Here's a toy I've been playing around with, theory-craft wise.



at sixty five grand this is an expensive asset for a group to own, but if something looks like it'll go wrong then i doubt you'll regret buying it.

The basics: it's an obsolete drone that's been retrofitted with a rigger adaption and some stealth toys. its role is to kill hostile tanks that pay an unexpected visit or to clear the skys of enemy heavy assets. It's relatively fast and has an excellent range, but crap maneuverability and armour means that in a dogfight this thing is dead.

tactics: this thing orbits the site at extreme range on autopilot and uses cloud cover to hide from enemy eyes and sensors. If everything goes well then it leaves when you do, and no-one ever knows that it was even there. If something goes wrong, your rigger jumps in and fires the appropriate missiles at extreme range (a healthy 6 km for air-to-air), then sends the drone home.

weaknesses:
1) Matrix. seriously, with a firewall limit of 2 you're in trouble if anyone with even basic hacking skills spots this and tries to take it over. program limits mean that if your rigger goes down then you'll be in a lot of trouble, as its on-board dicepools are not very impressive at all and even with rating six missiles there's a decent chance of missing.
2) Defenses. This toy is the ultimate glass cannon, and if your enemy hits it then there's good odds that it just died. It's not maneuverable enough to dogfight, and any modern air-superiority drone is going to be faster, better armoured and more agile. It provides air superiority by providing hard-hitting and accurate missile fire at several times the maximum range of most other weapons (well, accurate in the hands of a rigger at least), but if something gets close enough to shoot back then your options are to run or to run.


the reason i picked the Reaper drone instead of a more modern design is that it comes with four weapon mounts as standard, along with a second fuel tank and a satellite uplink to give it fantastic operational range. its top speed isn't too bad either, so you can generally rely on being able to call it up from almost anywhere in your base city and have it arrive in time to save the day.

So... what do you all think? Vehicles aren't really my gig, so if someone can give me some ideas on whether it's a workable design or not i'd really appreciate it.

A Renraku Stormcloud with an Internal, Fixed, Remote weapon mount sporting a grenade launcher (an MGL-12 works, though if you can get the Gonryu monstrousity from War!, all the better) .... pointed straight down. THAT, my friend, is "unobtrusive-until-used" air support.

...

By the way: Firewall is not limited by System. It's an attribute, not a program.

stormcloud with an Aztechnology series 5 iron bomb. a cheap one-shot weapon that can float around until needed. total cost of 2600 for the drone, 3000 for the internal remote fixed weapon mount, 400 for the bomb. then the drone just floats away...

if you absolutely must kill everything within the area, and intend to do it with the flare of death from above, then an Aztechnology Liebre with a Fleche hail barrage rocket launcher is the final word in missile deployment. the total package costs 40,400 including external smartlink and airburst link (vital), plus another 1000 for a full load of frag rockets. fire 20 frag missiles at any infantry target and it will go away, even if the dice penalties mean that every shot after the first 2-3 is pretty much simply rolling scatter. Depending on your budget you can use anything from explosive rockets to SS-N-49 SIROCCO anti-ship missiles (1000 per barrage to 8,000,000 for the volley... though if you can afford 20 SS-N-49s then you can probably afford a more modern drone to strap them to ) for dealing with vehicles, again relying on sheer number of shots over anything resembling accuracy. Personally, I'd load up the launcher to deal with infantry and stick a sniper rifle loaded with AV rounds on the secondary mount to deal with most vehicles.

EDIT: If someone could confirm you can load up the Fleche Hail with iron bombs i'd appreciate it. Who needs accuracy when you can carpet bomb the area ?
EDIT EDIT: Load the Fleche with Mitsubichi-GM Outlaws on block 1. your target will be gone unless it has hardened armour 18+, as will everything within 20-30m (20 16P/-2 hits is enough that even the soak troll will notice it). sure 40,000 is a bit pricey for a single shot, but the effect will usually be worth it! 5km range isn't something to sneeze at either.

