>> 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 minigun in Predator might have been the 5.56mm NATO XM-214.
However, the minigun from T2 looked more like the 7.62mm NATO version found in
choppers (amongst other vehicles). Remember, Arnie was a lot stronger and
heavier than a normal human. Also, the weapons (esp. barrels) did not look
the same.
I'm curious as to what the smart gun from Aliens actually is (the
novel didn't go into any detail). The guesses around here are:
(1) gauss (unlikely)
(2) caseless ammo using electricity rather than a firing pin (possible)
(3) caseless ammo in a chain-gun (more likely -- a 7.62mm chain gun weighs
under 35 pounds unloaded today)
A lower rate of fire is a must for a man-portable weapon, since on
full auto the XM-214 eats up about 4000 rounds per minute which means ammo
shortages would abound (this is, IMHO, even a worse problem than recoil).
>Whether this would matter to a man outside of the nearest set of combat
>armour is debatable. Notice that the rules do not state that a man can use
>either a PGMP or FGMP without armour, just without POWERED armour.
In Book 4: Mercenary, of the 3 PGMP and 2 FGMP, only 2 of them require the
user to wear battle dress (the highest tech level versions of each use grav
compensators to cut down the recoil, and the lowest tech PGMP is already
stated as having a horrible recoil (and a poor rate of fire because of it)).
The only one of these weapons I let PCs get their hands on was the PGMP-12,
and only one per party (they were rarely used, since they are illegal just about
everywhere (law level -1 anyone?...)).