>>5217520>>5217547Oh hey anon! I guess I'm wrong, there ARE in fact examples in 40k of infantry scale accelerator guns and guess who makes them? Spoilers cause this is just more future plan posting so as not to clutter the thread
Now I tried to find more info that isn't just the wiki, but all I could find on the 8e Tau Codex is
>Tau rail weapons use linear accelerator technology to fire a solid projectile at hyper-velocity. They are capable of punching through the thickest of armour and of taking down the largest of enemies.
A Rail Rifle in 8e has:
>Range 30" S6 AP 1 and has rapid Fire
Meanwhile a Las Gun in 8e has:
>Range 24" S3 AP 0 and has rapid Fire
So at least going by the rules alone, they definitely are 1 for 1 a better weapon than a lasgun.
Looking up the munitorum book gives a bit more info on its development. Granted, if the Tau could do it I have no doubts now that there might be an STC out there (and even if they didn't I'd still bet there's an STC out there) but this is how they did it from scratch.
>This iteration of the rail rifle could not punch through a battle tank’s armour so effectively as the larger railguns, but it made a mockery of anything up to and including XV88 Broadside armour
>Early rail weaponsrequired substantial shielding in order to avoid flooding [...] with harmful levels of radiation. These shields were inevitably formed of super-dense metal alloys, and contributed greatly to the mass of the weapon.
>Amongst the developments was a new ceramic, named or’es’var – literally ‘mighty bulwark’. Originally conceived as an ablative hull material to counteract the devastating effects of the Imperium’s fleetborne nova cannons, the material was soon discovered to have unparalleled radiation absorption across a wide spectrum – and better than that, it was light, almost weightless.
Hah, so they had to steal Imperial Ceramite just to make the stuff? We already have that.
For mass production:
>Whilst the rail rifle officially remains exclusive to Pathfinder teams, there are persistent rumours that more compact versions of the weapon are currently being trialled by Fire Warrior cadres on the Tau Empire’s eastern fringe
So yeah, Accelerator Infantry Guns are definitely a thing that has precedence in the setting. And I'd bet both my eyes Talos could do it better than them. Or at least find the human STC of the superior version. 