# Some Notes On Guns **URL:** \ **Category:** FAQ\ **Tags:** weapons\ **Created:** [October 14, 2022, 2:23am UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/some-notes-on-guns/497 "2022-10-14T02:23:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![avatar](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/avatar/32/2_2.png) [@avatar](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/avatar)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2022, 2:23am UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/some-notes-on-guns/497/1 "2022-10-14T02:23:43Z")
Continuing the discussion from [Post-Contact Hilarity](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/post-contact-hilarity/459/103): I did love the review post, but just a few notes here for anyone looking for canon. Or cannon. 😉 > [@Post-Contact Hilarity](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/post-contact-hilarity/459/103): > > “
love the main gun magazine, combines the power supply and ammo in a single clip, so you don’t have to figure out which you have to pull when things go pear-shaped
” Technically, it’s got four. Powercell, ammoblock, thermal clip, and since it’s a sluggun, magazine. (The former two fit into the fixed stock; the thermal clip screws into the side - bayonet fitting -, and the 64-round sluggun magazine snaps in on top like a P90’s.) You are _extremely_ unlikely to need to change out the ammoblock in the field. It’s good for tens of thousands of rounds. You usually change out severely depleted ammoblocks during regular maintenance. You also usually don’t need to change out the thermal clip except during maintenance - the weapon’s designed to radiate away heat but the goo eventually crystallizes after many cycles - and the heat sink is usually a bench-replacement part on non-military models, but the military ones put it in thermal clips so you _can_ swap it out in the field _if_ you are engaging in sustained unusually high rates of fire. (The exceptions here are hailguns, which are defined by sustained high rates of fire, and thus tend to combine disposable coolant and powercell into a single swap-out unit.) The powercell’s the only thing you need to _expect_ to change out regularly. Good for a couple of hours on an average battlefield. Press-and-yank the old one, shove a new one into place. Designed for quick-swap. Side note: the magazine design uses a mechanism that rotates rounds on an elongated circular track, and drops them down to load. This allows you to load multiple types of round in a single magazine, then switch between them on the fly - essential for effective sluggun use on the modern battlefield. > [@](#): > > “
and, yea, that slug gun kicks like a _mule_! But, you got all sorts of neat ammo for it, including a few we’re not supposed to talk about
” While it does have a kick (especially when firing anti-materiel spikes rather than lobbing grenades), it’s surprisingly light by equivalent standards. They put a lot of effort into gyros, magnetorheological fluids, regenerative deceleration, and the like kinds of recoil damping. It’s not one of those guns that will shatter your arm if you fire it without armor and bone weaves, at least. 😀 > [@](#): > > “
you do have to be careful when swapping the mags in any kind of water or wet environment. That’s why you wear gloves, because when God doesn’t like you, the ‘minor’ short is going to make your arms hurt
” Oh, boy. You do _not_ want to short one of those powercells. They hold a lot of energy to run the mass driver for that long, _and_ they’re the quick-discharge type for obvious reasons. If you did manage it, you would not be feeling any pain. (Indeed, there is a special ops manual on the gentle art of using QD powercells as impromptu grenades.) Fortunately for those needing to fight in rain, swamp, or ocean, powercells are inductively coupled to their receptacles, specifically to avoid problems associated with getting moisture and dirt in the works. It took a bit longer to figure out an analogous heat-exchange system for the thermal clips, but it’s the same principle. > [@](#): > > “
optics are nice, but you can tell that you’re supposed to have 'plant hardware to run this gun. If you don’t, the ways to handle adjustments is just mean and not very well handled. But, then again, you’ve got space elves that have no problem with trying to figure out how to handle sixteen different things all at the same time
” It’s designed to work with a personal (and optionally team) battle mesh, yeah. While the optical sight is nice and includes basic capacity-available indicators, the manual controls are, charitably, spartan. You get the selector switch (safe/rifle/slug) and three-detent trigger (single-shot/three-round burst/automatic-while-held), and can manually rotate the magazine to choose sluggun rounds, but that’s about it. No feature options for you. That said, manual operation is intended as an emergency backup, not for routine use. Normally you could run it from a ‘lace or VII, a wearable, have your muse do it, run it from your armor hub or sub-warming, etc., etc. if all else fails, whip out your tablet terminal and program it that way. ---
