Dear Folks –

For those interested in man-portable meson guns, here’s a blast from the
past:

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TNE Weapons: David-class Heavy Battle Dress with Meson Rifle
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From: xxxxxx@mpgn.com Tue, 16 May 1995 19:22:47 -0400
Download date: 16 May 95

Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 17:01:21 GMT
From: "Brendan O'Donovan" <xxxxxx@odonovan.demon.co.uk>
To: xxxxxx@MPGN.COM
Subject: Battle Dress Design
Message-ID: <13@odonovan.demon.co.uk>

David-class Heavy Battle Dress
Mass: 403.2kg
Price: Cr 209,920
Stat mods: -3AGL, -2INIT
Armour Value: 5
Endurance: 2hrs continuous
Features:
WSV Helmet Suite
Chameleon IR supression
30km (short) radio,
0.16Mj Meson Rifle, 15 EPG cartridges
3km Beam pointer for above

The meson rifle is a very small (1m tunnel length) shoulder mounted meson
gun. Even this length gives it an effective range of 1000km! [SEE design
below]

Weapon ROF DamVal Mag Range
Meson Rifle 1 2-2-2-2 15 3000m

This probably would have little effect on vehicles, but the effect on the
crew inside would probably be more significant. Does anyone have any ideas
as to what sort of effect this might have on personnel? Should the number of
damage dice be greater than the damage value (as for lasers)? I can't find
any references to meson guns being used in versions this small and there may
be a good reason, but the possibility of an Intrepid Grav Tank being
neutralised by a sniper seems interesting.

I'm not completely sure if this would work at all. I've no idea what the
recoil would be like, whether there'd be a need for radiation shielding,
etc.

Also, I'll get round to posting the 'Dark Century' which I described in my
adventure idea shortly. I'm working on a replacement (Dark Century II?) at
the moment, and I'll post the two together.
--
Brendan O'Donovan

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Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 17:00:39 +1200 (NZST)
From: adou01@cs.auckland.ac.nz (Andrew Richard Doull)
To: xxxxxx@MPGN.COM
Subject: Re: TRAVELLER digest 287
Message-ID: <199505170500.RAA25672@cs26.cs.auckland.ac.nz>

[Brendon O'Donovan submitted this interesting design.]

>	“David' class Heavy Battle Dress
>	0.16 Mj Meson Rifle, 15 EPG cartridges

This problem was raised earlier in the GDW-beta list server, and the
recommendation was to use a multiplier to weapon size equal to the
difference between light and heavy focal array lasers. This does not make
portable meson guns much less powerful, but the argument died down when
someone clarified that all meson weapons required beam pointers. Your design
seems to have raised this problem again.

While the discussion is on battledress, I would like to point out my
battledress designs kick butt over anything that GDW has published. Why? I
install fuel cells rather than batteries, which have between 1/3 and 1/10
the listed mass of the batteries used in the battledress designs in FF&S.
The extra space savings I use to install stealth or EMM, extra weapons,
cybernetics (Yes, from chapter 12), and other equipment, including tool
kits.

This gives a much wider variety of design possibilities and lets me beef up
the armour by a factor of 3 or 4. Oh, and because fuel cells generate heaps
of excess power because of their minimum volume, they are ideal for
installing DEI lasers, gauss weapons, and in this case meson guns. (Which I
had not previously thought of).

A.D.Venturer (aka Andrew Doull).

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Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 05:34:51 GMT
From: "Brendan O'Donovan" <xxxxxx@odonovan.demon.co.uk>
To: xxxxxx@MPGN.COM
Subject: Re: Meson rifles
Message-ID: <14@odonovan.demon.co.uk>

In your message dated Tuesday 16, May 1995 you wrote :
>	The meson rifle is a very small (1m tunnel length) shoulder mounted
meson gun.

> Did you use FUSION, FIRE & STEEL to design it?
>
> --Chris

Yes.
Here are the details:
Discharge energy: 0.16 Mj
Input energy: 0.8 Mj
Tunnel Length: 1 m
Effective Tunnel length: 1 m
Volume: 0.0016m3
Mass: 0.0012t
Tunnel Price: MCr 0.00016
HPG:0.08t MCr 0.00044
Effective range: 1000 km
Intensity all ranges(limited by beam pointer):0.16
DV at all ranges: 2

Although this is a FF&S design, it is by no means a conventional use of the
design sequence, it's more an exercise in 'What if?', which is why I'm
interested to hear people's opinions about it. There are certain
un-addressed questions in scaling between starship sized weapons and small
arms, such as recoil, effectiveness of a beam pointer, and damage scaling. I
cannot see why lasers should be unique in being more damaging to personnel
than vehicles, after all, the average rifle only delivers a few thousand
joules of energy and is still apparently more damaging than this weapon.

Even if the damage isn't increased, the distraction to the pilot of a
vehicle flying at low level could still prove effective.
--
Brendan O'Donovan

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Dug out of my Black Hole of Quality^TM (aka "The Best of the TML").

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David "Hyphen" Jaques-Watson ..at.. Beowulf Down (Tavonni/Vilis/SM 1520)
http://www.tip.net.au/~davidjw                    xxxxxx@pcug.org.au
"I file things in historical order, with a hashing algorithm of gravity"