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Tell Me What do you think are the top 10 weapons in Systms Failure?

1. Rossum Organitech Combat Walker...

In all seriousness, you will have to be more specific than that. What kinds of weapons are we referring to here? Handguns? Tanks? Battlesuits?

It,s the HandGuns.

gaby wrote:It,s the HandGuns.

1 - 10 --- Anything you can shoot a bug with!

The disadvantages of a Desert Eagle are that its big and heavy and the bullets would be harder to come by. Big bullets mean fewer bullets can be carried as well. 100 rounds of .50 pistol ammo is a helluva lot heavier than 100 rounds of .357 ammo. Also, if you're close enough to have a reasonable chance of hitting a Bug with a handgun round, you're close enough to get pounded by that same Bug. It's better to go with something that's got some range and some penetrating power and save the handguns for softer targets.

Oh, for clarification a handgun is a pistol and not all small arms, Gaby.

C-4.

Battlesuits.

or my Old GhostWalker Battlesuit. I forgot who hosted that for me.

The best gun for any apocalypse campaign is the .357 magnum revolver. You can fire .357magnum, .38special, 9mm parabelleum. And a number of other obscure, foriegn cartridges. Not the greatest for mowing down oncoming hordes of bugs. But it fires most of the commonly found pistol ammo in north america. Note it doe's require using a half moon clip for 9mm ammo. because they are rimless. If the person in question does not have them they are easily made or jury rigged.

Hey Marco, didnt you host my Ghostwalker suit on your site?

Wow, some major thread necromancy.

But since the thread's back...


Tasers, because I secretly like the bugs and want to be nice

The loss of your Funky Ass (tm) would be a bitter blow to the Human Resistance.

If you look at the combination of a high AR and SDC, a Bug's hide is probably more akin to light vehicle armor than ballistic gelatin.

I concur that using 5.56mm against the bugs is ineffective and a good way to make a lot of noise for little effect. .308 is a much better way to go. In terms of rifles, then, the best in this scenario is a M1A, FAL, G3, or similar battle rifle. Heck, I'd rather field my new (to me) .308 Enfield than a M16 variant. My rate of fire may suffer, but at least my hits would have a chance of doing some damage.

Methos Bloodwind wrote:Anything that will Kill a Bug, Worm Zombie or Splatterpunk DEAD!!!!!!!

Amen, brother.

CS Jarhead wrote:AR-10 = 7.62 goodness. I would really like to see a 7.62 rifle in an AR design but with gas piston instead of blowback. Like the HK M-4 that got them in so much trouble with colt.

Lets not forget 30-06. Retro M-1 Garand or BAR style.

I'd rather have an AK chambered in .308 - a Saiga, perhaps - than an AR-10. In the Systems Failure setting, reliability, including the ability to function when dragged through the mud, must be put at a premium. I think the AK design wins in that arena, with maybe only the G3 equalling it.

A Garand or BAR would suit me just fine, though.

Given the fairly low-tech nature of Systems Failure and the possibility of spending a lot of time in places where you can't get replacement parts or nobody's got the tools to do serious repairs on a gun, I'd probably side with soviet engineering over superior performance any day of the week (assuming we've got a fairly even supply of ammunition regardless of what choice we go with).

Of course, if I lived near what passes for civilization, or I just happen to know where a US Army Base full of guns and ammo is, I'd probably have my character throw his cheap commie crap away and use the awesome firepower of the free west

Rallan, since you live Down Under where the gun control laws became a lot tighter prior to the Meltdown, what kind of firepower would be most immediately accessible to Aussie Resistance fighters?

CS Jarhead wrote:I often see this being referanced. Part of knowing how to use a weapon is knowing how to maintain it. If you want to treat your weapon like crap and not clean it or lube it ever I guess the AK is the way to go. My personal combat experince is that I would rather have a M16. Accuracy and good ergonomics. That is what I know best. One of the features I hate most about the AK is that the selector switch/safety is 1. hard to toggle and 2. is on the other side of the weaopn. Yes I know there are kits to mod this. I also dislike the rocking motion required to seat Ak mags.

Keep in mind a couple of things. First, we're talking about a battle rifle to use in a prolonged guerilla war in a SHTF environment. Frequent cleaning may not be an option and parts could be hard to come by. Having a rifle that requires heavy maintenance, therefore, may not be the best option.

Second, to the best of my knowledge, the AR15 operates a bit cleaner than the AR10. If you have significant experience with both weapons, I'd be happy to hear your thoughts. If you haven't used the AR10, however, you might not be aware of the extent of its issues.

As for the AK, I agree with you that it has disadvantages as well. Heck, besides the M1A and perhaps the FAL, I don't know of any battle rifle that doesn't suffer significantly in one way or another. That said, I'd still look hard at a PTR91 or .308 AK variant simply because they are almost unbreakable and work even in the worst conditions. That advantage, in my mind, counts for a lot in the gritty world of Systems Failure.

