The deWulf universe took one of it’s early inspirations from the Aliens™ universe, and that kind of inspiration filtered down into the small arms as well. One part of which was the ubiquitous “smart gun”.
The challenge I had is that since the setting’s a bit more advanced than the Aliens one, the question was “what kind of propulsion am i using?” I didn’t want to just go to use standard chemical bullets, but the deWulf’s sort of “signature weapons technologies” were more plasma and laser based. Laser wasn’t something they’d really managed to miniaturize yet, and the same with plasma, so the choice I made was a kind of weird hybrid setup.
Standard rounds (Shared between the support weapon and the combat rifle) are binary liquid propellant. Gives you a much cleaner burn, and lets you get some fine control on your burn rates (and the ability to do a “hot shot” for boosted AP, but with a lot of barrel wear). Both weapons also have a small NPU battery pack to help power the weapon’s onboard electronics. It’s not going to give you a lot of juice, but you won’t have to be swapping them out anywhere near as fast as mags.
The heavier “smart gun” gets an upgraded muzzle system (that really shouldn’t be on the assault rifle, but oh well) that tweaks the bullet’s flight path to better match the targeting data coming from the millimeter radar mount on the upper front of the gun. The system is also mainly used for fine tuning the actual flight path of the round; the operator still has to make sure that he’s pointing in approximately the right direction.
The one thing though, is that the “smart gun” is not really a squad support weapon thanks to the additional tracking system. It’s far more common as either a support weapon on an armored unit, or as a defense for a fixed position, at least for on paper deWulf doctrine. It’s definitely NOT a hip-fired weapon, and that sort of use takes a skilled user to even have a hope of making it work.
Dollarton Proxima Shipyards 