I like how the artists couldnt decide what the two "barrels" on everything were for so they'd often draw them both smoking while others would insist only one was actually a barrel.
IIRC all guns in mass effect are high energy magnetic accelerators, one of the barrels is for bullets, the other is for discharging plasma/ super heated coolant.
Then why do a bunch of the guns have no second "barrel" and why does the scope on the avenger plug into a coolant vent?
IIRC all guns in mass effect are high energy magnetic accelerators, one of the barrels is for bullets, the other is for discharging plasma/ super heated coolant.
you don't want DI in space because it shits where it eats
when firing initially from a cold state, the shit will stick to the metal
and because heat dissipation is extremely low in space due to no media for heat transfer, the receiver will heat up rapidly with continued firing and the gassing will make it far worse
the heat issues also affect pistons at the gasblock
the same issues exist in a less severe form for low atmo conditions
even if these issues are fixed or minised, fouling, both from powder and the environment, will be a massive issue in certain atmospheres or environments
also ice and ice-like condensates that will freeze everywhere in your gun
a moving barrel recoil operation with a muzzle booster that has its own heat dissipator is probably the most realistic option for a firearm in space
the recoiling barrel will have enough mass to displace fouling and icing
the muzzle booster system will be forcefully defouled and de-iced with every shot
you'll also be able to dual-purpose the heatsink as a functional element of the muzzle system to some degree
a forward assist and a reciprocating charging handle will also be necessary purely because of icing
Things freeze in space, but VERY slowly because there is practically zero thermodynamic media meaning heat loss is via radiation only which is SLOW but an unheated object will drop to -120c and under over time unless it is in the light of a nearby star
Things heat up rapidly because again heat loss is via radiation only. There is no air to absorb and carry away heat.
Your heat loss rate is always under 2% compared to in-atmosphere on earth, which has an oatmeal bowl thicc atmosphere in astronomical terms and is a greater thief of heat than prometheus
>In 1964, the M16 entered US military service and the following year was deployed for jungle warfare operations during the Vietnam War.
Anon in two months some flavor of the AR will have been in service for 60 years.
For all our advancement from 1920, it will have been in service for more than half of the time from that year until modern day.
normal people will probably still be using some variant of , along with all the other common rifle, pistol, shotgun designs that exist today
the military might move to heavier, higher velocity, longer range service rifles to make better use of advanced optics and counter improvements in body armor
but I don't think we will see widespread adoption of anything exotic like railguns/coilguns or lasers
SPBP.
We'll be flying semi-cryogenic generation ship missions to alpha centauri with some flavor of direct impingement armalite rifle.
>In 1964, the M16 entered US military service and the following year was deployed for jungle warfare operations during the Vietnam War.
Anon in two months some flavor of the AR will have been in service for 60 years.
For all our advancement from 1920, it will have been in service for more than half of the time from that year until modern day.
punctuated equilibrium.
we've more or less reached the end of the current paradigm, but it only takes one shift in the underlying fundamentals (like a change to cased telescopic ammunition) to change the optimal end design.
the major advancements are going to be driven by improvements in propellants; burning faster, cooler, and with more energy for the mass. with shorter barrels, increased capability for sustained fire, and smaller cases allowing for higher capacity, we'll see a spread of roles from pdw to saw consolidated in a single uncompromised package. at least that's what i think. maybe small arms will be completely obsolete by then and we'll all be disembodied brains hooked up inside tanks melting each other with telekinetic beams instead
>roles from pdw to saw consolidated in a single uncompromised package
I used to think this way, but these days I doubt it. Youre always going to have different traits that roles will lean into.
It will be a low profile 360 coverage that sit on your shoulder and will automatically engage any threats. It can have datalinks with other battlefield elements if needed. The software will be intelligent enough to always engage threats and never have false positives. As a sidearm, it can appear to be deactivated but the sensors and cameras are miniaturized and you won’t be able to tell if it’s watching it not.
Depends. It will be either coilguns if humans find efficient energy sources and roomtemp superconductors or maybe they switch for caseless ammo with propellants ignited by electric trigger mechanism.