**Author:** ![doctorcatfish](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/doctorcatfish/32/141_2.png) [@doctorcatfish](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/doctorcatfish)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2022, 10:07am UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/some-notes-on-guns/497/2 "2022-10-19T10:07:11Z")
VII - virtual intelligence interface? interlink interface? I can’t see NATO going for ‘lacing or ‘planting soldiers just for gun interfacing, but a wearable seems very likely. I bet DARPA will be jumping on that posthaste, as soon as they deal with the eleventy other things that need doing NOW. ---
**Author:** ![Maximilian\_Crichton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e8c25b/32.png) [@Maximilian\_Crichton](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/Maximilian_Crichton)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2022, 2:28am UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/some-notes-on-guns/497/3 "2022-10-20T02:28:25Z")
I mean, it’s not that big of a leap from 'lacing monkeys to play Pong to 'lacing Marines to go pew pew ---
**Author:** ![doctorcatfish](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/doctorcatfish/32/141_2.png) [@doctorcatfish](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/doctorcatfish)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2022, 1:18pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/some-notes-on-guns/497/4 "2022-10-20T13:18:32Z")
Somehow I don’t think eldraic systems are going to be cozy with the crude 'lacing that Earth-developed tech is capable of, starting with the safety interlocks, to the encryption and handshake protocols, and going from there. And NATO is not just going to put the Imperials in the critical path for not just functional weaponry, but functional _armsmen of any sort_. ---
**Author:** ![Maximilian\_Crichton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e8c25b/32.png) [@Maximilian\_Crichton](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/Maximilian_Crichton)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2022, 1:35pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/some-notes-on-guns/497/5 "2022-10-20T13:35:19Z")
> [@doctorcatfish](#): > > Somehow I don’t think eldraic systems are going to be cozy with the crude 'lacing that Earth-developed tech is capable of, starting with the safety interlocks, to the encryption and handshake protocols, and going from there. > [@avatar](#): > > That said, manual operation is intended as an emergency backup, not for routine use. Normally you could run it from a ‘lace or VII, a wearable, have your muse do it, run it from your armor hub or sub-warming, etc., etc. if all else fails, whip out your tablet terminal and program it that way. What I’m hearing here is that these rifles can and will gracefully handle increasing levels of user incompatibility, and what they can’t handle can probably be picked up by an industrious but underpaid contractor. > [@doctorcatfish](#): > > And NATO is not just going to put the Imperials in the critical path for not just functional weaponry, but functional _armsmen of any sort_. The question is whether they can afford not to, before a passing merchantsoph dumps the latest _open-source_ versions of the tech onto the open market. ---
**Author:** ![avatar](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/avatar/32/2_2.png) [@avatar](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/avatar)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2022, 2:13pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/some-notes-on-guns/497/6 "2022-10-20T14:13:11Z")
> [@doctorcatfish](#): > > VII - virtual intelligence interface? interlink interface? Virtual Interface Implant. The intermediate step between a wearable and a neural lace; it can’t simply read your thoughts, but it can add information to your sensory input and respond to subvocalizations. Hopelessly obsolete by Imperial standards, but still in common use elsewhere. > [@doctorcatfish](#): > > And NATO is not just going to put the Imperials in the critical path for not just functional weaponry, but functional _armsmen of any sort_. > [@Maximilian\_Crichton](#): > > The question is whether they can afford not to, before a passing merchantsoph dumps the latest _open-source_ versions of the tech onto the open market. The question is whether they can afford not to figure something out quickly before someone realizes that swiftness in procurement of weapons and/or mercenaries will earn them at least a _temporary_ promotion to “baddest motherfuckers on the planet”. While it is true that Imperial ironmongers prefer not to offer their products to raging assholes and reputable mercenaries consider “grubby shoots” beneath their dignity - and bad for morale and troop quality - it’s not like there aren’t plenty of disreputable dealers and mercs out there. And your friendly local Artifice Armaments, ICC rep will not shy from pointing out to you that you might want to invest in some modern defense technologies (and perhaps the valuable cadre services brokered through Ultimate Argument Risk Control, ICC) before someone like that guy, yeah, right there, figures out that he can hire a whole bunch of _linobir_ shock troops, guns included, and pay 'em in looting rights. Sure, by the standards of the greater galaxy, they’re ablative meat
