Weapon Design Chllange:Mech Mounted Rail guns

[Darkness12]

OK here's  a weapon design challenge for you all. Now we have seen these before in mech commander gold and in the mek tek mech paks for the retail version of mw4 mercs. But this is something for you all to help yourselves to, In my mind I thought 'hey why don't we try out hands of making rail-guns for use on mechs and heavy vehicles' so the challenge here is to design a reasonably particle rail gun for use on mobile platforms. something to be partnered with the Gauss rifle. but there are a few rules.

1.The Design entries must be balanced in terms of statistics.

2.Only enter two version of your rail gun one for the inner sphere, the other for the clans.

3. It must have the bear minimum synopsis fluff of one paragraph.

There is a three month deadline starting from today.

There will be one winner from both tech sides,one for IS and one for Clan.

So people get designing those rail guns.

[glitterboy2098]

there is little gameplay difference between a railgun (which uses a set of charged rails to accellerate a projectile), and a guassgun (which uses rings of electromagnets to accellerate projectiles.)
so if you want a railgun, use a guass rifle and rename it. (in fact, there is a canon brand of guass rifle named the Von Ryan railgun.)

[Khymerion]

I'll give it a shot, perhaps to view the Rail Gun as the next gen of the Gauss Rifle... or the steps towards moving beyond it.

Rail Gun

The Gauss rifle has been relatively unchanged technologically for centuries now.  While refinements to the concept have been implemented and thus giving us the Clan incarnations in addition to the Sphere's own ideas on the concept, a true next generation step forward has not been seen.  Now, while we have stood at the edge of another age of regression, shining beacons had kept us from falling permanently back into the abyss that some of our grandparents can still recall for us.  To them, the magnetically accelerated slug of the rail gun was akin to magic... a token of a lost age!  Our clan brethren merely shrank the device, refining it...  and it wasn't until contact with us again did they actually start to expand upon the weapon!  It is time for us to step forward and usher in a new age of weapons, not unlike our Star League ancestors who centuries ago shook the worlds of creation when the first Gauss rifle thundered a round down range or make the earth tremble itself with the shattering footfall of the first battlemech.

Ahem, enough theatrics aside.  What we are proposing here and are in need of additional funding is a next generation mass driver.  We all know exactly where the upper limits of our current technology hovers, the size of the Heavy Gauss Rifle is a mere testament to that.  Any more and we might as well call it a sub-capital weapon... and we all know the connotations about those.  We are at a choke point in terms of material sciences, at least currently.  We can't improve performance without either gaining heat due to increased energy requirements nor can we just keep increasing the size of the machine without it becoming akin to trying to mount artillery on a mech.  I almost envy our ancient ancestors a millennium ago who had only to build a bigger ship to mount their guns on instead of fitting it into a modern machine's constraints.

To this end, we chose to work from the internal weight and footprint of the current generation's Gauss Rifle... to allow our engineers the ability to slip the weapon into currently fielded mechs.  When fired, the rail gun leaves a shimmering trail behind it, a small detriment to units that are trying to be stealthy due to what is akin to a line pointing right back to the firing position.  The kinetic energy penetrator in the initial tests have shown to have traits not unlike that of the armor piercing munitions produced thirty years ago within our parent state.  While we did suffer a slight reduction of potential damage due to a minor side effect.

Sorry general, what was that?  Oh, forgive me.  The side effect?  The rounds tend to hit too hard and thus not convey all their energy to the target, often punching clean through.  Reduced damage compared to the current generation of gauss rifles but I think benefits far outweigh this reduction.  Another byproduct of the weapon is the simple fact that it is... less efficient in it's shielding.  The sheer amount of energy being pulled from the reactors to push the round to the hyper velocity speeds does heat it up far beyond what most consider acceptable for a gauss rifle of our generation.

Now verses mechs, the HV rounds are fantastic but in today's modern theater of war, we need to consider the threat of the infantry, both conventional and powered.  The HV rounds performed, well, on par with energy weapons against them.  Don't worry, we didn't test on any live subjects... merely training dummies.  For the anti-personnel role, a 'low powered' setting was added to fire a low velocity round down range and a high explosive anti-personnel round is provided.   While the low powered setting does not reduce the heat generated by the rail gun, the extra energy is needed to fire the heavier HEAP round.  The HEAP round maintains it's full damage potential when fired against soft targets such as infantry.