Wouldn't it be pretty simple to remove the Reaper's electronic guts and install a commlink to pilot it? Sure, you'd have to spend the time to manually program the pilot autosoft for such an antiquated drone, but as you said; without its pathetic system limitations, it's a superior chassis and remains so in 2070, capable of carrying a world of hurt.


They just don't make 'em like they used to.

has anyone fitted out the Aztechnology Liebre for dog-fighting, and if so can you recommend a loadout please? it seems fairly well suited for it due to its heavy weapon load out, insane speed and acceleration (60/240, 1620. That's better than the Saeder-Krupp Blitz, which is a modern drone that uses speed as its main selling point!), and it has a good pilot and body standard (though obsolescent means that it's pilot is a bit out of date ).

Maxim 5: Close air support and friendly fire should be easier to tell apart.

I'm pretty concerned about non-VTOL drones in urban combat. My rigger would have a hard time getting one of those enough space to even get airborne in the beginning.
Aside from that, air support in emergency cases is very much appreciated.

I always thought they were the same thing

Problem here. I see what you're trying to do. But you've completely ignored the payload restrictions.

Rocket/missile launchers use reinforced weapon mounts. The drone only has regular weapon mounts. (LMG or under)

Even if the GM allows you to upgrade a weapon mount, the body score is only high enough to increase the size of 1 mount from normal to reinforced. (though you could slot a multi-round missile launcher on it then instead of those single shots you're trying to use).


By those lights... more likely you put in a single rocket/missile launcher... expand the magazine, then dual feed it (think that gets it up to 10 or 12 missiles IIRC) stuff it on the heavy hard point. Stuff a LMG on a normal weapon mount, again dual feed it (you have a 200rd belted ammo feed with each weapon mount... might as well grab ammo from 2 bins if allowed). Then say toss two dumb iron bombs on the last 2 mounts. (since they don't really have a launcher, not sure how well that works... but just running with it).

I don't really think missiles are a great way to go through for this. They're big, expensive.

Mod-wise you'd be better off going for say VTOL capability or the like. Or better yet using an actual modern drone.


Sensor wise, the UWB radar is questionable on an airborne platform due to range. (signal rating 4 on the radar is only 1km IIRC. You really should go for a vehicular radar 6.) Most sites worthy of the name are going to be using signal masking paint or some other kind of shielding so you're not going to be looking through many walls with the UWB from the air.


Quite frankly... for the cost you're paying. I'd rather buy the ares air supply and upgrade that to combatant status. (it's only obsolescent, not obsolete, and starting as a military drone means it only goes from DR5 -> DR4 accordingly... much better starting point).

Yeah, missiles just aren't very good in Shadowrun. If you want air support, an autocannon is much better.

Falconer, by the RAW you're right. However, I think this point needs to be utterly ignored in light of the fact that the MQ-9 Reaper actually carries four or more god-damn missiles.

It's kind of hard to argue with a photograph, and that there is the real McCoy, launching with six missiles ready to go.


Perhaps the original stats should have had those hardpoints pre-listed as reinforced. The thing about the Reaper is that, if you're thinking Shadowrun, if you're thinking 'drone,' and if you're only thinking of airborne images, you're probably thinking of the Predator, and thinking it's tiny. It's not. The beast is rather large, and it needs to spend precisely 0% of its weight lifting a bulky organic control system, or the even-bulkier organic support systems that keep said organic system alive and let it interface with the vehicle.

In short, it's a 'drone' the size of a plane, and with the carrying capacity of such. It's relative fragility might matter if you wanted to mount an autocannon or something, but it can easily lift missiles.

Indeed... Common Sense Applies here. Change the integral Mounts to Reinforced and be done with it. *shrug*
Same with the Predator.

Quick and dirty and effective, just don't be surprised if your enterprising players wind up quad-mounting Thunderstruck railguns or something.


Less quick and dirty, but more rules-intense, would be coming up with a specific "missile" hardpoint that does away with the inherently retarded assumption that you're taking the same complete weapons system you would use by yourself and mounting it on a drone, and lets you stick missiles (and only missiles/rockets/drop weapons) on the hardpoint.

