Sci-fi Weapons, Vehicles and Equipment

Hah, "buckyshot". That's a good one.

"Buckyshot", a sci-fi weapon and...A Good Name For A Rockband...

All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be on The First 48

Another weapon from Schlock Mercenary that you might be interested in: This gun takes the concept of the Anti-Materiel Rifle to a whole new level, and might also be combined with this idea from Freefall for added effect.

edited 21st Oct '13 7:29:04 PM by MattStriker

Be sure to weigh down the buckyshot with lead or tungsten. Carbon is very light weight.

@ Flanker 66

Thanks about the bio-grafting. My novel I'm working on now concerns the crew of a tramp freighter/experimental science platform in disguise. Since it's a civilian ship, it's not armored, and the crew, although they have conventional weapons for use on the ground, go to great lengths to obtain weapons that won't damage the hull of their vessel in the event that on board combat takes place. So the bio-grafted venom glands are one solution. Venom-shooting rifles or handguns, tranquilizer darts, and high powered tasers are commonly used. The bio-grafts are expensive but not that uncommon.

For the Elctrolaser ("Elaser") Rifle, the "backpack" (which is what I meant by portable power source) is basically a miniature fusion generator (I allow for significant miniaturization in my 'verse) connected by a power cable to the rifle, which is usually so big it has to be shoulder mounted. Small versions of the rifle exist but without the power source they're limited to a couple power clips before the whole weapon has to be recharged. One cool thing about this weapon is I can describe the effect of being targeted as "skin-tingling" even without the thing be fired. T Hink of it: you're targeted with a voltaic arc filled with potential energy waiting to be released by a triggered conductive charge. Two attack dogs get blasted into blood and liquified organs by this weapon, to the chagrin of their owner, the ship's Artificial Human doctor.

edited 22nd Oct '13 5:14:16 AM by fulltimeD

I am officially using the name Buckyshot. Thanks for that one.

@Maxwell Daring:

I like the way you think! Those ideas sound like the sort of thing a mad scientist would come up with...

@Taira:

Improvised weapons are a cool idea, and I like your concepts. I imagine such scrounged together weapons are common in guerrilla or criminal arsenals in my 'verse, albeit more as a back up or nasty surprise.

As for "Buckyshot"*

, there's probably something similar in my setting - fill the air with lots of sharp projectiles, and hopefully the enemy will slice themselves to ribbons.

@Matt:

Those are also good ideas.

They remind me of a HEAT variant I've come up with, which were initially designed by the Coalition to kill or disable military cyborgs, but as it turns out are also ideal for handling powered armour - the first stage is an EMP, which for its original purpose would have stunned or paralysed the cyborg but against powered armour instead disables its shields (or alternatively causes its synthetic muscles to lock up if the shield is already down). The second - and last - stage*

behaves as normal. A newer variant includes a "shredder" stage that contains ball bearings/highly durable monofilament wire/[insert thing here] that is designed to rip the target's interior to pieces before it detonates.

@fulltime D:

That also makes sense, since there is an electric field acting upon the target. Perhaps their hair would stand on end as well? Regardless, it's a nasty weapon.

Another Coalition weapon is an anti-personnel micro-missile. It's designed to destroy or disable squads or larger units. Seeker options include IR and laser guidance, as well as electro-optical systems (or even a combined seeker head). Attack profiles include direct fire and indirect fire (in this mode it behaves similarly to the Javelin ATGM in top attack mode, climbing above the target and then diving on to it). Generally, once it detects it is at an ideal point it fires off miniature cluster munitions and detonates them all at once to shower the area in highly lethal shrapnel.

The Coalition is a big fan of missiles (micro or otherwise), if it's not clear.

Locking you up on radar since '09

I thought of this as a vehicle component in my video game concept called Alexandria called Composite-HE (CHE) munitions.

How they work is in a way take traditional APHE type rounds and put them on steroids. Specifically they are launched from the cannon at high sometimes hypersonic velocitiesnote

. When they impact a smart-fuse sets the detonation of the tandem-warhead shaped charges behind the tungsten penetrator nose. This smart-fuse will set the detonation delay based on target, for example a tank will have the greatest delay so the penetrator can pierce the armor enough so that the rest will kill it entirely often because the blasts blow what's left of the penetrator all the way through. The shaped charges themselves are surrounded by frangible casing which emulates the effect of more conventional HE or HEDP ammunition.

