Selective Gyroscope

Selective Gyroscopic Stabilizer

Gyroscopically stabilized weapons resist the recoil generated by the firing of a projectile. This increases accuracy (especially for automatic weapons) because the second and subsequent shots in a burst would otherwise drift upwards due to muzzle climb. The disadvantage of gyroscopically stabilized weapons is that they require more time to aim. The gyro opposes all changes in orientation, due to recoil or otherwise, and the weapon must be muscled into position to take the first shot.

Xenium is a magical metal found on Kulthea with the property of negating gravity. Gravitons (the fundamental particle of gravity) cannot penetrate Xenium. If a gyroscope is shielded with Xenium it has no mass, and therefore has no inertia. The gyro is still spinning and will regain its normal inertia if the Xenium shielding is removed. The selective gyroscope consists of a high speed gyro encased within a hollow sphere of Xenium. The plates of the sphere are hinged and can be quickly moved out of the way by small servo motors. The gyro is hooked to the weapon's control system and draws its power from the weapon's energy cell.
The gyro will be mounted in a housing attached as close as possible to the center of mass of the weapon (usually just in front of the trigger guard). Typically the gyro's control system is programmed to retract the Xenium shields as the trigger is pulled, just before the round is fired. The gyro negates half of the penalty for the second shot in a double-shot action (to -15, from the normal -30), and reduces the penalty for an aimed burst action (to -15, from the normal -20).
Other control programs are possible: A sniper rifle might be set to retract the Xenium shields when the finger is placed on the trigger so that an aimed shot can be made more accurately. This would add +10 to aimed shots but -10 for non-aimed shots. A sudden change of target or opportunity shot would suffer an additional -10 penalty (total -20) due to the difficulty of moving the weapon with the gyro active.

Weight: weightless

Spells used: N/A
Time to enchant: N/A

Note: the animated GIF image on this page was produced using POV-Ray, a free raytracer available on the Internet. The Power Macintosh version of POV-Ray was used. The source file which generated the image is also available. The POV source file is free for derivative use.

Note(1): BTW, this really wouldn't work. Anything encased in Xenium is weightless, but not massless. Consider a skyship of Eidolon as an example: When sailing in water at full mass the ship has a certain inertia X (where inertia is mass times velocity). As the ship lowered its Xenium shields if its mass were approaching 0, for inertia to be conserved its velocity would have to approach infinity. Thus, the skyship would be quickly propelled out of the Kulthean star system at faster and faster speed until it reached 3x10^8 km/sec, the speed of light in vacuum. At that point the ship's mass would be converted to energy, but since it would have no mass at that point the Universe would get very confused. The Universe gets cross when it gets confused, and we don't want that now do we?
Even though the physics don't work, its such a neat gadget I'm leaving it on the web page anyway.