It pisses me off beyond belief that the technology behind 4.73x33 is long gone and the HK people said it themselves, they would have to start from scrap if they ware to produce the round again for some other, less controversial rifle.
>LK-99 ended up a nothingburger >no dirt cheap high school level synthesis superconductor >no troll physics energy storage loops >no garage kit coilguns >no ultra long range electricity transmission
pisses me off to no end
Judge Dredd style toybox gun that aims itself and shoots for you using whatever anmo it deemed most effective. Or drones. I think as tech increases wars are just going to become two industrial sectors competing against each other until one runs out of steel. Wars might become far more common but they'd hopefully be far more civil in terms of human casualties
100-200 years in the future human soldiers will be either drone controllers or vehicle pilots, waving a rifle around will look as larpy as waving a sword does now.
it's incredible how mass effect ruined every single cool part of itself >we have a material that reduces the mass in the surrounding area when electrified >so our guns shave tiny metal splinters off a block, reduce their mass, and accelerate them electromagnetically
>but then that stopped working so uh thermal clips
In 100 years probably mostly the same, but with unrecognizable calibers using new propellants and materials. EM guns will probably be a thing but will be large, clunky, and not very widespread. Lasers will be notably more common but likely still restricted to vehicles. Artillery shells ~90% guided and all designed for stealth. All missiles designed for stealth.
In 200 years EM will have definitely displaced traditional firearms. They'll come in everything from small assault rifle and PDW sized packages. Lasers will also be prevalent but not as much as EM guns simply due to the amount of damage an EM accelerated slug can do by comparison. Laser C-RAM is common and can easily be carried into an area to cover a wide bit of airspace. Much of the middle east and most of Africa will still be using absolutely ancient AK variants simply due to how many there are and how easy it is to make more.
The guns were great, then people bitched about having infinite ammo. Ideally it would've been great if you could do ME1's cooldowns AND have the option pop in a new thermal clip if you didn't want to wait. Thermal clips somehow retaining all their heat until you pop them out is far less realistic than having hundreds of shots based on lore.
>They'll come in everything from small assault rifle and PDW sized packages...
to large bore guns you'd put on tanks and ships.
God I hate being so easily distracted...
EM guns are never going to replace chemical propellant for personal firearms. The energy density of batteries can't get anywhere near gunpowder or even more energy dense explosives. They're only practical for ships or perhaps large vehicles if we get small enough nuclear reactors to practically power a tank.
Based on our current understanding you're right. Thing is I full well expect that to change down the line as new materials and energy storage and delivery methods are developed/discovered.
We're talking about 1-2 centuries in the future, anything we come up with is pure speculation and probably hilariously conservative if not outright primitive. Imagine a guy in 1823 speculating on weapons and warfare of today. Flight was impossible, smokeless powder wasn't a thing, self contained cartridges weren't a thing, gasoline and the ICE weren't a thing, even the most basic guided munitions weren't a thing, radiation was basically unknown to nearly every living person even in science. Their picture of warfare in 2023 would be woefully primitive compared to the real deal. Us speculating on 2223 is probably going to end up looking just as primitive, especially if we impose our own current technological limits upon it.
Don't declare the future so certainly like that. You don't know what you don't know and you can't know what the future holds beyond an educated guess that is continually less and less "educated" the farther into the future you speculate.
I think there's a chance that rocket, or gyrojet ammo makes a comeback, maybe sometime before EM guns take over.
With stronger propellants and better manufacturing, the main disadvantages (low muzzle velocity, poor manufacturing quality) will be gone, and their main advantages (low recoil, high max velocity/energy) can shine.
Rocket bullets are like EM guns in one way, their acceleration is constant throughout the barrel, meaning there's no diminishing returns to a longer barrel. Meaning you could get some crazy velocities.