The simple solution works, though.

Or put on a multiple drone launch rack and fill it with Ares Heimdall drones. They're much cheaper than missiles and since they aren't fired missiles, the whole scatter mechanic. That makes missiles nearly worthless is out of the picture.

This, in a thousand shades of awesome. ^^^

True...

Wasn't this one of the things that made it to German releases?

Edit: Also, Used Car Lot actually has rules for upgrading Obselete off of vehicles, at a suggested base price of 25% of total price. 5 grand for a Jump-innable Reaper is really tempting.

Way to miss the forest for the trees.

He's not carrying 4 individual rockets on external launch hardpoints... he's carrying 4 LAUNCHERS each with their own ammo bay. The two at the top listed 6 missiles each! (think of the AH-64 apache with it's 4 packs of hellfires...)

So No I am most definitely not missing the spirit of things here. And the reaper only has 4 hardpoints for a max of 4 hellfires. Not 4 or more. And no it is not the size of a plane in the fighter sense of the word. Global hawk maybe, but reaper isn't all that big as a drone.


The way I described following the rules, the sucker still is carrying 10 or 12 rockets. (didn't check the extended mag to see if rockets were only a 25% or a 50% increase). A LMG. AND two bombs.


Also there ARE wing mounted launch weapons in the books for mounting directly to hard points. Page 125 arsenal launch weapons. Look at the Mitsubishi-GM outloaw series. As well as the AIM-27 sparrowhawk. Use those on the normal unreinforced mounts.

Okay, yeah, I think that would handily exceed the Reaper's lift capacity without fucking with the engine. That would be like carrying those tree-type hardpoints with stacked missiles. That doesn't fly. I read it as having mounted one missile on each hardpoint.



That also sounds like it would exceed the thing's lift capacity...





Did you look at the image I linked? It's carrying six missiles. I imagine those two inner hardpoints are for big, nasty tank-killers and the outer ones are for killing things less nasty than tanks, but I also expect that, depending on mission requirements, it shouldn't be hard to swap those inner hardpoints for the same dual missile mounts as the outer ones.

The two inner hardpoints appear to be 250lb or 500lb JDAMs, not missiles. The outer rails are pairs of Hellfires. Neither are being used to anti-armor work. The heaviest thing they might hit is a house or possible an old Land Rover.

The also cost a mere $36.8 million per, plus the ground station and support techs.

What is your profit margin on this run?

First of all, the real one has SEVEN hardpoints (one of them internal). One real-world, actually-used payload configuration is, wait for it ... fourteen AGM Hellfire air-to-ground missiles.

And gee, the OP's version? Fourteen air-to-ground missiles.

Funny how that works out.






It can lift 3,000 pounds, plus itself. Hellfire AGMs weigh between 100 and 160 pounds (dpending on specific model). Think about it.





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomi...#Specifications

Um... those sixes? Those are the sensor rating and not the number of missiles. I think it's a quirk of herolabs readout.
The plan was always to merely carry 4 missiles on hardpoints. 2 air to air and 2 anti tank.
Sorry for the confusion

Another quirky herolab output for your perusal. please note that the MLRS is loaded with 8 rating 6 missiles, 2 of each type, and is mounted in a reinforced weapon mount.


It's a fairly slow-moving strike-craft that's been converted to a lighter than air craft and outfitted with an extremely expensive gun. i was going to use a far superior chassis as the base, but for some reason a blimp travelling more than 800 m per round seemed wrong to me somehow.

And now, something below availability 12 for those starting riggers out there:

IIRC they already have that. Arsenal, page 124. under launch weapons.

Here is what you originally pointed us towards...



Not seeing anything about Weapon Mount Type here, Do you?

