weapons in combat

[fenris07]

Hey guys, i have a random question for you all.  I had a boarding action take place in my last game and i don't know what kind of weapons the Hishen or a Pirate/PDF force would use.  I don't need stats or anything just wondering what they're load outs would be so when i write up my next battle report it will at least be close to accurate in the 5150 universe.  Any other information on either of those groups fluff wise would be cool as well, thanks!

[easyeight]

Howdy. 5150 Star Marine has all the stats you'll need, but basically figure that standard Hishen troopers wear soft body armor and carry an Auto-3 weapon, with a squad support of an Auto-4 weapon. There are Hishen Marines with hard body armor as well. Pirates mostly soft body armor, but the odd hard body and rare exoarmor they got someplace or other. Again, using a mix of Auto-3 for troopers and Auto-4 support weapons at the squad level. At the platoon level you can add a heavy weapons team, a sniper team, etc.

[atomicfloozy]

In the very old 5150 Book One - the Hishen NCOs & Officers carry a Parak pistol as a side arm & can also carry the Parak rifle. One team member may be armed with a SMG or SAW. An interesting rule from this book is that as slavers, whenever Hishen outnumber their opponents two to one, they set their weapons to "stun" in an attempt to capture slaves.

There's not a pirate list in the original book, but pirates could be made from the Freedom Company (mercenaries) list. They have access to the same weapons as military, but the heavier stuff is harder to get. The same is true of armor - rolling 2d6 yields 2 to 6 No Armor; 7 to 8 soft armor, 9 to 10 hard armor & 11+ for special armor types. The first book had 5 different kinds of specialized armor that did different things. Pirates could have aliens or even be an all alien force, except for Hishen, you couldn't have an all Hishen pirate force.

[fenris07]

Awesome, thanks for the quick feed back!  Looks like it's all ballistic weapons. 

[atomicfloozy]

There are beam weapons, it's just they have the same stats as the slug throwers. Rapid Fire Laser would be an Auto-3 in the newer rules for example. If you want the energy weapons to behave differently, you have to creat house rules. For example, some games only allow beam weapons to fire every other turn citing recharging time, some games the energy weapons are only available as heavy support weapons citing the size needed to generate a lethal energy beam.

Personally, I'd just treat the beam weapons the same as projectile weapons.

[stryderg]

In the original 5150 there were different armor types that had varying defenses against different weapons. ie. Reflective armor worked really well against lasers but not at all against slug throwers. I loved the idea, but it was a lot of looking up stats and trying to remember who had what type of armor.

I guess my point is that it really doesn't matter (in game terms) what the specific weapon is. For your story, it's a big universe, they would be armed with whatever is easy to get their hands on.

[bigwalleye]

Yeah, I have a house rule that lasers go: "Peww! Peww! Peww!"

Otherwise, the result is the same.

[Ed the Two Hour Wargames Guy]

Apr 25, 2020 4:04:25 GMT stryderg said:

In the original 5150 there were different armor types that had varying defenses against different weapons. ie. Reflective armor worked really well against lasers but not at all against slug throwers. I loved the idea, but it was a lot of looking up stats and trying to remember who had what type of armor.

I guess my point is that it really doesn't matter (in game terms) what the specific weapon is. For your story, it's a big universe, they would be armed with whatever is easy to get their hands on.

Yep, good point. I hate having to consult tables all the time and as I get older I hate it more.