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BT411 -- WEAPONS FIELD GUIDE: EVERY WEAPON, AS THE ORIGINAL BUILT IT
Updated 2026-08-13 -- reconstruction review edition, for the whole group.
=============================================================================
WHAT THIS IS: we have now read the original machine's firing code for
every weapon family and compared it, behavior by behavior, against what
our port does. This document is the result. For each family you get:
what the shipped machine really did, what our port does today, what
changes in the next build, and -- where the code alone cannot settle
it -- what we need from your memory.
HOW TO REVIEW: you flew the real pods; we only read their code. Read
each section and mark anything that CONTRADICTS your memory of the
machine -- and anything that confirms it. Silence is not confirmation:
if a section simply matches what you remember, a one-word "matches" is
genuinely useful data.
HOW TO REPLY: EDIT THIS FILE. Every section that needs your input
ends with a YOUR NOTES block -- write directly in it (callsign first,
then MATCHES / CONTRADICTS / CAN'T RECALL, then your detail) and post
the edited file back when you're done. Which floor, which revision,
which mech you flew -- machine-room details turn weak memories into
strong evidence.
ONE RETRACTION UP FRONT: the last issues handout (#27) told you
ballistic rounds could now "genuinely MISS a moving target". The
deeper dig behind this document proved that framing wrong: the
original decides a cannon hit AT THE TRIGGER, and the round you watch
fly is a tracer drawn for show. We were wrong; details in the
AUTOCANNONS section. Your review of that section is part of the
group's sign-off on the correction.
=============================================================================
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1. LASERS -- SMALL / MEDIUM / LARGE, STANDARD AND ER
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THE ORIGINAL'S BEHAVIOR
- A charge-and-release energy weapon. No ammo, no jam. Six marks, one
mechanism -- only the numbers differ (Appendix A). No pulse lasers
exist anywhere in the shipped content.
- Firing needs three things at the trigger: a LOCKED target, your
view actually on the target (the weapon only arms while you are
looking where it points), and the target inside effective range.
- The beam is instant. The hit is decided the moment you fire -- no
travel time, no leading. What you see is the discharge drawing
itself, plus a 0.2-second afterglow that tracks the target.
- Damage scales with the SQUARE of the stored charge. You cannot
fire early -- the trigger does nothing until the charge completes.
The only partial-power shot is a different CHARGE GEAR (section 2,
veteran/expert only), and the REAL ladder -- read from the machine's
own gear table after Oracle's notes called out our old example --
is: seek 1 = 56% damage (fastest), seek 2 = 77%, seek 3 = 100%
(THE published number -- the calibration gear), seek 4 = 153%
(an OVERCHARGE: more damage AND more heat per shot, at roughly
triple the charge time). Downshift for rate of fire, seek 4 for
the single big hit. Distance never matters: full damage anywhere
inside effective range, zero damage past it.
- Out of range: the trigger works and the beam draws, but the damage
is silently thrown away. No hit, no denied tone we can find.
- Effective range shrinks in proportion to damage on the body zone
carrying the weapon: a half-wrecked arm fires at half reach. An
undamaged weapon reaches exactly its listed range -- confirmed
down to the byte this week.
- Overheat is a hard stop: a heat-failed laser quits outright. There
is no gradual weakening on the way down.
- Each hit lands on ONE panel of the target.
OUR PORT TODAY
Same machine, verified live end to end. The beam is drawn from the
real laser-tube art. Charge timing is smoothed for modern frame
rates -- a robustness measure, not a behavior change. (The #164
stuck-beam guards are already in.)
CHANGING IN THE NEXT BUILD
Nothing mechanical.
WE NEED YOUR MEMORY
- Firing past range: do you remember shots that visibly fired at a
distant target and just did nothing? That is what the machine did.
- Generator switching mid-charge: did switching or re-routing
generators while a laser was charging COST you the in-flight
charge (with an electrical alarm)? A yes pins down a control path
we have not been able to identify from the code alone.
