Muster out with Battle Dress?

[Lord High Munchkin]

Remember "Law Levels" will make a BIG difference to what PCs can have and hold onto (even carry about).

 

[locarno24]

This does not mean you should allow PC 's to run all over the galaxy in Combat Armour and Battle Dress. In most places this would not be allowed, and would be inappropriate to the situation. This also doesn't mean that such equipment isn't useful either. It means that you use the right equipment for the circumstances that you find yourself in.

True for anything. API rounds is a case in point. Yes, not that hard to get hold of the 3rd Imperium's equivalent if you have some decent military or underworld connections. But, as with the anti-material rifle, it only really applies if you specifically feel the need to go looking for them.

Aside from mercenary/high guard campaigns, battle dress is likely to turn up in very small numbers of suits, and should represent an 'oh, snap' moment for the PCs if it's not them inside it. As said, if you have set up an ambush for a suit you're expecting it's not impossible (or even that hard) to deal with. If two suits bust through the wall, wielding gauss rifles, when everyone in the group is carrying a handgun at best and wasn't expecting to be attacked, then you're going to find the battle dress getting a lot more respect*.....

Remember "Law Levels" will make a BIG difference to what PCs can have and hold onto (even carry about).

True, but the two tend to go hand in hand - if battle dress can be worn openly, then weapons which can punch through it can probably be carried openly, and vice-versa when it can't. Of course that makes it even more of a shock when someone has managed to sneak something on-planet.


* Quote from our group when something rather similar happened:

"Time for plan B!"
"What's plan B?"
<Exasperated Look> "The same thing plan B always is! RUN!!!!!"

 

[DFW]

Sorry but if you want to sprout nonsense:

Do you have to add water if you want it to sprout? ROFL

 

[rust]

It could well be that our views on Battle Dress and on weapons and am-
munition are somewhat influenced by our real world experiences.
For someone in the USA it is completely normal that comparatively heavy
weapons and their various types of ammunition are almost freely avai-
lable, while over here only a minority of people have ever seen any fire-
arms up close.
I suspect this difference is likely to "taint" our views of what a Traveller
society might be like, and how it treats weapons and military gear of all
kinds.

 

[DFW]

Very true rust. For instance, civilian owned AR-15's are common in the U.S. Much less so where you live I suspect...

 

[DFW]

As for the "special ammos" like SLAP or API: They only exist (or work reliably) for calibers 12.7mm or above. And that's not the stuff typically found with the police.

Nope, in the US only private citizens have .50 cal MG's. Police, no.

http://ee.ar15.com/ItemView.aspx?iid=55411

 

[rust]

Well, actually a few million germans have experience with firearms, anti tank missiles etc,

True, but this is still a minority, since women never were drafted and the
percentage of drafted men was far from 100 % even at the height of the
Cold War and steadily declined over the last decades.
All in all, I would be surprised if more than 30 % of all Germans alive to-
day ever held a weapon more dangerous than a kitchen knife in their
hands.

 

[rust]

As for the "special ammos" like SLAP or API: They only exist (or work reliably) for calibers 12.7mm or above. And that's not the stuff typically found with the police.

Ah ... no, rust did not write that. :wink:

 

[DFW]

+ The link does not work

+ The USA is not the world. Nor does it represent the majority of the world, Actually it's a minority with rather strange weapon laws

+ Try writing something sensible for an exhange. Or give an example of a US police force using .50BMG as a standard weapon

I clicked through the link from your post. Works fine. You must be blocked from your country.

Of course the US isn't the world. Never said it was. Strange comment from you.

Why would I give you an example of US police using a .50 cal? when I said, "in the US only private citizens have .50 cal MG's. Police, no."

Try actually reading posts before responding.

 

[rust]

According to Wikipedia:

"Similarly, .50 BMG weapons have attracted attention from law enforce-
ment agencies; they have been adopted by the New York City Police De-
partment as well as the Pittsburgh Police."

 

[DFW]

According to Wikipedia:

"Similarly, .50 BMG weapons have attracted attention from law enforce-
ment agencies; they have been adopted by the New York City Police De-
partment as well as the Pittsburgh Police."

Wow! NYC? Who would have thunk. In NYC only the police have guns. What do they need an HMG for?

 

[rust]

Wow! NYC? Who would have thunk. In NYC only the police have guns. What do they need an HMG for?

I suspect what they have is the .50 BMG sniper rifle, not a machine gun.

 

[locarno24]

I suspect what they have is the .50 BMG sniper rifle, not a machine gun.

Almost certainly. 0.50 rifles have a principle role as vehicle-stoppers, something potentially of significant interest to a SWAT team.

But again, even if someone has a 12.7mm weapon, it's not like that's something they will be carrying about with them on a day-to-day basis.