The end result is a wide versatility shell that covers effectively three types of ammo into one and is effective against any and all materiel targets. Composite-HE munitions come in a variety of calibers from 35mm to 125mm and beyond.

@ Flanker

The nastiest ;)

My fleets' primary offensive weapons are Tactical-Grade Heavy Lasers and Relativistic Missiles; they can also improvise mass drivers. There's particle beams and kinetic weapons for point defense and also for deflecting debris but they're rarely used. Most combat is long-range, across multiple light seconds.

edited 22nd Oct '13 11:34:22 AM by fulltimeD

@Major Tom:

CHE sounds simple, but effective; a plus for any military weapon.

@fulltime D:

Ah, gotcha. I haven't figured out the specifics, but missiles, railguns and energy/beam weapons are all viable load-outs, the Union's teleportation shenanigans aside*

. What's the difference between Tactical and Strategic Grade weaponry, aside from presumably scale and damage?

Speaking of whom, would I be correct in thinking that a 20/25/30mm*

railgun would cause extremely serious injuries to personnel (if not killing them outright) but would only do mild damage to vehicles that are more heavily armoured than an IFV/APC? Am I overestimating the damage done or underestimating it?

Continuing on that train of thought, what sort of weapons would be viable for 10' powered armour wearing infantry, keeping in mind that the Sirian Union prefers to make use of railguns and similar tech? Sorry for asking so many questions!

Locking you up on radar since '09

Cyberpunk had an anti-personnel device, similar to the ones in MobileSuitGundamThe08thMSTeam: a claymore that shreds those who get too close.

There is RA for PA and 'borgs. Your standard Blade Below the Shoulder and other arm weapons.

"Rifles" and "pistols" would be HMG and 7.62 caliber respectively. The railgun would have optics and would be computer controlled. Ditto anti-tank missiles. There would be a grenade launcher and/or energy weapons.

A 20-35mm round would kill those it hits but unless it's HE wouldn't affect troops spread out. An HE round of that size is for an area target (like infantry) and they are mixed with AP around (for vehicles).

edited 23rd Oct '13 3:40:00 PM by TairaMai

All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be on The First 48

Thank you very much!

For reference, I imagine the standard railgun ammunition is AP rather than HE (the Union had historically assumed it would be fighting other forces in powered armour - i.e. insurrectionists or other internal enemies, if not other aliens equipped with powered armour), though HE or HEAP are also options; they aren't as effective as dedicated anti-tank weapons. So they're only going to knock out one person at a time rather than killing several people at once.

Also, I feel I should clarify; when I say "mild damage" I mean dents, scratching off paint, that sort of thing. They're not going to be knocking out tanks with their railguns, because that's stupid.

Colour me surprised! I would've thought shrapnel or overpressure would have posed a danger.

If there was something of that sort it'd probably have to be retractable for obvious reasons (you don't want it getting in the way). How large would a bayonet or combat/utility knife be, do you think?*

Any neat features you could include in them?

Makes sense. I can't really disagree anyway because of my aforementioned poor sense of scale.

Those are all things that Sirian Union powered armour could/would be packing, depending on role (the railgun is standard issue for Powered Infantry; rifles would depend on the mission or would be used by regular infantry. Pistols are carried as back-up regardless of wearing powered armour or not). I was also thinking that due to connectivity with the suit the railgun could have some form of "aimbot"/smart targeting type ability. Energy weapons would be trickier, though (the Union is less advanced in this area than the Coalition or Confederacy). However, it would probably be powered off the armour's generator.

Locking you up on radar since '09

The RA would cover "center mass" where the pilot is. Mostly for those who are anti-armor. Against an ATGM or tan main gun it won't last, but against a law or RPG it's better than nothing.