Mike Taylor wrote:Rallan, since you live Down Under where the gun control laws became a lot tighter prior to the Meltdown, what kind of firepower would be most immediately accessible to Aussie Resistance fighters?

Wow. What a great question! I've been a long time fan of Systems Failure and opponent of disarmament laws but I never put the two together.

I look forward to an answer to this question, but my guess would be that folks Down Under, in the UK, and other similar environments might be in trouble!

Not necessarily. They could simply have found other solutions to a lack of firearms. Consider some facts here. The majority of Australia's hardlines are on its coasts. That limits where Bugs can travel. Even if they stuck electrical generators and fuel on road trains, there's only so long they could operate in the Outback before having to get back to the coasts.

As far as people being able to flee to the outback goes, sure. Aussies would have that option, if they had the skills to make it work. People in the UK or someplace similar likely wouldn't.

Either way, my comment goes to the ability of the populations of those areas to fight back. It would have been interesting to see a Systems Failure sourcebook that takes place in 2015 or 2020, where the people of well armed nations (the US, Switzerland, much of the Middle East, etc.) have forced the bugs out of their lands and are now engaging the foe on foreign soil. By then, the rest of the world's population is either dead, bugged, or in hiding (probably in that order), making the crusades of the free nations an even more difficult task.

By and large Australia's freedom fighters wouldn't be all that heavily armed, because 1990s Australia just wasn't that heavily armed a place. Pistols, shotguns, and hunting rifles are pretty much the (legal) limits of heavy firepower, apart from the sort of high-powered asskicking weapons used by Tactical Response Group police and the military.

After the collapse of civilization though, things might change. After all, if resistance fighters in Indonesian provinces can whip up their own M-16 factories, and half the terrorists of central asia are running around with home made AK-47s, it really shouldn't be that hard for folks out in the sticks to start churning out their own firepower.

As Mike pointed out though, the big advantage Australians have for survival is the extremely limited infrastructure once you get away from the major cities. More than 90% of our population lives within a hundred kilometres of the coast, and the vast majority of that 90% live within a hundred kilometres of their state capital. Once you get out beyond the black stump, there's not much out there. Ghost towns that shut down when cattle runs or the gold rush dried up and their reason to exist died. Clumps of farming towns hundreds of miles apart. Millions of square miles of desert, jungle, forest, and mountain.

Things are a bit more cluttered in the southeast where the best farmland and the biggest cities are, but even there they've far more space to play with than their American counterparts. The state of Victoria is roughly the size of Arizona, and has the same population. New South Wales is larger than Texas, and has a little over six million people in it (which gives it a slightly higher population than Washington State). And they're our two most populated states, and not even that large.

maasenstodt wrote:Second, to the best of my knowledge, the AR15 operates a bit cleaner than the AR10. If you have significant experience with both weapons, I'd be happy to hear your thoughts. If you haven't used the AR10, however, you might not be aware of the extent of its issues.

The AR-15 is simply the AR-10 in a smaller lighter caliber. The only reason the AR-15 would operate cleaner is the caliber change and difference in how the gunpowder burns.

Ok Here is my top ten list.

1. MK-14 EBR: capable of automatic fire. There is just something likable about being able to put a three round burst of 7.62X51mm NATO into a Human outline at 100 yards is a good thing.

2. Ruger Suger Redhawk: A .44 magnum Double action Revolver, has almost as many shots and far more reliability than a Desert Ego.

3. Mossberg M-590A1: a military grade shotgun, that will still bust clay pigeons all day.

4. M-240G: Given that the Gridbugs are built like light vehicles a GPMG is a good thing to have.

5. DPMS "Kitty Kat": For those close encounters of the insect kind I want something with a bit more umph than a PDW.

6. SIG-Sauer P-226: It's a personal favorite semi-automatic handgun of mine.

7. M-16A2 with an A1 fire control group installed. While I know that Full-Auto magazine dumps are a bad thing( as a US army Armorer from back in the A1 days how often the swapped out barrels). I would much rather hunt for a new barrel than hunt for a new me.

8. Any Remington M-700P/M-24/M-40 varient: Not only reach out an touch someone but put Bambi on the dinner table.

9. M-82A2/M-107: For those larger jobs.

10. M-203: Nice to have, but the ammo would be hard to come by.

Phalanx wrote:I like Rockwolf's list.

Thank you very much.

I have handled most of that list and can extrapolate on the rest. I chose them not only by capabilities but what I could possibly find parts for. the one problem with a select fire MK-14 is that Clinton had 750,000 of the origional M-14s destroyed and currently parts are a bit hard to come by for they did not disassemble the rifles before destroying them.

Me I was trying to strike a ballance between usefullness and the ability to find spare parts.

PS: number 11 is the Ruger 10/22 rifle.