As the implacable grind of the Third Succession War drags on year after year, everyone needs more tanks. They'd rather have more mechs, but by and large they'll take what they can get. But with civilization itself groaning at the seams, setting up new tank factories is no mean feat. You don't intend to let that stop you.
How Hard Can It Be? A Battletech Arms Manufacturer Quest
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On machine gun design
Me: "Golly I can't wait for the update."
Every GM Ever: "Then do it yourself!"
Also Me: "You know what? Fine. Challenge accepted."
(Disclaimer: this is tangentially related to and in no way affiliated with the quest as a whole.)
As per the informal agreement between the two of you, you had to prove the ability of Whiterock Industries to actually produce a tank. The high volume production lines for repeat production were in the works, as it were, as your efforts had been focused on proving that you had a product worth buying. Right now the Sloop didn't look like much, lying on the workshop floor bereft of skin, flesh, and mind. Even so, the preparations toward changing that were also in full view, with a number of serviceable chairs laid against one wall to replace the desecrated office chair that currently served as the command seat, a double handful of "blanks" and cheap metal panels to map out the installation and mounting of the sensor and tracking system resting along the entire length of a shelf, and a trio of "practice" (that is to say, early failures) Delta Dart-5s securely stowed in their transport cases with a fourth the subject of argument as a work crew dangled it in the gouge in the turret that was designed to hold something like it in order to design the necessary mountings.
"Looks busy." The Westfield representative, a man named Lucas Towu, remarked from beside you.
"We're in the final stretch." You explain, forcing a casual air. "It has everyone excited."
"Hmph." The rep agreed wordlessly. "I know the feeling."
The two of you filed back into the conference room the workshop held. Usually it would be used to bring together a number of people but today it held only two. As much as you were ambivalent about Westfield Arms the militia were properly paranoid about the whole endeavor and so had requested that the visiting group be as small as possible. Similarly, the rep had been patted down before leaving the first hallway in the building to ensure that there were no recording devices or whatever else on their person. Despite that, the number of people who were trusted at Westfield was fairly low. Combined with your visit to their CEO some time prior there was sure to be speculation in the public broadcast programs about what Whiterock Industries was trying to accomplish.
"It is impressive what you have accomplished." Towu admits freely. "My own investigations show that it usually takes much longer to develop a vehicle."
"This is just the working model. The facilities to actually make the finished product generally have to come before a formal "introduction"." You wave away the praise.
"Still. You are serious about this and are close to succeeding."
"An accurate assessment." You agree easily.
"The first thing that I would like to do, is explain what you are asking of us." At a tilt of his head you nod and he begins extracting papers from a briefcase. Illustrations of heavy weapons, as it turns out. "This is the "machine gun" fielded on the Scorpions used by the militia." A single paper, this time a depiction of one of the LMGs sold as small arms. "And this is what we can currently make. The biggest factor of modern intermediate weight ballistic weapons is the stacked ammunition. While those shells used in autocannons are prepared ahead of time by techs the machine gun loads them itself from the storage bin. Once in one of a number of barrels the shells are then ignited by an electrical sparker. Unlike an autocannon, where the shells are only ever intended to be fired in as short a time frame as possible, the machine gun has two distinct modes of operation. Against armored targets, it does something similar and fires each stack as rapidly as possible as that barrel slowly spins through the active position. When engaging infantry or other soft targets, however, the shells are fired one at a time albeit at a much higher rate of revolution. This has the side effect of giving the barrels a much longer time to absorb heat from the burning propellant, which, as the barrels are built to take the pressure caused by more or less the entire stack being fired at once, requires only a little active cooling to counter."
"And such a thing is dramatically different than a gas or recoil operated bolt." You note, pointing at the image of the infantry weapon spread on your table.
"Exactly. I am not saying that we can not do it, only that such a project is not going to be a minor thing."
[A choice of lending the support of your militia techs who know something like this or something, I don't know.]
