Armor and Weapons As Mustering Out Benefits
 

What armor and weapons do you allow for mustering-out benefits ? Other than the more mundane (e.g. snub pistol, SMG, blade, flak vests, ballistic cloth clothing, etc.) do you allow military/naval service characters to exit with Gauss weaponry ? Combat Armor? Battle Dress ? My view is that certain items would be restricted (such as the PGMP and FGMP and Battle Dress), usable only by the State's military/naval forces and possibly available to sanctioned mercenary organizations. I don't see the Imperial Marines allowing a mustering-out character to take his/her suit of Battle Dress with him/her. Likewise, I think much of the "state of the art" weaponry (and any heavy weapons) and armor would have to be left in the armory. I think that what the character would be allowed to leave with would be personal weapons, and "military surplus" (i.e.obsolete to force's TL) armor and weapons. Accordingly, if a character from the TL-15 Imperial Marines or Army takes Combat Armor, it might be TL 11 or 12 (not the standard issue TL-14). (I'm torn regarding gauss weapons though.) And for lower tech forces, such as a planetary army/wet navy etc., s/he probably wouldn't be allowed to leave with higher tech weapons (higher tech lasers, gauss weapons, maybe not even the ACR) which would be "cutting edge" for that force. Thoughts ?

No armor at all, as that would make it difficult for civilian law enforcement agencies to deal with the individual. I do not allow personal energy weapons in my universe, so that issue is moot, but I would not allow those either, for the same reason. As for other weapons, nothing aside from standard projectile weapons. No gauss rifles or Advanced Combat Rifles either are permitted. Basically, what is in the Traveller Book and LBBs.

I was in the British Army - they didn't give me the option of keeping my SLR, let alone the sterling smg and the browning 9mm they also trained me to use.

I limit mustering out weapon benefits to LBB1 stuff only.

I think it should be VERY milieu and situational driven.


For example, if you are mustering out from something like Pirates or Mercs, it would be reasonable to have something higher end, definitely not PGMP/FGMPs but maybe a lower end laser or rifle TL back 1-2, or a RAM GL. Tools of the trade as much as any repair kit/doctor instruments muster out.
If it's a libertarian or warrior honor society, probably something in the same ballpark.
Marine, Navy and Merchant, gauss/snub/laser pistols, accelerator weaponry, etc. and other ship security whatever would be appropriate.

A milieu where the service people are more like Swiss reserves would reasonably have military weaponry, but they would be limited to service functions and using them for 'personal business/defense' in any way would likely result in court martial and/or dismissal.

Probably the easiest thing to do is base available weaponry on the civilian LL of the government they were in the service of. Pirates, Rogues, criminals probably operate on LL0-1, Imperial space and most starports/star forces at LL-2, LL of the planet they served/mostly operate from, LL3 for Hunters and other interstellar civilian careers.

Depends.

While I don't see any military giving away body armour, getting it from your friendly neighbourhood quartermaster, or declaring it destroyed and lost on a mission, and then caching it, seems a possibility.

However, there is a local tradition of demilitarizing used assault rifles and selling them to ex trained organized militia, since they expect a new generation of sidearms with presumably improved performance.

You could be looking at a forty year old gauss rifle, castrated to semi automatic.

I'm on this page too. You might have a plasma gun or something, but you go toting in public and you PDQ get the attention of the authorities. Same goes for full combat-style armor.
Now, you have a need for such heavy personal artillery and protection for some specific purpose? Fine, use it for that purpose and put the toys back in the box when done.
For most scenarios, hand guns of various sorts, edged weapons, a shotgun, or maybe the occasional long arm will fly along with body armor that isn't obvious will do more often than not.

Every game and scenario doesn't have to, and shouldn't, be military grade combat at least in my version of things.

Dunno why a Gauss rifle would stand out from any other slug thrower.

Sure, it's can be automatic, but as someone else mentioned, maybe they can be downgraded to semi-automatic. But, there's other automatic weapons that were on the list.

