From: Don Greenfield <gryphon@a...>
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 1999 09:37:37 -0600
Subject: [DS] New Weapon
I've been mulling over my Free State background lately, working up some TOE's and designing vehicles, and it seems that there is something of a gap in the weapons provided in the rules. They all seem to be optimized for putting holes in thick chunks of metal. While this may be all well and good for those Great Powers that have the industrial and financial wherewithall to build, deploy, and replace the heavy metal, those of us out on the frontiers don't have those luxuries, or those kinds of enemies. We spend most of our time trying to deal with the scads of infantry running around with the Twenty Second century versions of AK-47's and RPG's. Hence the following weapon: Low Velocity Cannons (LVC): The LVC operates on the same principles as the HVC, however, the LVC is optimized for firing chemical energy warheads at moderate velocities. The emphasis on a good Anti-Personel capability, with secondary Anti-Armour performance. A useful twentieth century comparision would be the 76 to 90 mm low pressure cannon, or the 81 mm gun-mortars primarily found in Third World militaries. The LVC comes only in size classes 3 and 4. Range Table: Close Range Medium Range Long Range LVC/3 12 " 20" 28" LVC/4 14" 23" 32" Damage LVC: Against Reactive Armour: Yellow Chits Against all other armours: Red Chits Against Infantry:: Red Chits Costs: 6 x Size of weapon. Rationale: As a lower velocity version of the HVC, the LVC would seem to have less inherent accuracy and range, so I knocked 4 inches off the equivelent sized HVC range. Since the antiarmour effect comes from a chemical warhead like those on the GMS systems, but since the warhead is lighter than on those systems, I reduced the effects. Since the whole point of the weapon was to have an effective anit- infantry effect, I gave it the best AP capability I could find on the DF weapons chart. This was the DFFG, and I can justify this by saying the LVC has a special AP shell that only a low velocity weapon can fire (sensitive fuzing, greater HE load, whatever). I'm not real sure about the points, just looking at it it seems less useful than a standard HVC, but somewhat more than RFAC's. I gave it 6 x the size, but I'm open to discussion. Any thoughts?