Range is comparable these days to what we have come to expect from the Gauss Rifle though hopefully refinements in engineering and material sciences will see it's range increased.  This gentlemen is the first step to next generation of weapons.  Please look at the provided documents before you for specification of the weapon system once it progresses past the prototype stage.

Rail Gun
Heat - 6
Damage - 12
Short Range - 7
Medium Range - 15
Long Range - 22
Tonnage - 15 tons
Critical Slots - 7
Ammo Per ton - HV - 8    HEAP - 4

Clan Version
As per above, only 12 tons and 6 crit slots...

Special Rules - Explodes on a critical hit as per standard Gauss Rifle but for double damage (24 instead of 12).  CASE may function as per normal.

Ammo Bins carrying HEAP rounds explode as per standard ammunition rules but without the penalty to hit inherent to the Autocannon special ammunition.  CASE may function as per normal.

Hyper Velocity rounds perform as per the Armor Piercing special ammunition rules.  No chance for an explosion (treated like standard Gauss Rifle rounds in this regard).

HEAP rounds do full damage to infantry units.

[Darkness12]

Khy you have got the basic outline of the next gen weapons. everyone follow khy's basic example.

[Onisuzume]

A coilgun would be longer-lasting, though...
Of which we already have plenty examples.

[Feign]

Warning: Physics mode:

There are pros and cons to rails and rings in the real world.  Simply renaming a Gauss Rifle to a railgun seems off, as the two are kind of at opposite ends of the ballistic spectrum.

Coilguns require some precise timing, and have something of a limit on the speed you can get along a certain barrel length due to the time needed fro the charge to propagate through the wire in each coil At higher speeds the propagation rate becomes more and more of a factor.  Aside from that, the magnetic flux does create an outward stress on the coils themselves, meaning the coilgun isn't completely free from wear but definitely experiences less of it than a conventional gun.

A railgun has a very straightforward path for electrons across a tiny "coil" created by the source, rails and bullet in a circuit.  The same force that puts stress on the coils in a coilgun is the one pushing the projectile in a railgun, but since there is a short path, even at the end of the rails, the propagation time of charge is inconsequential, and the projectile speed is only limited by the amount of charge put through the rails.  For the speed to get to the point that the gun is worth its size, the amount of energy is enough to practically tear the gun apart and reduce the projectile to a stream of burning metal plasma from atmospheric friction and sheer amperage.

Because of the top speed of a coilgun being more dependent on the propagation time rather than projectile size, it is better suited for a large, slow, heavy slug.  Because atmosphere is such a major role in the stability of a railgun, the smaller the projectile the better, making a small, ultra-fast projectile ideal for it.  If you put the same energy into them both and make your projectile ideal for each, you'll get about the same raw energy out.

That said, I like Khy's version. ;D

[Kiesel]

Weapon designers wanted a weapon to occupy the previously unfilled niche in long range direct fire weapons.  There were already large powerful weapons in both high heat / low tonnage and low heat / high tonnage varieties which could be mixed to best utilize the heat sinks integral to fusion engine design.  However there was no alternative to the lightest autocannons, which were impractical to mount alongside secondary weaponry, and which so under-taxed even the most archaic cooling systems as to be laughable.  Since no laser or particle beam would be able to achieve the range required without being enormous, an hypersonic projectile weapon was envisioned.
Although equivalent in size to an AC-5, the resulting device performed even better than expected, hitting targets reliably at what would be extreme ranges for any other weapon in the inner sphere.  It also had more than twice the kinetic energy of the only autocannons able to match its range, at the small cost of consuming cooling capacity which would otherwise go unused.
However, an unfortunate side effect to the astounding speed of the projectiles soon became apparent.  While they easily penetrated into the most advanced armor materials, the rounds functioned more like meteors than shells.  If the round hit armor that was too thick, the round would disintegrate before penetrating fully, spreading the damage to the armor over a wide area and preventing further penetration.  However if the round was lucky enough to hit an area protected by only a thin layer, the resulting ball of plasma would wreak havoc on the internal components via heat and overpressure, potentially bursting from weak points on the opposite side.
Though mildly disappointed by the performance of the weapon versus standard armor, the shockwave from the impact would still crack armor plate weak to ballistics, and since the round penetration distance before disintegrating was the same versus every material tested including tougher armors, this was considered a net gain in effectiveness.