What we don't mention is we don't know what kind of maintenance a GR requires. It has a lot of moving parts, and is a powered rifle (I think it take power from the magazines, which i guess have some sort of battery component).

Normally, rifles, when basically kept out of the weather, are effectively immortal.

Does modern fiberglass or synthetic stock hold up after 50 years if kept in reasonable humidity an temperature? Or do they break down? I haven't heard much either way.

But, beyond that, bunch of metal bits that need just a little bit of oil to remain functional for 100 years.

A GR, however...maybe not. Filled with electronics, move parts (gyro stabilized), etc. 50 years later, who knows what state they're in. Is a 50 year old magazine still usable? Will it still hold a charge? That's 50 years of idle chemistry there.

I have (had) an old iPhone 3GS. Put it on the shelf when I upgraded. After a couple years, it had effectively bloated and ruptured. I assume it was the battery. Nothing leaked, but it was ruined. This was kept inside the house.

Even with military electronics, there's likely no need for a 50 year shelf life on it.

Meanwhile, Granpa's Krag will shoot like day one, if you can find ammo for it, after a day of TLC with some 3-in-1 oil. As worst, you may get a bad spring.

I suppose (depending on the ruleset you are using) the Gauss Rifle might have better armor penetration that an Assault Rifle or ACR.

The Mongoose Core rulebook allows for armor as a mustering out benefit for Army and Marine characters, hence my initial question. I certainly take the point that a character can't go walking down Main Street in most advanced metropolises while wearing Combat Armor and not expect to "be pulled over" by local enforcement. However, a character signing aboard/owning shares in a Free Trader who owns such armor (and normally keeps it boxed in his quarters, or in the Ship's Locker) would be highly useful in repelling pirates (or boarding other ships), undertaking missions where some gunplay might be anticipated (e.g. rescue operations), exploration missions in frontier areas, not to mention a bit of mercenary service. I wouldn't see it as "everyday wear" (cloth is more acceptable, socially), but it is hard to come by in most circumstances and this gives the character an opportunity to put it by for a rainy day (and purchasing more civilian-like garb.

Agreed. If your interstellar government is closer to the 20th-21st century model of Western governments, then LBB1-Only is fitting - maybe the weapon was personally owned and retained, or purchased with mustering out funds. If your milieu has an interstellar government more closely resembling 19th century or earlier Western governments, then retaining military equipment on mustering out would be more in scope.

I generally let players have whatever they can imagine, but consider that a bunch of weapons are going to very difficult to get through customs on a lot of worlds (Read Roleplaying opportunities). Then couple that to the cost and availability of parts for maintenance and repair. Note advanced ammunition also falls into those categories as well.

Also note I tend to keep my games at a Knife and Pistol level of conflict, Where Shotguns and SMGs are the heavy weapons. Over the years some variation of Snub Pistols have been the most common weapons.

One benefit is that you don't have to locally source the equipment, possibly at inflated prices, from shady brokers, in regions where procurement is at best in a legally gray area.

Never really saw the concern, but we’ve always played in Outland/Firefly type campaigns where rifles, pistols and knives were to be expected. But the heavier stuff we always steered away from, even for Army and Marine characters. Kept it special when every once in a while a VRF Gauss gun or a PGMP was in play.

That had to be one hell of a duffle bag to sneak out a VRF Gauss gun.... :devil:

So you would not allow a Snub Pistol (IIRC it's a LBB4 weapon)?

I see it as one of the most used weapons by space crews (even comercial ones), due to its zero-G use and tranquilizers capacity...

I donno.

I'm beginning to doubt it's efficacy.

In game mechanic effects, it's slightly less effective than a Survivalist round, basically a twenty two long rifle, and apparently, our laws of war outlaw high explosive smallarms ammunition.

Honestly, I never really worried about it that much, kept the PGMPs and the FGMP's off limits, but didn't worry about much else.