YOUR NOTES (callsign first, one entry per line):
>
>
>
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2. THE CHARGE GEAR (ALL ENERGY WEAPONS) -- SETTLED BY YOUR MEMORY
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THE ORIGINAL'S BEHAVIOR
Veteran/expert pilots could cycle an energy weapon's charge gear
(four settings). Cycling past the top wraps to the bottom and the
weapon keeps working: a stored charge above the new gear's level
simply counts as FULL and fires (a wrap-fired top-gear charge deals
its normal top-gear damage -- no secret super-shot, no dead weapon).
FOR THE RECORD: an earlier version of this document claimed the
machine shipped a flaw here -- that wrapping the gear left the
weapon permanently dark. Several of you said flatly that never
happened. You were right. The re-audit you triggered found our
reading of one number in the original's code was wrong by a single
byte-width, and the "brick" existed only in our port, never on the
machine. This section is your correction, adopted.
OUR PORT TODAY
Fixed to match: cycling behaves exactly as you remember. (Before
the fix our gauges could briefly read EMPTY on an over-charge where
the machine read FULL -- if you saw that, it dies in the next
build.)
CHANGING IN THE NEXT BUILD
The correction above ships. The old "deviation" entry is withdrawn
-- the energy lane now has ZERO deviations from the original.
YOUR NOTES (callsign first, one entry per line):
>
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2B. SEEK-4 ON THE HEAVY WALKERS (VULTURE / MADCAT / THOR / LOKI)
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THE ORIGINAL'S BEHAVIOR (audited to the byte this week)
- Drive heat scales with weight times speed squared, and no amount
of running ever cools you -- there is no airflow cooling anywhere
in this machine. The fast-heavy Clan walkers pay the most.
- Gears 1 through 3 make IDENTICAL heat: seek-3 is free speed.
Seek-4 roughly doubles drive heat AND raises your top speed --
a sprint gear. Cruising it on a heavy walker without the boost
crosses myomer degradation in under twenty seconds and the
governor bites. A same-weight humanoid at the same speed cooks the same:
it is physics, not a chicken-walker curse.
- The machine gave you the tool: BOOST COOLANT LOOP 5 (Generator D /
Myomers). One press visibly buys your speed back; a full boost
sustains seek-4 on a Vulture indefinitely.
- THE TRAP: one press past maximum WRAPS THE VALVE CLOSED. If you
ever boosted a loop and it cooked anyway -- you probably hit the
wrap. Two presses, never three.
- Standing still sheds heat fast (~10 degrees a second).
OUR PORT TODAY -- AND A CONFESSION YOUR REPORTS FORCED
You were right that something was off. Our build measured your
mech's acceleration at modern frame rates, and at those rates the
measurement picks up walking-gait jitter as phantom acceleration --
nearly TWO-THIRDS of your drive heat on a flat cruise was noise
that the original's electronics (sampling at their own slower
clock) never saw. The port was punishing heavy walkers roughly
TWICE as hard as the machine did.
CHANGING IN THE NEXT BUILD (the fix, measured)
Heat sensing now samples on the original's clock. Result on the
bench: a Vulture at seek-4 WITH the loop-5 boost holds FULL
supercharge speed indefinitely, running hot but stable -- the
valve trick works exactly as the machine intended, and the
manual's printed Super Charged speed is real. WITHOUT the boost,
seek-4 still cooks you (that part is the machine's own balance,
and it stays). The wrap trap also stays: two presses, never three.
WE NEED YOUR MEMORY
- Next build: boost loop 5, hold seek-4 on a big walker. Does the
sustained supercharge match how the machine felt? Your yes
closes the oldest heat complaint on the books.
- Did the loop-5 valve boost trick live in era pilot lore, or are
we rediscovering it?
YOUR NOTES (callsign first, one entry per line):
>
>
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3. PPC AND ER PPC
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THE ORIGINAL'S BEHAVIOR
- The firing machine is literally the laser's -- the same code, the
same rules (lock, look, range gate, square-law charge). Everything
distinctive is the numbers: hardest energy hit (12; ER 16),
longest energy reach (900 / 950), a slow 5-second recharge, and
the only BLUE pip.