Probably similar to how they do today, but probably with >Custom tunable electronic triggers >Integrated ultra long life battery packs that can provide power to anything mounted on the rails >Polymer cased ammunition >Optics featuring integrated thermals, night vision, extremely miniaturized range finders, automated target recognition, etc >Optics and firearm datalink that will allow you to pull the trigger and it will fire as soon as it matches the automated ballistic solution to hit the target, similar to systems being developed for tanks today >Total round counter electronic counter for things like maintenance schedules >Magazine round counter displayed either on the gun, on AR overlay glasses, or in retinal implants, could also track things like barrel temperature for squad automatics and other shit.
Besides all that, as metallurgy, composites, and chemistry improve, I expect we will see an arms race of faster rounds with more durable barrels to handle them to defeat more and more powerful armor.
>Year of our lord 2123 >i hear a Martian-american refugee break my holowindow >not going to the milking plant without a fight. >grab my Colt 1911 >4 world war baby!
M4A1 Sopmod Block X with caseless ammunition or some other ammunition that isn't brass.
It's funny to think that the M16A1 is only 41 years away from being antique. A few less if you count the 601 and XM16E1.
Lighter stronger, cheaper materials use to make them.
Probably mainly 3d printed
Caseless ammunition
As for more futuristic exotic things I can see optics being self calibrating and maybe replaced with AR (augmented reality) glasses to aid in aiming.
Maybe AI assisted aiming
Electrical powder ignition
Fundamentally, guns haven't changed a lot in the last 150 years, or at all in the last 80. It's the furniture and accessories that have changed, but that's all superficial. Either we continue to see incremental advances in materials science that makes stocks, grips, etc. get lighter and stronger and therefore causes more superficial changes, or there's some kind of fundamental advance on the order of the integrated cartridge or smokeless powder that we can't predict and that will radically alter the way guns look.
Some evolution of the M4/AK standard designed to fire pissing hot loads that would blow up anything around today, or perhaps even plasma rounds or some shit.
easier to predict what will be around in 100 years imo.
there might really be a development from m4/ ak still present, maybe even familiar calibers (not 5.56 obviously, but maybe still for the civilian market).
if electronic triggers become available, then the future will probably be bullpup.
also a lot of familiar tech that will mature by then will be used. some sort of shot placement help along with a smart scope and electro trigger, maybe counterbalanced action if the loads became really hot (hehe), smart 40mm ammo (if underslung GL are still a thing or that HK GL that got removed from service a while back) ...
Just realized that is space Hi-Lo 30mm would be extremely useful. All you need is a bit of tungsten to pen the suit and the typical rainbow trajectories of shoulder fired grenades disappears in zero G
Personally I highly doubt the overall design of the M4/AR/whatever is going anywhere anytime soon. The modularity alone pretty much guarantees staying power. Future shit may really stretch the limits of what would be considered a part of that, but that’ll all just be further progression of Stoners design, not some entirely brand new thing.
or bullpups. they even talked about electric triggers with NGSW bullpup prototype (as a possibility).
https://www.reddit.com/r/ForgottenWeapons/comments/tlp44s/thales_australia_68mm_weapon_system_in_response/
all drones
manually operated arms might be used only after EMPs or due to signal jammers
probably (like rn in the USA) all effective weaponry will be made illegal, i.e. autonomous drones, explosives, long range rail guns
It'll look similar to a conventional rifle in terms of configuration, but how it functions is dependent on the environment it must function in. Our manual of arms for small arms hasn't really changed much since WW1, so unless something forces us to change how we make guns we'll stick with what we know pretty much forever.
>Hello /k/ bros how do you think guns will look and function about 100-200 years into the future >Fully automatic 20 mm handheld cannons
I will never be satisfied until all projectiles thrown out of a gun can have a big enough payload to work both as anti air flak and shrapnel against fortifications.
Reminder that aryans are canonically extinct in Mass Effect and everyone with blonde hair and blue eyes in the series was retconned to have faked their appearance for aesthetics, and that this and the rarity of pure white Europeans are talked about as positives.
Personal BVRM launcher, every soldier will essentially be a walking F35 connected to radar, drones and ISR. Able to fire a missile far beyond line of site.
