That's what I'll go with. I had to do a lot of historical reading to get this even remotely close to right, I beg forgiveness for not realizing it took the Russians 5 years to catch up to the US in spook agencies.
Kiiinda the opposite. Specifically, the KGB was a reduced intelligence agency from the ones that came before, divested of many powers that were spun into separate agencies, because after Stalin's death no-one wanted an all-powerful intelligence agency with secret police powers under a single person's control. (timeline)
Ah, well that's actually even better. Such an organization would have even more inside knowledge of their boss and the insanity he'd recently been up to, and would be well aware he's been having his loyalists watched nearly as closely as his enemies. Shame I didn't know the original agency soup letters.
The lack of MALP is quite difficult to work with, especially on the chance you call an instant-death world, or a world that attacks anything coming through the gate on principle. You have, fortunately, never generated such a world on exploration yet.
I had actually wanted to bring it up, but there wasn't a particularly good spot to put it. I was planning on just having something be jury-rigged by a frightful SG squaddie and his fears being justified when the camera shows a volcanic hellscape or some such equally bad thing, sprinkle in some narrative convenience to justify a device that arguably does nothing but sometimes kill birds.
Honestly, there would actually be some use, namely as a way to check to see if there may be stuff in the air that kills you. Since, just a camera wont tell you about the levels of certain kinds of deadly gasses.
See, that just rubs me the wrong way. Staff weapons aren't roman candles, you can't just duct-tape five or six of them in a rough circular arrangement and make a minigun! The plasma projector is clearly electromagnetically charged, and it would have to be quite a powerful field to keep a plasma ball cohesive. You do not put five or six EM fields in close proximity to each other! It's very dangerous!
...
So long as they are activated sequentially so that only one of them is activated while the other 2 is off it should be fine.
I loved that fic, but I personally think a weapon would need a complete redesign to make it aim better. It doesn't have anything like a barrel to help keep it firing straight. The plasma it fires is affected from many things, including the planet's magnetic field(If the plasma is controlled by mini mag fields). An actual barrel should help control and fire it better, plus if we can get it set up like a rail gun then we might be able to send the plasma bolts out as faster speeds
That sounds way out of 1950's tech ability at the moment so that is why I focus on at least making it ergonomic first, something that should be simple enough for 50s tech before trying to improve the weapon. The bolt flew straight enough and just making a Staff SMG is good enough for most away missions as they are usually in close quarters.
They did that in XSGCOM by Hotpoint:
Article: The Commander heard a familiar sound and turned to watch a tracked Heavy Weapon's Platform rolling into range. The Jaffa immediately switched targets and opened up on the machine but the rare staff blast that hit the thick frontal armour merely blackened it before the HWP began to return fire in a storm of identical blasts from the six staff-weapons mounted together on a revolving turret
An electric motor turning them like a Gatling-Gun the cluster of staff-weapons, now minus their counterweight clubs at the far end, began to pour a continual stream of plasma bolts into the treeline as the HWP kept rolling along, its treads marking it's passage across the planet all the way back to the stargate. Cooling issues meant that a staff could only rapid fire a few shots normally, drastically restricting their usefulness in suppression fire, but in this mounting when there was a half dozen of the things putting out better than four-hundred discharges a minute between them, the small automated tanks carrying a Gatling-Staff could really kick ass.
The psychological impact of the continual sound and fury was as much of a factor, if not more as the casualties caused. Laser and conventional cannon armed HWP's had considerably more accuracy, a longer reach and overall slew more effectively, but they didn't project the same aura of mayhem on the move that one of these babies did, Sharp thought to himself with a grin, as the machines relentless, plasma-spewing advance continued, the quantity of fire coming from the forest starting to drop off at last.
I know, I was asking if the scientists in this quest have done that yet?
It might be that this draws to much power at once and results in a 10% chance the weapon explodes each time you fire more than one shot per second.
But this argument is based on the idea that the common Jaffa is merely a levy conscript. This is clearly incorrect from their martial culture. The master student relationship is presented as a common element to Jaffa training, which should imply that almost every Jaffa has had the training of grandfathers to be those good bowmen.
Honestly, this could make some sense, ESPECIALLY if you consider Earth's entrance literally nuked the status quo, leading to a time of relative peace ending, so it could be that the elites were generally getting killed off in the war faster than they could be trained as the Go'auld all jockey for position. Doesn't explain all of it, but could explain at least a small portion of it.