- What makes a PPC special is what it does to the VICTIM. Energy
hits -- and only energy hits -- carry two riders:
(a) DISPLAY SCRAMBLE: every energy hit pokes the victim's cockpit
display system once -- some kind of gauge/MFD disturbance per
hit. What it looked like and how long it lasted is NOT
recoverable from the code.
(b) GENERATOR SHORT: if the struck zone holds critical equipment,
one random critical component takes a forced short --
generator brownout, charge stall, cockpit electronics dip.
OUR PORT TODAY
The firing machine and the generator short are in and verified. The
display scramble is NOT implemented -- right now your screens shrug
off a PPC hit, and that is a known gap on the polish list.
CHANGING IN THE NEXT BUILD
Not yet. We will not invent the visual: the scramble gets built
AFTER your testimony, not before.
WE NEED YOUR MEMORY (this one really matters)
- Taking a PPC hit, from inside the pod: what happened on your
screens? Static or interference? A flash? Gauges and MFDs going
briefly to garbage? How long did it last?
- Separately: after taking PPC hits, do you remember the generator
browning out or your weapons losing charge (the short rider)?
YOUR NOTES (callsign first, one entry per line):
>
>
>
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4. AUTOCANNONS -- AFC25 / AFC50 / AFC100
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THE ORIGINAL'S BEHAVIOR
- The cannons are point-and-hit, not fly-and-hit. At the trigger,
with a lock, the machine checks the range; in range, the damage
lands THEN -- one solid ballistic hit on ONE panel of the locked
target. The shell you watch fly is a TRACER, drawn for show after
the decision is already made.
- No leading. The lock does the aiming, and a dodging target does
not shake a round already fired.
- Out of range: the round is consumed, the tracer flies anyway, and
the damage is silently discarded. No hit, no warning.
- Recoil: every shot with real punch (damage over 3) kicks your own
pod up and back through the gyro, in proportion to the shot --
the AFC100 kicks about 3.5 times as hard as the AFC25.
- Jams roll after each shot only while the weapon itself is running
a heat alarm -- in practice veteran/expert only, since the lower
sim levels never heat-alarm a weapon. Chance grows with weapon
temperature.
- One panel per pull. The old "shotgun across zones" spread in our
port (#112) was our bug, never the machine's.
OUR PORT TODAY
Until now our cannons flew a real shell that could miss --
reasonable, and wrong. The trigger-time machine is now implemented
against the original's code line by line and bench-verified: full
batches land as one hit, out-of-range rounds are consumed and
discarded. What it needs now is a real night of fire.
CHANGING IN THE NEXT BUILD
- The trigger-time cannon goes live in the build you test next.
This is the big #171 correction -- please hammer the cannons.
- The tracer's flight speed: the original derives it from the gun's
range and muzzle height (roughly one second to cross full range).
Our stand-in speed was close by accident; the recovered authentic
numbers go in.
WE NEED YOUR MEMORY
- When YOU fired cannons, did the pod's view visibly kick up and
back (distinct from being hit)? Was the AFC100's kick noticeably
harder than the AFC25's?
- The AFC25 specifically: did it occasionally eat a trigger pull
silently -- a click, no shot, on an apparently ready gun? (Its
ammo feed timer exactly equals its firing cycle -- the only gun
where the two can race.)
- Firing beyond range: did the visible round fly on forever, or
vanish? (The code consumes the round and discards the damage; the
tracer's visual fate is the one part we cannot recover.)
- Round pace: roughly how fast did cannon rounds visibly fly?
About a second to cross full range, or very different?
YOUR NOTES (callsign first, one entry per line):
>
>
>
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5. GAUSS ** THE HEADLINE QUESTION **
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THE ORIGINAL'S BEHAVIOR (as best we can prove it)
- The Gauss the pods actually fielded is built ON THE CANNON
MACHINE. The shipped content authors it as an autocannon-class
weapon: about 20 points of solid shot out to 900 (tied with the
AFC25 for longest ballistic reach), a slow 8-second cycle, only
16 rounds, runs nearly cold, and the only YELLOW ballistic pip.
It hit, and it hurt.