Name: Rail Gun
Type: DB
Heat 6
Damage 4
Range 3/9/19/30
Ammo: 32
Tonnage: 8
Crits: 4

Special:
Every hit marks off the full 4 pips of armor, regardless of specialty armor type, unless the armor would take more than 4 pips of damage.
Every hit against a form of armor which would reduce or negate the chance of critical hits is treated as though the armor were standard, every critical hit against standard armor or weaker has an additional +2 chance.
If a critical hit from a Rail gun hits ferro-fibrous (or any other specialty armor), it is not rerolled and instead damages the armor of that location for 4 pips (or more), if the attack hit the front torso then the rear armor is damaged, or the front armor if the attack was from the rear.
If a critical hit hits endo-steel (or any other specialty internal), it is not rerolled and instead damages the internal structure of that location for 4 points.

If the weapon is damaged, it explodes for 8 damage, case works as normal.

Clan weapon is as above, except:
Range: -/10/21/32
damage: 5 (deals 5 pips of damage unless the location would take more.)
Tonnage: 7
Crits: 3

[Khymerion]

I like the inner sphere version alot.  Not too much of a fan of giving the clanner version the bonus point of damage plus the smaller size... but beyond that, will have to give it a spin.  Perhaps even mix and match the two proposals thus far.  I'll get back to you!

[Fallen_Raven]

Warning: Physics mode:

There are pros and cons to rails and rings in the real world.

A railgun has a very straightforward path for electrons across a tiny "coil" created by the source, rails and bullet in a circuit.  The same force that puts stress on the coils in a coilgun is the one pushing the projectile in a railgun, but since there is a short path, even at the end of the rails, the propagation time of charge is inconsequential, and the projectile speed is only limited by the amount of charge put through the rails.  For the speed to get to the point that the gun is worth its size, the amount of energy is enough to practically tear the gun apart and reduce the projectile to a stream of burning metal plasma from atmospheric friction and sheer amperage.

You forgot a major weakness of railguns, arcing and projectile welding. Both of those become more significant as you increase the power running through the rails. Since a railgun relies on induction to operate, a larger bore needs more current (if I'm recalling my basic electrical concepts and terms correctly) to produce the same magnetic field strength, but more current produces more waste heat and can weld the projectile to the rail. So large caliber railguns are very difficult to use, especially for multiple shots, but smaller caliber models loose very little in the way of velocity for far smaller power use.

[Feign]

You forgot a major weakness of railguns, arcing and projectile welding. Both of those become more significant as you increase the power running through the rails. Since a railgun relies on induction to operate, a larger bore needs more current (if I'm recalling my basic electrical concepts and terms correctly) to produce the same magnetic field strength, but more current produces more waste heat and can weld the projectile to the rail. So large caliber railguns are very difficult to use, especially for multiple shots, but smaller caliber models loose very little in the way of velocity for far smaller power use.

Good point, though newer railguns use a copper conductor behind a denser projectile, the projectile and rails are intentionally lower conductors with higher melt temperatures and the amperage is turned up to the point where the copper conductor is almost always vaporized by the end of the barrel.  It pretty soundly fixed the welding problem, but instead slowly builds a copper plating on the rails that after repeated firing can jam the whole thing up.  In any case, it's not a terribly reliable weapon with all the things that can go wrong with it.

To perhaps make it more flavorful:

Rail Gun
Heat - 4
Damage - 12
Short Range - 9
Medium Range - 18
Long Range - 36
Tonnage - 15
Critical Slots - 7
Ammo Per Ton - 20

A railgun takes an enormous amount of power, and even with the largest combat rated fusion engine, only one railgun may be mounted in any one vehicle or mech.

Each firing of a railgun has a chance of warping, welding, plating or otherwise damaging the rails.  On an unmodified dice roll of 3 or lower, the gun gains a +1 to hit penalty for the rest of the combat, which is cumulative to later rolls of 3 or lower.  If the gun rolls an unmodified 3 or lower when the to hit penalty (from self-damage) is +3, then the gun takes one critical damage and explodes as if hit by enemy fire.

