Part 758: Small Arms 101
An Infantryman’s Small Arms Primer:Battletech isn’t all about big stompy robots killing each other.
So, what sort of small-arms does the average Battletech protagonist use? Well, approximately 99.9% of the time, they will field a pistol. In keeping with the futuristic setting, this is usually a Laser Pistol; but not always.
So, without further adieu, here is a list of small-arms weapons fielded in Battletech.
The most common and prevalent weapon in the Battletech universe is the good old-fashioned “Slugthrower”; AKA a normal gun, rifle, submachinegun, automatic rifle, etc. that fires a cased or caseless round at a target. Slugthrowers vary wildly by type and manufacturer and are the technology on which autocannons are based.
I don’t have a lot to say about these, they’re pretty boring and honestly the only person who used them frequently and spends any time thinking about their capabilities is Cassie Suthorn; and that’s usually because she’s fighting DEST Ninjas and thinking about how hilariously-high-caliber weapons can punch through their magical DEST Ninja body armor and being suitably grateful that she is carrying weapons capable of doing just that and/or lamenting the gun she took from that dead DEST operative isn’t because they don’t want to accidentally kill each other and she’s out of hilariously-high-caliber ammunition for her own gun.
Yeah, that’s right, Cassie runs out of ammo a lot. She has to, since nobody else ever does.
The biggest man-portable slugthrower in the Battletech universe is the Zeus Heavy Sniper Rifle. The Zeus propels a .50 caliber round faster than the speed of sound and has an effective range of well over ten kilometers. Due to the extreme kick, the Zeus must be tripod-mounted in order to fire effectively; in most situations the recoil (without the aid of a tripod) would be sufficient to break the user’s bones.
The second most common weapon in the Battletech universe is the Laser, which comes in pistol and rifle forms. A pistol-sized laser is incapable of causing any harm to a battlemech, but in numbers laser rifles can be dangerous. They’re also extremely accurate for Battletech weapons, which tend to have their effective ranges measured in “dozens of meters” rather than the hundreds you’d generally expect.
Short of the statistical extreme presented by the Zeus, Laser weapons tend to be the longest-ranged small arms due to their inherent point-and-shoot accuracy. Additionally, rare LosTech laser pistols are one of the more common forms of old Star League technology that crops up; such as the handheld prototype small laser pistol carried by Jeremiah “I’M THE FUCKING PROTAGONIST LOL” Rose. Still, barring Rose’s impossibly good hand-cannon, most lasers are fairly anemic in the hands of anyone who’s last name isn’t Allard or Kell (or Wolf or Ward or Kell again).
Used nearly as often as lasers, and far more commonly used by protagonists than the “more common” Slugthrowers, Needlers don’t fire conventional ammunition. Instead, they use a block of ballistics plastic designed to shatter into thousands of inch-long plastic flechettes. As such, most needler wounds are surprisingly painless (when compared to having your tissue exploded by a laser); but have a tendency to turn an unarmored target into hamburger.
Unlike other weapons, Needlers also have a massive drawback: While a wound from one is nearly always fatal without immediate medical attention, most needlers are incapable of penetrating even thin body armor. Needlers also have extremely limited ammunition (usually around 5 shots per block of ballistics plastic) and are also difficult to reload quickly due to their bulky, semi-fragile ammo. They also have a ludicrously limited effective range, which makes anything other than a needler pistol redundant and silly. Most ‘Mechwarriors who carry needlers do so because the weapon can in no-way be construed as a threat to an enemy battlemech.
There are firms working on ways to improve needler armor penetration in some way, but no real advances occurred until 3062 (in the standard timeline) when a new type of ballistic plastic was created that not only flechettes but is incendiary and burns at nearly a thousand degrees for a few seconds after ignition.
The least-common small arms weapon in the Battletech universe are Gyrojet Guns. Firing a stabilized, self-propelled round rather than a solid slug, Gyrojet and Gyroslug weapons have ranges comparable to ballistic rifles. Pistol-sized Gyrojet weapons are rare, due to the size of the ammunition; and Gyrojets have more limited accuracy due to a slow initial projectile speed.
Gyrojet Rifles and Gyroslug Carbines do have one advantage over every other, more conventional weapon: their ammunition is explosive. The largest Gyrojet weapon, the Heavy Gyrojet Gun, is more akin to an RPG than a typical handheld rifle. Still, these weapons are fairly flawed and were used in only a single Battletech book (“Star Lord”), which existed only to sell copies of the ‘Mechwarrior’ RPG (3rd edition) in which Gyrojet rifles were introduced. That “Star Lord” reads like someone’s D&D campaign should therefore be of no surprise to anyone. If anyone still uses Gyrojet weapons, I will eat my fucking hat.
The final type of small arms in the Battletech universe is the sword. What? Poptarts, that’s retarded! Yes, I agree, but swords crop up with amusing (almost irritating) regularity; and not JUST among members of the Draconis Combine.
In addition to swords, I also include:
- knives (combat and utility)
- Katanas
- DEST Vibro-Katanas (which are capable of piercing anything even vaguely resembling body armor without even a hint of resistance
)- those Shuriken that the Smoke Jaguars use to make their bidding process even more retarded than the normal
- Jeremiah Rose’s
- Anything else sharp that's gotten a confirmed Antagonist and/or Protagonist kill in Battletech
- That I-Beam that Kai Allard-Liao fired out of a gauss rifle that one time, just because.
Edit: And in case you're wondering, Gyrojet rifles are actually a thing.