Bladed weapons would be no more than a meter long. The better for slashing tires, cutting antennas, fences and such. Against "nudies" (un-armored troops) it's more for the scare factor. Or a quick, quieter kill when the trooper gets the drop on foe.

edited 23rd Oct '13 4:58:14 PM by TairaMai

All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be on The First 48

Tom: From earlier. Lasers can be spoofed, obfuscated, or misdirected. Also there exist systems that can pick up on a laser designater flashign them and slew a gun to its source. In an age of drones , cyborgs, and other advanced tech it would be very easy to have a drone swing a gun around rapidly and pop off a shot and take out the designator.

Trying to target those with a laser designator might just be a bad idea. Dumb fire weapons are nearly immune to anything but obstruction or obfuscation of LOS for targeting and aiming. The only other way to stop the projectile is heavy protection or destroying the projectile.

No form of active targeting painting a target means minimized detection and reduced warning time before firing.

edited 23rd Oct '13 7:23:05 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

^ A lot of laser designation is able to be done on the parent vehicle. Both Cobras and Apaches can lase their own Hellfires and laser-guided Hydras. Assorted MQ aircraft can do the same.

This extends even to tanks and other stuff. T-72s can lase their own gun-launched missiles for instance.

Even better, nobody ever said such laser guided munitions had to be fired with guidance. Between things like lock-on after launch, home on jam and various ECCM methods to counteract anti-lasing tactics and abilities, there's no sure fire anything as far as future munitions go pertaining to the blurred line of rockets and missiles.

edited 23rd Oct '13 8:35:04 PM by MajorTom

Here's one: Sentient self-replicating Von Neumann probes. Basically, the ships are modular components suspended within an amorphous hull made of smart nanomaterial. Such ships are often over 100 kilometers long, are capable of turning entire solar systems into computing megastructures or swarms of drones as they see fit, have godlike intellects, and possess adorkable personalities and odd names like "Don't Make Me Come Down There" or "Vulgar Display of Flowers". What other details might be handy? Also, this is rock-solid on the hardness scale, more or less.

I don't think you quite understand the fundamental difference between how laser counter measures work vs IR or radar guidance counter measures.

The majority of Laser guided munitions read the back scatter from a laser contacting an object of sufficient density. Very few are tail guided aka beam riders because of problems of maintaining LOS with the projectile with the guiding laser. You also have to point the laser at the target meaning no fire and scoot like can be used with back scatter. Its basically the laser equivalent of the TOW. It can be accurate but leaves the launcher dangerous exposed.

You can easily blind a laser receiver on any laser targeted munition effectively "poking out its eye" with a soft kill option. Simply throwing up a dense smoke screen causes massive diffraction especially if you include refracting particles in the substance that makes the smoke like say silicon, quartz, mica, or other similar substances with a high rate of diffraction when in powder form.

Meaning the tracking is across a much larger surface area because the laser back scatters size just got larger and on a substance that moves and shifts unlike a solid surface can wildly throw off the central tracking point. Adding more back scatter with laser noise pulses can feed false signals to a laser receiver. Kinda like chaff and flare approach.

Only one of those options provides anything for a Lock on Jam and that would be the constant noise pulse. Everything else the best you could do is on jams witch to inertial guidance and aim for the last good target lock.

The millimeter radar systems only work at very close range due to limits on power output and power cell size but can be handy for detecting obfuscated targets.

Also having a laser designator on the vehicle itself would be a very good reason to not target a targeting laser reactive defensive system with a laser designating device in the first place. Hey my vehicle is here shoot me is what you might as well be screaming.

In short taking a even smaller missile, smaller then a hydra that is a compact man portable munition limits some of the guidance options a bit.

There is also a neat tactic where you can mix dumb fire and guided munitions. a few guided and a few dumb fire at a target making it harder for some systems to knock out all the guided targets.

Who watches the watchmen?

@ Flanker:

Ah, gotcha. I haven't figured out the specifics, but missiles, railguns and energy/beam weapons are all viable load-outs, the Union's teleportation shenanigans aside*. What's the difference between Tactical and Strategic Grade weaponry, aside from presumably scale and damage?

"Tactical Grade" is just a term I invented for my 'Verse to describe a laser device that is powerful enough to be in the range of a weapon. A "Tactical Laser," or Tac Laser. Less powerful lasers wouldn't be "tactical grade." A strategic weapons system in my verse would be like a defensive satellite grid, for example, which most civilized planets have. There are no shields, so I also include ship-deployed area denial weapons like debris clouds and mines intended to discourage pursuit.

