These are cool, glad you liked the AR-15
Another thing I was thinking about at one point was a Point Defence Sub Capital Pulse Laser
Essentially a Sub Capital Pulse Laser that has a max range of short range but improved attack against aerospace fighters, small craft and DropShips.
It's not something I've fully explored
I've been thinking about something along similar lines, although I was first working out how to make full-capital pulse lasers -- something that my in-universe company would have started working on post-2609, but were looked down on because of their much shorter ranges.
Biggest hurdle I've had is calculating out the Battle Values of the individual weapons -- maybe it's nitpicky, but I really like to have all of my stats in order (including costs & BV). From what I can tell, the calculations for standard-scale weapons follow the rules from the HeavyMetal Pro website (
http://heavymetalpro.com/bv_calc.htm), but they break down when you try to work with capital-scale weapons. And it's not just capital-scale lasers, it's pretty much all of them. Part of it, I think, is that instead of the detailed ranges (as found in
Strategic Operations p. 442), the calculations seem to be based on the abstract range brackets used in Aerospace combat (for example, both the NL/45 & NL/55 can reach the Extreme bracket, & the BV ratio between the NL/55 and NL/45 is
exactly the same as their damage ratio, 11:9; but while the damage ratio for the NL/45 and NL/35 is 9:7, their BV ratio is a weird decimal of 1.366265:1). Closest I've been able to calculate the numbers out is:
-- for capital weapons, BV = Damage (standard scale) x Weapon Modifier x Bracket multiplier
-- Weapon Modifier is x18 for energy weapons & x14.4 for ballistic or missile weapons (including gauss)
-- Bracket multipliers
appear to be 7/5 for Extreme, 79/60 for Long, 59/60 for Medium, & 11/20 for Short. I say "appear", because there's at least 1 discrepancy I've found (The Piranha Sub-Capital Missile should use the standard multiplier for the Long Range bracket, but appears to use instead a multiplier of 335/216 instead; it should have a BV of 569 & 71 per missile, but the actual listed BV is much higher).
for pulse weapons, I think the Bracket multipliers change to x20/9 for Extreme, x37/18 for Long, x59/36 for Medium, & x11/12 for Short
-- Pulse weapons with a -2 modifier should change the Bracket multipliers to x29/18 for Extreme, x19/12 for Long, x17/12 for Medium, & x5/6 for Short; those are only, IMHO, some estimated WAGs on my part.
Fair warning, the original designs I came up with were a little on the short-ranged side. Oh, maybe 24 hexes for Aerospace combat isn't bad, but it gave a good reason why the SLDF High Command was less than enthusiastic about replacing their standard lasers (even with the enhanced accuracy found in pulse lasers). I wanted to also be able to have some "improved" versions, but also mostly stuck as prototypes...this time more because of the timing. To facilitate that, I used 2 standards for my conversions:
-- since, from what I can tell, the most common pulse laser used by the SLDF seems to have been the Medium Pulse Laser, I used it as the basis for the original capital pulse lasers. This gave much heavier weapons, but a lot of the weight went into better cooling systems.
-- the improved versions are based more on the Large Pulse Lasers, which don't see as much increase in damage or mass as the Medium versions. However, because they've also been pumped up to increase their range, they also run a lot hotter.
-- I also added some sub-capital laser variants. Even though they're developed after the improved capital pulse lasers, their ranges would be so shortened that I did 2 versions again: 1 based on Medium Pulse lasers as a "quickie' development, & another loosely based on the Large Pulse Lasers, again saving weight but pushing a lot of extra heat (in this case to match the range of the original sub-capital lasers)
Name Type Heat Dmg (Aero) Range (Aero) Item/Ammo (tons) To-Hit TC? Rating (Year) Item/Ammo (C-bills) Item/Ammo (BV)
NPL45 AE, CAP, P 76 45 (4.5-C) 7/15/22/30 (Med-C) 1,300/na -2 N E/F-X-F (2619) 750k/na 1,328/na
NPL55 AE, CAP, P 96 55 (5.5-C) 8/16/24/32 (Med-C) 1,600/na -2 N E/F-X-F (2619) 1.275M/na 1,623/na
NPL65 AE, CAP, P 110 65 (6.5-C) 9/17/26/34 (Med-C) 2,000/na -2 N E/F-X-F (2620) 1.875M/na 1,918/na
iNPL40 AE, CAP, P 82 40 (4-C) 9/18/27/36 (Long-C) 980/na -2 N E/X-X-F (3065) 875k/na 1,480/na
iNPL50 AE, CAP, P 110 50 (5-C) 10/20/30/40 (Long-C) 1,260/na -2 N E/X-X-F (3065) 1.4875M/na 1,850/na
iNPL60 AE, CAP, P 132 60 (6-C) 11/22/33/44 (Long-C) 1,540/na -2 N E/X-X-F (3066) 2.1875M/na 2,220/na
SCPL1 AE, CAP, P 27 10 (1-C) 6/12/18/24 (Med-C) 270/na -2 N E/X-X-F (3075) 320K/na 255/na
SCPL2 AE, CAP, P 32 20 (2-C) 4/8/12/16 (Short-C) 360/na -2 N E/X-X-F (3075) 502.5K/na 300/na
SCPl3 AE, CAP, P 36 30 (3-C) 3/6/9/12 (Short-C) 450/na -2 N E/X-X-F (3075) 675K/na 765/na
iSCP1 AE, CAP, P 40 10 (1-C) 9/18/27/36 (Long-C) 210/na -2 N E/X-X-F (3079) 385k/na 370/na
iSCP2 AE, CAP, P 47 20 (2-C) 8/14/19/24 (Med-C) 280/na -2 N E/X-X-F (3079) 586.25k/na 510/na
iSCP3 AE, CAP, P 54 30 (3-C) 7/13/18/22 (Med-C) 350/na -2 N E/X-X-F (3079) 787.5k/na 765/na