[Onisuzume]

Because of the top speed of a coilgun being more dependent on the propagation time rather than projectile size, it is better suited for a large, slow, heavy slug.  Because atmosphere is such a major role in the stability of a railgun, the smaller the projectile the better, making a small, ultra-fast projectile ideal for it.  If you put the same energy into them both and make your projectile ideal for each, you'll get about the same raw energy out.

Ofcourse, a smaller projectile fired at high velocities has the downside of being able to punch through the opponent's armour, hitting almost nothing in the interior, and then exiting through the rear armour, leaving only two small holes.
A larger projectiles, on the other hand, does a wee little bit more damage when hitting something.

You forgot a major weakness of railguns, arcing and projectile welding. Both of those become more significant as you increase the power running through the rails. Since a railgun relies on induction to operate, a larger bore needs more current (if I'm recalling my basic electrical concepts and terms correctly) to produce the same magnetic field strength, but more current produces more waste heat and can weld the projectile to the rail. So large caliber railguns are very difficult to use, especially for multiple shots, but smaller caliber models loose very little in the way of velocity for far smaller power use.

Good point, though newer railguns use a copper conductor behind a denser projectile, the projectile and rails are intentionally lower conductors with higher melt temperatures and the amperage is turned up to the point where the copper conductor is almost always vaporized by the end of the barrel.  It pretty soundly fixed the welding problem, but instead slowly builds a copper plating on the rails that after repeated firing can jam the whole thing up.  In any case, it's not a terribly reliable weapon with all the things that can go wrong with it.

So why are we doing railguns then, if they have such disadvantages?

[Feign]

So why are we doing railguns then, if they have such disadvantages?

That's actually a very good question.  One probably to ask the US Navy...  They're still trying to make it work while people are still able to make coil guns in their garages...  It's a mystery.

[Khymerion]

Why?  Because perhaps... over the course of a millennium ...  perhaps...  someone... some where...  actually figured out how to make one work...  and not just work but work well.   A thousand years and if they are still working with the same metallurgical and physical technologies that we have today... well...  I would be more surprised.

That is the problem... we are playing in a setting where we can toss a good deal of what we understand RIGHT OUT THE WINDOW.  It is like trying to get someone from the year 1011 AD to understand carbon fiber technology and nuclear reactors.  So why are we doing it?

Because it is a fun thought experiment to come up with a 'next generation' direct fire projectile thrower.  So, rather than argue about how impractical it is to even develop such a weapon using today's understandings of metallurgy, physics, and power generation...    we need to remember that we are talking about a setting where machines powered by micro-suns and already have mastered magnetically propelled projectile weapons already exist...  it means in setting, they have already figured out what we haven't. 

What made it work?  That is for the US navy and plenty of big projects who will probably spend years upon years refining and discovering.  It probably won't be the same things some guy is building in his garage powered by a car battery and using parts he picked up at a Radioshack.  Or perhaps it might.  Perhaps it is just refinement, much like the gun today sure looks alot different from it's ancestor 500 years ago...  and we are in a setting where the Guass Rifle isn't introduced till 2590.  That means that there is a good deal of material sciences being worked on... much akin to the difference between today's US navy prototypes and what we now get to play with in game.   It is definitely like looking at an ancient hand cannon and wondering how the heck we have AR-15s today...  roughly the same amount of time and I am sure the steel in the barrel of the hand cannon is a heck of alot different from the barrel of that AR-15.

So, enjoy... have fun... don't try to develop rules for a weapon that have all the problems of TODAY's prototypes and concept pieces but run with the idea that someone might, some day in the distant future, might want to improve the weapons that they have THEN and just stupidly called it a Rail Gun out of the irony of being a history major some point in their career and remember that some fools used to have a bunch of terms for roughly the same concept.

[A. Lurker]

Well, the slight problem with the "it's the FUTURE, darnit, they can DO that then!!1" argument is...if it is indeed the future, why would they feel any urge to go back to the weapon concepts of the present, i.e. their past as of centuries ago? Isn't that kind of like using 21st-century cutting-edge technology in an attempt to make the perfect crossbow for the modern battlefield? ;)

[Fallen_Raven]

Isn't that kind of like using 21st-century cutting-edge technology in an attempt to make the perfect crossbow for the modern battlefield? ;)

You mean Turok?  :)

[doulos05]

Well, the slight problem with the "it's the FUTURE, darnit, they can DO that then!!1" argument is...if it is indeed the future, why would they feel any urge to go back to the weapon concepts of the present, i.e. their past as of centuries ago? Isn't that kind of like using 21st-century cutting-edge technology in an attempt to make the perfect crossbow for the modern battlefield? ;)

Crossbows can be made to be nearly silent, compact, they could be constructed to be nearly maintenance free, are relatively easy to reload, and are very accurate over short distances. Plus, when painted black they remind people of ninjas. This sounds like the perfect weapon for a special forces team.

