PGMPs and Battledress

[Golan2072]

P.126 says:

It [the PGMP] is so heavy and bulky that it can only be used easily by a trooper in Battle Dress

But the PGMP first appears at TL12 and the Battledress at TL13. How do TL12 troops use a PGMP-12? Is that with a "Very Bulky" penalty in all cases? (though I'd love to see a more primitive "exoskeleton" with less armour and less manouverability at a lower TL, see the Walkers in Aliens or the Exoskeleton in the STALKER computer games).

 

[hdan]

Maybe they require "musket stands" (or tripods, if you prefer ), and can only be fired from a stand-still position, after you spend a minor action to deploy the stand?

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

That would likely be a man-portable weapons system mounted on a tripod carried by at least two people. A better description may be warranted to reflect that.

 

[steve98052]

In addition, the table on page 121 describes a TL16 plasma weapon that isn't in the artillery table -- and indicates that it's a no-recoil model. That seems wrong in a couple of ways:

• Plasma weapons spray a jet of matter, which should generate recoil, possibly enough to make battle dress mandatory -- unless they have some sort of built-in recoil compensation (like the FGMP-15 in the original Mercenary).
• Traveller customarily reserves TL16 as beyond the technology available to characters except as artifacts acquired during adventuring.