- The code ALSO contains a second, "true" Gauss-rifle mechanism
that charges up and does NOTHING when fired -- no damage, no
heat, nothing. No shipped content anywhere uses it. Dead code.
- Full honesty: for a while our audit believed the pods fielded the
do-nothing Gauss and that our port's Gauss damage was an
invention. Reading the raw content bytes settled it the other
way -- the fielded Gauss is the cannon-class one.
OUR PORT TODAY
Same content, same machine: our Gauss already deals cannon-class
damage. Port and original agree. Nothing changes.
WE NEED YOUR MEMORY (the headline)
- Confirm the Gauss KILLED: heavy single hits at extreme range, a
slow cycle, a small magazine, a gun that never warmed up, and a
yellow pip on the display. We expect YES.
- Which mech do you remember carrying it? (We believe the Loki;
your memory checks our content map.)
- If instead you remember a Gauss that charged up and did NOTHING
when fired -- say so loudly. That would be evidence that some
floor revision shipped content for the dead mechanism, content
we do not have.
YOUR NOTES (callsign first, one entry per line):
>
>
>
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6. MISSILES -- HOW EVERY RACK REALLY FIRES
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THE ORIGINAL'S BEHAVIOR
- Missiles are the one family that genuinely FLIES. Everything else
in the game decides its hit at the trigger; a missile earns its
hit in the air.
- Lock required, same as every weapon. There is no dumb-fire path
anywhere in the machine -- the trigger will not take without a
lock. (No special Streak lock code exists either; all racks fire
through the same gate.)
- ONE flying round was drawn per salvo, plus one explosion -- the
pod drew a single missile even for a 15-tube volley. The damage
bookkeeping rides that one round.
- The seeker LEADS: it flies a constant-bearing intercept toward
the exact spot on the target picked at the moment of fire, and
detonates on a close-proximity fuze with a swept contact check.
- If the target dies mid-flight, the lock drops and the round goes
stupid.
- A rack's listed "range" is fire-control display only. Real reach
is physics: motor burn, then up to 10 seconds of coasting. Rounds
that hit the floor die; rounds that time out fizzle.
- On impact, the cluster roll: out of an n-missile salvo, between
roughly a quarter and all of them count as hits, scattered across
the victim's zones with a fresh scatter every burst.
OUR PORT TODAY
The whole chain is live-verified: a 382-impact night corpus matches
the original's cluster roll exactly, and the fuze and lock-drop are
benched. (Flight SPEED is the one thing that corpus measured against
the old dragless model -- see CHANGING below: speeds drop to the
original's governed values next build.)
Presentation deliberately differs: we draw the full ripple of N
rounds (the lead round carries the damage, the rest are tracers)
with a small tube spread. The damage economy is identical.
CHANGING IN THE NEXT BUILD -- AND WHAT TO WATCH
MISSILES SLOW DOWN, AND THIS IS THE ORIGINAL'S SPEED. The audit
found the original governs every missile with air drag that caps
its top speed -- an LRM tops out near 550, an SRM near 775. Our
rounds had no drag: an LRM was leaving its burn at over 3000,
five times the machine's speed, and flying nearly twice as far
downrange. Next build restores the governor. Missiles will feel
heavier, arcs will read slower, and long shots will take
noticeably longer to arrive -- that is the pod's real feel, not a
nerf. If missile flight FINALLY looks like you remember, say so;
that confirmation is worth as much as a bug report.
The bystander gap. The original's rounds swept everything in the
flight path every tick -- a third mech between shooter and target
could eat someone else's missile. Our rounds currently contact only
the locked target and the terrain: a mech in between gets flown
through, and only splash can touch it. This is the largest
remaining missile-physics gap; the fix is designed but not landed.
WATCH FRIDAY: if you take missile hits aimed at someone else --
beyond splash distance -- report it with the shooter's name.
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7. MISSILE SPLASH
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THE ORIGINAL'S BEHAVIOR
Splash was LIVE on the pods -- every stock mission enables it. An
impact splashes a radius of about 30 around the hit point; strength
scales from the FULL rack size and falls off steeply with distance;
the mech that took the direct hit is excluded from its own splash.