 but _here_? ---
**Author:** ![Maximilian\_Crichton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e8c25b/32.png) [@Maximilian\_Crichton](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/Maximilian_Crichton)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2022, 2:45am UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/some-notes-on-guns/497/7 "2022-10-21T02:45:31Z")
> [@avatar](#): > > a _temporary_ promotion The one neuron in human brains in charge of long-term planning: “Hell dawg that’s all you had to say!” > [@avatar](#): > > It took a bit longer to figure out an analogous heat-exchange system for the thermal clips, but it’s the same principle. Some variant of magnetic refrigeration? ---
**Author:** ![doctorcatfish](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/doctorcatfish/32/141_2.png) [@doctorcatfish](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/doctorcatfish)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2022, 2:40pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/some-notes-on-guns/497/8 "2022-10-21T14:40:16Z")
> [@avatar](#): > > > [@doctorcatfish](#): > > > > VII - virtual intelligence interface? interlink interface? > > Virtual Interface Implant. The intermediate step between a wearable and a neural lace; it can’t simply read your thoughts, but it can add information to your sensory input and respond to subvocalizations. Hopelessly obsolete by Imperial standards, but still in common use elsewhere. And since it _is_ in common use elsewhere, it can be multiply sourced, evaluated by independent groundside and galactic viewpoints, traded, and most importantly _can’t be simply embargoed by fiat_. Humans and eldrae are sufficiently close cousins that we will _know_ someone’s going to be sneaky, _melith_ or no _melith_. For this reason, NATO will instantly grab wearables for immediate use as they require no biosurgical prep, and implement VII as resources, threat-levels, consent and comfort dictate. (A lot depends on just how many systems are between us and the nearest authoritarian star nation, pirate nest, unscrupulous trade post, and so on. Getting solid intel on local galactography is a **must** , and OSINT won’t be sufficient no matter how open the extranet filters are.) > [@avatar](#): > > > [@doctorcatfish](#): > > > > And NATO is not just going to put the Imperials in the critical path for not just functional weaponry, but functional _armsmen of any sort_. > > The question is whether they can afford not to figure something out quickly before someone realizes that swiftness in procurement of weapons and/or mercenaries will earn them at least a _temporary_ promotion to “baddest motherfuckers on the planet.” That’s precisely why they _don’t_ jump straight to 'lacing, or even VII. Aside from the medical ethics, logistical single-source avoidance, and so on
 don’t use your first-rate cohorts for “early adopter” trials. Let someone _else_ short out their proprioception and cerebellar feedback because baselines don’t have #RANDOM\_AMAN\_UPGRADE and the shady rep didn’t notice. So yes, the ICC rep will make their points, and NATO will point out that they’re not silly enough to jump straight to top-of-the-line stuff with enough delay to let some less reputable schmucks ambush them while half-trained. So sure, we’ll talk cadre for trainers and ultra-shiny hardware, but _timetable_. Give us something we, not your friendly neighborhood mercs, **we** can start getting familiar with **right the eff now**. Do space elves do ‘trust but verify’? ---
**Author:** ![avatar](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/avatar/32/2_2.png) [@avatar](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/avatar)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2022, 4:28pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/some-notes-on-guns/497/9 "2022-10-21T16:28:59Z")
> [@doctorcatfish](#): > > And since it _is_ in common use elsewhere, it can be multiply sourced, evaluated by independent groundside and galactic viewpoints, traded, and most importantly _can’t be simply embargoed by fiat_. Neural laces aren’t single-source tech; they’re not even single-nation tech. You can pick 'em up anywhere in the Core Economic Zone from Cognitech, sure, but also from companies as diverse as Satori Noetic Enlightenment Boutique down through Honest Jinmi’s Goodthinkful Place & Benzene Bagel Bar. If you’re concerned about single-sourcing, the thing you ought to be concerned about is the _gun_, since the IL-15i Battlesystem _is_ all kinds of proprietary and Artifice Armaments aren’t shy about license enforcement. > [@doctorcatfish](#): > > Humans and eldrae are sufficiently close cousins that we will _know_ someone’s going to be sneaky, _melith_ or no _melith_. Or so they would assume, anyway