Speaking of whom, would I be correct in thinking that a 20/25/30mm* railgun would cause extremely serious injuries to personnel (if not killing them outright) but would only do mild damage to vehicles that are more heavily armoured than an IFV/APC? Am I overestimating the damage done or underestimating it?

To be honest I have no idea. The only armor most civilian ships have in the Long Season Verse is designed to protect against radiation and other "navigational hazards." IE no armor. It's mentioned that on military ships with sufficient armor, soldiers carry projectile weapons like regular rifles and guns or scaled down railgun rifles (more expensive) and have no concern about firing them inside because the ships are so heavily armored they can take it. But that's also because they're designed with the possibility of an enemy boarding operation.

Continuing on that train of thought, what sort of weapons would be viable for 10' powered armour wearing infantry, keeping in mind that the Sirian Union prefers to make use of railguns and similar tech? Sorry for asking so many questions!

I'd give powered infantry the biggest, baddest handheld or shoulder-mounted weapons available.

---

I should note that as a general patttern in my "Long Season Verse" (named for Harry Daedalus Long Season, the protagonist), humans (who are the only sentients in the Milky Way) have a tendency to construct technology that is very advanced and powerful in terms of allowing people to explore and settle new worlds, but impractical for combat. I fill my 'verse with this sort of tech.

An example of this is the ship-mounted particle beam weapons. Particle beam weapons are based on the lower-intensity Sensor Cannon system. Most ships have a particle array with various sensor cannons. A warship has extra power to sufficiently weaponize this system in short-range combat. A non-military ship doesn't have that extra juice, but if they picked up an auxiliary generator, and install it without overloading their ship's power grid, they could turn their sensor system into a weaponized Particle Weapon array.

A Note: Sensors are sublight-only; No Everything Sensor. There's an active component, the sensor cannon, which projects various particle beams at an unidentified object, and the crew use their passive sensor equipment as well as visual means to observe the interaction of the particle beams with the object to determine things like mass, composition, etc.

Another example: Hawking Shields are a kind of artificial membrane used during the Jump Sequence to clear small debris from the terminal coordinates, and protect the crew from the Hawking Radiation their FTL jumps generate. They're energy-expensive, turned on before the jump and switched off right after. So even though theoretically they could repel weapons, they're not used to do so because they can only operate about a minute at a time without needing to be recharged. SO again, a powerful, advanced technology that's not practical for combat at all.

edited 24th Oct '13 5:07:31 AM by fulltimeD

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edited 24th Oct '13 5:03:40 AM by fulltimeD

@Maxwell

Von neuman nano weapons have...issues.

The first is copy degradation. Because we live in an imperfect universe (and perfect ones are boring as hell) we can't make a perfect copy of anything. We get minute errors every time we make a copy. Normally, this isn't an issue but if you make a copy of a copy of a copy you start getting copies that don't look like the original.

The second is durability. Nanomachines are essentially hypercomplex chemicals and, like any complex chemical compound, sufficient heat or light (e.g. UV light, fire) can destroy it. Since nanomachines are so small, it's nearly impossible to insulate them from the elements. Unless, of course, you decide to put them in their own protective medium. Keeping them in an opaque water based solution, for example, would stabilize the temperature and limit UV exposure.

Third is effectiveness. Nanomachines could be designed to burn through steel like acid but it would be far less expensive and moderately quicker to use actual acid in large quantities. Furthermore, it would be so sluggish that the enemy would have time to neutralize the nanomachines with a blow torch or flare. The primary advantage is that you don't need a whole lot of it. When acid dissolves something, it turns into salt and, usually, water. As a result, a given quantity of acid can only eat through so much metal. Nanomachines are under no such limits. Depending on how they work, they can keep on eating until they run out of power. Very useful if you need to get through a blast door or quietly sabotage equipment.

Oh, I see - so it'd be mounted to the torso?*

I think you'd need to design it carefully (especially for cyborgs) to avoid shrapnel whizzing upward and giving your head/helmet extra ventilation.