[A. Lurker]

Crossbows can be made to be nearly silent, compact, they could be constructed to be nearly maintenance free, are relatively easy to reload, and are very accurate over short distances. Plus, when painted black they remind people of ninjas. This sounds like the perfect weapon for a special forces team.

Fair enough, special forces are pretty much by definition "special".

But for general combat purposes, I have a hard time seeing any sizable armed force voluntarily arm its members with those modern super-crossbows over plain old firearms. :)

[doulos05]

Fair enough, special forces are pretty much by definition "special".

But for general combat purposes, I have a hard time seeing any sizable armed force voluntarily arm its members with those modern super-crossbows over plain old firearms. :)

Sorry, I was going for a bit more tongue in cheek than reality. The other thing to consider is that THIS. IS. BATTLETECH! We don't play silly rules like economics or physics or common sense! We kick all of those things into a vast hole which I can only assume empties in GURPS.

[Khymerion]

Well, the slight problem with the "it's the FUTURE, darnit, they can DO that then!!1" argument is...if it is indeed the future, why would they feel any urge to go back to the weapon concepts of the present, i.e. their past as of centuries ago? Isn't that kind of like using 21st-century cutting-edge technology in an attempt to make the perfect crossbow for the modern battlefield? ;)

Yet, we have examples like the Po and Ontos as people in the 'present' looking back to weapons of the past (the T-34 and the, well, Ontos) and rolling out 'new' designs.  Also, setting wise, they are more than happy to call mech archaic things like the Trebuchet and Catapult...  so it is not too far to think that they might go back and choose an archaic name for a weapon system...

plus...  as a reminder...

The Gauss rifle IS a magnetic rail gun!  It IS the rail gun the navy wants (but with FASA physics attached), just with the bugs worked out (Like actual metallurgical improvements).  It IS the wonder weapon we all think about in Sci-Fi...  it just got squished before it could become wonder weapon for capital ships (Like Lasers and Cannon are currently the kings of BT) from other sci-fi (Which did to get them).  The clans were uncreative (200+ years and only made it lighter).  There is no ifs, ands, or buts about it, it is a rail gun/coil gun/what ever term for using electromagnetism to propel a shell down range we want to use today.

Oh no.  Someone wanted to refine it and made a big enough leap for it to actually transcend the current generations of Hvy/Light/Reg/HAG/AP/Silver Bullet gauss rifles.  They needed to differentiate it from the current generation...

What do we call it?  An Improved Gauss Rifle?  Or just grab another one of the many names for the guns used over the vast history of mankind.   Heck, they could of just called it a Hyper Velocity Javelin Thrower (H-JAV for short) and it would not be much of a difference.  After all, this is a next gen weapon.

Giving the Rail Gun all the problems that TODAY's prototypes have is like saying that in our modern or future setting RPGs, we need to still have rule for ammunition that fouls in the rain, hand making ammunition, and barrels exploding due to poor hand forging for all firearms (for games set from the 1890s onward).  Imagine playing a game of Twilight 2000 and having to worry about if you should fire your AK74 or M16 because it's raining and there might be smoke from the last volley of fire still in the field (and not from smoke grenades or artillery).  If the setting has the bloody Gyrojet pistol and rifle actually being acceptable weapons (despite RL failure) and thus assuming that the intervening millennium smoothed out the problems (like the weapon being useless at short range), we can assume that the rail gun doesn't have today's screw ball prototype problems.

So it is not the equal of saying we can make some really awesome Crossbows with modern tech for general issue (or an awesome steam driven catapult, look at the pumpkin chuckers), it is saying that they actually perfected (or at least refined) a weapon that is already in service (Gauss Rifle).

[A. Lurker]

The Gauss rifle IS a magnetic rail gun!

