barasawa said:
That's odd, my post completely dissapeared. I wonder why...
Oh well, I'll try for a short version of what I said earlier:
First - Since an Assault Rifle is considered a Military weapon, most people would think it actually does more damage. This is a game in a fictional universe after all.
Given that the term "assault rifle" has a well-understood meaning and that that meaning is the same in the Real World and in previous editions of Traveller, I don't find this a very convincing point. I'd expect the designer to at least familiarize himself with basic points of reference like this.
Second - As the original poster said, the Assault Rifle is TWO tech levels higher. So maybe it's just got better sealing and stronger propellants. Since Kinetic Energy equals Mass times Velocity, you could make a huge crater with a measley BB if you could just fling it fast enough.
Actually, .5 x Mass x Velocity Squared. The assault rifle
intentionally uses a less powerful cartridge than previous combat rifles, and usually a shorter barrel, which militate for significantly lower penetration.
The US experience is instructive. The standard US bolt action rifle and semi-automatic rifles used the powerful 30-06 cartridge (7.62 x 63mm). In the 1950s, the M-14 autorifle and similar models like the FN-FAL used the less powerful (but still very potent) 7.62 x 51mm round. In the 1960s, the AR-15/M-16 led the West's adoption of the lightweight 5.56 x 45mm round. The trend, therefore, has been towards lighter rounds, which allowed for significantly more ammo to be carried, and which was an effective round against unarmored targets at normal combat ranges.
But in Iraq, this round's lack of penetration has caused the US military to consider re-adapting the NATO 7.62mm x 51mm cartridge because it has better penetration through walls and body armor. (The military ultimately chose the 6.8mm x 43mm round, which is about midway in performance between the 5.56 x 45mm cartridge and the NATO 7.62mm).
And there really hasn't been much improvement in bullet performance over the last century, for a variety of reasons. The next improvement in performance should come in muzzle energy (when ETC cartridges are perfected at TL 9 or so) or in rate of fire/ammunition capacity (when caseless cartridges become popular).
Hmm, just thought. Maybe the game designers did that intentionally so that military would have stronger weapons than civilians or low tech throwbacks.
Or maybe the designers didn't do their homework. Or maybe they made a simply typo.
At the end of the day, no one who knows anything about modern TL6-8 firearms would seriously assert that an assault rifle has better penetration than TL5 combat rifles.