One thing the code cannot prove either way: whether the SHOOTER was
protected from splashing themselves at point-blank.
OUR PORT TODAY
Same math, verified -- including the full-rack-size splash strength,
pinned to the original's code this week. We exclude both the direct
victim and the shooter. The on/off wiring differs slightly from the
original in a way that only matters for custom missions -- a site
option question for later, not a Friday one.
WE NEED YOUR MEMORY
- Do you remember splash hurting mechs standing NEAR an impact?
- Critically: could you hurt YOURSELF firing missiles point-blank
into a wall or an adjacent mech? Our port says no; the original's
code will not tell us. Your memory is the tiebreaker.
YOUR NOTES (callsign first, one entry per line):
>
>
>
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8. HOMING AGILITY, THE LRM ARC, AND THE NARC
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THE ORIGINAL'S BEHAVIOR
- Three flight profiles exist in the shipped content:
LRM round: sluggish 60 deg/sec turn, 10-second burn, and the
LOFT -- at long range the seeker aims high and
the round flies the signature climb-then-plunge
arc.
Streak round: 360 deg/sec turn -- six times the LRM -- short
3-second burn, no loft. The round that out-turns
evasion.
Narc round: the surprise -- Streak-grade 360 deg/sec tracking
PLUS the loft PLUS the long 10-second burn. A
light rack that flies like a hawk.
- There is NO beacon mechanism anywhere in the machine. The Narc
never tagged anyone for anything; it is a light, hard-tracking
rack and nothing more.
- Several racks LABELED "LRM" actually feed Narc-profile rounds,
and at least one "SRM6" feeds Streak rounds. Two visually
identical racks homing very differently -- one sluggish, one
snapping onto target -- is authentic, not a bug.
- Rack names lie in other ways too, all authentic authored data:
an "SRM6" that fires 4 tubes, an "SRM4" that fires 2, LRM10s that
hit nearly twice as hard on one chassis as another.
OUR PORT TODAY
Same data-driven resolution -- the racks read the same content, so
all of the above carries over for free. One detail we are NOT
stating yet: which profile the 2-tube SRM racks fly -- our two
content reads disagree and the pass that settles it has not run.
CHANGING IN THE NEXT BUILD
Nothing mechanical.
WE NEED YOUR MEMORY
- Do you remember visually identical LRM racks homing very
differently on different mechs? And can you confirm the Narc did
nothing special -- no tag, no beacon, just a fast light rack?
- Do you remember SRM racks that fired FEWER missiles than their
name -- a 4-tube "SRM6", a 2-tube "SRM4"? Or LRM10s/LRM15s that
hit noticeably harder on one chassis than another?
- THE SRM RANGE PIP: the original PRINTED MANUAL shows the SRM
range mark at 450 in three separate display mockups; the game
content we have authors it at 800. That smells like the range
changed between software revisions. Which number do you remember
on the ladder when you selected an SRM rack -- 450 or 800?
(Range on a missile is display-only either way -- the rounds fly
on physics -- but your answer dates our content revision.)
YOUR NOTES (callsign first, one entry per line):
>
>
>
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9. AMMO, EJECT, AND JAMS (CANNONS AND RACKS)
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THE ORIGINAL'S BEHAVIOR
- The reload countdown runs only while the weapon's generator route
is powered, and a HOT generator reloads slower. Below minimum
voltage the countdown freezes entirely.
- The EJECT control (novice pilots are locked out of it):
TAP = eject one round, and the weapon resets to loading if
rounds remain. This is the in-mission UNJAM.
HOLD (3 seconds) = dump the entire bay. The weapon is out of
ammo for good until re-arm or respawn.
- Jams roll after each shot while the weapon itself runs a heat
alarm; the chance grows with weapon temperature. Standard and
novice sims never heat-alarm a weapon -- so in practice only
veteran/expert pilots ever jammed.
OUR PORT TODAY
Same machine, tap-unjam included -- it is the mechanism behind
#166's "tap EJECT" advice. One divergence: our jam roll currently
waits for a higher weapon temperature than the original -- a
leftover safety from before the heat economy went live.