>ass effect
That was peak "2010's Globohomo" science fiction, looking back I just cringe at all of it. Weapons, art, most aliens, story, it's all drek.
I think that we're probably going to stick with chemical propellants and kinetic projectiles for small arms, but the bullets and cartridges are going to get crazy. If it weren't for the Hague Convention restricting payloads in bullets we'd already have Elysium style explosive rounds. In terms of cartridges polymer case telescoped rounds have the most potential to mature, but they've got a shitload of engineering problems to overcome.
The other side of how guns are going to advance is the inevitably of microchips in small arms. We're seeing it already with the NGSW optic, and there are advantages to having a gun specifically coded to its operator. Police get killed by their own guns often enough, a reliable smart gun with RFID or fingerprinting would be a step to solve that problem. Microchips in small arms ammunition as well, most likely something similar to the EXACTO program unless something major changes with what is and isn't allowed for military ammunition. The US technically isn't a signatory to most weapons limitations treaties, but we play along with them for PR purposes most of the time.
More mundane advancements are just the same things we've been seeing since the end of WW2, lighter weights, higher reliability, better accuracy, etc.
I like how the artists couldnt decide what the two "barrels" on everything were for so they'd often draw them both smoking while others would insist only one was actually a barrel.
one barrel shoot boolet, other barrel is additional heat vent
Then why do a bunch of the guns have no second "barrel" and why does the scope on the avenger plug into a coolant vent?
IIRC all guns in mass effect are high energy magnetic accelerators, one of the barrels is for bullets, the other is for discharging plasma/ super heated coolant.
SPBP.
We'll be flying semi-cryogenic generation ship missions to alpha centauri with some flavor of direct impingement armalite rifle.
you don't want DI in space because it shits where it eats
when firing initially from a cold state, the shit will stick to the metal
and because heat dissipation is extremely low in space due to no media for heat transfer, the receiver will heat up rapidly with continued firing and the gassing will make it far worse
the heat issues also affect pistons at the gasblock
the same issues exist in a less severe form for low atmo conditions
even if these issues are fixed or minised, fouling, both from powder and the environment, will be a massive issue in certain atmospheres or environments
also ice and ice-like condensates that will freeze everywhere in your gun
a moving barrel recoil operation with a muzzle booster that has its own heat dissipator is probably the most realistic option for a firearm in space
the recoiling barrel will have enough mass to displace fouling and icing
the muzzle booster system will be forcefully defouled and de-iced with every shot
you'll also be able to dual-purpose the heatsink as a functional element of the muzzle system to some degree
a forward assist and a reciprocating charging handle will also be necessary purely because of icing
>you don't want DI in space because it shits where it eats
you have no understanding of space, groundmonkey
>it's gonna overheat
>no wait it's gonna freeze
Make up your fucking mind.
Things freeze in space, but VERY slowly because there is practically zero thermodynamic media meaning heat loss is via radiation only which is SLOW but an unheated object will drop to -120c and under over time unless it is in the light of a nearby star
Things heat up rapidly because again heat loss is via radiation only. There is no air to absorb and carry away heat.
Your heat loss rate is always under 2% compared to in-atmosphere on earth, which has an oatmeal bowl thicc atmosphere in astronomical terms and is a greater thief of heat than prometheus
>DI
Nigga we're replacing that shit NOW and nobody else ever adopted it, DI is dead.
Kind of doubt it. Look at how we advanced since the 1920s and then hypothetically double that rate into the future.
>In 1964, the M16 entered US military service and the following year was deployed for jungle warfare operations during the Vietnam War.
Anon in two months some flavor of the AR will have been in service for 60 years.
For all our advancement from 1920, it will have been in service for more than half of the time from that year until modern day.
normal people will probably still be using some variant of , along with all the other common rifle, pistol, shotgun designs that exist today
the military might move to heavier, higher velocity, longer range service rifles to make better use of advanced optics and counter improvements in body armor
but I don't think we will see widespread adoption of anything exotic like railguns/coilguns or lasers
punctuated equilibrium.
we've more or less reached the end of the current paradigm, but it only takes one shift in the underlying fundamentals (like a change to cased telescopic ammunition) to change the optimal end design.