It's a magnetic coil gun. Yes, both use magnetism to accelerate a projectile; they nonetheless work quite differently, and conflating them is a bit akin to calling a cannon a rocket launcher. (Hey, those both use the awesome power of applied chemistry to accelerate a projectile...must be the same kind of weapon, then. :D)

[Fallen_Raven]

Yet, we have examples like the Po and Ontos as people in the 'present' looking back to weapons of the past (the T-34 and the, well, Ontos) and rolling out 'new' designs.  Also, setting wise, they are more than happy to call mech archaic things like the Trebuchet and Catapult...  so it is not too far to think that they might go back and choose an archaic name for a weapon system...

plus...  as a reminder...

The Gauss rifle IS a magnetic rail gun!  It IS the rail gun the navy wants (but with FASA physics attached), just with the bugs worked out (Like actual metallurgical improvements).  It IS the wonder weapon we all think about in Sci-Fi...  it just got squished before it could become wonder weapon for capital ships (Like Lasers and Cannon are currently the kings of BT) from other sci-fi (Which did to get them).  The clans were uncreative (200+ years and only made it lighter).  There is no ifs, ands, or buts about it, it is a rail gun/coil gun/what ever term for using electromagnetism to propel a shell down range we want to use today.

Oh no.  Someone wanted to refine it and made a big enough leap for it to actually transcend the current generations of Hvy/Light/Reg/HAG/AP/Silver Bullet gauss rifles.  They needed to differentiate it from the current generation...

What do we call it?  An Improved Gauss Rifle?  Or just grab another one of the many names for the guns used over the vast history of mankind.   Heck, they could of just called it a Hyper Velocity Javelin Thrower (H-JAV for short) and it would not be much of a difference.  After all, this is a next gen weapon.

Giving the Rail Gun all the problems that TODAY's prototypes have is like saying that in our modern or future setting RPGs, we need to still have rule for ammunition that fouls in the rain, hand making ammunition, and barrels exploding due to poor hand forging for all firearms (for games set from the 1890s onward).  Imagine playing a game of Twilight 2000 and having to worry about if you should fire your AK74 or M16 because it's raining and there might be smoke from the last volley of fire still in the field (and not from smoke grenades or artillery).  If the setting has the bloody Gyrojet pistol and rifle actually being acceptable weapons (despite RL failure) and thus assuming that the intervening millennium smoothed out the problems (like the weapon being useless at short range), we can assume that the rail gun doesn't have today's screw ball prototype problems.

So it is not the equal of saying we can make some really awesome Crossbows with modern tech for general issue (or an awesome steam driven catapult, look at the pumpkin chuckers), it is saying that they actually perfected (or at least refined) a weapon that is already in service (Gauss Rifle).

So you're saying that you want a quantam leap of weapons technology for a society that has just finished reviving Primitive equipment. This weapon is also based off of a weapon that functions on one principle but named after weapons that operate on a (somewhat) different principle. And this weapon isn't allowed to use any feature after the weapon it is named on, but has to be different from the system that it is based off of.

I'm not sure what it is that you actually want.

[Feign]

Khy has a point in that it's absolutely possible that the 31st century Gauss Rifle is likely varied to the extent of containing any number of rail, coil and/or mixtures of the technologies.  I've recently found myself that using a coil to impart added flux between the rails is actually pretty effective at improving projectile speed at lower voltages without worrying about timing any coil pulse sequences (though using a series of pulsing coils down the rail would certainly be more efficient than what I set up).  It's quite possible that the Gauss Rifle is some optimal hybrid of rail and coil...

Meaning a pure "toaster and steel bearing" coilgun wouldn't even be worth mentioning in BT any more than a "Copper lines and a battery" railgun...  Outside of an awesome MacGyver remake.

[Khymerion]

It's a magnetic coil gun. Yes, both use magnetism to accelerate a projectile; they nonetheless work quite differently, and conflating them is a bit akin to calling a cannon a rocket launcher. (Hey, those both use the awesome power of applied chemistry to accelerate a projectile...must be the same kind of weapon, then. :D)

Point taken...  and that point, it is kinda the same problem that the real life gyrojet pistol has...  it is a gun, it is a rocket... it's both.  In the case of the Coil and rail gun, the difference seems to be more akin to smoothbored and rifled gun...