D.

Nope, if they want one they will have to buy one, and then only tranq rounds are available for civilian use. A normal revolver can be modified to fire snub tranq rounds easily enough IMTU.
I have recently adopted the Chiappa Rhino as the go to illustration for the revolver/snub pistol IMTU.

The HE and HEAP are more likely to damage ship equipment than a revolver round, and how many merchant ship crews bother with zero g combat training for that matter.

Probably the same ones that bother about having weapons, as altering gravity is as much an anti-hijack toos as weapons may be...

30.06 is around 4,100 Joules. GR run about 4,500. Could modern Level III armor with ceramic inserts stop a GR? Dunno. Not sure it can stop an 30.06, honestly. More designed to thwart assault rifles.

Offence and defence tend to even out at their technological levels; it should be gauss weapons versus combat armour.

Game mechanicswise, the default advanced combat rifle round has the same damage potential as the default assault rifle round, with an eighty percent increase in effective range, a kilogramme lighter, presumably a faster rate of fire and lighter ammunition.

IBM guarantees parts for 40 years for their mainframe products, and DEC used to use manufacturing techniques designed for avionics to produce components for the VAX. You can make electronics with a nice, long shelf life if you want to spend money.

Capacitors are really what craps out most of the time, although this can vary with the type of capacitor. Whether a battery could be made to last that long is another problem. Modern batteries don't have that long a shelf life although there is research in progress into nano-material based technologies that could radically increase the shelf and service life of lithium cells.

Having said this, a conventional projectile weapon is purely mechanical, and ammunition technology has allowed it to have shelf lives of half a century or more while still remaining viable. One could argue that with current technology we don't really have a pressing need to go with radically different technology than we have now - maybe bigger and more powerful if some significant improvement in body armour technology becomes widespread.

However, if something equivalent to TL11 combat armour were come onto the market, then you could (per Striker) armour infantry with something equivalent to 20mm of RHA. With current armour piercing technology (if you take something like a .50 cal SLAP round as a benchmark) then you might need a rifle with a muzzle energy in the 10kJ range to be effective against that type of armour. Better armour piercing tech might bring that down a bit.

At that point you've got a disruptive innovation that needs something better. Perhaps a gauss rifle that can fire a lighter projectile at higher velocities. Maybe superdense materials could be used to make the penetrators of such ammunition. If you go down that route you've still got to make a rifle that can be deployed in the field and stored and serviced with reasonably practical logistics. Problems of shelf life would have to be solved for whatever technology was employed.

Outlaws em on planets, not ships.


Ships that have planetary bombardment missiles and lasers, mind you.

Hmm, Striker has the Gauss being not much more of a penetrator over ACR but putting on one helluva personal machine gun at great ranges, twice as much ammo per clip, and mostly equal to the assault rifle's best damage at 3-5x the range.



Big part of why I prefer the Striker mechanics over CT or others, that range thing matters both in pen and damage.


The 'sleeper' ability of the ACR is in that HE round against just cloth/CES or less equipped opponents. I guess the Geneva Convention is over with by TL10.

Historically, treaties have not outlasted their signatories. No reason to believe that will change in any projected future.

Nope. You simply don't target personnel with HE rounds. What you do is target something inanimate behind them, and if they happen to get in the way, they're collateral damage. Regrettable of course, but legal. Works for WP and napalm ('scuse me -- it's "Incindi-gel" now) too.

They're legal for anti-materiel use, but illegal for anti-personnel use.

Hmm, well I am postulating a more or less spacefaring version of the current nationalities IMTU, with treaties still in play and one of the major story lines is someone IS making ACR HE rounds out in the Cloud and someone is planning to use them at some point. So it's an actual story line hence my focus on direct anti-personnel use.

In war, hollow point is illegal as well.

Not for law enforcement.

Also, how effective are ten millimetre slugs at I believe one hundred fifty metres per second?

I assume you are referring to snub pistol rounds, yes?