It actually says nothing in that section under Launch Weapons, nor on the referenced pages for Weapon Mounts. It is something that they forgot to include. If you are referring to the text that says that they can be installed into Fixed Weapon Mounts (only reinforced mounts make any sense here) or Heavy Turret (Under the Main Guns Heading), it is still not clear whether you need a Standard or Reinforced Weapon mount that is fixed for Launch Weapons. I interpret that as needing a Reinforced Mount for each hardpoint for Rockets/Missiles/Bombs. Your mileage may vary. It is possible that the Standard Fixed mount would work, but it does not say that. If you can point me in the right direction, please provide the quote, and where you found it.

... how dare you be right.

Well, today, we've learned three things.

1: We desperately need a Rigger 4.
2: Playing games by a game company that seems to be taking an ethical stance against admitting it can make any errors whatsoever, and hence, refuses to publish any erratta whatsoever, has its downsides.
3: None of the Megacorps are worth a good goddamn, given that a 70-year-old drone UAV has clearly vastly superior payload capacity to any of their modern drone offerings, to the point that when you list its actual payload capacity, players familiar with the game immediately call bullshit.

You're surprised? The megacorps care about nothing except the bottom line, which they can improve by selling cheap drones with good PR to a large market. Modern contractors have a comparatively small market (the military. i'm fairly certain it's illegal to sell combat UAVs to anyone else, though i haven't done any research into it) who demand as much bang for their buck as they can get and have (hopefully) learned their lesson about buying from the lowest bidder (Everyone remember the original M16?). As a result, older drones tend to have to, you know, actually do their job efficiently. New drones can be shoddy and second rate if the PR people can sell it as the next big thing.

EG: Aztechnology Liebre (obsolescent surveillance/pursuit drone from 'this old drone') vrs Saeder-Krupp Blitz (cutting edge interceptor drone from 'Milspec Tech')
Handling: -1 to +2
acceleration: 60/240 to 40/200
max speed: 1,620 to 1,200
Pilot: 4 to 2
STD upgrades: Obsolescent, Reinforced Weapon Mount, Weapon Mount. to 3 Weapon mounts, ECM 2, ECCM 4
Armour: 4 to 9
Sensor: 4/3 (obsolescent) to 4
Cost: 19,500 to 100,000

The Blitz is better in several areas (Handling, Armour and Electronic warfare has it as the clear winners) but lacks the sheer speed and punch of the older Liebre (Reinforced weapon mount means it can pack some serious firepower). What good is a cutting edge Interceptor if a ten-year-old design at a 5th of the price can outrun it by almost 30%?

The difference is marketing. Smart runners will pick up the old-school models being discarded by the "cutting edge" groups for a discount, then upgrade them to kick ass . Keeping up with the corps is for the gullible.

The Old School is often the Best School...
I love me some old drones/vehicles.

As soon as Rigger 4 gets published it's curtains for the game. Not that it wouldn't be a mercy killing, but you do understand that, right?

Umm, it's not the "megacorps". It's that the people who get hired to write this "stuff" have not the foggiest idea about whatever it is that the are being paid to write about. Like the seaport docks of Bogota, which unknown to CGL is located at 8600 feet elevation and 250 miles or so from the ocean. It's amazing that someone can write thousands of words on a city without EVER LOOKING AT A MAP!!! And of course none of the "editors" and "proofreaders" did either. That level of expertise and commitment is present throughout all the CGL SR products.

Why? Is the publishing of a Rigger (#) book the death knell of an edition?



Wow. That's... Wow. Really? None of them have Google Earth?

Pretty much that is the pattern. Though I'll admit with SR3 it was the revised version that had less of the horrible layout errors and typos of Rigger 3 and added postage stamp sized pictures.

TJ: I disagree... I think a normal weapon mount suffices for the airborne launch weapons. All that needs done is for the drone to drop the thing, then it fires up it's motor and goes. A single missile from arsenal is about the same size/weight as a LMG + ammo. The dumb-iron bomb is only about 25kg or so in my appraisal, it's dinky for a flechette type bomb! (if one frag grenade uses X amount of rating Y explosive, square root of 4 of them would double the yield to equivalent blast roughly speaking). The self-contained launch missiles have a higher base cost than the ammo missiles as well (4000 base vs 2000 base).