 > [@doctorcatfish](#): > > So yes, the ICC rep will make their points, and NATO will point out that they’re not silly enough to jump straight to top-of-the-line stuff with enough delay to let some less reputable schmucks ambush them while half-trained. So sure, we’ll talk cadre for trainers and ultra-shiny hardware, but _timetable_. Give us something we, not your friendly neighborhood mercs, **we** can start getting familiar with **right the eff now**. Do space elves do ‘trust but verify’? Oh, they will happily sell you all the downlevel hardware you want, don’t get me wrong, from the penultimate shinies all the way back to muzzle-loading cannon if the buyer requests. But apart from opening the sales pitch with the good stuff, they _would_ also like to be sure that ifwhen the performance difference between noetic and virtual interfaces bites you on the ass, that (a) they told you about it, with graphs and charts and historical examples, (b) therefore it wasn’t their fault, and (c) therefore you ain’t getting a refund. ---
**Author:** ![zakueins](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/zakueins/32/65_2.png) [@zakueins](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/zakueins)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2022, 4:15am UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/some-notes-on-guns/497/10 "2022-10-22T04:15:35Z")
> [@avatar](#): > > Oh, they will happily sell you all the downlevel hardware you want, don’t get me wrong, from the penultimate shinies all the way back to muzzle-loading cannon if the buyer requests. > > But apart from opening the sales pitch with the good stuff, they _would_ also like to be sure that ifwhen the performance difference between noetic and virtual interfaces bites you on the ass, that (a) they told you about it, with graphs and charts and historical examples, (b) therefore it wasn’t their fault, and (c) therefore you ain’t getting a refund. So, the trick is to treat any contract negotiations with an Imperial company like negotiating with the Fae. The _bad_ kind, the blood-soaked ones that consider the Brothers Grimm stories to have been _toned down._ An iron-clad contract is _not strong enough,_ you want something in the range of titatinum-clad. Adamantium-clad, [primary adamantium](https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Adamantium#True_Adamantium) preferred. But, if you can get that contract, they will enforce it to the letter. Which is something that it takes a lot of effort to explain to some people. _Especially_ politicians that think they can re-negotiate the deal after it’s been made. (And, while watching an Imperial do the whole “pray I do not alter the deal” thing with vector-manipulator devices is good fun and probably useful from a eugenic standpoint, running through most of the Presidential succession on a regular basis is hard on the carpets.) ---
**Author:** ![avatar](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/avatar/32/2_2.png) [@avatar](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/avatar)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2022, 3:17pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/some-notes-on-guns/497/11 "2022-10-22T15:17:14Z")
> [@zakueins](#): > > So, the trick is to treat any contract negotiations with an Imperial company like negotiating with the Fae. The _bad_ kind, the blood-soaked ones that consider the Brothers Grimm stories to have been _toned down._ An iron-clad contract is _not strong enough,_ you want something in the range of titatinum-clad. Adamantium-clad, [primary adamantium](https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Adamantium#True_Adamantium) preferred. But, if you can get that contract, they will enforce it to the letter. That is pretty close to the exact opposite of true. Theirs is a very high-trust society, remember? Deals involving more money than this planet _has_ are routinely concluded on 'change with a word and a handshake, because that’s how gentlesophs do business. _Dictum meum pactum_ and _pacta sunt servanda_, and coming to a mutually beneficial and harmonious agreement: _sĂ©delĂ©lef_. Now, sure, you _can_ adopt the whole > [@doctorcatfish](#): > > Humans and eldrae are sufficiently close cousins that we will _know_ someone’s going to be sneaky, _melith_ or no _melith_. mindset and insist on treating business dealings like negotiating with a hostile party