BattleTech - The Board Game of Armored Combat
Catalyst Game Labs => Ask the Lead Developers => Topic started by: Saklad5 on 19 February 2024, 09:55:07
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Why does Gauss rifle ammunition have a Technology Rating of E? I get that Gauss rifles themselves have high-tech capacitors, but the ammo is just solid metal slugs, correct? It'd make more sense to have a Technology Rating of A, since even the most infrastructure-poor world should have basic metalworking capabilities. You don't even need low tolerances: Gauss rifles canonically can fire almost anything, though cut-up steel girders probably deserve a lower Quality Rating and the associated jam chance.
This extends to all types of Gauss ammo. Oddly enough, the most complicated of the bunch, the Silver Bullet ammo designed to carefully splinter when fired, is also the most accessible: it has a Technology Rating of D!
This may seem like nitpicking, but it has a serious impact on the ease of resupply. It should not be this hard to order a bunch of nickel-ferrous cylinders.
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Gauss ammunition is not a "simple metal slug," just like modern APFSDSDU munitions are the product of advanced metallurgy, architecture, and extensive development. The M829A3, for example, is considerably more capable than M829 from 20 years earlier, and could not have been designed or manufactured easily at lower tech levels.
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Thanks for the response.
I'll buy that actual Gauss ammo is that complicated, but still: E?
Hyper-velocity autocannon rounds are D. Generic nuclear weapons are C. Armor-piercing autocannon rounds are E, and most similar to the APFSDS rounds of real life.
What bugs me about Gauss rifles is that basically all information on the subject says that the difficult part to manufacture is the capacitor of the gun itself. It's also bizarre that Silver Bullet Gauss ammo has a lower Technology Rating than both standard Gauss and LB cluster ammo.