So you're saying that you want a quantam leap of weapons technology for a society that has just finished reviving Primitive equipment. This weapon is also based off of a weapon that functions on one principle but named after weapons that operate on a (somewhat) different principle. And this weapon isn't allowed to use any feature after the weapon it is named on, but has to be different from the system that it is based off of.

I'm not sure what it is that you actually want.

You have a point there.   Then again, the setting seemed to have a group who just rediscovered a technology ('40) suddenly come out with the Light Gauss Rifle within 19 years of it's rediscovery.  The Silver Bullet within 10.  Heavy was 21 years.  Clanners lagged behind a bit before introducing a next gen Gauss at 19 ('49) years after first contact with a dynamic people with the HAG and 20 years for the AP Gauss.

Now, making the assumption that there is a fun extra 15 years or so tossed on for the jihad...  I kinda wrote my tiny short from the POV of 85 or maybe even 86, far outside the purview of what might fall within the universes' Jane's Fighting (fill the blank) for that year (AKA, the TROs).  Now, building this POV for the work...  assumed some lab jockey toyed around with some things.  After all, mistakes and unexpected results are some of the most revolutionary things.  Or perhaps the boy was sitting on a grav train one day not playing Angry Birds 3085 edition on his data slate and actually came up with an idea.

After all, except for force fields and anti-grav, we got pretty much everything else in Sci-fi laying around... complete with hand held lasers that actually can hurt someone... meaning we solved the battery problem we have today!

Bam, built a pseudo prototype using a half junked gauss rifle that was laying around (mythbusters style or how half the R&D departments I know operate), probably blew up half the lab in the first firing.  Kept toying around with it.  It is the closing days of the crusade to beat down the Jihad or just right after, R&D budgets are probably being slashed at this point or proposals for new weapons being pushed to the side in favor of mass production (or as close as we can get to it) to support the drive to Terra.  This guy's team probably slap dashed the first series of prototypes using stuff they borrowed from around the factories or custom built it.  Bingo, it worked.  It probably has a terribly more complex name on the folder when they submit it up to the higher ups in the company.

They look at it funny.  Who wants a H-JAV?  That sounds terrible.  We can't sell that!  It would be as silly as calling it a HAG!  Explain it to me.  Insert sound of snoring as the lab boys explain all the higher up particulars of how the new weapon operates.  All that sinks in is the fact that it weighs as much as a gauss rifle but its better... oh, and the extra set of rails needed to support the greater output.  Genius moment from the higher ups, Rail gun!  Pass it to marketing, marketing talks to the lab boys, they face palm as the H-JAV is now called a Rail Gun, they get the presentation Okay-ed by the higher ups, insert story from my initial post.

This moment in Dilbert-esque history has been brought to you by Lorina Sparkling Lemonade.

Now, got a better name for a next generation improved magnetically propelled projectile thrower that isn't a terrifying acronym?  I am all ears.

[Kiesel]

In the case of the Coil and rail gun, the difference seems to be more akin to smoothbored and rifled gun...

It's more like the difference between reciprocating engines and turbines in ship propulsion.
Reciprocating engines are excellent for moving very large ships at slow speeds, but the stresses and vibration involved in redirecting the large moving parts limits maximum RPM.
Meanwhile the turbine engine spins in one direction at a constant rate so no vibrations and can be made of simpler sturdier parts, allowing you to go much faster, at the expense of efficiency

In the magnetic weapons, a gauss weapon (aka a coilgun) switches the polarity of a sequence of magnets to first attract and then repel the projectile, while the railgun uses the magnetic force generated by current flowing through the projectile.
The maximum projectile speed of any gauss weapon is determined by how fast you can switch the magnetic polarity of each coil, which in turn is determined by the physical properties which govern the propogation of the magnetic field.  If you switch too soon or too late the coil slows the projectile instead of accelerating it, the strength of the field dissipates with distance, and at some point you can no longer squeeze the coils in tight enough to make the projectile go any faster.  Trying to increase the muzzle velocity of a coilgun past a certain point is an exercise in rapidly diminishing returns.
Meanwhile, a railgun be accelerated to as fast as you have energy to pump into the weapon, but becomes less efficient as the projectile gets bigger.

The end result is, that if you have a given amount of electrical energy to convert into kinetic energy, the coilgun is better off accelerating a large object at a low muzzle velocity, while a railgun is better at accelerating a tiny object at a very high muzzle velocity.

