02-03-2012, 08:21 AM | #11 | |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: 25mm Grenade Launchers
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Now, Enhanced Time Sense may help know some of those things in time . . . |
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02-03-2012, 08:35 AM | #12 | |||
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: 25mm Grenade Launchers
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25mm GL might be somewhat high velocity, I don't recall. What would you get if you loaded it with APEX? Not indirect fire, but could make a bit of an elephant gun out of it. Quote:
If you really want to use concussive attacks against armor, contrary to effective practice, a 40mm launcher with thermobaric warheads is at least a step in the right direction. IIRC that will defeat some weaker armor. 64mm thermobarics are actually a threat to power armor. Quote:
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. Last edited by Ulzgoroth; 02-03-2012 at 08:43 AM. |
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02-03-2012, 10:47 AM | #13 |
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Europe
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Re: 25mm Grenade Launchers
Yes. 25mm sounds tiny. Maybe it'll be useful for lobbing specialty rounds, such as flash-bangs, concussion or various forms of gas?
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02-03-2012, 10:54 AM | #14 |
Custom User Title
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Indianapolis, IN
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Re: 25mm Grenade Launchers
One thing you could do is stat up a 25mm ramjet round. A thin outer shell carries a propellant molded around a penetrator with an airspace for combustion. It is fired at a a high enough velocity to sustain ramjet combustion and continues to accelerate until burn out. Good only in atmospheres with enough O2 to support combustion. Do the math or make a judgment call on damage. You should be able to get an armor divisor out of it.
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Joseph Paul |
02-03-2012, 11:02 AM | #15 |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: 25mm Grenade Launchers
HE grenades are primarily for using on 'mooks'. 40mm HE is more useful than 25mm but still not much good against TL9 hard targets.
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
02-03-2012, 11:26 AM | #16 | |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: 25mm Grenade Launchers
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— First, real-world weapons of this kind are optimized for attacking many soft and typically concealed targets over a small area, and not for striking a single hard target dead-on. A grenade launcher is basically a low-powered, big-bore shotgun capable of lobbing small gobs of explosive a lot farther than you could throw them. It isn't a proper anti-armor weapon! A 25mm or 40mm weapon powerful enough to defeat armor kinetically would smash the person firing it. A man-portable weapon powerful enough to defeat armor explosively would need to be larger than 25mm or 40mm; that's why RPGs have 80-150mm over-caliber warheads. Second, video games ignore all this in favor of the Rule of Cool: Of course you use the biggest-bore gun that you have against the toughest bad guy! Of course a projectile that goes BOOM is better for this than one that doesn't! Video games also regularly conflate grenade lauchers with rocket launchers (which are good for fighting hard targets), up to and including in the character dialog. Video games and action movies make crappy reference points for real-world armaments. Realistic options are to make the mooks soft targets, so that a single fragment or a few HP of concussion will demoralize or incapacitate them, or to issue a weapon built to fight hard targets. The latter is realistically a recoilless or rocket-propelled projectile launcher, although some fancy grenade-launcher rounds might suffice, if barely. Cinematic options are to make "hard" mooks softer by swapping out DR for HP, or to issue some sort of science-fictional ammo that can reliably defeat DR from a low-powered 25mm barrel. Just going to high-velocity 25mm cannon rounds and ignoring recoil would be a start.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
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02-03-2012, 11:50 AM | #17 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: 25mm Grenade Launchers
One thing is that, if UT explosives are useless against common armor, then the militaries will tweak them to become useful, or not issue them at all. It would be nice to have rules for increasing the number of fragments (at the expense of fragment damage, to increase the chance of getting a hit on an un/underarmored location) or increasing fragment damage (at the expense of fragment number).
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02-03-2012, 11:55 AM | #18 |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: 25mm Grenade Launchers
The bad assumption is "common armor." Armor has existed for as long as there has been warfare. It has always been the preserve of the wealthy individual (knight, samurai, whatever) or the rich nation. For everybody else, there's prayer and fate. This hasn't changed from TL1 to TL8, and I doubt that TL9+ will change this unless you posit a post-scarcity world for all, in which case why are people fighting wars? So in a TL9+ world with warfare, most targets will remain ill-equipped, unarmored conscripts, ill-equipped, unarmored guerrillas, and ill-equipped, unarmored Third World professionals. That's why HE won't go out of style in infantry weapons. When the rich kids fight each other, though, they'll have armor, and thus use armor-piercing weapons rather than peasant-killer weapons . . . just like knights did.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
02-03-2012, 12:14 PM | #19 | ||
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: 25mm Grenade Launchers
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The Reflex Tacsuit, which is the typical (i.e. neither the élite nor junk, I assume) armour of paramilitary and light infantry units, provides DR10 against Crushing damage, stopping 3 out of 4 dice that grenades do. That's for the same-hex hit, though admittedly not counting any peculiarities of different armour levels across the body. That's with light infantry and paramilitary types. Even with SWAT-level armour, we get enough DR to survive (but of course not ignore) a direct hit. And Heavies, indeed, are to be fought exclusively with AP weapons like Shaped Charges. |
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02-03-2012, 12:51 PM | #20 |
Join Date: Jan 2010
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Re: 25mm Grenade Launchers
I really doubt something called the "thimble grenade" is going to see general use on the front line of many armies, it seems more like a special ops weapon. Combatants should be worried about 40mm grenades doing 8d[2d] crex. If one of those lands in your hex while you're wearing a full tacsuit you're out of the fight.
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grenades, rules, rules clarification, ultra tech, ultra-tech, weapon |
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