High tech guns, and an ultratech gun theoretical question
 

Hello all. I present to you my dilemma. And another hypothetical question.

I was reading High tech on the section of specialized ammunition. Looking at things like HE rounds, LE rounds, etc. and all of them say to "Adds a linked crushing explosion with linked fragmentation" or something thereabouts.

I was trying to find how to know how much damage to actually add but as the book itself says. It doesn't have a formula as "it is beyond the scope of this book" I was wondering if there was something in another book or someone knows of a good way to implement it. Or if I am sposed to Frankenstein it together with the explosives formulas in the basic set?

Now. On to my "I wonder if question"

I played a videogame a long time ago where an ultratech type gun existed. And I would like to see if I could recreate it. I don't know about use it. But I want to see what it would take to make it.

It was your basic go to assault rifle with a smallish clip. And it did much less damage than the regular assault rifles. But. The difference was the ammunition.

Where as all other guns shot a projectile from A to B in a straight line, this one shot in a straight lineish. But the rounds themselves were semi homing. The would turn and curve to hit enemies hiding behind buildings, or crouched behind the endless "chest high walls" scattered about. Yo would just target them and more or less try and keep them in your field of vision and the bullets would just follow them. Not some huge 30 mile chase, they would only deviate some... Say 5 feet diameter from where they were shot at. But as stated before the bullets didn't deal as much damage due to momentum being lost to them turning. And they moved slowly as well if memory serves correctly.

Like some sort of 'semi-homing' round or something like that was what I was looking to make. Probably gun specific to keep it from being way to OP. And more than likely suuuuupppper expensive as well.

Re: High tech guns, and an ultratech gun theoretical question
 

For homing in Ultratech, see P.146. It's only available on ammunition that has propulsion (For obvious reasons).

Re: High tech guns, and an ultratech gun theoretical question
 

I have looked at homing. It's not what I'm looking for. Maybe something similar but it's not the effect that I'm looking for.

Re: High tech guns, and an ultratech gun theoretical question
 

See Ultra-Tech, p 146, for the standard GURPS rules for homing projectiles from small-arms. They basically let you spend 4 times as much per shot to have a bullet that uses the Homing Enhancement (Characters pp 105-106).

Figuring out explosive damage is fairly complicated. You need to know the weight of explosive in the shell (typically 5%-20% of the weight of the projectile; see High-Tech p 169-170 for examples) and REF of the explosive filler being used. Then damage is 6d x square root(explosive weight in lbs * 4 * REF) (see Campaigns p 415).

Fragmentation damage is strictly based on shell diameter; see the weapon tables for examples.

Hope that helps!

Re: High tech guns, and an ultratech gun theoretical question
 

High Tech generally favors a descriptive rather than predictive approach. To guess how much boom an exploding bullet has, you need to guess how much explosive is in it and then, as you say, use those explosives formulas (and probably the HT REF table). And then you can hope it's got the same ballistics as the solid version... But if it's an exploding bullet that actually exists, you can look up how much explosive is in it instead of guessing at it, and ideally you can check what its ballistic properties are too.
Your GURPS options for modeling non-dumb projectiles are Homing and Guided. The difference is that Homing is fire-and-forget while Guided requires user assistance. Both are covered in the Basic Set. (Maybe also treat it as Overhead.)

Re: High tech guns, and an ultratech gun theoretical question
 

I think what you might be looking for is Guided (B412) rather than Homing. While UT doesn't give any rules for Guided projectiles, I would probably permit them with the same cost and stats as Infrared Homing, but require a target designator on the weapon (negligible cost at TL 9+, similar to a laser sight, but has potential to warn the target).

Re: High tech guns, and an ultratech gun theoretical question
 

That's the equation I was referring to. So that clears up that issue. I was fairly sure it used that equation but I wasn't positive. Thanks

Re: High tech guns, and an ultratech gun theoretical question
 

Thanks people, one of my questions have been answered. It is looking like I won't be able to recreate the effect of the second part to my liking so I guess I'll scrap that idea.

Thanks for the input you guys.

Re: High tech guns, and an ultratech gun theoretical question
 

What is it that you want, exactly? Especially in equipment there's no reason you can't model this thing in GURPS if you can decide what it actually is.

Re: High tech guns, and an ultratech gun theoretical question
 

Just from the description, it sounds like it might reduce Cover penalties by 2, and perhaps give a -1 Dodge penalty as well (like a Deceptive Attack).