Advanced Combat Pistol

[Todg]

Which makes you wonder why the Imperium won any of its last few years. I understand the influence of Vilani conservatism, but that hardly applies to the Solomani or the Zhodni.

 

[Uncle Bob]

I dunno. We haven't seen an expensive Army deliberately attack a soft target. So far we can say that accdental and incidental damage to soft taarget is at least as serious as when cheap armies go all out.

I suppose cheap armies have cheap pistols. Otherwise the last couple of posts (including my last one) are off-topic.

Pistols, People

 

[far-trader]

Yes, Pistols. Posting to the uniforms thread and corejob's out of the box thinking got me wondering about cybernetic or geneered weaponry.

I think there might be a possible future warrior who IS his gun and ammo. The idea is just germinating but I see some interesting possibilities. Or is this still off topic

 

[veltyen]

Macroscopic biological warfare.

For example see the Tyranids (From Games Workshop: Warhammer 40000) or Aliens.

Any kind of fast growing dangerous organism will do at a pinch.

.... and at a pinch you could put the spores in some kind of pistol (trying valiantly to stay at least vaguely on topic).

 

[SanDragon]

While the idea of an advanced pistol to keep up with the advanced rifle is a nifty idea, may I ask why?

It isn't practical in a dirtside combat environment.

Unless this ACP is for shipboard combat, where most contacts will be at short range?

Maybe I'm just being a wet blanket on what has been a free flow of ideas.

I'll shut up now.

 

[veltyen]

As a second line weapon would probably be the most common answer. Some firepower at reduced size/weight/cost for those people who's primary role isn't infantry, but may be required to defend themselves on occasion.

More likely ACP would be LACPDW.

Lightweight Advanced Combat Personal Defense Weapon.

 

[mike wightman]

How feasible is a TL9 fusion of the Accelerator Rifle rocket round and the 10mm warheads carried by the TL8 snub pistol rounds?

At higher TLs what about a gauss snub pistol?

 

[Todg]

One area where traveller got it right is that HEAP (HEAT) rounds must of necessity be low veocity.

A gauss snub pistol? Why bother. The big advantage of gauss weapons is high velocity. Throw a projectile at adequate velocity and it doesn't need to be explosive. And from a game perspective, look at the effective range of snub weapons.

About the only reason for low evelocity gauss weapons I can see is for stealth. A big subsonic gauss round is going to be the perfect silenced round.

 

[Anthony]

Originally posted by Corejob:
One area where traveller got it right is that HEAP (HEAT) rounds must of necessity be low veocity.

Not really. HEAT rounds for 120mm cannons move at around 1300 m/s. There's very little point to high velocity HEAT rounds, but they aren't impossible.

The main issue is that HEAT rounds need to be large, and you're not going to have a gun of reasonable size that fires large rounds at high velocities.

 

[Todg]

But you'll notice that these rounds have very long stand-offs. A 12 inch standoff isn't going to be too practical in a pistol, or rifle for that matter. All HEAT rounds require a certain amount of standoff, which is proportional to the diameter of the warhead and the velocity of the projectile. The faster you go, the longer the standoff.

The RPG-7 travels at something likle 150m/s and still requies about six inches of standoff.

 

[Jame]

As a second line weapon would probably be the most common answer. Some firepower at reduced size/weight/cost for those people who's primary role isn't infantry, but may be required to defend themselves on occasion.

More likely ACP would be LACPDW.

Lightweight Advanced Combat Personal Defense Weapon.

Actually (I say most of three years later), this might be what it turns out to be - something near-pistol sized with performance similar to a PDW.