I can just tell that you are absolutely insufferable to talk to at parties
honestly perplexing. i was just making a constructive point and you got offended. who is unfun here? please seek help for your condition
>in space, no one can hear you jam
Pointy sticks. Or personal Gauss guns.
Who needs guns when I can pick you up with my mind powers and shake you like a dog
What if no mind power??????
Reroll classes because you chose the wrong one
It was "like a doll", but good reference.
>doll
No, like how a dog shakes something in it's mouth.
>mind powers
How fucking cute.
the major advancements are going to be driven by improvements in propellants; burning faster, cooler, and with more energy for the mass. with shorter barrels, increased capability for sustained fire, and smaller cases allowing for higher capacity, we'll see a spread of roles from pdw to saw consolidated in a single uncompromised package. at least that's what i think. maybe small arms will be completely obsolete by then and we'll all be disembodied brains hooked up inside tanks melting each other with telekinetic beams instead
>the AR of the future
The colonial marines technical manual has an autistic amount of information on their service weapons and munitions
>roles from pdw to saw consolidated in a single uncompromised package
I used to think this way, but these days I doubt it. Youre always going to have different traits that roles will lean into.
unironically, Starfield's Beowulf
It will be a low profile 360 coverage that sit on your shoulder and will automatically engage any threats. It can have datalinks with other battlefield elements if needed. The software will be intelligent enough to always engage threats and never have false positives. As a sidearm, it can appear to be deactivated but the sensors and cameras are miniaturized and you won’t be able to tell if it’s watching it not.
Depends. It will be either coilguns if humans find efficient energy sources and roomtemp superconductors or maybe they switch for caseless ammo with propellants ignited by electric trigger mechanism.
It pisses me off beyond belief that the technology behind 4.73x33 is long gone and the HK people said it themselves, they would have to start from scrap if they ware to produce the round again for some other, less controversial rifle.
millions of DM and work hours down the drain.
The technology is gone, but the methods aren't. You'd have to start from scratch regardless, the G11 and it's round were absolutely shit.
>LK-99 ended up a nothingburger
>no dirt cheap high school level synthesis superconductor
>no troll physics energy storage loops
>no garage kit coilguns
>no ultra long range electricity transmission
pisses me off to no end
Can I play?
Quarian ass, however
>make ass bigger but make hips half the width
shit taste
>You vill fuck ze alien
No.
>waifu you literally can't touch
No wonder she's so popular, she's essentially real already.
Judge Dredd style toybox gun that aims itself and shoots for you using whatever anmo it deemed most effective. Or drones. I think as tech increases wars are just going to become two industrial sectors competing against each other until one runs out of steel. Wars might become far more common but they'd hopefully be far more civil in terms of human casualties
100-200 years in the future human soldiers will be either drone controllers or vehicle pilots, waving a rifle around will look as larpy as waving a sword does now.
it's incredible how mass effect ruined every single cool part of itself
>we have a material that reduces the mass in the surrounding area when electrified
>so our guns shave tiny metal splinters off a block, reduce their mass, and accelerate them electromagnetically
>but then that stopped working so uh thermal clips
In 100 years probably mostly the same, but with unrecognizable calibers using new propellants and materials. EM guns will probably be a thing but will be large, clunky, and not very widespread. Lasers will be notably more common but likely still restricted to vehicles. Artillery shells ~90% guided and all designed for stealth. All missiles designed for stealth.
In 200 years EM will have definitely displaced traditional firearms. They'll come in everything from small assault rifle and PDW sized packages. Lasers will also be prevalent but not as much as EM guns simply due to the amount of damage an EM accelerated slug can do by comparison. Laser C-RAM is common and can easily be carried into an area to cover a wide bit of airspace. Much of the middle east and most of Africa will still be using absolutely ancient AK variants simply due to how many there are and how easy it is to make more.