where you’re doing preemptive defense and probably your damnedest to screw each other over, and they’ll dance with you - _very well_, in fact, having plenty of experience with actual hostile parties. (Up to a point, anyway, that point being the one at which they decide you’re too much of a pain in the ass to deal with and there are plenty of counterparties in the sea who aren’t.) But you end up with a _caĂŒlgyrelef_ - you’ll get less and pay more for it that you would have, had you behaved in a more gentlesophly manner. **And** you’ll find that the terms and their enforcement have more knives in them, it being understood that people who go around acting like everyone’s planning to screw them over are _usually_ the same people who spend a lot of time doing the screwing. tl;dr Here is the secret to success in this market: whatever Donald Trump would do, do the _exact opposite._ ([Word reference here](https://eldraeverse.com/2020/02/23/eldraeic-words-of-the-day-agreements/).) ---
**Author:** ![zakueins](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/zakueins/32/65_2.png) [@zakueins](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/zakueins)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2022, 3:44pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/some-notes-on-guns/497/12 "2022-10-22T15:44:47Z")
> [@avatar](#): > > That is pretty close to the exact opposite of true. > > Theirs is a very high-trust society, remember? Deals involving more money than this planet _has_ are routinely concluded on 'change with a word and a handshake, because that’s how gentlesophs do business. _Dictum meum pactum_ and _pacta sunt servanda_, and coming to a mutually beneficial and harmonious agreement: _sĂ©delĂ©lef_. In retrospect, I can see your point. But, the only way I can think of getting this through some people’s heads is the idea that _Imperials_ consider trust, truth, and agreements to be sacrosanct is that way. You don’t play semantic games with Gods, those rarely _end well_ for the guy that thought he was a tricky bugger. And, nothing says that the titanium-clad contract can’t be mutually beneficial, you just have to spell things out _because_ Imperials aren’t humans with very good (if somewhat inadequate) prosthetic ears. They have reasons for what they do-logical, thoughtful reasons. They just aren’t human reasons and you can’t just “wing it” on human instincts. You have to work through all the dreary steps because of the old expression of “assume is when you make an _ass_ out of _you_ and _me_.” (Hilariously, this is what a good lawyer does. It’s not all courtroom drama. It’s spending hours checking every single punctuation mark of grammar, because sometimes that punctuation is where you make your bones.) ---
**Author:** ![doctorcatfish](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/doctorcatfish/32/141_2.png) [@doctorcatfish](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/doctorcatfish)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2022, 1:12am UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/some-notes-on-guns/497/13 "2022-10-28T01:12:42Z")
> [@avatar](#): > > Neural laces aren’t single-source tech; they’re not even single-nation tech. You can pick 'em up anywhere in the Core Economic Zone
 That’s all well and good, but Sol isn’t _in_ the Core Economic Zone, now is it? > [@avatar](#): > > Oh, they will happily sell you all the downlevel hardware you want, don’t get me wrong, from the penultimate shinies all the way back to muzzle-loading cannon if the buyer requests. > > But apart from opening the sales pitch with the good stuff, they _would_ also like to be sure that ifwhen the performance difference between noetic and virtual interfaces bites you on the ass, that (a) they told you about it, with graphs and charts and historical examples, (b) therefore it wasn’t their fault, and (c) therefore you ain’t getting a refund. "OK, for our regular press pool, this briefing is on background and should be attributed to ‘Senior Defense Official’. Our new colleagues on the line should have received a packet from Civil Affairs, containing licensing terms codifying our local attribution tradespace; contact the Public Affairs adjutant after the question-and-answer segment if you didn’t receive one, or if this is your first pool briefing. For that last cohort, a rough approximation of the terms would be something like “as your description of the speaker gets less specific, the level of detail communicated gets more specific.” Right, now to follow-up on a question from the last briefing Q&A – on the choice to invest in wearables and VII in addition to our partnership negotiations for fully wired – or ‘laced’, as the preferred outsystem term seems to be – anyway, tightly integrated weapon/wielder connections. We’ve had a lot of feedback from many terrestrial commentators, both experienced professionals and, uh, otherwise. That’s on top of the public notifications from the folks at Artifice Armaments, of course. I want to note that some of the most insightful comments came _before_ their press releases began, so the following analysis is _not_ just in response to our new blue-blooded quasi-cousins
