Whit's Fur Ye'll No Go By Ye

[Arrbi Betna]

Betna had been toying with the concept a while, but hadn't quite acted on it just yet. He'd been inspired by one of the weapons Mandal Hypernautics had made a while back, but had only fiddled with the idea. Now, with both time and funding, he figured he could toy with it a little more in depth. A little more seriously. It was a novel concept, but with Teta done and over and with the sheer scale of the fighting there, a novel concept may be their best shot at survival.

With that mindset, Betna found himself in his old workshop in the back of Mythosaur Munitions with a wide variety of tools, components, and designs. Sure, he'd sold the shop to Mandal Hypernautics a while back, but it was more a licensing thing. Less a MH property and more a contracted agreement to push MH products, help with MH projects, and generally display the MH logos and namebrand in the shop. It had earned him enough funding to hire a few full time staff so he could go do other things, but for this type of deal, he figured he'd give it a go personally.

He pulled the diagrams and schematics for the Vulcan cannon system over and his theorized system and got to work. It was a simple enough design, but also complex. He just had to add a bit, take a bit off, and fiddle with the rest until it worked.

Easy enough. At least, he hoped it would be.

 

[Arrbi Betna]

First thing was first: size. The Vulcan was a thirty five meter beast and definitely threw its weight around. Problem was, Betna didn't need a huge weapon like that, he needed a smaller version. Not handheld, per se, but small enough for one crewman to operate efficiently. It was a daunting task, but one he felt capable of completing. Trick was, he had to scale down the machine to start with, then came the tricky part.

Scaling was simple enough, to an extent. Drop the number of barrels, decrease overall length, and generally swap out the caliber size. Instead of a projectile big enough to rip apart a starfighter, he just needed a projectile to punch the basic stuff like foliage, thin walls, small trees... the kind of stuff people liked to hid behind on the ground. Maybe some thing armor plating, too, but that was pretty much all it needed to do.

Dropping the size was easy, keeping the function wasn't. Had Betna used a rail gun type weapon, the process would be simple and quick. Problem was, Betna needed a slug thrower. Sure, a railgun was neat and handy and all, but he felt he'd get more firepower and a higher rate of fire with a slug thrower base.

Plus, slug throwers were far more terrifying than any rail gun from his experience.

 

[Arrbi Betna]

With smaller size came smaller parts. With the Vulcan, that meant giving up performance. Add in that the Vulcan was a mass driver, not a slug thrower, and you hit snags in the design. Betna kept the general layout, but moved away from the Vulcan design at that point. A mass driver wasn't designed to take the recoil of a chemically propelled slug, which meant a lot of the dampening that made the Vulcan so terrifying in its fire rate was more or less useless or too heavy for a smaller style weapon.

Betna got to work. He sketched out the concept using the smaller scaling he'd deciphered from the initial designs. He opted to go for a weapon roughly eight hundred millimeters in length, then based the other dimensions off of that measurement. It was a simple enough affair to run through and took him almost no time. He knew that this was probably the last of the easy steps in the design, but figured that so long as the weapon was worth the work, it was worth the hassle.

With the rough dimensions worked out, it was time to move on to the actual design of the weapon. He had a few examples to go on, but most were either too small for the design or weren't for actual slug throwers. Betna had to decide at this point on how the weapon would be fed. Magazine or belt?

 

[Arrbi Betna]

With the conceived weapon's probable rate of fire, Betna decided that a belt feed would be preferred over a magazine. With a belt feed, you could fit more ammunition into the weapon at once. With a magazine feed, you couldn't keep up the rate of fire needed for what the weapon was designed to do. There were problems with belt fed weapons, but Betna figured he could figure those out later on. For now, he just had to get the basics ready.

Belt fed weapon concept done, Betna moved on to the actual housing of the weapon. He could opt for durasteel or alusteel, or even titanium. It really boiled down to which one worked better. He knew from experience durasteel was tough, but heavier than Alusteel or Titanium, but Alusteel was expensive. Titanium was cheaper and a bit lighter than Alusteel, but Alusteel was stronger. It was a tough call and one that Betna didn't really want to make with the design just now, but he had to do so soon. The design couldn't wait for a last minute change, truth be told.

 

[Arrbi Betna]

After a bit of research, he opted for an Alusteel housing. Alusteel was lighter and stronger than Durasteel and could deal with the possible heat buildup of the weapon. Titanium was lighter, but wasn't quite as strong as the Alusteel and while it could hold the temperatures thrown against it better, the housing was going to get banged around a bit. Betna figured it was better to get the best of both worlds with the actual housing of the weapon. He could use Titanium later, but the housing would be Alusteel.

With the housing material sorted, Betna went to work getting the actual housing designed. It wasn't exactly easy, but it wasn't superbly difficult. It was a rough idea for now and he knew it would change as the design fully came about. He just wanted a general idea on where everything would be located for now.

That done, he swapped to the internal components. He had to figure out the power system for the weapon and how to make the motor itself for the barrels. This was one of the trickier parts of the design, honestly. One that could make or break the weapon system.

 

[Arrbi Betna]

Pneumatic, hydraulic, or electric. Those were his options for the motor power source. Plus the electrical equipment already in the weapon design. After a bit of deliberation, Betna opted for electric entirely. Sure it was more prone to being damaged by an EMP or ion attack, but it was the lightest of the three. Pneumatic would have a delay and hydraulic would add more weight than he wanted. A design flaw with this weapon was more or less inevitable, so he had to make the strengths count as much as possible. In this case, leaving the EMP vulnerability open while maximizing the motor power and weapon ability. He just hoped it was enough.

Then came the motor. It was a bit tricky for Betna. The motor could easily overheat and shut down, the normal failsafe for the design. Thing was, he figured he could maybe improve on it a bit. He knew the weapon had to have a high rate of fire, but maybe there was a way to tweak it. Betna decided to call it a day and head on out to the MH R&D department for a bit. He figured it was time to talk to a man about a horse, as it were.