LE at least in the US can use hollow point, it has both that stopping power long as the target isn't armored and it is less likely to penetrate walls very far. The treaty limits are more for rifle rounds that are going to lay on one heck of a hurting. I have Striker rules for that in my CT thread.
So yes, snub pistols are more a 'ship security' weapon, it's range problems make it less then ideal for combat anyway. So it might get a pass on Geneva type limitations.


Hmm, gets me thinking- perhaps the correct form factor for the Accelerator round is a pistol.
You don't have recoil or increased range/power from a longer barrel, so doesn't matter that you put a rifle-sized round in a pistol frame. Just fewer rounds and maybe a little less range accuracy, same rifle pen at long range function.
Yes, seems to work like an SMG but longer range punch and zero-G advantage, at the expense of vulnerability close in.

Isn't that actually a misconception, like the claim that .50 explosive bullets are illegal to use against enemy personnel?

IBM and DEC don't have their electronics running around in snow, sand, mud, rain, and 110 degree heat in the hands of someone named "Joe".

Yes, conventional weapons are, but we were talking about Gauss Rifles -- which are unconventional even if ubiquitous.

The AR-15 pattern rifle is the US Military's longest serving long arm (50+ years now I guess). It's fair to say that fire arm technology suitable for the field has plateaued.

Companies and militaries have been working on next generation rifles for quite some time, but nothing of note has broken through in terms of high technology. They seem to have most of the problems with bullpups solved apparently, however.

I think you'll find that honor belongs to the M14, still in active service as the Mk 14 EBR.

However, I agree with you on the firearms technology plateauing. I had a nice, rousing argument the other day with a friend over bullpup vs. traditional vs. alternate layout (G11/P90) for action in a combat rifle. We never did settle on one being better than the other, it all comes down to what's comfortable for the users.

Maybe he shipped it home a few pieces at a time ?

I did a little research on the ssubject of advanced combat rifles and the US Army last week, to figure out likely Confederation slugthrower policies.

They conducted tests thirty years ago to find a replacement, and it seems that unless there was at least an overall fifty percent improvement in performance, which none of the candidates had, it wasn't worth their while.

They concluded that required High Explosive tipped bullets.

However, it does seem that the rifle and probably the cartridge slowly evolved since then, to suit current doctrines and battlefield experiences.

The next big innovations are likely reliable caseless rounds and dead on sighting and tracking, meaning lighter ammunition and one shot one kill.

There's going to be a tension between outranging your opponents and closing the gap.

Beginning in 2014, the US Army began evaluation of a "smart rifle" (made by Tracking Point), that has laser sights and a built-in computer. The ACR is not long in coming.
Quoting from the Daily Mail article:

A laser rangefinder is used by the shooter looking through the scope to identify the target that he or she wants to hit.The high-tech sight then takes into account humidity, wind and the typical ballistic drop from a bullet fired over a distance.Once the target has been selected, the scope provides cross-hairs which have to be lined up with the pin that is dropped on the target. To ensure accuracy, the shooter can not even squeeze the trigger unless the cross-hairs and pin are aligned.

Since that contest was actually called ACR, I'm assuming that is what prompted that naming and firearm qualities in our game rifle, with built-in assumptions that some advanced tech really better then current panned out.


One of the things I like about original Striker was that interplay between armor and weapon development, with sometimes offense and sometimes protection having the upper hand.

To me that would be the advent of the 'electronic sight' from CT.


The game ACR proper is a bit beastly- in Striker it's penetration and effective/long range is equal to the TL6 HMG, I'm assuming that's effectively an M2 .50 cal. To me, the ACR is a hightech G11 that works out the bugs.


The ACR is quite the leap-small ammo packing such a wallop, probably materials technology to allow for a barrel that is handling very high pressures, whatever quality measures for said barrel to handle auto fire, and a lot of recoil tech to handle the increased power.

