Ares for gwad's sake.

Put some interesting stuff in too. Have corporate politics come into it, like have two weapons with identical stats and maybe a new feature. Both corps alleged that the other corp stole their design, but the courts have come-up blank trying to investigate which corp truly created the design. As-such the prices for the two weapons are significantly lower than they should be as the corps try to establish their weapon over their rival's. (and other scams, like the corps giving their weapons away to gangs for the same purpose)

Egon, if your players are happy, it doesn't matter if people bitch about munchkinism. I, for one, am glad to see someone who doesn't automatically shun anything that isn't completely in line with the almighty CANON. Kudos.

first off thanks for all the response.

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let see, first off I have never played Blue Planet in truth this idea was inspired by CyberPunk where cassless ammo fire arms have ammo capacities that seem to disrupt the was of space and time.

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I would like to make it clear that nether the barrel or clip moves. Think of it as a self loading revolver. So no ROF increase. the action would how ever be encased in a housing to keep dust and sand out.


Next item in the Ares New Product Catalog.
Jet Recoil using the same BLP as your firing action these three jets at the tip of your barrel to counter act the accuracy robbing effects of recoil.

each jet provides 2 points of recoil. For a total of 6 points of recoil comp. First I am quite aware of the risk of fire and burns, and that this system could in fact launch things at the face of the user, maybe the nice gun would not fire the jets when the jets are full of mud or not. How ever this system dose fit on the gun and allows the user to move unlike the gyro-mount.

so back to our Ares Alpha Strike our officer in the riot can make two burst a round with no recoil penalty.

How would this differ from gas vents and why would it offer double the compensation benefits?

Sounds like he is proposing burning extra propellant to get the recoil reduction. (a sort of JATO version of gas vents). And you though the early ASKUs were dangerous, this thing will do a lot more that set your eyebrows on fire!

You probably want to look into rate of fire harmonization instead. Say, reduce the max autofire to 6-8 rounds in exchange for some recoil compensation.

Here's my take on a BLP weapon that hopefully isn't to unbalancing.

It needs to be marginally better/comperable that the areas alpha.

Here's the PSB we'll use.

The BLP burns much cooler than regular caseless propellant while having a similar gas expansion speed, this means that it runs cooler that comperable caseless designs.

Use of 'foamed composites' (very hard soap bubbles) in the furniture of the rifle make it lighter that conventional dense polymer furniture.

Lastly, a microprocessor automatically adjusts the rate of fire to reduce felt recoil.

So we'll throw out.

ARES BLP
weight 3.2 KG with 1 loaded magazine. (around a 3/4 of a KG lighter than most other assault rifles)
Accepts all accessories.
SA/BF/FA
Integral SMII
48 round magazine
3 points recoil comp
Max autofire of 8 rnds.

Cost around 1500 (compared to 2K for the alpha, but then, it has a GL)
SI or 5 (mostly b/c it new)
BLP ammo availability is high too, with an SI in the 4-5 range.

If you are using rules for velocity controlled rounds, then you easily 'cold load' the BLP projectiles.

If you are using standard SR rules for 'silencers' and 'supressors' then let it use a 'silencer' even though such weapons normally could not.

A bit better that the alpha, but not going the unbalace the game.

It's lighter, it holds more bullets, and it has better recoil comp, but the max autofire of 8 rnds is sorta limiting.

That just once again proves that the Canon Companions firearm creation rules are wrong among the wrongest of wrong things. The canon guns are insane enough; no need to make it worse.

As for the BLP thing, I'd have to say that it's just a bad idea. Even aside from the obvious problem of stored munitions safety— [i]which is very significant and kills this right here/i]— the concept of loading a weapon with two reservoirs of ammunition and needing to maintain both at acceptable levels is simply absurd. This will not work for anything short of a joke of an action movie.

As for the ammunition selector, it's just a mechanical nightmare for any soldier in the field, not to mention that it is eminently impractical and infeasible.

Hmm, here's some outlandish notions to play with off the top of my head, note that I have no idea if what I'm writing is realistic or not.

Spell Shell:
Tired of that watcher spirit constantly picking on you? Annoyed by an astral mage who watches you in bed with your wife? You need Spell Shell. Each shell has been treated with special enchantments and a variant of the hermetic circle, causing it to be dual natured. The bullets are just as good on spirits as normal bullets are on metahumans.

Game effects: As dual-natured Bullets, spell shell may be damaged passing through wards or other astral barriers just as dual natured beings and active foci are. Spell shell inflicts it's normal damage on any astral form ignoring immunity to normal weapons, unless the firer is also dual-natured all shots at astral forms suffer blind fire modifiers. On physical beings it acts like a normal bullet. Dual natured beings struck by Spell Shell must make two damage resistance tests, one for their physical body by the physical bullet and one for their aura damaged by the astral bullet.

