The weapon's status as an Experimental Weapon would end just as the Jihad would officially end, and would enter regular production by 3081 and become a standard technology in the Inner Sphere. These immense forces also destabilize the unit, making it more difficult to operate in combat. The Improved Heavy Gauss Rifle also inflicts a great deal of structural stress when it fires This limits the Improved Heavy Gauss Rifle to torso locations on BattleMechs or hull mountings on combat vehicles, as the recoil and stress would rip the arm or turret off the vehicle. These capacitors also require so much energy that they can only be charged by a fission or fusion engine. In addition, like all Gauss weapons, the capacitors that charge the Improved Heavy Gauss Rifle are fragile and will explode if hit by enemy weapon fire. Though the damage inflicted by the slug is consistent across all ranges, it doesn't inflict as much damage at short range as the Heavy Gauss Rifle's slug. At 20 tons, it weighs as much as a Wasp or Stinger, and seriously limits the units that can carry it into battle. The first is the Improved Heavy Gauss Rifle's weight. In order to get this improved damage profile the engineers had to make a few compromises. In most other respects, the Improved Heavy Gauss Rifle functions like a Heavy Gauss Rifle. The minimum engagement range has also been reduced by 25%. The Improved Heavy Gauss Rifle inflicts 10% more damage than an Autocannon/20, and occupies as much space as the standard Heavy Gauss Rifle. And you want it shaped like a long rod penetrator, not a cannon ball. Alternately, aluminum-coated tungsten cermets could be used. After four years of work, the engineers had created a weapon that occupied the same amount of space as the Heavy Gauss Rifle but was able to inflict consistent damage at all ranges. In a railgun-style Gauss Rifle, you wouldn't even need a magnetic jacket or sabot - the project just has to be conductive, not ferromagnetic. This would lead to a more consistent damage profile, making the Improved Heavy Gauss Rifle effective at all ranges. Though the Heavy Gauss Rifle was mostly effective, engineers thought they could improve the ballistic performance of the projectile. Work on the Improved Heavy Gauss Rifle began in 3061 after the Heavy Gauss Rifle entered production.
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