I'm wanting to see a BattleTech Gauss Rifle.

I don't have much time to game anymore, and I sort of am interested in seeing if any other players were interested in building the "standard" Gauss Rifle from BattleTech. My friend introduced me to the board game, and I've become obsessed with the brand.

I think it theoretically is a type of Coilgun, but it could be a Railgun, as that's not particularly clear Gauss is probably a thing of it's own, but might be able to be simulated with coils. It does have a capacitor, and can refire in the span of 10 seconds.

What I do know about it is that it fires a 30cm diameter (so 15cm radius) "watermelon" (so I'll guess a 1.5 aspect ratio) Nickel-Iron payload accurately out to a range of at least 660 meters under normal atmospheric conditions. In space it should be significantly further.

The reactors used to power these things are also fusion reactors, so I'm not opposed to black box modules being required to do this if needed (though apparently using this thing drains the power on a mech if used simultaneously with other energy type weapons like lasers and causes a delay in shooting the salvo).

The weapon also weighs 15 tons for a normal variant, but there's a 3 ton leeway for the heavy and light variants. Cost is no object though, especially in COADE terms.

A standard Gauss rifle should be able to penetrate a 1 ton monolithic steel plate however, though the specific steel type and height is never mentioned.

I hope this proves to be an interesting design challenge for anyone who decides to pursue it.