 Anyway, we’re looking at this in much the same way as the dustup by the Black Sea a little while before Contact. We’re on the opposite end of the problem, but the scenarios have many parallels – a memetically advanced but technologically lagging force, primarily requiring immediate defensive capabilities while _also_ needing to rapidly turn over the techbase to reach battlespace parity standards. We caught a lot of flak back then too, for prioritizing an early push of second-rate hardware over just sending the shiniest stuff on the first flight. Folks assumed we were shorting the front-line fighters, but it was just the opposite. The entire series of equipment transfers was designed to make the turnover _while in the field_, maintaining an escalating capability all along. It’s all very well for us to build a cadre of noetic-network special forces – just to take a hypothetical example; not confirming or denying plans for such – but if we face a threat three months into a nine-month training course, they’re not going to be much help. Our average trooper, regardless of service, isn’t going to dive straight into intensive neurosurgical implantation – nor should they! Whereas a wearable with a virtual interface is something they can instantly grasp and rapidly acclimatize to. From that pool we draw the early adopters for VII, and from them, for 'lacing. But in the meantime we _still_ get that escalating boost to effectiveness across the board. Crawl before you walk, walk before you run – but make sure you’re the best damn crawler in the playground in the meantime. And lastly, to the folks still harping on that tarballed set of charts, graphs, and promotional sensories-- all I can say is, we very much appreciate packaging all that high-quality OSINT on likely threat capabilities and effectiveness gradients for our analysts’ convenience. Now, whose hand was up first? Ah
" ---
**Author:** ![avatar](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/avatar/32/2_2.png) [@avatar](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/avatar)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2022, 5:28am UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/some-notes-on-guns/497/14 "2022-10-28T05:28:14Z")
> [@doctorcatfish](#): > > That’s all well and good, but Sol isn’t _in_ the Core Economic Zone, now is it? If you’re buying the Artifice Armaments IL-15i Battlesystem, which is where this started out, you’re _shopping_ in the Core Economic Zone. (Having presumably found a shitton of hard currency somewhere.) Also, more specifically, in the department labeled “Shiny Transrifles for Shiny Transsophonts”. Otherwise you’d be buying your guns from Min Rosell Combine Mercantile, or some mid-range outfit like Consulate Export Arms, JSC, Rhuliv Longteeth, or Nal Kalak State Arms that sells weapons probably more suitable for phase one of your suggested gradualist approach. (Or, for real emerging markets _chic_, a bunch of Meat Machines that fell off the back of a _Hariven_, but that’s not worth going for.) 'Cause what you’re proposing doesn’t _fit_ that approach. You’re starting out by buying the shiniest, most up-to-date piece of hardware on the market, then half-assing its support systems in ways guaranteed to make it perform well below spec, when you _ought_ to be buying something mid-range and whole-assed. ---
**Author:** ![zakueins](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/zakueins/32/65_2.png) [@zakueins](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/zakueins)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2022, 2:05pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/some-notes-on-guns/497/15 "2022-10-28T14:05:37Z")
This is what I was thinking the United States’ approach would be
the best middle tier hardware they could get, get in _quantity_, and support, which would serve as the basis of future developments into building up to working toward higher-tier hardware and equipment. > [@avatar](#): > > 'Cause what you’re proposing doesn’t _fit_ that approach. You’re starting out by buying the shiniest, most up-to-date piece of hardware on the market, then half-assing its support systems in ways guaranteed to make it perform well below spec, when you _ought_ to be buying something mid-range and whole-assed. ---
**Author:** ![avatar](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/avatar/32/2_2.png) [@avatar](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/avatar)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2022, 2:36pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/some-notes-on-guns/497/16 "2022-10-28T14:36:11Z")
Would you believe I only just figured out I was quoting the Tao of Ron Swanson?