A handgun, maybe shotgun in a car, maybe. A Browning? I sincerely hope not.

The USA is not the world. Nor does it represent the majority of the world, Actually it's a minority with rather strange weapon laws

True. But then one thing to bear in mind is that the sheer number of different worlds with different social orders means that probably every combination of gun control laws (or lack thereof) can be found somewhere in the Imperium or its periphery. The question isn't whether the police of Backendofnowhere, IL, can take out a suit of battledress, but whether an Imperial citizen can. And the answer is, inevitably, one of the three* Universal Answers To All Traveller Questions:

"It depends where in the Imperium you are."

And one thing that should be considered is that police forces aren't stupid; if, in your version of the universe, third parties can obtain battledress either on mustering out, or obtained second hand from mustered-out veterans, then the incidence of crime including such hardware is going to be higher, which means they will be prepared for it. This won't mean every squad car having a matter disintegrator in the boot, but it means that whilst individual patrolmen may be no different to their modern contemporaries, there will be a SWAT-analogue with ready access to potentially battle-dress killing gear for when the fecal matter hits the rotary air impeller.


* The other two, respectively, being "It's probably done with gravetics." and "Because I'm the bloody GM and I said so, Okay?"

 

[rust]

* The other two, respectively, being "It's probably done with gravetics." and "Because I'm the bloody GM and I said so, Okay?"

And I always thought it was "The Ancients did it." :lol:

 

[justacaveman]

There seem to be two camps on this thread: Those who think letting PC's have Battle Dress is the height of folly, and those who think it's not that big a problem.

I personally have only had 1 character who had a suit of Battle Dress. It wasn't a mercenary campaign, it was obtained by putting together 3 damaged suits (The pirates who were wearing them no longer needed the suits.) along with some spare parts he had obtained. He only used the suit about 6 times, and it only proved useful twice.

I just don't believe it's as big a deal as some make it out to be. Any planet of TL 5+ that has regular contact with galactic culture, will be aware of the capabilities of powered armour, and have ways of dealing with it kept handy just to deal with pirates and criminals who like to use such things on lower tech planets (DSAP ammo can be easily made at TL 5.).

 

[justacaveman]

Somebody said:

Try writing in an understandabel way quite a few here thankfully don't use english as a primary language

Then why are they posting on an English language forum? If it's not your primary language of course there'll be some misunderstandings. I wouldn't go to a Korean language forum and complain about their language usage while deriding the Korean language itself. Seems rather rude to me.

 

[justacaveman]

Remember that even if PC's don't have access to Combat Armour and Battle Dress in YTU, the police are still going to have weapons to take it out. This is because CRIMINALS DO NOT OBEY THE LAW. There will be suits of Battle Dress and Combat Armour available on the black market, because these items have been available in Imperial space for hundreds of years. In most cases these are probably the exact same designs that were used by the character's grandparents. In the Imperium these are mature technologies, and only special units in the core worlds would have state-of-the-art cutting-edge gear. This would be because military organizations are very conservative and resistant to change (The Imperial military probably suffering from an extreme case of this.).

 

[DFW]

Try writing in an understandabel way quite a few here thankfully don't use english as a primary language

I wrote in perfectly understandable English... I don't know what language is your primary. Although, I can probably assume that it is a primary national language for countries that, all told, would fit into one of our states?

 

[rust]

Although, I can probably assume that it is a primary national language for countries that, all told, would fit into one of our states?

If that state happens to be Alaska or Texas.

With that problem solved, could the gentlemen please return to a less
silly pattern of behaviour ? :roll:

 

[kristof65]

Something else to keep in mind about BD - even if a character has it, they're not going to be wearing it all the time. And even if they do attempt to do that, there are plenty of other ways to get at them.

Say a PC uses BD to commit a crime, and the police can't stop him. Doesn't mean they can't track him - eventually he's going to have to shed it, or go back to his home base.

Let's say the BD dressed PC commits his crime, hotfoots back to his waiting scout ship and takes off - BD or not, his Scout ship is now vulnerable to the SDBs on intercept courses for him. Plus his ship registry is now known, and surely he'll end up on the sector's wanted lists.

Or he commits that crime, and runs to a hiding spot in the woods, where he strips off his BD and strolls non-chalantly back to the starport, unidentified. Problem is, he can probably kiss that BD suit goodbye as the authorities pick it up or stake it out to see who comes and gets it.

As for the different takes on assault weapons laws around the world - even the US has different takes on things from state to state - a good example (and probably more applicable to a discussion of BD) are the differences in the laws for the use of body armor from state to state:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2194/is_n3_v64/ai_16984614/?tag=content;col1

Most of the US body armor laws only outlaw it for convicted felons, and stack on additional crimes/penalties for the use of body armor in crimes. I've been unable to find data on how it's treated in various other countries.