Weapons and Vehicle customization

I guess it just goes along the lines of "if it isn't broke, don't fix it". Think about the 1911, a one hundred year old gun that is still considered as the top combat pistol by many. But I agree, personally I'm gonna make my own equipment list up for my players that shows some examples of the progress made.

Given the technology and manufacturing capabilities, there should be one heckuva lot of possible "add-ons" for personal weapons. Much of this is probably refined to the point that additions to a standard design are kind of like fiddling with Lego - fabbing a new weapon involves going through a long menu of optional extras.

Just off the top of my head, there are the following possibilities, among many:

Styling - As in colour / appearance. Is the weapon specifically made to look cheap, or standard-issue property of a specific group, or as a "one of a kind" look for that Character?;

Sensor / sighting packages ;

Security features - People can get VERY touchy about other people messing with their gear. In this case, maybe a locking system to discourage unauthorized handling - might be hooked up to an alarm, or a shocker, or even a bomb (!);

Environmental protection - Wide variety of environments to be found within the Solar System (and beyond). Some of these can be especially tough on equipment, increasing the chance of breakdown. Suggest specific protections for environment types such as hard vacuum, temperature extremes (high OR low), radiation, high pressure / aquatic, dust, humidity, and any others that seem to fit. Some protections can be used together (eg. dust and low temp, for Martian conditions?), others cannot be mixed (easily, anyhow).

Special Configurations - A weapon might be adapted to "snap on" the outside of one's spacesuit, or to a vehicle mount. Bipod? Tripod? Silencer? Flash suppressor? Concealability?

Zeroing / Counterfeiting- As I understand it, manufactured items are "tagged" so that one always knows where it was made, etc.. Somebody running a covert mission may desire that the weapons used do not have any identifiers, or even that a false identifier be placed on them instead.

(double post...)

The Kinetic Weapons discription states that 'standerd' firarms all use caseless ammo already.

Oh, and for those wondering about the value of chemical-energy weapons in the 22nd century, remember the two things weapon buyers look for:

a) Will it kill the other guy?

b) Is it cheap?

A lot of very promising weapon systems have been abandoned because the existing platforms fulfilled these above requirements, For example, the Cheyenne and Comanche helicopter gunships and the various planned replacements for the M-16. Sure, lasers and plasma cannon may be potent, but if the old-fashoned slug-thrower can still do the job, it will still be there, and probably at a much more cost-effective price then it's higher-tech counterparts.

I think the real trick here is how many things can you mod without the system becoming too burdensome and at what point have you created a new weapon.

Is an SMG with a barrel extension and a shoulder stock still an SMG or is it now a rifle chambered for smaller caliber?

How many mods could you actually apply to a weapon before you violate the weapon's essential integrity? If you took a pistol and swapped out the barrel, magazine, grips, and trigger assembly you don't have much left.

which is why a simple weapons chart isn't really all that great in a world where customization means that you get someone to work up a unique nano-fab design for the weapon you are going to use until you die.

Vera or Delilah or whatever you want can be a single body with any number of variations in ammo capacity, weight, barrel length, caliber, ammo type and rate of fire.

A system that links these characteristics to aspects of the game rules would be far more flexible in creating a weapon suitible to a given character than making up mods for the existing weapons stock.

I'm sure once I have a better grasp of the mechanics involved i'll have all kinds of ideas here but for the moment I'm just going to console myself that someone else probably thought of this and didn't have the pagecount to include it.

which is pretty much what I said.

Hard to descibe a system of multi-target smartlink poison flechette shoulder mounted auto guns controled by murder thoughts when you've got to indoctrinate people into 150+ pages of world history.

One thing I want in EP and will make for myself if none of the designers oblige me is gyrojet weapons.

Now look: There was a lot of bad stories about the original gyrojets in the 60's, but most of that was traced to ONE bad batch of ammo that had a minor defect in one of the stabilizers that caused the ammo to be inaccurate.

Properly made gyrojet ammo was highly effective and allowed for far more powerful rounds than normal ammo due to the reduced recoil.

With EP's tech base gyrojet ammo would be a snap to make, and it's low, low recoil would make it useful in micrograv. Also, the relatively large size of gyrojet ammo would make adding neat types of specialized tips, like even shaped charge explosive armor piercing or even the "bolts" from warhammer 40,000 feasible.

Of course regular explosive ammo is nothing to sneeze at either. For a look at a gyrojet weapon with 'advanced" tech, check out the old tom selleck SF movie "runaway".

BTW, someone is still working on a "next generation" gyrojet project, here's a link: http://www.deathwind.com/project.htm

I thought that Seeker Pistols/Rifles were gyrojets?

The part you are missing is that a seeker weapon IS a gyrojet. That's essentially what gyrojet was... portable missile guns. Seekers fulfill that role entirely, as they are the same exact weapon.

As for railgun technology, it has more potential than you think. If it can be made aerodynamic and magnetic, you can theoretically make it into a railgun round. I can imagine that futuristic gravity bombs will also be made in railgun round forms, albeit for much larger railguns. I can imagine that smaller bomb payloads could also be made for railguns. The only real thing you can't produce for railguns are seeking rounds... they completely defeat the advantages that railguns try to achieve.