So talk to me about Universal Weapon Training if you will. Now on one hand I see the advantage of such a system which swiftly allows training in weapons but why does it group a stack of basic weapons or pistols etc. Surely it's hugely different using a Bolt Gun to a Melta Gun compared to a Bolt Gun and a Bolt Pistol? When I first heard about this I thought it would group say Melta Pistol, Basic and Heavy training together.

I mean if you were taught to use an AK47 in life does that mean it'd be easier to use a Grenade Launcher or a Beretta? Maybe i'm thinking to much into it so tell me if my logic is flawed.

Darkshroud said:

Coming from very heavily armed society myself and working in profession where I constantly come in contact with real life firearms and combat training I can say that in real life the difference between weapons isn't that big. It takes hundreds of hours to train someone to the point when he or she is handling firearms safely and shooting accurately under stress. However, even if all that training was done with only one type of weapon (like AK-47) once you do become proficient with weapons it takes maybe 15 minutes to learn to use a new type of weapon at acceptable level and only a fraction of the original hundreds of hours (we are talking about maybe a dozen hours) to become truly proficient with the new weapon type. Of course there is a huge difference between grenade laucher, machine gun and sniper rifle but in the end professional use of weapons is a state of mind. It doesn't come easy but once you have it adding new weapons to your list of tools is comparatively easy. I myself have been teached the basics of firearm usage with assault rifle in the military. After that time I have become familiar with literally dozens of different types of weapons, up to and including some stuff that is pretty far from basic assault rifle. Still been trained in the new weapons never took nowhere near as much time as the basic firearms and combat training did back then.

I have to agree with Polaria.

As a former U.S. Infantryman myself, I received a LOT of training with the M-16. However after the initial training I moved on to all of the weapons an Infantryman could concivebly use. The training for all of those weapons combined, took less than half the time it took me to learn to shoot in the first place. So yes, learning how to shoot one weapon makes it much easier to learn how to use any other weapon that is even remotly related, I.E. one firearm works basicly like any other firearm.

-Erich

The division, and even the naming scheme, between Basic, Pistol, Heavy and Melee weapons comes from the old tabletop days of Warhammer 40K. These were the classifications of weapons that different miniatures could be armed with and only certain minis could be armed with certain types of weapons. I still have old 40K rulebooks that say, for example, an Imperial Guard sergeant may take be given weapons from the Pistol or Melee list, one guardsman may exchange his lasgun for a weapon from the Basic list and two guardmen may form a heavy weapons team and a weapon from the Heavy Weapons list.

So, all it really is is a legacy and a little nod to us old tabletop players.

Ah of course the old TT system. It carries on to today I guess, 1 marine may have a plasma/melta or flamer and 1 marine may have a heavy bolter/missile/plasma etc.

I suppose it's represents the various fire arm training the explorers have recieved and like you forces people have mentioned it becoming easier.

Doesn't the arms master talent represent a person's ability to know their way around a weapon? If so I don't really get the premise of universal weapon training.

It's also worth pointing out that with the exception of Primitive, most Universal talents are gained at character creation. It's mostly there to save space, rather than listing all the different weapon groups the character is proficient with as individual talents.

I understand the universal rules, the only confusion is over the needle pistol under exotic. my Gm told me it was also covered by pistol universal but i'm not sure of that

Jarrion_Zukov said:

Because it isn't. You need to get Exotic Weapon Training (Needle). It covers needle rifles too.