XENOPEDIA: MAF GUNS
As the enemy begins to dig its heels deeper into our soil, it has become increasingly clear that our conventional firearms simply won't cut it anymore. Many of our more recently encountered foes are so well shielded that our troops can empty entire magazines into them before they buckle. We're still quite far away from getting man-portable mass accelerators of our own, but there's no law that says we cannot apply the same principles our enemy uses to enhance magnetic accelerator guns to the chemical propulsion guns we are more familiar with.
The Mass-Assisted Firearm, or MAF, is effectively a crude imitation of our enemy's weapons using our own technology. Like an alien gun, a MAF uses the mass effect to decrease the mass of its projectile, which consequently gives it dramatically increased kinetic energy and muzzle velocity. The man difference is that rather than using a tiny piece of metal shaved off with a precision laser, a MAF just uses a conventional bullet.
The weapons themselves are custom-built, but the ammunition remains the same. While we could theoretically get better performance from a purpose-built cartridge, we've elected to design our weapons around already-existing bullets instead. Using existing calibers means we get to take advantage of humanity's enormous existing ammunition stockpiles, and the benefit of a custom-built bullet just wasn't worth the huge addition in required man-hours it brought to the project.
Ironically enough, the biggest difficulty in this project didn't come from the guns themselves. With what we've learned from studying our captured alien gun, applying its design principles to our own technology was fairly straightforward. No, the hard part was getting a battery that could power the accursed thing. While a mass effect field generator uses a surprisingly small amount of power considering its reality-shattering effects, it still consumes far more power than most of our conveniently-sized batteries could hope to provide.
So, we've had to use inconveniently-sized batteries instead. Every MAF is powered by what is essentially an incredibly advanced car battery, which we have built into a much more ergonomic shape that can be made into a backpack. Each of these power packs contains the same amount of charge, but the MAFs consume it at different rates depending on the model. Fortunately, even the most power-hungry of models can still get almost a full day's worth of charge out of a single power pack, though that can change with exceptionally heavy use.
Fortunately, we can get away with a lot more in terms of energy-economy and ergonomics when equipping Xenonauts compared to regular infantrymen. An infantryman can deploy to combat for weeks or months at a time, but a xenonaut mission rarely lasts more than a day at the most, and our troops aren't expected to lug around their equipment on extended patrols either, so the added weight is more of an inconvenience than a major ergonomic problem. The unfortunate reality is that, unless they want to go back to the proverbial pea shooters they've been stuck with, our Xenonauts will simply have to bear the burden.
And it is a burden that is very much worth bearing. The increased effectiveness against shields and to a lesser extent armor is desperately needed in the field. I've left files for all of the models we've designed on your desk, the information inside should help us in deciding how best to equip our troops with these weapons.
XENOPEDIA: MAF ASSAULT CARBINE
Of all of our MAF weapons, this is likely the most tame and straightforward. The assault carbine fires 9mm ammunition, but with kinetic energy comparable to a 5.56 round with a particularly potent powder load. As this implies, the assault carbine is intended to replace the M16 as our primary service rifle. The primary advantage that it has over the M16 is ammunition capacity. A 9mm round is obviously significantly smaller than a 5.56 round, so our troops can carry dramatically more ammunition on them without any reduction in power. It loads with a one hundred and twenty round drum magazine. So, while it doesn't actually hit that much harder than its predecessor, it can put four times as many rounds down range before having to reload. So, more kinetic energy is applied to an enemy barrier through increased volume rather than increased power.
As a side note: when we first put this one on the drawing board, I don't think anyone on my team would have expected designing the magazine to be the most difficult part of this project, but that's exactly what happened. As it turns out, designing a high-capacity magazine that can actually manage to get through it's entire ammunition load without jamming is incredibly difficult. I must say, I have a newfound respect for gunsmiths after this project. I suspect I have lost some hair. Our magazine design ended up being an over-engineered and convoluted abomination that would have been thrown out by any military armaments procurement board worth their inflated paychecks for being ludicrously expensive. Fortunately, we're equipping a clandestine organization, not an army, so the cost is less ruinous for us.