Look at the combat choppers on page 136-7 of the same book... the fighter on 150. All of them are only using normal weapon mounts on the wings where you'd hang air-launched ordinance like missiles... on 137 the underbarrel flexible is clearly marked as reinforced and all the rest left normal. I sincerely don't see them strapping 4 LMG's together on those mounts.

A ground based system would need a special rail to get the same thing going since it can't just drop the missile then let it get it's motor running. And by that point of getting to War which the OP does. You might as well use an actual launcher loaded with stock anti-tank rocket.



The OP is still clearly using launchers which need heavy mounts though. Notice all those smartlinks, airburst, improved rangefinders. Those aren't missile options. He's putting missile launchers on the wings with a ton of upgrades, then loading missiles into the points. So to me it looks like he's still using single shot missile launchers with all the bells and whistles installed rather than putting air-launched ordinance directly on. (if he were using air-launched ordinance then the weapon mount is adequate... using a launcher with it's attendent benefits moves it up to a reinforced mount requirement).

Good to see I had the quantity wrong. I thought he was packing 24 missiles in 4 launchers initially and in error.


But the point still remains... that by the rules. You can simply upgrade one of the mounts to reinforced. Then buy an actual launcher like the Yakusoka MRL. It starts with a SA rate of fire. 8 missiles to start (2 of each of 4). With a quick mod that goes up to 10 (extended mag), With another... it goes up to 20 (additional feed/dual feed). That's 20 missiles 4 each of up to 5 different types is how I'd handle that. Install your smartgun (external/internal makes no difference), airburst, and whatever bells/whistles needed. And that's without touching the other 3 mounts.

Or, as my read-through of SRM 04-00 "Back in Business" discovered .... a writer who thinks they can stick a cavern with a 100m ceiling (yes, one hundred meters ...!) directly under Seattle AND HAVE THE CAVERN BE AT SEA LEVEL[ (Pirates Cove, supposedly part of the Ork Underground ... a harbor big enough for cargo ships, with an explicitly-described 100m ceiling, and within 5km of "small, twisty, looping tunnels" of the heart of downtown Seattle.)

Nevermind that a natural cavern with a 100m ceiling, far enough across for bloody freighters AND a sprawling "town", would require a roof of solid stone at least 50m to 100m thick just to support itself. Nevermind that Seattle isn't located along 150m+ cliffs, period. Nope, "gigantic harbor-town in a cave" sounded cool, so f*ck reality, that's what's there, ha ha ha ha!

*sigh*

Maybe it is new Seattle built on the ruins of old Seattle Futurama style.

More like the corpse of old seattle.

It is the curse! It is cursed, you see. ... That is bad.

Does it come with a free frozen yogurt?

No. This is Cyberpunk, there is no free anything.

And, when there is, it's the most expensive thing you've ever had.

I do understand your point, but in some respects, I have to disagree. In what world does an LMG and 250 rounds of ammo weigh in at 250 to 2000 Pounds? That is the weight of standard Bombs for Standard bomb racks. In a lot of ways, they are indeed simple mechanisms that require little to function, so a Standard mount makes sense, but those loads are so far beyond "LMG or Smaller" that it is laughable. Not sure where you are getting the 25kg Weight you are using in your equations. Please do not try to reverse engineer the explosive capacity of Bombs and Missiles/Rockets based upon the borked Demolitions Rules.

The biggest problem is that you have writers who have absolutely NO IDEA about Military Vehicles/Weapons/Demolitions to make ANY type of Informed opinion on what they are writing about. They fail so epically that you get planes that carry only a FRACTION of the weapon capacity of Modern Weapon Platforms.

I think that a lot of the issue is that the writers/developers are creating something that a shadowrunner has a chance of surviving against (by providing an illusion of lethality - an ilusion we all see through), when in reality, a 500 lb. LGB (let alone a 2000 lb. LGB, or a Hellfire Missile, Or 155mm Artillery, etc) will Kill You Dead, if you are in the primary blast Radius, no need to soak. *shrug* Unfortunately, in the world of Shadowrun, all you need be is a few meters away from Impact to survive. Shadowrunners should die horrible deaths when facing Military Spec Vehicles/Weapons.

