Ranged Weapon Descriptions

• Description: The name or description of the weapon.

• Type: A basic description of the kind of damage the weapon causes.

• Pen: The Penetration value of an attack with the weapon. Most ranged weapons cause constant Pen for each attack. Exceptions are those with continuous beams and those which are thrown.

• Wound: The Wound Score of the attack, applied as a Row Shift to any Penetration delivered to the target to convert it to damage points and determine the injury severity.

• Dose: Those weapons that deliver a non-injuring biological effect will have a Dose score. For most weapons, this will be omitted.

• AP: The Armor Piercing score – add the AP to the relevant Armor Score to find the Row Shift for the armor roll.

• Shot: The Shot score for an attack. If a Shot score is listed, the weapon launches a multiple projectile attack. At a range score of Spread + target's Size or less, add the Shot score to the Wound score of the attack. Beyond this, the Wound falls off by 1 for each unit increment of range score until it reaches the Wound score for an individual projectile – beyond which point there is a chance that even a perfectly aimed shot will still not strike the target with a single projectile. See the section on multiple projectile attacks.

• ROF: The Rate Of Fire, or maximum number of shots you can take in one action. No more than 3 × ROF shots may be taken in one combat round. A "s" indicates the weapon is semi-automatic and can fire up to three shots per action plus your skill modifier (but always at least one). If the "s" has a number in front of it, it can fire a maximum of that many shots per action (and never more than 3 × that amount in any one combat round). A "b" with a number after it indicates the weapon is capable of burst fire, which shoots the indicated number of shots with each pull of the trigger; the number of times you can pull the trigger is the same as for a semi-automatic weapon. A ROF of ½ means that the weapon's action must be worked between shots. After spending an action to work the action the weapon is ready to fire; after firing another action must be taken before it is ready to fire again.

• Ammo: The number of shots the weapon can make before its magazine or energy storage is exhausted. Those guns that do not have an external energy source can often hold a single round in the chamber while they have a full magazine – these are described by "N+1" where "N" is the number of shots in a full magazine. When you exahust a magazine and load a fresh magazine into the gun, you don't get the "+1" unless you take the time to strip the top round off the magazine into the chamber, remove the magazine, load a round into the magazine (or just grab a fresh magazine), and then re-insert the magazine.

• Bulk: The Bulk score minus your Size is a penalty to use a weapon in cramped conditions or to conceal a weapon on your person.

• Aim: The Aim score subtracts from the combined Size and Range difficulty, to a minimum difficulty of 0.

• RCL: The recoil score. If you shoot more than once in an action, you have a penalty to hit if the RCL plus the Score of [number of shots fired this action] is more than your Strength. Subtract your Strength from the RCL modified for the number of shots to get the penalty to hit for each shot.

• Str: The Strength score needed to effectively point and maneuver the weapon. If your Strength score is less than the weapons listed Str, you have a penalty of -1 to your hit roll for every point by which your Strength is lower. Str can be ignored if the weapon is fired from a rest, bipod, tripod, or mount.

• BBRS: The Base Blast Range Score. At this range score, the blast causes the listed Pen. Closer than this, the blast causes contact damage. At larger range scores, the Pen falls off as an additional -3 RS for every +1 to range score.
• BRPB: Blast Radius Penetration Benchmark. This is the range score out to which the blast is likely to cause severe or lethal injuries to unarmored or unprotected individuals. The number in square brackets is the RS to Penetration at that range. This can provide a more useful benchmark of the likely area of devastation caused by the blast. It is the closest rnage score to where the RS to Pen is -6, meaning that the average 2d6 roll for Pen (7) is reduced to a Pen of 1 so that the victim will take an average injury of their Wound Score Limit (and the effect of an injury of their Lare Wound Limit to each hit location). Note that it is still possible for the blast to cause severe injuries beyond this range – expect significant injury out to an additional +2 to +3 to the range score.

• Spread: The Spread score is a measure of the random deviation of the shot from where you are aiming – the size of the pattern you would get with perfect aim, if you will. The higher the spread score, the more accurate the weapon is. Refer to the section on Multiple Projecile Attacks and Inherent Accuracy in the Rough Methods rules for a description of how Spread works in the game.

• Focus: The Focus score is only relevant for focused weapons (like lasers). It is the range at which the beam cannot be focused to a small enough point to get full damage. Generally, for every point by which the Range score exceeds the Focus score the shot either gets +1 to AP (that is, the shot becomes less effective against armor by one RS) or Penetration score is reduced by 2 RS while the Wound score is increased by +1. The details depend on the class of weapon (for example, lasers vs. beam disruptors), and will be detailed in the weapon description.

• DA: DA stands for Damage Attenuation range. It is the distance in meters at which the Penetration of the shot is reduced by -1 RS. The effects are cumulative: if the shot goes twice the DA range, it gets a -2 RS to Pen, three times the DA gives a -3 RS to Pen, and so on.