This is also apparent when you look at the currently planned military uses for both technologies.  The coilgun principle is being used to develop powderless mortars, while the railgun principle is being used to develop extremely long range small bore artillery.


Essentially, the problem I am seeing with your "advanced gauss rifle with incorrect nomenclature" idea, is that both weapon types area already well defined, and aside from the powersource (i.e. electromagnetism), they rely on completely unrelated principles with divergent  research paths.  The next big leap in coilguns will come from higher temperature superconductors which will allow faster and more efficient polarity reversal without cryogenic cooling, while the main thing holding back the navy railgun is the physical melting and vaporization of the rails which will have to be solved with more resilient conductors.

[Fallen_Raven]

It's more like the difference between reciprocating engines and turbines in ship propulsion.
Reciprocating engines are excellent for moving very large ships at slow speeds, but the stresses and vibration involved in redirecting the large moving parts limits maximum RPM.
Meanwhile the turbine engine spins in one direction at a constant rate so no vibrations and can be made of simpler sturdier parts, allowing you to go much faster, at the expense of efficiency

In the magnetic weapons, a gauss weapon (aka a coilgun) switches the polarity of a sequence of magnets to first attract and then repel the projectile, while the railgun uses the magnetic force generated by current flowing through the projectile.
The maximum projectile speed of any gauss weapon is determined by how fast you can switch the magnetic polarity of each coil, which in turn is determined by the physical properties which govern the propogation of the magnetic field.  If you switch too soon or too late the coil slows the projectile instead of accelerating it, the strength of the field dissipates with distance, and at some point you can no longer squeeze the coils in tight enough to make the projectile go any faster.  Trying to increase the muzzle velocity of a coilgun past a certain point is an exercise in rapidly diminishing returns.
Meanwhile, a railgun be accelerated to as fast as you have energy to pump into the weapon, but becomes less efficient as the projectile gets bigger.

The end result is, that if you have a given amount of electrical energy to convert into kinetic energy, the coilgun is better off accelerating a large object at a low muzzle velocity, while a railgun is better at accelerating a tiny object at a very high muzzle velocity.

This is also apparent when you look at the currently planned military uses for both technologies.  The coilgun principle is being used to develop powderless mortars, while the railgun principle is being used to develop extremely long range small bore artillery.


Essentially, the problem I am seeing with your "advanced gauss rifle with incorrect nomenclature" idea, is that both weapon types area already well defined, and aside from the powersource (i.e. electromagnetism), they rely on completely unrelated principles with divergent  research paths.  The next big leap in coilguns will come from higher temperature superconductors which will allow faster and more efficient polarity reversal without cryogenic cooling, while the main thing holding back the navy railgun is the physical melting and vaporization of the rails which will have to be solved with more resilient conductors.

To take the example farther, a railgun's high speed projectile the size of an orange can hit a target moving at Mach 4, but the coilgun can launch an Abrahms (not the mass, an actual tank) on a transatmosphereic shot across an ocean. Depending on what you're wanting to do, either would be completely useless. And if you ever get to the point that you start shooting tanks at people, R&D is the wrong place to start looking for paractical solutions.

[Khymerion]

Then that makes the massive capital scale mass drivers the ultimate development of the rail gun... unless there is going to be more splitting of hair for the definition in that regard.

The big problem I still have with many of the rail gun proposals given that lump on so many heavy disadvantages based on modern day mess ups and immaturity of the sciences going into them is that they don't take into account that things have advanced in setting.  B-Tech is a good deal more fantastic in that regard.  Example:  If we can bore a hole through space and time to send messages and ships across light years in seconds, easily reusable dropships without weeks of downtime to check tiles, and contain the energy of small suns to push warmachines around within the weight of a relatively miniscule amount of tonnage, and not something the size of three mile island, I think someone might have figured out superconductors and how to keep the rails of a railgun from melting.

If the Railgun is truly not going to be a mass driver nor a next generation gauss rifle, that it really is an artillery piece and that there is absolutely no way to merge the concepts together to make a unified device (which I seemed to have mistakenly equated with the gauss rifle being), then shouldn't a refined and properly matured railgun (assuming a millennium or at least five centuries of metallurgical and physics advancement) be more akin to that of a next generation version of the sniper, thumper, and long tom tube artillery systems?