Sorry for the rant. The gap between real world and Shadowrun when it comes to Military Vehicles and Weapons, and their capabilities, is just a hot button for me.

Magic and dragons and an ork underground that already stretches more or less the entire length of the city yet this is what you really have a problem with? The entire setting can pretty much be described as to hell with reality yet this is where you draw the line? Certainly i'll admit the container ships thing was way over the top (as well as unfeasible for smuggling) but seriously this is what you pitch your tent on?

There's no defense for Bogota so I won't. The sooner it's ignored the better, hey kids lets fight a ground war in the mountains!

There seems to be a consistent underlying theme in shadowrun of de-powering weapons, vehicles, bombs, missile, and grenades. I can only presume out of some wiedly placed desire for "balance". Unfortunately at this point it's come full circle which is why int he current 6th world incarnation magical threats like sirrug and ghostwalker don't tread lightly at all because some amongst the writing staff have little conceptualizing how "unfair" or "magical" stand off weapons like cruise missiles, drone stikes, saturation bombing, and for god's sake orbital bombardment would be. So while presumably some of those really effective military toys are out there they'll never get stated up because that stuff is never ever ever supposed to fall into the hands of Shadowrunners who are the primary thrust of the story. Likewise shadowrunners are supposed to run from a lot of magical stuff because it is big and scary. So in order to preserve the game world fear a lot of weapons technology presumably gets neutered all to hell and gone. I can only presume and hope this was a deliberate design decision at some point that's now reached on to parody rather then just a baseline lack of understanding on how some of this stuff works.

That's because I don't see the Dumb Iron bomb as a 250 or 500lb'er let alone 1000. Similarly I don't see the air-launched missiles as massive anti-vehicle missiles like mavericks... more like the infantry carried Javelins or SMAWs. Small short range, suitable for drones. Something like a Javelin missile is only about 25lbs or so.

I see it as a more of a non-inert practice bomb. The yield is too low to be much of anything else. Though it's still one hell of an anti-personnel weapon. Even at 50lbs it's not that bad.

And you'd be surprised. LMG + ammo + accessories is tipping the scales at typically 40+ pounds. Toss on the underbarrel GL some kind of tripod'ish mounting fixture as well for the drone mount. It's getting heavy.


The bigger stuff yeah, I can see needing bigger more specialized mounts for things like the cruise missiles or the monster anti-tank missiles. But the LAW in the book is only like 12P off the top of my head. The anti-tank no launcher needed in arsenal is coming in at 18P, and it gets +1 damage and -1 AP for each net success for the block III or IV.


I think generally in the SR setting a lot of those massively large weapons have been more phased out in favor of smaller more precision loads. It's just the way the setting went. As far as the demolitions rules... they're fine I don't see why you think they're so borked. There's always room for improvement but rating * sqrt(weight) for base explosive DV works reasonably well.


They even got guidance seeker heads for rockets/missiles/mortars/artillery. I would see zero issues fitting one of those on a bomb as well.

Yes. I'm a mapper by inclination, and I think in all three dimensions. Whenever I describe a space, I'm also thinking of what's AROUND it ... including up and down.


The existance of magic and orks is what the entire setting is predicate upon. The metaphysics behind their existance is internally consistent.

Putting 100m-ceiling town-sized caverns that small ships can enter, underneath a city that is less than 200m (or better, 300m) above sea level AT THE COAST ...? There's just no ROOM for it. And there's nothing in the metaphysics of shadowrun that suggests .... *vomit* "TARDIS caverns" *vomit*

I'd've been pleased if the description had kept things to smaller boats ... and had maybe described a system of locks for lifting those boats up to an undeground river near the ceiling. IOW, put the level of the harbor 70m or 80m BELOW sea level.


Certainly i'll admit the container ships thing was way over the top (as well as unfeasible for smuggling) but seriously this is what you pitch your tent on?

