If we look at the number of different weapons per TL in the lists of
Traveller weapons we will notice one curious thing. There is a lot of
'contemporary' weapons, and the number of weapons per TL goes down as the
the timedistance ('timedistance'?:) from today gets greater.
(I'm doing this from memory, so I reserve myself for the errors in advance)
We have the rifle, the bolt action rifle, the carbine, the hunting rifle, the
autorifle (equivalent to the Squad Automatic Rifle (SAW) I think) several
calibres of pistols and revolvers, the shotgun, the autoshotgun, two assault
rifles, several machine guns, the submachinegun and so on as examples of
weapons using the 'brass case' technology.
Lowtech weapons, of the 'powder and ball' and 'arrow' versions there are a
few.
For 'caseless' technology weapons, we have the ACR (?), but the snub pistols,
the accelerator rifle and the Assault Rocket Launcher might also be caseless
weapons, since they fire rocket propelled bullets. It depends on if the initial
launching charge is in the bullet itself or in a brass case.
Gauss weapons are a small group, there are only the gauss rifle, the gauss
pistol and the Vulcan analogue, the VRF Gauss Gun (Vulcan is the 20mm minigun
that viritually all US fighters use, the VRFGG would have to have at least
penetration 40 for me to call it a GAU-8 analogue:)
Lasers have the laser rifle, carbine and pistol.
The high energy weapons are practically the same weapon done at 6 different
TLs.
The grenades, grenadelaunchers, hand grenades, rifle grenades, recoilless
rifles and all that stuff have a lot of types on a lot of TL's, but the only
new innovation is the RAM grenades (And that's not really new either. It could
be compared with the RAW (Riflemans Assault Weapon, a HE or HEAT rocket powered
thingy fired from an M16 to bust bunkers and vehicles)
From a military point of view (conventional wisdom, at least) one needs one
weapon for the common rifleman, usually a rifle:)
There should also be several different support weapons of various portability:
Heavier versions of the riflemans weapon, and some kind of direct & indirect
explosives projector too.
The officers need something light like an pistol and all the rest needs a
good and light defence weapon.
Add to this the civilian versions of the above, the hunting rifles and so on.
So, what is my point with all this? The point is that a lot of weapons that
logically (In my opinion, at least:) should exist on the higher TL's doesn't
exist in Traveller. Where is for example all the caseless versions of
contemporary weapons? Where is the light manportable pulse laser support
weapon? Where is the gauss SMG (or if you think that the current gauss pistol
is really a SMG equivalent: Where is the non-auto gauss pistol?) Where is the
gauss shotgun?
One of the troublesome result of these holes in the list of weapons is that a
force equipped to something more than TL9 won't have the capability that it
could have. I think this is one of the basic causes of the 'This TL's infantry
weapon can't penetrate this TL's infantry armour' problem.
I also think that the fact that a lot of people introduce non-standard
weapons that fills these holes are an indicator that the problem is a real one.
Examples are Mikes Gauss MG and the Painter (Laser MG that works by letting
it's beam scan over a designated area, thats where the name comes from) from
my own campaign.
- - -bertil-
- - --
"Some people almost never think. They just reshuffle their prejudices."