One of the conceits in our Battlestar Galactica game is that the Colonial Fleet steadily moved away from a fixation on preparing for war with the Cylons, to a more ‘Coast Guard” sort of footing — reduced special operations ability, more drug/gun interdiction, counterterrorist, and search and rescue-oriented missions where the main threat were humans. Instead of heavy battle rifles, they moved to pistol cartridge carbines like the Storm and P90 — guns that were well-suited for shipboard combat against soft targets (people) and were easier to teach Colonial Fleet personnel to use comfortably.

In the event of the return of the Cylons, however, I submit that the small arms lockers of repositories like Ragnar would be loaded with older weaponry that was oriented toward Cylon-killin’. To that end, here’s one of the weapons systems I would think we’d see in the Colonial Fleet inventory, but which doesn’t see widespread use:

Armor-piercing ammunition — I would assume that most of the rounds fleet personnel scrambling to mean the Cylon threat would grab would be AP rounds. These would be steel core or nosed rounds like the SS190 for the 5.7x28mm and 5.56mm.  These ignore 3W of armor according to the rulebook. I would assume they also had some kind of depleted uranium or similar AP round for heavier weapons like anti-materiel rifles and heavy machineguns. These should gain the benefit for small arms but for use against vehicles. (Example: a .50 M2 would have a d4W against vehicles, but with the DPU rounds would gain the “ignore 3W armor” benefit.

Another thing you would most likely see would be battle rifles in the .30/7mm to 8mm range. An example might be the FAL .7.62mm with a d8W damage, a range of 300 yards, and 20 rounds in the magazine. But the weapon I think you would have seen for boarding/counterboarding actions and urban settings would be the venerable shotgun…but with an improved payload.

For our game, I’m introducing the equivalent of the real-world FRAG-12 round. This is a 3″ 12 gauge shell that has a fin-stabilized 19mm round that increases the range of the shotgun dramatically. These rounds could be armor piercing slugs that fragment on hard targets, showering metal fragments throughout the Cylons that should damage electronic components and tear the “musculature” of the machines. Like the FRAG-12, there could also be HEAP (high explosive, armor piercing) rounds to add insult to injury. The FRAG-12 rounds would give a d10W damage and ignore 3W of armor for the AP version, and would increase the range of a shotgun the usual 8 yards to 30 yards; the explosive “grenade” rounds would do the usual d10W+2d6W explosive round damage.

Because of the utility for engaging Cylons, you could make a good bet that your marines would not waste AP rounds on humans when doing counterterror or law enforcement operations, and would be armed with the standard rounds for their weapon. But feel free to disagree.

One of the platforms that is pretty bloody deadly on its own, before you include the FRAG-12 rounds is the AA-12 automatic shotgun. Here’s a look at this beast in action:

Here’s the AA12 stats for BSG — AA12 shotgun   Damage: d10W (+2d6W)   Range: 30 yards   Cost: 3500   Availability: Military, rare   Ammo: 8 (stick mag), 20 (drum)

And for James Bond: 007 — 

AUTO-ASSAULT 12 SHOTGUN

PM: +1   S/R: 2/5   AMMO: 8/20   DC: I/K   CLOS: 0-10   LONG: 20-50   CON: n/a   JAM: 95+   DRAW: -2   RL: 2   COST: $3,500

FRAG-12 Ammunition

The FRAG-12 ammunition in JB:007 doubles the long range of the shotgun using it. The explosive version does DC: J and has half the blast radius of a standard grenade. In the AA-12 the explosive FRAG-12 does DC: J/L