Ship's Locker: Out of the Closet

[Condottiere]

Advanced Combat Rifle - Bill of Materials

If you fully utilize the two ammunition capacity increase options, each of which would maximize that by fifty percent, you could basically double that, in case of intermediate rifle rounds, sixty.

If you use the compact option, you automatically lose a quarter of any capacity, and have to drop one of the increased capacity options, so doesn't seem worth it, within the context of a combat sidearm.

Compact seems more suited for concealed carry.

 

[Condottiere]

Advanced Combat Rifle - Bill of Materials

I don't think it's mentioned, but I would speculate that maintaining a gauss rifle is a lot more finicky, and a lot more efficiently done in a deployed army division, than a Marine platoon.

Which got me looking, as to exactly how many Marines are assigned to Imperium starwarships, per category.

Four hundred tonne patrol corvette with eight.

Twelve hundred tonne Kinunir class colonial cruiser with thirty five.

The Valiant class light thirty kilotonne cruiser has twenty.

The Ghalalk class fifty kilotonne armoured cruiser has two hundred.

And surprisingly, that seems to be that, even on dreadnoughts.

Similarly with sailors, I would think that outside some sniper gauss rifle inclusions, the navy armourers would prefer something that's easier to maintain, that's only rarely utilized.

 

[Condottiere]

Advanced Combat Rifle - Bill of Materials

It seems, once you get to technological level ten, twenty two long rifle is obsolescent.

Except, maybe as a granny gun, or as a Hush Puppy.

Ammunition is certainly cheaper, and you should train with what you intend to use.

It could be configured, that in an emergency, you could use standard five millimetre assault rifle ammunition, though it appears that that, is more expensive.

It's possible that advanced combat rifle rounds would be too powerful for an assault rifle, and that would create a hazard.

So, I'll hazard a guess that the reason the Confederation Navy doesn't have gauss pistols as ceremonial pistols, is because that's the Confederation Army's preferred smallarms platform.

 

[Condottiere]

Advanced Combat Rifle - Bill of Materials

1. The idea being that the Confederation Navy has a distinctive aesthetic different from the Confederation Army.

2. This is encouraged by Security, to ensure that these two institutions can never be aligned enough to team up, and pose a threat to the Confederation.

3. In terms of sidearms, the Navy only has, or should, worry about combat within the confines of spacecraft and space stations, or on their hulls.

4. The length of a spacecraft corridor is likely less than that the expected two to three hundred metre dirtside engagement range.

5. The effective range of an advanced combat rifle is four and a half hundred metres.

6. You probably don't want shell casings floating around in microgravity.

7. Switching to caseless rounds triples cost, though at around ten starbux per forty rounds, to thirty starbux, doesn't seem too expensive.

8. And if gravity is switched off, you switch to rocket guns, with an effective range of two and a half hundred metres.

9. Or, close quarters, snub guns.

 

[Condottiere]

Mandalorians Learning Logistics Almost Destroyed the Galaxy

So once upon a time the Mandalorians discovered something called logistics, and it was terrifying for the rest of the galaxy.


1. Administration/zero, first.

2. Armour Guccification.

3. Bougie warriors.

 

[Condottiere]

youtube.com/watch?v=Haf2Tpjh3E4


The Ork Who Accidentally Achieved Enlightenment in Warhammer 40K

An Ork got hit by a Baneblade shell and stopped wanting to fight. The WAAAGH field — a ten-million-year-old psychic aggression network — doesn't know what to do with that.

This isn't the standard Ork lore video. We're going into the WAAAGH field's secondary cognitive resonance patterns (3rd Edition Codex, margin text nobody reads), the sub-harmonic frequencies described in Simon Spurrier's Xenology that most Tech-Priests don't measure, and what the Horus Heresy Black Book 6 reveals about a Weirdboy under interrogation saying the field "still listens for da voice." The Old Ones didn't just build Orks for war. They built them for what comes after. That shutdown protocol has been sitting dormant for ten million years. One Baneblade shell just hit soft reset.

Also: a Painboy eats the evidence and files a neutral medical report. This is a normal day for him.

CHAPTERS
0:00 — The WAAAGH Field Has a Problem It Doesn't Have Words For
1:28 — Ork Neurology: The Krumpin' Lobe and Why Urgok Shouldn't Be Calm
3:45 — How the WAAAGH Field Actually Works (And Why It's Trying to Fix Him)
5:20 — The 3rd Edition Codex Line Nobody Reads: Secondary Cognitive Resonance
6:30 — The Old Ones Didn't Build Orks to Fight Forever
7:55 — Black Book 6 and the Weirdboy Who Said the Field Listens for a Voice
9:10 — Grimtusk Arrives. Stares at Some Rocks. Has a Feeling.
10:40 — Da Contemplata of Cephalyx VI: This Has Happened Before
11:55 — If Urgok Chose Peace, Every Ork in History Chose Violence
13:20 — The Sub-Harmonic: Xenology and the Frequency Nobody Measures
14:50 — The Painboy Scene (Medical Ethics in Crisis)
16:00 — The WAAAGH Field Starts Dreaming. Neither Gork Nor Mork Appears.
17:30 — The Deathwatch Arrives. Nobody Moves. The Report Ends There.
18:40 — Why a Peaceful Ork Is a Moral Problem, Not a Military One
19:20 — The Question the Ordo Xenos Won't Answer