The common rifleman carrying a handheld M2 in rifle form certainly is a jump in firepower.

I have always interpreted the ACR to use an outgrowth of or advancement upon Electrothermal Chemical (ETC) propellant (introduced in TNE also, IIRC).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electr...cal_technology

<Shrug> LBB4 doesn't specify, I am going with the round weights but plenty of room for other interpretations. Whatever makes you feel fuzzy, a happy 'my world is the way I like it' ref is likely more at ease with his reffing.

One difference is that caseless rounds are reliable enough to use in full automatic, and I would presume that the manufacturing process would make them cheaper than the cased ones we have today.

Since the propellant part of the round is completely consumed, you don't need an ejection slot, though removing a dud might be more complicated, which is why I assume it's one reason it's technological level ten, where this may happen once in five, ten or a hundred thousand times.

I might be misremembering, but nine millimetre bullets were conceived to have a six millimetre sabot, six millimetres the normal ACR bullet, and a Pournelle invented compromise between NATO standard and the previous one; sabots, I'm told, tend to bounce around on the ground when firing from a prone position, possibly back to the shooter, and his friends shouldn't stand too close to him.

Weapons and armour mustering out benefits
 

I agree with those that say limit players on both weapons and armour. Weapon wise the most damaging I let players have are gauss rifles and laser rifles. With armour I never let them have battle dress or combat armour. However if the players can make a persuasive argument, I will let them have vacc suits or hostile environment vacc suits as "armour".

IMTU I have Reflec as less a laser wavelength reflector and more a heat reflector. So it has applications in fire fighting, shipyard and damage control work.

Well, having tailored vacc suits as armour (in the versions where they exist, of course) has even some logic. After all, they are tailored...

I just replaced my MGT 1st ed with the 2nd ed, and that has an elegant solution to the Armor mustering-out benefits conundrum. Rather than allowing mustering-out characters to take just any armor (up to and including Combat Armor), the player is limited to an armor item up to Cr 10,000 and TL 12 - a second roll of Armor means either receiving a second item with the same limitations, or trading in the first award for an item costing up to Cr 25,000. Note that for those using the CSC, even TL 8 Vacc Suits cost 12,000.

With respect to weapons, the MGT 2nd ed likewise has a reasonable solution to weapons mustering-out benefits. The individual is limited to mustering-out weapons up to Cr 1,000 and TL 12. So the most advanced weapon you can take under that system is the ACR (or Snub pistol or Accelerator Rifle/Gyrojet Rifle). Anything more advanced (or more expensive - such as the Laser Carbine) you have to acquire yourself.

Interestingly, if you get two results of Armor as a Benefit, you can turn in the first set (value up to 10,000 credits and TL-12) for a TL-12 suit valued up to 25,000 credits. With the CSC, that allows for a Boarding Vacc Suit whose armor protection starts to approach that of Combat Armor (and give respectable Rads protection) - and I can just hear the explanation given to local law enforcement ("Armor ? It's not armor officer. It's my vacc suit.) Per the CSC, such suits are often used by merc units that can't afford combat armor.

Bear in mind that under the Book1/Book4 rules a gauss rifle can do 16D damage with a 10 round burst and 40D with a panic fire attack (or 52D or 56D depending on how you interpret the rules), and gets the group hits from automatic fire rule. It also gets pretty good hit bonuses against all armour types. Under the CT RAW it's the most powerful small arm in the OTU by quite a considerable margin.

Also, by any reasonable interpretation of the material describing the OTU, as of 1105 it's likely been the most widely manufactured small arm in the Imperium, most of the Imperium's neighbours and nearby extra-Imperial space for the better part of a millenium.

It might not have the wow factor of a FGMP but it definitely has more dakka. In practice, the solution to the problem of super weapons is to nerf them a bit, rather than get into convolutions justifying why the party can't get hold of a weapon that should be as common in and about Imperial space as the AK is in 21st century Terra.

