> From: [email removed] (metlay)
> Subject: (3725) What plasma weapons do.
>
> It's much harder to think up reasons why people shouldn't carry around
> Gauss versions of the General Electric gatling used in PREDATOR and
> TERMINATOR 2, whose official designation escapes me.
Even a gauss minigun would have an obscene recoil. I've forgotten exactly
what the recoil is for the 5.56 minigun, but it is in the order of tens of
kilos *average* pressure when fired on full ROF.
But it is possible to use it while standing: There is a low (600 r/m type)
setting designed for this, which is what I suspect they used in the movies:
'Low' auto on the gun and fast auto on the soundtrack. One can see this quite
clearly in Aliens for example where for each muzzle flash there is two to
five shots on the soundtrack.
The recoild would however be of lesser importance if we are talking about
people in battle dress, but I'm not sure it would be low enough even in that
case to allow walking around spraying wildly like in Simmons 'Hyperion'.
The way to go (I think) is laser gatlings. Using the 3G^3 rules it is
possible to do a TL9 laser gatling with an ROF of 5000 and a punch about
equivalent to a heavy pistol (.357M or .44M) that weighs around 10kg and have
a powerpack of about as much. At higher TL is becomes possible to do even
nastier rapid fire lasers.
> Mike Metlay [email removed]
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