Suggestions Welcome; Infantry Weapons.

[Border Reiver]

As part of a far far future campaign I'm designing with my friend we have designed a tech 18 battledress as standard for the Federation Marine Force. This battlesuit is jump 1 capable with lifesupport for 3 weeks, anti-matter powered, an array of sensors and designed to be the ultimate individual killing machine. This has been fudged together from MT/TNE design sequences.

But we're missing weaponry. We're a little loathe to give it a disintegrator (too high a tech anyway). We were thinking of a main weapon (energy based?), secondary weapon and a "less-than-lethal" weapon. Other layout suggestions welcome, grenade launchers, missiles etc.

But what would a tech 18 bootneck carry?

 

[far-trader]

Hmm...

A disintegrator can't be too high tech if you have a wearable man size jump drive But on to other weapon ideas, a couple off the top of my head from the extreme engineering department...

Jump Projector Beam (zap and the target goes away, for a week at least if that's how you still run jump) - Powered off the suit's jump drive so you may end up not being able to jump yourself right away or use it rapid fire.

Neural Scrambler - Nice non-lethal (or less than lethal to lethal) weapon, one hit and the target neural net goes comatose (or worse). Might also be useful against high level computers (those with synaptic neural processors).

Tac Nuke Grenade Launcher - Presuming this thing is as tough as I suspect and made to take down equally tough targets. Useful against low tech (TL15-) ships even. Computer controlled of course.

Meson Pistol - Handy sidearm for close in fighting against armored opponents.

 

[Border Reiver]

Keep 'em coming, I like.

We though long and hard about the JumpSuit. How would the tech work. We considered an inflatable jump grid with a detachable drive but opted for the TNE paradigm buster of sub 100 ton jump drives. Fudged up the numbers a little and came up with a drive that would weigh in at 600kg and have a total volume of 275 litres.

Fuel is still a problem though. A tech 18 antimatter powerplant would only weigh in at 10kg and have 2 litre volume. This would supply 2 gigawatts power. But would the J-Drive need hydrogen J-fuel. Drop tanks? Fuel Bladders?

Back to weapons. I like the meson pistol and nuclear launcher. I may have to dig out my T4 Imperial Arsenal and have a gander at neural weapons (jump projectors shelved for something nastier

)

Off to work on the meson pistol.

 

[mike wightman]

If you look at the TL16+ weapons in T4's Emperor's Arsenal you'll find a couple of nice weapons:

antimatter gauss rifle - a gauss rifle that fires rounds that contain a sliver of antimatter

contragrav rifle - fires contragrav projectiles at ridiculously high velocity

plasma rifle - a much lighter version of the PGMP

AMPCMP - antimatter plasma cannon man portable

 

[veltyen]

Antimatter projectors.

You've already got a source of AM on you

PGMP-FGMP-AMGMP....

 

[mike wightman]

Just in case you've missed it in the MTRM, in MT the amount of jump fuel required decreases with TL.
For jump 1 at TL16- 10% hull, at TL17 8%, TL18 6%, TL19 4%, TL20 2%, TL21 1%.

 

[Golan2072]

Don't forget melee weapons - monowire, monowire-based "Variable Swords" (as in Larry Niven's novels), maybe even a "sword" built from plasma contained in a strong force-field.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Off the top of my head; the PGMPLMG and/or the FGMPLMG. Pretty much as implied; light machinegun versions of the high energy weapons.

You may want to consider a "laser" version of the PGMP or FGMP. That is the standard high energy weapon (at least our group used to play it) would just cap-off one huge burst of energy per trigger pull (per combat round).

For this new iteration of the weapon the firerer would merely hold down the trigger to unleash however many shots he wanted. But then you get into how many "rounds" does the thing hold? In the classic ruleset the MP high energy weapons (after TL 12) have unlimited "ammo" with the caveat "amount of use depending" (or some such).

So your only real obsticle is to dicate how much juice these things suck up, and what their power source is. Do they run off of the anti-matter supplied by your combat suits, or do they have their own integral power supply?

Our group also dallied with plasma and fusion pistols, as well as LASER light machineguns, which I mentioned on another thread s couple years back.

Something a bit more whiz-bang might be something like a "gluon gun", or "Z particle gun", or maybe even something that imports energy from another dimension onto the target, or vice versa.

That's all I got now.

 

[Pickles]

You guys are just too bloodthirsty. What about the third, non-lethal option?

I would go for something which immobilises, like a carbo-filament net or a super-sticky-goop gun (TM) to disable other heavily-armoured opponents.

Otherwise, the usual array of tasers (with armour-piercing limpet drills), sonic stunners, and other electrical knock-you-out hardware.

 

[Border Reiver]

It is tech 18, whether to add some psionic weaponry or not? Psionic targetting and/or controls?

The meson pistol has become a meson fist, a melee weapon that focuses at 5cm to 2m range on contact, preset. You punch that armoured opponent in the chest and his pleural cavity explodes.

I'm adding a goop gun. I was very impressed by its use by the USMC until they gave a demonstration. Very messy, very sticky, remove with top secret solvent....Johnsons Baby Oil.

 

[far-trader]

Cool idea on the meson dusters, that's gonna get copied to my artifact list

About the goop gun, I'd have to question it some. Too many situations where it's going to be less effective. Too cold, too hot, wrong atmo, no atmo, no gravity, and probably more that are eluding me at the moment. Still, in the right conditions its handy.

Psionics crossed my mind briefly too but they are just too easy to counter, I can't see them being used if anyone knows about them.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Non-lethal; interdimensional gun; a weapon that transports its target into a micro pocket universe capable of sustaining one person per shot.

A derrivative of that (actually something I got off of Star Trek the Motion Picture); the data/transporter gun, where said target is essentially stored onto some recordable media until such time as they are needed.

 

[Straybow]

I would think at TL18 atmospheric composition or lack thereof would not effect goop. I like that for the nonlethal equipment.

How about a monofilament cestus for close quarters? A loop of monofil a couple cm in front of the gauntlet knuckles. A backhand works like a cheese slicer. A punch scoops out a chunk.

Naturally, the filament also acts as a lance extending out from the arm, a "hand-held" (positive vector) sword, or "downward" pointing (negative vector) blade.

AI monitors telemetry and retracts filament in proximity of the other parts of the armor or recognized noncombatants and friendlies.