CHANGING IN THE NEXT BUILD
The leftover jam gate comes out. Warm cannons and racks on
veteran/expert may jam a touch more often. That is the authentic
rate.
WE NEED YOUR MEMORY
- Did weapons only ever jam for veteran/expert pilots? And could
you CLEAR a jam mid-sortie by tapping EJECT to cycle one round
out?
- Did a rack or cannon ever go permanently dark WITH ammo remaining
after sustained fire? At what firing intensity? (Field case from
our own nights: an SRM6 latched out with 19 rounds left. Whether
that could happen at authentic intensity is an open question.)
YOUR NOTES (callsign first, one entry per line):
>
>
>
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10. INCOMING-MISSILE WARNING
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THE ORIGINAL'S BEHAVIOR
Every missile launched at a mech announces itself to its target --
the machinery for a warning is there. What CONSUMED that
announcement (a warning tone? a beeper tempo change? a threat lamp?)
we have not located in the original's code.
OUR PORT TODAY
The beeper plumbing exists but nothing feeds it -- the warning is
structurally dead (#83 on the known-gaps list).
WE NEED YOUR MEMORY
- Did the pod audibly warn you of inbound missiles? A tone, a tempo
change, a lamp -- anything. If it did not, #83 closes for free.
If it did, describe it and we build exactly that.
YOUR NOTES (callsign first, one entry per line):
>
>
>
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APPENDIX A -- THE AUTHORED NUMBERS (straight from the shipped content)
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Range is in the same units your fire-control shows. Cycle in seconds.
ENERGY (damage = full-charge shot; scales with the square of charge)
WEAPON DMG RANGE CYCLE HEAT/SHOT
SLaser 1.5 150 1 0.75
ERSLaser 2 225 1 1.5
MLaser 2.5 350 2 2
ERMLaser 3.5 500 2 3.5
LLaser 5 600 4 6
ERLLaser 6 750 4 8.5
PPC 12 900 5 11
ERPPC 16 950 5 16
Reach shrinks with damage to the carrying zone: listed x (1 - zone
damage). An undamaged weapon reaches exactly the listed range.
BALLISTIC (one panel, decided at the trigger; recoil kick = dmg/16)
WEAPON DMG RANGE CYCLE NOTES
AFC25 7 900 2 feed timer = cycle (see sec. 4)
AFC50 13 750 4
AFC100 25 400 8 hardest hit, shortest reach
GAUSS 20 900 8 16 rounds, yellow pip, near cold
Cannons and racks run effectively cold next to the energy bank.
MISSILE RACKS (DMG = whole-salvo total; per-round in parentheses)
RACK TUBES DMG CYCLE
SRM2 2 10 (5.0) 2
SRM4 4 35 (8.75) 3
SRM4 4 20 (5.0) 3
SRM4 2 10 (5.0) 2
SRM6 6 50 (8.3) 5
SRM6 6 35 (5.8) 5
SRM6 4 20 (5.0) 3
LRM5 5 10 (2.0) 2.5
NRK5 5 10 (2.0) 2.5
LRM10 10 35 (3.5) 4
LRM10 10 20 (2.0) 4
LRM15 15 50 (3.3) 6
LRM15 15 35 (2.3) 6
LRM20 20 65 (3.25) 9
Same rack name, different numbers = different chassis fits, all
authentic. We are re-verifying the per-chassis map before naming
which mech carries which variant. SRM racks display range 800;
LRM/NRK racks display 6000 -- display only; real reach is flight
time. Cluster roll on impact: of n launched, between about n/4 and
n count as hits.
FLIGHT PROFILES (authored on the round, not the rack)
LRM round: turn 60 deg/s burn 10 s loft YES
Streak round: turn 360 deg/s burn 3 s loft no
Narc round: turn 360 deg/s burn 10 s loft YES
All rounds splash radius 30 on impact. After burnout a round coasts
up to 10 seconds before fizzling.
=============================================================================
WHEN YOU'RE DONE: post your edited copy of this file back to the
weapons thread. "MATCHES" alone in a notes block is real data. The
GAUSS and PPC-HIT questions are the two we cannot answer without you.
=============================================================================