Everybody has their "thing" where their staards for continued suspension of disbelief is hgiher than the rest of the group. For me, it's maps and spatial volumes and such.

Except, they ARE. In real life.

And if you had bothered to read the rest of my post Pax... you would have noted my reasons WHY I feel the setting has moved away from massive overkill ordinance to smaller more precision packages. It's not as if the setting doesn't allow for rampant miniaturization of tons of things.


They *DO* make smaller bombs. Hell, they even resorted to slapping guidance packages on inert practice concrete bombs and using them for direct hit kinetic kills with minimal collateral damage.


In game they've also gone from monster 40mm grenade's for launchers down to half the size, and an eighth of the mass. Why should we not expect a similar miniaturation of other explosive weapons?

In game, there are no indications of Size and Mass for such ordinance, though. If there were stats for such things, and if they were internally consistent, that would be one thing. They are not, however. I understand Precision Munitions. American Precision Munitions are not 25 lbs. however. Many of them are in the multiple Hundreds of Pounds range (LAW, SMAW, and AT4 notwithstanding, since in modern times, they are not Precision munitions,they are unguided). As for 40+ Pounds of LMG... Nope (At least not the M-249 SAW). Carried one, with 600 Rounds of Ammo (for many months in fact) and it was STILL not 40 Pounds (even if it may have felt like it after 30 miles of movement on foot). Hell, the radio I carried in the war was heavier than the weapons I carried, by a good amount.

Sorry but the published specs aren't with you there TJ.

IIRC: the SAW itself is ~8kg empty. 200 or was it 250 rounds of belted ammo comes in at 6kg or so. (I remember the 7.62 for sure was about 10kg per belt... the 5.56 was about 60% of it's weight including belt).

15kg * 2.2== 33lb. Now toss on other fittings for things like pintle mounts, drone mounts, etc. Don't think I'm that far out of line there. So if you're packing 600 rounds... you're up to far more than that.

But yeah all things being said... including weight reductions possible... we're arguing over tidbits at the edges.


Also I listed the Javelin... which is a guided missile massing roughly the same as a LMG in weight sans launcher.


Also they sized down the minigrenades to 20mm barely larger than a 12guage shotgun (about 18mm IIRC). I can't recall where but I'm certain it is. I've seen others pull up the cite elsewhere on here but can't recall it myself. There's a part of me which kind of wonders why at that size why GL's and shotguns weren't merged together.

Indeed... Tidbits at the edges.

The reason most air-to-air or air-to-ground missiles carried by jets are so big is the fuel needs, not the warhead. At 50,000 ft, it's 15km to the ground. And against an airborne target you don't just have to cross the distance between the two aircraft but the distance they cover in that time.

If you've got a drone chasing a target traveling at high subsonic speeds like an airliner (650kph) and it takes a shot at an almost point blank 1km range with a barely-subsonic 1000kph missile, the missile will take 10 seconds to get there after traveling almost 3km. That's why a 1950s era "short range" air-to-air missile like the Sidewinder weighs ~190lbs when the warhead's only 20lb: it has an operating range of 22miles and hits speeds of 2500kph.

With supersonic craft and realistic radar that spots a target 50 miles away, you need a lot more oomph, hence the thousand-pound 30-100 mile "medium range" mach4 missiles like the AMRAAM.

Helicopters can get away with smaller missiles ( ie. Hellfires w/5-mile range) since they typically engage in visual range, often after popping up over a hill in an ambush. Plus choppers are subsonic and typically limited to the unpressurized altitudes, so you'd never expect them to engage a supersonic target.

I'm good with SR4 making drones out of cheap plastic, composites, and engines from a small motorcycle; it makes them semi-disposable. And in drone-on-drone warfare you can get away with using light weaponry because they're soft-kill targets traveling at helicopter speeds. But if you want to hit hardened military targets or military jets, you're going to need a fairly beefy missile just to do it at a survivable range.

Because let's face it, if you can use a 1950s, Vietnam-era fighter to dominate the skies because it outruns and outranges everything else in the sky and is totally unhackable that's what people will do.