  DA for projectiles is inversely proportional to atmospheric density. If you are on a world where the atmosphere is twice as thick as one Earth standard atmosphere, the DA range will be half as long. Underwater, DA is ¹⁄₁₀₀₀^th the listed DA.

  For lack of space for additional columns, the range for explsoive effects are also listed in this column – the maximum radius of explosive contact damage, the size of gas clouds, the reference range of explosive blast effects, and so on.

• Max: The maximum range of the weapon, in meters. Beyond this range, the weapon can no longer hit or damage its target. It is not always listed – for many guns the maximum range is so long that the effects of the DA range will make it moot by that point, and beam weapons like lasers often do not have a maximum range at all.

• PSz: The Size attribute of the projectile. This is useful mainly when point defense systems try to shoot the projectile down, because it reflects how difficult it is to hit the projectile and how much damage it takes to disable it. Most projectiles have a Density sub-attribute of +2½, except for warheads, grenades, and similar munitions which have a Density sub-attribute of +1 and armor piercing projectiles which have a Density sub-attribute of +3. Armor piercing projectiles have a Structure Brawn of +8, everything else has +0 for Structure Brawn. Warheads are disabled like Mooks; a disabled warhead immediately detonates or otherwise has its effect at the range where it is disabled. Those projectiles with a purely kinetic effect on the target must be destroyed (Injury Score +16) in order to keep them from having their effect.

• Speed: The Speed value is a rough measure of how fast the shot moves, roughly ¹⁄₄^th of the muzzle velocity in meters per second. The projectile or beam from a weapon will move 10× the listed Speed in one combat round. For every multiple of the Speed of the range between you and your target, you get a -1 penalty to hit and your target gets a +1 bonus to his defense roll. This reflects the arcing of the shot due to gravity, deflection by wind, leading the target, and the extra time the target has to get out of the way.

• Mass: The mass of the weapon in kg. The loaded mass is listed before the vertical bar, the mass of one full load of ammunition is listed after the bar. If a '+' sign is used instead of a vertical bar, the number before the '+' is the unloaded mass, and the number after the '+' is the mass of one ammo pack that is carried separately from the main weapon. If the mass is listed as two numbers separated by a colon, the first is the mass of the beam pointer and the second is the mass of the beam generator (and ammunition, as appropriate); the beam pointer is separate from the weapon.

• Price: The cost of the weapon in Republic dollars ($). The price of the weapon itself is listed before the vertical bar, the price of one full load of ammunition is listed after the bar.

Legality

The worlds of Tīan Nán, Žemyna, and New Carolina have stricter restrictions. These worlds prohibit the individual ownership of any fully automatic or area effect weapon^*, and require permits to carry dangerous weapons^** on one's person inside city limits (weapons can legally be transported inside latched and locked hard cases, and can be stored and carried in one's place of residence). Non-lethal weapons, such as stunners, are exempt from these regulations. Obtaining a weapon carry permit requires the applicant to not have a record of violent criminal activity or mental illness that would predispose them to violence or suicide, complete and pass a weapon safety course, and have their bio-signature taken and recorded into the police databases.

The Zox Hierate does not allow anyone other than the armed forces or law enforcement to own or carry weapons. The law allows those with a legitimate need to carry tools that can be used as weapons (such as kitchen knives, or construction tools). In practice, law enforcement is likely to overlook tools on the "common people" even if they do not have an obvious legitimate use. On the other hand, law enforcement will happily use the posession of a possibly dangerous tool as an excuse to arrest, imprison, torture, and execute those who they suspect to be a criminal. Or those who get on the wrong side of local or Hierate-wide politics, or who are interfering with the corrupt rackets the police are running.

The worlds of Gummi space have no laws. Individuals openly carrying weapons in inhabited areas without public sanction will be met with distrust, which can range from nervous tolerance up to demands by heavily armed members of the public safety committee to lay down their weapons. As usual with Gummi practices, these responses are conditional - in rural or frontier areas where firearms are necessary for hunting, protecting crops and livestock, or defense from aggressive wildlife, open carry of weapons is likely to be tolerated. Gummis and their entrainments are more suspicious of lasers than most other weapons, because they are seen as having the alarming ability to penetrate standard defenses (namely, deflector screens).

* Explosives used for demolitions, mining, agriculture, or other legitimate purposes are not considered weapons, and can be purchased, stored, and transported with the appropriate blasting permit. Explosives still must be stored far enough away from inhabited places than an accidental detonation will not cause injury or property damage.

** the definition of "dangerous weapon" varies between these worlds, but always includes all laser, induction, needler, mountain, and chemical propellant weapons, as well as ranged disruptors and Gummi venom weapons. On Tīan Nán and New Carolina it also covers blades and disruptor blades more than 10 cm in length, with exceptions for those devices deemed to have a legitimate use (such as kitchen cutting knives or axes for chopping wood).

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