The guns were great, then people bitched about having infinite ammo. Ideally it would've been great if you could do ME1's cooldowns AND have the option pop in a new thermal clip if you didn't want to wait. Thermal clips somehow retaining all their heat until you pop them out is far less realistic than having hundreds of shots based on lore.
>They'll come in everything from small assault rifle and PDW sized packages...
to large bore guns you'd put on tanks and ships.
God I hate being so easily distracted...
EM guns are never going to replace chemical propellant for personal firearms. The energy density of batteries can't get anywhere near gunpowder or even more energy dense explosives. They're only practical for ships or perhaps large vehicles if we get small enough nuclear reactors to practically power a tank.
Based on our current understanding you're right. Thing is I full well expect that to change down the line as new materials and energy storage and delivery methods are developed/discovered.
We're talking about 1-2 centuries in the future, anything we come up with is pure speculation and probably hilariously conservative if not outright primitive. Imagine a guy in 1823 speculating on weapons and warfare of today. Flight was impossible, smokeless powder wasn't a thing, self contained cartridges weren't a thing, gasoline and the ICE weren't a thing, even the most basic guided munitions weren't a thing, radiation was basically unknown to nearly every living person even in science. Their picture of warfare in 2023 would be woefully primitive compared to the real deal. Us speculating on 2223 is probably going to end up looking just as primitive, especially if we impose our own current technological limits upon it.
Don't declare the future so certainly like that. You don't know what you don't know and you can't know what the future holds beyond an educated guess that is continually less and less "educated" the farther into the future you speculate.
in 100 years there will be electronic triggers and aiming help (trigger-fire delay if needed) if nothing else.
Also why TF do people complain about unlimited ammo? Especially when there's cooldown? Not everything has to have a reload to be fun.
I think there's a chance that rocket, or gyrojet ammo makes a comeback, maybe sometime before EM guns take over.
With stronger propellants and better manufacturing, the main disadvantages (low muzzle velocity, poor manufacturing quality) will be gone, and their main advantages (low recoil, high max velocity/energy) can shine.
Rocket bullets are like EM guns in one way, their acceleration is constant throughout the barrel, meaning there's no diminishing returns to a longer barrel. Meaning you could get some crazy velocities.
Probably similar to how they do today, but probably with
>Custom tunable electronic triggers
>Integrated ultra long life battery packs that can provide power to anything mounted on the rails
>Polymer cased ammunition
>Optics featuring integrated thermals, night vision, extremely miniaturized range finders, automated target recognition, etc
>Optics and firearm datalink that will allow you to pull the trigger and it will fire as soon as it matches the automated ballistic solution to hit the target, similar to systems being developed for tanks today
>Total round counter electronic counter for things like maintenance schedules
>Magazine round counter displayed either on the gun, on AR overlay glasses, or in retinal implants, could also track things like barrel temperature for squad automatics and other shit.
Besides all that, as metallurgy, composites, and chemistry improve, I expect we will see an arms race of faster rounds with more durable barrels to handle them to defeat more and more powerful armor.
>Year of our lord 2123
>i hear a Martian-american refugee break my holowindow
>not going to the milking plant without a fight.
>grab my Colt 1911
>4 world war baby!
M4A1 Sopmod Block X with caseless ammunition or some other ammunition that isn't brass.
It's funny to think that the M16A1 is only 41 years away from being antique. A few less if you count the 601 and XM16E1.
Lighter stronger, cheaper materials use to make them.
Probably mainly 3d printed
Caseless ammunition
As for more futuristic exotic things I can see optics being self calibrating and maybe replaced with AR (augmented reality) glasses to aid in aiming.
Maybe AI assisted aiming
Electrical powder ignition
Technology has stagnated, so probably an m4 with one of those fancy SPIW ACR whatever scopes and some future laser thingy
60 rounds of Real Fuckin' NATO
I'll take that and the K variant.
Fundamentally, guns haven't changed a lot in the last 150 years, or at all in the last 80. It's the furniture and accessories that have changed, but that's all superficial. Either we continue to see incremental advances in materials science that makes stocks, grips, etc. get lighter and stronger and therefore causes more superficial changes, or there's some kind of fundamental advance on the order of the integrated cartridge or smokeless powder that we can't predict and that will radically alter the way guns look.