As for the centre being the location of the pilot, hopefully you're not talking about the whole body - although in an ideal world it would be stupid to have the wearer's head in a powered armour's head, I would have imagined it'd be impractical to make the suit either big enough or wide enough to have the wearer entirely inside the suit; by that stage I think it'd be more Mini-Mecha than powered armour.

Makes sense. As I said above, 99.9% of all combat would be expected to take place at range rather than in a situation where you'd expect to use bladed weapons a lot. But it never hurts to have the option!

Reminds me a lot of the Culture in some ways, at least from what I've heard of it. If nothing else, it's an interesting idea!

I'm afraid I can't be much help, since my understanding of physics probably isn't advanced enough to ensure everything's diamond hard.

Cool. By the way, you can quote someone more easily by doing this:

[[quoteblock]] [TEXT] [[/quoteblock]]

Just replace [TEXT] with whatever text you're responding to.

That aside, I like the fact that they take advantage of the surprising deadliness of debris in space.

Fair point. Military ships in my 'verse are similarly armoured, especially Sirian ones. You still don't want to take heavy ordinance unless you know what you're doing, but as a general rule you don't need to worry too much.

Also, cool. I don't think I've seen many 'verses where shields aren't very useful.

Locking you up on radar since '09

Thanks for the heads up.

First, the copy degradation issue: The copies themselves are somewhat limited with their own self-replication capabilities. The reason for this is so that our galaxy doesn't become completely overrun with self-replicating machinery. This is also to prevent gradual copy degradation, which would also contribute to a killer probe scenario.

Second, the vessel itself isn't entirely made of nanobots. The actual surface of the ship is made up of sheets of interwoven carbon nanotube sheets. The majority of the fluid material is actually utility fog.

Third, it is equipped to assemble any number of mechanisms that can accomplish a given goal. Furthermore, there are much more subversive methods of dealing with enemies than the basic grey-goo.

Any more problems that need to be dealt with?

EMP: what does EMP do to the little nano's? Are they "off" or Killed Off for Real?

Rival nano's: some cyberpunk books and MegaCorp nanite "wars". Black snow would fall and bad stuff would happen.

One idea I've heard was nanite "fixers". Say a part breaks somewhere. A wire frays, a bolt snaps etc. Some nanites go out (or are placed there before hand) and fix the part. They rebuilt it or "merge" into the broken parts like army ants.

That's what is at the real core of Organic Technology. It's not Space Whale it's the "living" part of living machines.

The bio-andriods I have in my setting are the products of a transhuman group. The line between traditional machine, nanite and living organism is blurry. They are able to repair and (to some extent) program themselves.

The downside is that they are not built so much as grown and have to be taught like a living thing in addition to be programed.

All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be on The First 48

I have question. For nanomachines there are three key questions.

How do they move? What propels them and what powers that propulsion?

How are they powered? Where do they derive their power from for all of their systems?

How are they commanded/guided? What tells them what to do?

edited 24th Oct '13 7:13:56 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

The outer shell, which can be thought of as a sort of cell wall, would have sufficient shielding to protect it from residual radiation. In theory, this would be enough to protect it from a weaponized EMP. Even if there was an internal detonation, the system is compartmentalized enough to ensure that at least some nanos survive to revive the rest of the system. That's where the previously mentioned copy degradation issue gets interesting.

As for hostile nanotech, the main threat for our intrepid giant nanotech space whale comes from other probes with similar technology. There are a few ways to fight an infection. A ship can simply eject the foreign object as well as some of its own mass, it can directly attack the hostile nanos with its own autoimmune system, or it can "spoof" the foreign nanos by basically hacking into them. In the most dire situations, it can cut off heat circulation and let the entire section fry itself.

The ship is best thought of as a giant cell with multiple components suspended in a fluid, all kept in an amorphous cell wall.

Power is provided through an ambient microwave network, while larger energy demands are met with lasers. Computing is provided by a nanoscale fiber-optic neuron network distributed throughout the mass of the ship. The nanobots process orders from the network with its own fullerene-based processor.

Propulsion is still a work in progress

edited 24th Oct '13 7:51:55 PM by MaxwellDaring