As I sit here at my computer procrastinating from doing homework and looking at the Battle Suit Gallery a question came into my head. How does a Battle Suit reload once it's out of ammo? I don't think it would be anything like the Matrix: Revolution Battle Suits. Any ideas?

Plasma and fusion use canisters which hold some kind of gas. Just unscrew and replace like we would do with a camp stove. The round thing on the back of the burst cannon might be its gas canister.

I think the rail guns look like the jet packs have been converted to be power plants to generate the electric current needed.

As to solid rounds and missiles, if its like we do today in the military you have to go back to base and have the support team do it.

But if you notice, there are six missiles, and only six turns in the game, so why would you need to reload.......

Yeah but i mean more fluff wise in a long drawn out battle. Besides do you think those hands on a battle suit could reach over and unscrew the ammo canisters, clips, etc. off?

Yes, I know, long battle. thats why I winked.

The hands are retracted inside to protect the fingers. If you look at Farsights hand it is extended out to hold the sword. There are long articulate fingers in there.

But fluff wise there is most likely special suits that carry ammo and fuel around and do the reloading and special stations that the suits return to for this stuff. I think some people on here even have built these kind of things for objective markers. Could even be drones that do it. I do not see any place on the suit itself to carry spare canisters.

I look at it like a paintball gun. The projectiles can be very tiny if accelerated fast enough so the weapons that use slugs could be already carrying thousands of them and may not need to reload that often. Gas charged weapons may only use a few miligrams of gas per shot and also last for longer then the pilot can stay in the suit to begin with. In Vietnam the chopper pilots would fly back and switch into a new chopper each time so it could be like that too. A modern jet fighting with full afterburn can only stay in the fight for less then an hour I think.

edit: hey, maybe thats what that thing is in the stealth suit box that no one can figure out!! Its a battle suit reloader!!!

Lol maybe it is like it could transport ammo to it or something.... HOLY FRICK i think we figured out a use for it!!!!

Edit: on a more serious note... ahh who am i kidding. But anyways i made a conversion with my new XV-25s that has one guy swapping out an ammo cartridge.

There is also another possible senario. Anyone decide to let the thought of energy based weaponry climb into their heads. Pulse (burst cannon), fusion (fusion blaster), and plasma (plasma rifle) based weaponry could theoretically be powered by the same on board power plant that keeps the entire suit working.

I hafta agree with Vior'la Mont'yon,

About the only weaponry that would need reloading is railguns, missiles, AFP and flamers. Pulse weaponry would aside from energy packs have a near limitless supply of particles for charging.

While I was buying sprinkler parts at Home Depot it dawned on me that missile pods only have 3 missiles sticking out. Has anyone ever tried to tell you that you can only fire 3 missiles from a pod in a game?

as for a limitless power supply for energy weapons, it is generally excepted in Sci Fi fiction that some type of particle is used, even if only a single proton, to generate lazers, plasma cannons, fusion blasters, etc. Something to do with E=MC(MC). But yes, you can fit many billions of particles in a single gas canister. Even a pure light energy lazer beam often involved a particle being turned into pure energy and focused through a lens in Sci Fi.

Realistically whatever you shot in an atmosphere would have to run into many billions of particles along the way so a single particle is not going to do much however.

I do like the idea that everything is using the same source of on board power.

I'd picture quick disconnect valves like what we have on air tanks and what not for the plasma and a few others

As far as I can work out, all the power requirements would be met by the battlesuit's Sho'Aun'Or'es (Power generator), or an enhanced version in the case of the Broadside. Rail rifles are pre-loaded with "a hundred rounds of trillium tipped solid darts" (40K Annual, 2004), so it would make sense for the railguns to follow a similar set up. Burst cannons work on exactly the same principle as a normal pulse rifle. You may have noticed that there is a small cartridge on a pulse rifle where you would expect to find a normal rifle's magazine, and also another 'pack' mounted in a bullpup fashion in the stock. The pack in the stock corresponds to the two similar packs on the standard fire warrior back pack, which are recharging power packs (the backpack is a small, limited version of a Sho'Aun'Or'Es). This means that the cartridge should supply the matter requirements, and given the size I would assume that the burst cannon carries a similar cartridge internally (perhaps the drum on the back, or the two protrusions on the sides). The cyclic ion blaster would probably work in a similar fashion. The flamer and fusion blaster tanks are fairly obvious, and it seems reasonable to guess that they would carry enough for a decent length battle. The plasma rifle seems to have two small tanks on top, so they should follow the same pattern as the fusion blaster and flamer.