I think we are conflating the concept of what you can receive as a mustering-out Benefit with what a Traveller party conceivably could get their hands on via game play (e.g, using Streetwise to find an arms dealer who will sell you a military weapon, or a mini-adventure to find/steal a cache of them). The advantage of the mustering-out Benefit is that it costs the Traveller nothing (other than opportunity cost of not having received a different Benefit) and is immediately available to him/her at the outset of the game. I agree that the Arms Room Sergeant isn't going to let the Traveller leave with what would be cutting edge, or even standard issue, weapons and equipment. So the Traveller should be limited to the equivalent of military surplus, battlefield souvenirs, etc., and the Traveller should choose the most expensive and effective options available meeting that criteria (and no, organized western military forces - such as the US Army - don't allow you to keep and ship home as souvenirs automatic weapons taken/found on the battlefield). The AK-47 and its derivatives and M-16/M-4 family of weapons are ubiquitous among various military forces, revolutionaries and terrorists worldwide, but the fully automatic versions are not commonly obtainable in reasonably law-abiding societies. Even illicit users had to go through the process of acquiring them (CSC has a process and costs for purchases in various law level environments). So a good souvenir/private weapon for mustering-out could be the obsolete (except on some worlds) ACR, and the Gauss Rifle is what you perhaps could buy on a low law-level world (or through a shady arms dealer).

This is exactly the wrong approach that people take to this. It's not really an issue about availability so much as an issue about why folks are toey about them in the first place. Gauss rifles may or may not be legal to own in any given world but as of the Published 1105 setting they've been in production for something like a milennium, if not back into pre-Cleon days of the Sylean Federation. They are going to be on the grey market in quantity. There are even legitimate arms dealership companies like Interstellarms that get a mention in the Traveller source material.

They could be illegal locally, perhaps requiring some work to obtain, but the Imperium itself has no policy on trafficking anything smaller than WMDs and has a policy of turning a blind eye to local brushfire wars. Just within the grey market within Spinward marches one would expect to see many millions of Imperial or extra-Imperial manufacture (Zhodani, Sword World, Darrian, Aslan, Vargr, independent extra-Imperial polities) from several frontier wars and hundreds or thousands of local conflicts over the past centuries.

Under the RAW it's mass-murder on a stick. How is this possibly not the weapon of choice for low-rent gangland drive-by shootings or the shenanigans of whatever makes up the local equivalent of the mob or cartels?

That's a rhetorical question - the answer is 'of course it is'. I don't have an issue with Gauss Rifles per se, but the CT and Striker RAW have them crazy overpowered. The correct solution is not to make up contrived explanations about how parties at your table can't get hold of them because reasons. If you're going to do that they may as well not exist in the first place (which is also a legitimate approach, btw). The correct solution is to nerf them so they don't overbalance party-level fire combat scenarios. This is really a minor piece of house ruling to fix on a game that's famous for house ruling, and yet for some reason people seem unwilling to do it. I don't really understand why - maybe it's a canon thing.

This thread was originally about mustering-out benefits, not what is available overall in a campaign. I'm not adverse to Travellers obtaining in play higher-end military equipment (up to and including combat armor and battledress) if they go through the appropriate efforts (and law level risks) to acquire it (and, if necessary, explain to the authorities why they have it). Fully automatic AKs and M-16s are widely available now - but obtaining and shipping them from legitimate sources still requires end-user certificates. In Traveller parlance, that would mean you can show you are working for a government, or a recognized mercenary unit or private security service. Of course they are also available via illicit sources (some of that stock could well have been diverted from its intended end-user, some captured, stolen, etc.), but that should mean the equivalent of in-play efforts to find the dealer (easier on some worlds than others) or cache, robbing an armory, or taking it as spoil. It would be comparatively easy to find an automatic weapon (probably an AK variant) in the bazaars of Afghanistan, but not so easy in the cities of western Europe or the US (where the police authorities would take a jaundiced view if someone was so equipped).