I personally think we should consider railgun munitions to be on par with at least some of the advanced laser options (say, laser rifles for infantry).
Among the reasons:
-Railgun munitions enhance firepower without requiring STUs; advanced lasers may or may not do so depending on how things play out.
-Railgun munitions are ammo which can and probably will be designed to be compatible with existing railguns. This means we don't need to redesign entire combat platforms to accommodate them, whereas advanced lasers will necessitate extensive redesign and refits on many platforms. For instance, redesigning an Apollo fighter with a laser cannon instead of an autocannon, without sticking the laser in an external gun pod that slows down the plane significantly, is going to be a bigger deal than reloading a Predator's ammo rack to include some antipersonnel flechette rounds.
We've been repeatedly told that the GD-3 program won't have much impact on the infantry's anti-biomonster effectiveness, or such is my impression, but we've also been told the opposite. I don't even know anymore.
Regarding the GD-3: Here's Ithillid's commentary from
here: "So yes, it would be a significant upgrade against biomonsters. Not nearly as significant as, for example, a suit of zone armor, which can tote around a magazine of 8mm slugs and blast monsters with hypersonic darts of doom, but works better than a GD-2 for the job."
It would be an upgrade over our current rifle, for anti-Gana purposes.
The results of the Railgun Munitions project would probably not be available before Q4, but might well be worth it - I'm not opposed to seeing if we can find a die to toss at it next turn, but I think it would do more helping tanks against infantry than against Gana. Because mostly the problem for our railguns is that they are overkill for infantry, so we need HE and/or flechette rounds.
And yes, the STU requirement for the new lasers is likely to be an issue, especially if we go for the projects to upgrade Naval PD/SADN, and the tank laser PD/RWS, as well as going for offensive laser deployments.
Your missing my point. I would argee, Zone Armor would be better. I already said I think energy weapons would be more effective, and they'll definitely be more versatile and powerful. Slap lasers and plasma on Zone Armor for 1-800-Call-Me levels of abomination destroying fun.
But all that's going to be expensive. Maybe not super expensive, but expensive. And potentially time consuming. If we need something now, the build up costs could be massive pain, and we still might only get it later. I believe Inferno Gel can get made quickly and put into the field quickly, and we know organic material isn't happy to be bathed in fire. It not the perfect solution, but it fits 'good enough' better then infantry scale DEWs we're never made before.
My own conjecture mind, I'll be happy to be proved wrong and have a development/deployment something like a Plasma Caster to burn through the horrors. That'd be even faster.
The thing about inferno gel is that using it against Gana is outside its projected use case (vehicles), and likely to be a bad idea, because it's
not something you want to use in close-support range. It's a gel, and so it splashes. Likely onto the infantry the Gana are attacking. Which will make them quite unhappy.
Rapid-fire railguns like those on the Wolverine or Havoc (or A-16 Orca) should be quite effective against Gana, since they are basically autocannon+.
We have a bunch of solutions to the Gana in the pipeline already, we just need to get them into production.