More troublesome is the missile pod. The way I see it is that the missiles are spherical, or nearly so, meaning that a single missile pod would be able to carry up to twelve missiles (and a SMS would get up to 48). For reloading, I would assume that they are muzzle loaded, or use the little squares at the back of the pod in some way. As for the AFP, not a clue, unless they are using really small drone controlled ballistics.

Given that the Tau disapprove of long, drawn out battles, it seems logical that there would be ample opportunity for the battlesuits to return to the Fio outopsts to re-arm themselves on a fairly regular basis, so the need to carry ammunition for days worth of fighting is going to be very low anyway.

I believe that there was a very long and tedious discussion on the theoretical mechanics of the missile pod before the site upgrade.

My search-fu is very weak, because I'm befuddled from lack of sleep; though IIRC, the general consensus was that there were multiple small missiles in each tube.

I do believe that there were an essay at The Tau Online site about reloading MPs and SMSes. Thou also the official fluff provides a good explanation about Pulses, Rails, Plasma and Fusion. With Plasma and Fusion it's even more easy to explain since those two weapons are similar to other factions weaponry and function in similar manner.

That would make sense. do you have a link to the article?

Tau Weaponry

Check it. This one provides answers for all questions about Tau guns

There was indeed, the most interesting theory involved lots of small linked missiles. I cant find the youtube video that was linked, but there was a new missile system developed by the Army that had lots of small compact missiles loaded into one firing tube. They were electrically linked, allowing a variable number of shots to go off, possibly an obscene amount in a short span of time using multiple firing tubes mounted on one system. By that theory, the three tubes on an XV8 would be able to fire throughout an extended engagement, provided they werent alpha-striking.

I'll be on youtube for a few hours trying to find it, it was a nifty video .

I'd take that Tau Online article with a grain of salt... It's well written, but it has some glaring mistakes that significantly lower its feasability (Broadside projectiles firing at .9c? Impossible. Missile Pods being direct-fire weapons? Not according to the established fluff...)

Regarding the Missile Pod discussion we were having before, we never reached a specific consensus but I'm a firm believer that there are two missiles per tube, giving you six missiles per pod.

Once I get home from San Diego (this afternoon) I'll go ahead and make a little article of my own which I hope can answer the OP's questions a little better than the TO version....

That would be really cool Doombringer. It would sure answer my question.

Very good stuff. Yes, quick release!!

To further the concept, pg. 35 of fourth ed. shows the SM plasma weapon having the same type of "plasma containment flasks" holding 10 shots and the Melta gun "using a two part injection system to force pyrum-petrol gas into a sub-molecular state", also with a canister (though its hidden inside the gun). So fusion and Plasma weapons need some sort of fuel.

I agree with doombringer that a missile pod has two missiles per slot. It seems to long to just be one short range missile per tube and spherical projectiles, though cool, wouldn't really be missiles. The three squares on the rear top of the missile pod could be a vent system for the exhaust from the first missile.

If a missle pod has only 2 missiles for each of it's three tubes, how is it that you can fire a single missile pod twice, every turn, for a 6 turn (or longer) game? i think it makes the most logical sense of there only being 6 per tube, but the in-game mechanics don't reflect it. Even by twin linking a missile pod you'd still run out as twin linking weapons fires more shots by volume. Ideas?

Good point. So we need 12 missiles per Pod. Twin linking is just two pods so that wouldn't change the dynamic. So 4 missiles per tube.

Or it could be a missile that splits in half long ways to become two missiles, which would explain the sprue line across each tip and tail...... and then we are back to 2 per tube, but each is really a double missile.

edit: just read linked Tau Online article. It says two per tube, and that the system has an auto loader that can reload the pod from within the battle suits. Doesn't explain how the 'fish and HH reload theirs though.