Some evolution of the M4/AK standard designed to fire pissing hot loads that would blow up anything around today, or perhaps even plasma rounds or some shit.
easier to predict what will be around in 100 years imo.
there might really be a development from m4/ ak still present, maybe even familiar calibers (not 5.56 obviously, but maybe still for the civilian market).
if electronic triggers become available, then the future will probably be bullpup.
also a lot of familiar tech that will mature by then will be used. some sort of shot placement help along with a smart scope and electro trigger, maybe counterbalanced action if the loads became really hot (hehe), smart 40mm ammo (if underslung GL are still a thing or that HK GL that got removed from service a while back) ...
Just realized that is space Hi-Lo 30mm would be extremely useful. All you need is a bit of tungsten to pen the suit and the typical rainbow trajectories of shoulder fired grenades disappears in zero G
Personally I highly doubt the overall design of the M4/AR/whatever is going anywhere anytime soon. The modularity alone pretty much guarantees staying power. Future shit may really stretch the limits of what would be considered a part of that, but that’ll all just be further progression of Stoners design, not some entirely brand new thing.
or bullpups. they even talked about electric triggers with NGSW bullpup prototype (as a possibility).
https://www.reddit.com/r/ForgottenWeapons/comments/tlp44s/thales_australia_68mm_weapon_system_in_response/
all drones
manually operated arms might be used only after EMPs or due to signal jammers
probably (like rn in the USA) all effective weaponry will be made illegal, i.e. autonomous drones, explosives, long range rail guns
we're going back to swords
It'll look similar to a conventional rifle in terms of configuration, but how it functions is dependent on the environment it must function in. Our manual of arms for small arms hasn't really changed much since WW1, so unless something forces us to change how we make guns we'll stick with what we know pretty much forever.
>Hello /k/ bros how do you think guns will look and function about 100-200 years into the future
>Fully automatic 20 mm handheld cannons
I will never be satisfied until all projectiles thrown out of a gun can have a big enough payload to work both as anti air flak and shrapnel against fortifications.
I hope they discover some new technology that makes melee weapons viable again.
>Laser guns
>Armor that is impervious laser guns but not to big hammers
Done
Reminder that aryans are canonically extinct in Mass Effect and everyone with blonde hair and blue eyes in the series was retconned to have faked their appearance for aesthetics, and that this and the rarity of pure white Europeans are talked about as positives.
Personal BVRM launcher, every soldier will essentially be a walking F35 connected to radar, drones and ISR. Able to fire a missile far beyond line of site.
>ass effect
That was peak "2010's Globohomo" science fiction, looking back I just cringe at all of it. Weapons, art, most aliens, story, it's all drek.
>peak "2010's Globohomo" science fiction
WDYM? I dont necessarily disagree, but it was basically star trek for millennials.
The rot was already there.
They'll probably look like 3d printed water guns because by that time rail guns will proliferate.
I think that we're probably going to stick with chemical propellants and kinetic projectiles for small arms, but the bullets and cartridges are going to get crazy. If it weren't for the Hague Convention restricting payloads in bullets we'd already have Elysium style explosive rounds. In terms of cartridges polymer case telescoped rounds have the most potential to mature, but they've got a shitload of engineering problems to overcome.
The other side of how guns are going to advance is the inevitably of microchips in small arms. We're seeing it already with the NGSW optic, and there are advantages to having a gun specifically coded to its operator. Police get killed by their own guns often enough, a reliable smart gun with RFID or fingerprinting would be a step to solve that problem. Microchips in small arms ammunition as well, most likely something similar to the EXACTO program unless something major changes with what is and isn't allowed for military ammunition. The US technically isn't a signatory to most weapons limitations treaties, but we play along with them for PR purposes most of the time.
More mundane advancements are just the same things we've been seeing since the end of WW2, lighter weights, higher reliability, better accuracy, etc.