Hopefully someday we'll be able to discard magazines entirely from our weapon designs, the way our enemies have.
XENOPEDIA: MAF HIGH CALIBER LIGHT MACHINE GUN
Before the mass effect, the idea of someone lugging around an automatic weapon loaded with .50 BMG ammunition and shooting it as if it were a light machine gun would have been almost comical, but that is exactly what this weapon is. Unlike most of our other MAF designs, the primary usage of the mass effect here is not in enhancing the power of the cartridge (.50 BMG is no slouch, after all), but rather in making the weapon useable by a normal human. The main things preventing a normal human from doing this are the substantial weight of the weapon and the punishing recoil it would deliver into the user's shoulder. So, in this model the mass effect is used primarily as a weight-reduction tool and to compensate for the recoil.
The weapon itself is effectively just a copycat of the M2 Browning heavy machine gun with its ergonomics heavily modified to allow one person to carry it comfortably. Its main disadvantages are that it is something of a powerhog compared to the other designs. The mass effect field generator has to be constantly charged at all times to power the weight compensation effect, rather than only needing to be turned on when the weapon is fired. While most of the field generator's output is focused on the the weight and recoil compensation, it does still enhance the power of the round, albeit to a lesser degree than other designs. The enhancement is still noticeable. It's effectively converted from a reasonably effective anti-material round to a very light cannon round. This extra power helps to compensate for the fact that the heavier ammunition load means that the gunner carries fewer overall rounds.
XENOPEDIA: MAF SELF-LOADING SHOTGUN
The self-loading shotgun is a select fire weapon that fires 20 gauge shells from a twenty round box magazine. The two settings differ in more than just rate of fire. On semi-automatic, the muzzle velocity is enhanced to the point where it hits with kinetic energy comparable to a 10 gauge shell. On automatic, the muzzle velocity enhancement is dropped and recoil compensation is powered up instead.
The shotgun proved to have surprising utility against the aliens. No other weapon in our arsenal was as effective at quickly bringing down shields as several blasts from a shotgun in quick succession. The main drawback it had was the very same one it had on human battlefields before the invasion: it's heavily nullified by body armor. This was already a significant problem against human armor, so as you can imagine it proved to be even worse against the aliens.
This design counters that problem somewhat. While it's no more effective at piercing armor, it hits substantially harder. Even if the armor remains in tact, the sheer concussive force can kill the enemy, especially at the close ranges our shotgun wielding troops typically fight at. With the select-fire, our shotgunners can quickly bring down an enemy's shields with a spray on the automatic setting, and then beat them to death through their armor on the semiautomatic setting. It takes only a very easy flip of a switch to change settings, to facilitate rapid changes in fire.
XENOPEDIA: MAF PRECISION CANNON
Mechanically speaking, this is the most simple MAF design. It is effectively just a bolt action rifle with a two round internal magazine and a modern optic mounting rail. The main thing that sticks out is that it is loaded with 30mm cannon shells, not rifle rounds. As you can probably imagine, this is intended as a replacement for our sniper rifle. The main frustration our snipers have had is that even when they make a perfect shot, it will still just bounce off of the kinetic barrier half the time. This alleviates that problem. All but the most heavily shielded of personnel will be very dead if they find themselves on the wrong end of this, and even the heavily shielded ones will likely get knocked to the ground. Well placed shots will also very likely disable any vehicles our troops may encounter. Compared to its predecessor, the decreased magazine size might seem like a disadvantage, but for our marksmen it's likely a non-issue. If it takes more than two shots from this gun to kill, we would probably be better served shooting at it with a rocket launcher. Or a tank.
As you can imagine, the recoil compensation required for our snipers to not dislocate their shoulders when they fire is substantial. Even at the maximum possible setting for our field generators, it still kicks like a mule. This weapon is not for the faint of heart or soft of shoulder.