Frosty the Snowshot:
Designed much like Mercury rounds, each Snowshot is filled with a minute quantity of heavily compressed liquid nitrogen. On impact the outer shell shatters, splattering the target with LN. This intensly cold shower can shatter the strongest steel like glass!

Game Effects: Add 4 to the firearm's power, decreased by half by impact armor. The weapon then has secondary effects, the extreme cold will cause metal objects to shatter and destroy any object filled with water.

Ares Godslayer Ammo:
Created only in space, nothing on Earth can match the Awe-inspiring power of Godslayer Ammo. Each bullet is carefully crafted from powerful annular rare-earth magnets to create a pocket of anti-matter contained in the head of a single Spell Shell. On impact the forward magnets shatter, propelling a stream of raw anti-matter into the target. Supplies are extremely limited so reserve your's today!

Game Effects: Godslayer Ammo converts any firearm damage code to Naval damage. On impact the Anti-matter annihilates itself along with part of it's target, automatically reduce either the armor, barrier rating, or Body of anything struck by Godslayer Ammo by half the power of the weapon, rounded down. (Vehicles will a hull Rating reduce Bulwark by 1/4 power) If body, armor, or Barrier rating is reduced to 0, it is utterly vaporized instantly. If any body or barrier remains, the target may make a test to resist the naval damage power of the weapon with whatever it has left. Because it destroys whatever is on the surface first, Godslayer Ammo will take out dermal plating or sheaths before it affects natural body.

I agree that selectable ammunition is a mechanical nightmare. I thought about it for a long time because I thought that selectable ammo would be a lot of fun in a game and have a good side effect of actually lowering the body count a bit. All of this with out really giving the gun more power or game upsetting options.

Really a butt loaded multi-tubed clip, yes ha ha, that loads in to a revolver type action is the simplest if not only way to pull it off. At least that I could see. The odd side effect being you end up with a lot of selection. On the down side end to end shells take up a lot of space, and that is where the whole BLP deal came from. As far as feasibility look at the ThunderBolt, they let that fly.

As far as BLP's safety. well lets just say it needs a spark plug to trigger the reaction. It is all fictional any way.

Jet Recoil was just something silly I admit. The gun was caring jet fuel how else could it use it.....

I like the spell shell. In fact, I like it very much, and it absolutely should be canon. Should come with the caveat that they're extremely expensive, however.

The nitrogen filled shells are just silly, however. That small an amount of uncompressable nitrogen (it is a liquid, which would make it largely uncompressable, so drop the bit about supercompression; you won't be doing that in the space of a bullet, and almost certainly not without turning it into solid nitrogen) isn't going to come close to what you have in mind. Ever played with the stuff? I've dumped buckets of the stuff outside of my former high school and the ground doesn't shatter. In fact, it doesn't even stay frozen for very long. And dumping on a table won't freeze it, either. These simply aren't going to work as described.

As for the godslayers, you must be out of your god(damn)slaying mind. Hell, there's no need to throw the antimatter into the target, anyway; contact with the bullet mass should be enough to cause a catastrophic detonation. There really is no point to these; enough antimatter to do more than a simple explosive round would prove a massive liability, and everything these could do, conventional munition would do cheaper, more effectively, more precisely, and more professionally. And cost a hell of a lot less money and suspension of disbelief.

Anyway, as far as the Thunderbolt is concerned, it's silly, yes, but it's not absolutely outlandish. Raygun's implementation of the thing with Metalstorm isn't completely out of the question (though it's quite impractical), and, perhaps more likely, a more-advanced-but-essentially-same-in-concept version could be made on the same principles as the G11 project, which is how I've always envisioned it. Could it use cased ammunition as canon would have you believe? God no. But it's not like canon's ever been terribly good at being sane.

In regards to BLP requiring electrical ignition, still too complex and unsafe for use, and there remains the issue of dual ammunition reservoirs. I don't mind the idea of a binary component explosive— in fact, I do like it— but not for firing bullets. As an alternative to C4/C12, I think it could have its uses as a less stable but more potent tool.

Zazen: no, unless you count the double tubular magazine loaded neostead, which functions somewhat similarly, loading both tubes over the top and switching between the two at the flick of a switch. Incidentally, it proved largely useles in combat, requiring extremely long and awkward reloads between magazines; the flexibility of switching ammunition types never really proved to be much use, and unless the weapon you're using is firing from an open bolt, such a setup will only switch the next round to be loaded, not the currently chambered round. In eseence, were it to exist as decribed, it would be everything I said it was.

Don't forget new armors and stuff. If you're going to be throwing weapons that fire 15 heavy pistol rounds on full auto with no recoil then you'll probably also want to up the power of the armors.

The other way to do it would to be to leave everything the same, except for changing some names (now the Ares Beta is the drek ), a bit like how the rules for SOTA gear work.

