Also, the X3 is three times as long as a standard Gauss rifle. It's the coils of three separate civilian Gauss rifles attached one after the other, to get the smaller slug up to speeds where it does similar damage compared to the more powerful military grade Gauss rifle. Sawing it off to the point it's more easily concealable would make it about as weak as a civilian Gauss pistol. You might as well just get one of those, instead.
Ummm, I might be imagining it wrong, but did not Simus specifically choose a different coil configuration, so as to avoid an overly long weapon (and ended up with a ~3x thick one instead, I think)?
Still, that probably has one hell of a kickback. And pretty much as concealable (even in a sawn-off variant) as a small mortar.
This was what I thought, so I went and checked. We seem to be correct.
I meant combine the coils so that they're a set of large coils. A solenoid (which is what these coils are) with more wire loops is a more powerful electromagnet, no?
Also it would only be a gauss IED (interesting idea, magnetic bomb instead of chemical...) if the coils were working opposite to one another. If they were still separate coils, but the magnetic field matches, then they would not repulse.
Oh, combining them like that would work but it would still be pretty big. I mean, you can only squish them in so tight.
Also, kickback probably isn't a real issue, at least compared to the GR. The X3C fires a somewhat lighter projectile at a somewhat higher velocity, so the energy is unlikely to be much higher. In fact, since it uses most of the parts of three rifles, it's probably heavier, and therefore should have
less kickback.
...I'm really, really late with this, but I think PW should play the XCOM mod
Long War. I know he has XCOM, and I think he has Enemy Within too--and if he doesn't, it's worth getting.