Pink Pony Ork

 

[Condottiere]

Why Neil Hates Parsecs

What’s a parsec? Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice break down space’s weirdest unit of measure. Learn how people came up with parsec and how Star Wars, once again, doesn’t understand science.

Timestamps:
00:00 - Embarrassing Unit of Measure
1:13 - Origins of Parsec
3:12 - Parallax Experiment
7:59 - Parsec vs. Light Year
10:21 - Star Wars Messed Up
12:42 - Closing

Well, playing Traveller, you do have to close an eye.

 

[Condottiere]

Star Wars (1950s) | Golden Age Hollywood Concept Cast AI Trailer | 1950s Classic Hollywood Style

*What if *Star Wars was cast in the 1950s?**
This video is a *1950s Classic Hollywood concept cast trailer**, reimagining *Star Wars with **golden-age actors and actresses**, matched by **age, appearance, and character personality**.

Presented in *Academy Ratio (4:3)**, this concept explores how *Star Wars might look if it were made during the **golden era of Hollywood**, featuring **vintage star power**, classic sci-fi aesthetics, and period-accurate casting choices.

This is a *concept cast only* — no story changes, no modern actors — just a creative re-casting of iconic Star Wars characters using **1950s Hollywood legends**.

If you enjoy **alternate movie casting**, **classic Hollywood**, and **retro sci-fi concepts**, this video is for you.

 

[Condottiere]

The U.S. Army has raised its maximum enlistment age by seven years, moving it up from 35 to 42 years old, in an effort to spur greater recruitment.

The changes to the enlistment rules also include adjustments to existing factors that could rule out potential recruits, such as those having a single marijuana or drug paraphernalia conviction.

The changes reflect the Army's recent efforts to broaden its appeal and raise the number of people applying to be in the force after it missed its enlistment targets in 2022 and 2023, although numbers did rebound somewhat in 2024, according to the Army Times.

Under the previous policy, the Army capped enlistment at age 35, though older applicants could sometimes join through waivers.

Other branches of the military have higher age limits. The Air Force and Navy both already accept recruits over 40. The Marine Corps has a maximum enlistment age of 28 though it allows applicants 29 and older to request waivers.

“This regulation applies to the Regular Army, the Army National Guard/Army National Guard of the United States, and the U.S. Army Reserve," the officials said in a statement. The new policy starts in April.

Army recruits are entering the service at older ages than in previous decades, according to the Army Times.

So far in fiscal year 2026, the average age of active‑duty and reserve recruits is 22.7, a noticeable increase from the 21.7 average seen in the 2000s and 21.1 in the 2010s, according to Madison Bonzo, the Army Recruiting Division’s chief of media relations.

Army officials say the shift reflects a deliberate effort to broaden the recruiting pool. With the service working to attract candidates from a wider range of backgrounds and life stages, recruiters are seeing more applicants who are slightly older.

US Army quietly raises enlistment age to bolster struggling recruitment numbers

Rule change signals effort to widen recruitment pool after the Army previously failed to hit enlistment targets

www.independent.co.uk

Could consider revising age penalties for enlistment.

 

[Jame Rowe]

Interesting for Traveller, but the situation makes me glad I'm already past that limit.

 

[Condottiere]

Can Humans REALLY Leave Earth? [Interstellar Spaceship]

What would it actually take to leave Earth — not for a weekend on the Moon, but forever? This video tests three real generation-ship proposals against five brutal constraints: gravity, radiation, closed-loop life support, cultural continuity across 400 years, and the selection problem — choosing who gets to go. We break down Chrysalis (a 58 km modular ship that sheds stages like a rocket), Proximum (a civilization carved inside an asteroid), and WFP (a self-assembling micro-city based on MIT research). Along the way we confront governance without a homeworld, genetic bottlenecks, generational memory loss, and why shared rituals might matter more than engine specs. The answer isn't one ship — it's three radically different philosophies of what it means to be human in deep space.


1. Hull protection.

2. Cultural continuity.

3. Independent double hulls.

4. Or, quintuple hulls.

5. Synchronized elevators.

6. Frozen jeans.

7. Cross training.

8. Eighty year cycles of crisis.

9. Artificial intelligence database for informed electorate.

10. Geek chorus.

11. Database RAIDing.

12. System accountability.

13. Triangular modular neighbourhoods.

14. Help build your own spacecraft.