Wow. Judge Dredd pistols, here we come. That VLE video clip was interesting to watch. "Stun" says the pistol. "Lethal" says the pistol. "Big Fraggin Grenade" says the pistol. Ok maybe not the last one, but that'd be pretty intimidating too.

I wasn't disagreeing that it's mechanically feesible. Just my feeling that, personally, I don't find a Metalstorm pistol to be terrible combat viable. But, of course, with no combat experience, myself, and no personal experience with Metalstorm, I'm not exactly qualified to make any damning judgements. I'm more than willing to keep an open mind about it.

As for the G11 thing, I think my wording was rather off. I just find the concept of a pistol limited to 3 round burst fire with an extremely high rate of fire and caseless ammunition to be potentially more practical or likely than a Metalstorm pistol, given 60 years for technology to catch up. Again, quite arguable. The G11 metaphor really wasn't that great, as I didn't intend to drag along all the problems of that project.

And I pretty much agree with everything else you said, so there.

Yeah, I wasn't really paying attention to the 1,500 rps thing. I'd really imagined the Thunderbolt as something in the low 2000 rpm range, and that was about it. Also, no real disagreement from me that Metalstorm'd be less expensive than something along the lines of a G11.

Mainly, my preference for something somewhat mechanically similar to the G11 lies in the more conventional ammunition storage, as Metalstorm's inability to be reloaded mid magazine (or, for that matter, complete lack of a magazine in any traditional sense at all) strikes me as not a good idea for a small arm, much less a sidearm with a small capacity. Then again, with its intended use being for police work, It could not be nearly as big a deal, though this doesn't quite add up, as I have trouble seeing any sane police force adopting a weapon that kills anything it touches.

I think there's room to go either way, really, though I think you're winning me over on using Metalstorm in a(n already impractical) small arm concept.

I've never seen someone actually pull of the movie trick of shattering metal. I've seen small amounts of metal snapped in half after a long soak, but for the most part, it takes far too long to be effective at that level. It wouldn't work, even on the level of a minigrenade. That said, there is potential for substances other than liquid nitrogen to have somewhat similar effects, but I'm not familiar with any.

As for the Godslayer ammo:
Heh.

I was serious, though. At the level of a munition that will explode as an explosive round would, explosive rounds are naturally better. If they explode enough to destroy a room, conventional explosives are more professional, far cheaper, and in most cases, a better method of cleaning house. If they'll wipe out a carrier group in one shot, you've got something no sane person would ever use, not to mention a whole new cold war.

I have never understood how the metal storm system keeps from fouling the shells behind the one being fired. Dose anyone know a good article on haw the system actually work the only one I have read is an older on in popular science.

Those freezing bullets would be pretty nasty if they got a chance to spool around inside some nice soft tissue.

Not much more nasty than any light frangible round, unless the endothermic compound did the trick, which liquid nitrogen wouldn't. Zazen might be onto something with freon, though. I'm just not sure it's be possible to contain freon in liquid form in a round in any decent quantity, considering the pressures involved. It's also worth noting that what would essentially happen in soft tissue is the round tearing through like any frangible round, albeit less effectively, and then the disrupted tissue freezing, or at least getting quite cold. Nasty, unpleasant, and malicious, but not combat effective. What you probably want is a way to freeze tissue and then impact it, which is not really possible with a single bullet, and not very practical at any rate.

I mean, you could always put together a freon filled 40mm popup grenade, but at that point, wouldn't it be more ffective to just fire a standard fragmentation grenade?

Real or not, feasible or not, Id have to say no.

In any game system, but particularly this one, any advance in weapons and specifically firearms ... *any* ... will only result it all the characters buying it.

SRs typically rely on firearms as the primary method of keeping their character alive when push comes to shove. Simply put, SRs with the best weapons have a better chance to not die, and ultimatly live to continue playing.

If you build a better tool, everyone will work to obtain it.

The SR firearms as written already create several situations where everyone winds up with the same thing because it simply is the best out there, and I dont think advancing the SOTA in that area would benefit the gameplay at all.

It does seem a little complicated-
"If you load a mud foot down with a lot of gadgets that he has to watch,
somebody a lot more simply equipped - say with a stone ax - will sneak up and
bash his head in while he is trying to read a vernier." --Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers
That's my POV.

If this has already been addressed I apologize, but how do you reload a weapon like the Metalstorm? There is a strong possibility that I am just too ignorant to grasp a very simple and obvious concept, but I just keep envisioning some poor sap spraying 50,000 thousand rounds in one second, and then spending 15 minutes repacking the barrel one round at a time with one of those revolutionary war style rods. The only other alternative that I can see is to lug around eight spare barrels. Thank you in advance.

Metalstorm FAQ. Question 3.

Ah ha, thank you