[Actually we could probably say "we want an anti-infantry weapon with no performance against armor" and get it pretty trivially, I would assume. I don't expect that to be a popular option, but would that be "a" option @Vanigo?]
Every GM Ever: "Then do it yourself!"
Also Me: "You know what? Fine. Challenge accepted."
(Disclaimer: this is tangentially related to and in no way affiliated with the quest as a whole.)
As per the informal agreement between the two of you, you had to prove the ability of Whiterock Industries to actually produce a tank. The high volume production lines for repeat production were in the works, as it were, as your efforts had been focused on proving that you had a product worth buying. Right now the Sloop didn't look like much, lying on the workshop floor bereft of skin, flesh, and mind. Even so, the preparations toward changing that were also in full view, with a number of serviceable chairs laid against one wall to replace the desecrated office chair that currently served as the command seat, a double handful of "blanks" and cheap metal panels to map out the installation and mounting of the sensor and tracking system resting along the entire length of a shelf, and a trio of "practice" (that is to say, early failures) Delta Dart-5s securely stowed in their transport cases with a fourth the subject of argument as a work crew dangled it in the gouge in the turret that was designed to hold something like it in order to design the necessary mountings.
"Looks busy." The Westfield representative, a man named Lucas Towu, remarked from beside you.
"We're in the final stretch." You explain, forcing a casual air. "It has everyone excited."
"Hmph." The rep agreed wordlessly. "I know the feeling."
The two of you filed back into the conference room the workshop held. Usually it would be used to bring together a number of people but today it held only two. As much as you were ambivalent about Westfield Arms the militia were properly paranoid about the whole endeavor and so had requested that the visiting group be as small as possible. Similarly, the rep had been patted down before leaving the first hallway in the building to ensure that there were no recording devices or whatever else on their person. Despite that, the number of people who were trusted at Westfield was fairly low. Combined with your visit to their CEO some time prior there was sure to be speculation in the public broadcast programs about what Whiterock Industries was trying to accomplish.
"It is impressive what you have accomplished." Towu admits freely. "My own investigations show that it usually takes much longer to develop a vehicle."
"This is just the working model. The facilities to actually make the finished product generally have to come before a formal "introduction"." You wave away the praise.
"Still. You are serious about this and are close to succeeding."
"An accurate assessment." You agree easily.
"The first thing that I would like to do, is explain what you are asking of us." At a tilt of his head you nod and he begins extracting papers from a briefcase. Illustrations of heavy weapons, as it turns out. "This is the "machine gun" fielded on the Scorpions used by the militia." A single paper, this time a depiction of one of the LMGs sold as small arms. "And this is what we can currently make. The biggest factor of modern intermediate weight ballistic weapons is the stacked ammunition. While those shells used in autocannons are prepared ahead of time by techs the machine gun loads them itself from the storage bin. Once in one of a number of barrels the shells are then ignited by an electrical sparker. Unlike an autocannon, where the shells are only ever intended to be fired in as short a time frame as possible, the machine gun has two distinct modes of operation. Against armored targets, it does something similar and fires each stack as rapidly as possible as that barrel slowly spins through the active position. When engaging infantry or other soft targets, however, the shells are fired one at a time albeit at a much higher rate of revolution. This has the side effect of giving the barrels a much longer time to absorb heat from the burning propellant, which, as the barrels are built to take the pressure caused by more or less the entire stack being fired at once, requires only a little active cooling to counter."
"And such a thing is dramatically different than a gas or recoil operated bolt." You note, pointing at the image of the infantry weapon spread on your table.
"Exactly. I am not saying that we can not do it, only that such a project is not going to be a minor thing."
[A choice of lending the support of your militia techs who know something like this or something, I don't know.]
[Actually we could probably say "we want an anti-infantry weapon with no performance against armor" and get it pretty trivially, I would assume. I don't expect that to be a popular option, but would that be "a" option @Vanigo?]
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