manu

Some thoughts about the whole Arasaka intervention

Considering the timeframe, I wonder about something (and the PCs will probably do the same) : why did those nice Guys in Black act only once they deliver the babe ?

They were probably watching the place, and one could have expected them to intervene when the PCs and the babe are in the street, rather than waiting them to  be into a building, with potentials security/lawsuits/media repercussions.

If all you can tell them about it is ‘huh, strange coincidence, neh ?’, odds are they’ll feel screwed.

Some plausible explanations :

* They want to catch the pimp with his pants down to the ankles (figuratively, or maybe even literally), rather than relying on the worthless testimonies of equally worthless streetscums to trace him to the babe’s rapt/detention

* They might be coming for the babe and the pimp, but they jumped on the opportunity to screw the PCs into working for them (how come you didn’t figure out the guy was involved in white slavery ? forget about Arasaka’s rep, if you do us a favor and testify right to screw that bad guy, we’ll give you legal counsel and you’ll be out really quick. Of course you’ll owe us big, but there’s no price for freedom isn’t it ?)

If he's playing a corporate, well, it's hardly surprising for him to be unaware of streetslang - but this will make him more spotable as a suit.

If they made money out of it, well, it was a good reason to keep it going (at least from a business pow)

Well, emotional testimonies of horrible facts tends to be suspicious since the 'iraki soldiers throwing newborns out of incubators' scam of gulf war I

But a trial would have been better.

Note : I didn't know the mess took 6 hours to solve, and granted it tends to prove that more than a token effort was made to get them alive. And that Udaï and Qusaï had quite iron-gilded balls, even if lacking any other redeeming personnlity trait.

This won't change that some peoples are probably sleeping better knowing they're dead and can't tell about less than ethical past deals.

I wonder if saddam will get caught alive or also be found dead. Here again, many people will find him more convenient dead than alive and trialed (at least nobody's going to try taking hostages to ask for releasing him from a grave)

My overall impression is that not much effort was (well, hnonestly, about none) was made to get them alive.

Sure they largely deserved getting killed, but it gives me a feeling that a death in combat was more convenient than a trial, which might have dug up embarassing question about weapon trades prior to Gulf War 1 (remember where those anthrax (and other) batches came from... But everyone is involved - US biostuff, german chemistry, french nuclear reactor int hte 80s, russian weapons...)

A dead body might spill it's guts, but only in the litteral sense.

That energy transfer is, in the end, putting heat into the gazes to slow the drop of the pressure spikes once the bullet start to move in the barrel.

For those who don't know about physics, a gaz behave according to the following law (well, closely enough for our purpose) :

pressure x volume = mass x temperature x coeffecient (varies with the nature of the gaz)

temperature being in Kelvin degrees - obviously that law won't apply close to liquefaction point, but that's enough of a rere occurence in firearms to be neglected

Since the volume is fixed by the position of the bullet in the barrel, increasing the temperature means higher pressure, hence more push on the bullet, which means more energy (speed) transfered to the bullet.

Basically you can either :

- heat your barrel enough so it will transfer heat to the gases

- channel electricity through the gazes. The electric arc will heat the gazes directly

Obviously the channeling option is more effective, as you get a better transfer of your energy, and don't bother with heating the whole barell. But it's more complex to implement.

Quote (psychophipps @ July 01 2003,02:48)

The "energy enhanced" idea in 3G3 is 1) better explained, 2) actually researched, 3) much more realistic, and 4) not written by an untrained idiot who couldn't be bothered to take a trip to the library.  Let's hear it for the lazy fanboys at RTG! The best part about the EE (if you can't guess what I mean then you don't deserve a clue) weapons is that they simply need a wiring setup to transmit the energy to the hot gasses in the barrel.  This way you can use caseless, cased, and binary receiver types and use standard ammunition.  The modifications are fairly simple in nature, don't add much mass, and can be done quickly and fairly cheaply by a competent gunsmith. Mark(psycho)Phipps( HAHAHA! )

I suppose that thise wiring is somehow inside the barrel, with aonly a relatively thin abrasion-resistant coating. Otherwise you would have to keep your barrel hot - it the wiring is external to the barrel it'll never get hot quickly enough.

the first solution probably means a relatively short barrel life - which will be a concern for a regular issue weapon, much less for specforce types.

In the second case, you'll have to worry about dilatation warping the barrel, insulating the barrel to limit enery drain and heat hazards, which will make the whole system a real pita to design. Tough it can certainly fire in 'cold' mode, but it will probably require some time to 'warm up' to full effect.

With modern designs of spike belts, there's no need for explosives - a bladed design, using stuff like orbital alloys and other goodies will turn anything but a tank thread to shreds.

Even a polymer-cored tyre will get shredded. Sure the intened target won't be stopped dead in it's tracks, but it won't get far.

Not about the EMP-riffle carrying drone : this would be 100% effective only on run fo the mill car - recent security/milspec vehcles will probaably be able to withstand the hit, even if they loose some functions ('base' electronics like injection should be EMP-proofed)

This reminds me of the 'running mines' from Runaway - those pesky air-cushionned, self propeled landmines.

Once you get the delivery system, you can fit almost any kind of payload on it, even some kind of syringe-like system to pump chemicals into the target vehicle if it's floor is thin enough.

But such a whelled system can only be used on relatively smooth terrain, other it'l bump too much to be used effectively if speeds gets up.

what would be the point of such a weapon ?

The ballistics is likely to be poor, as even a minor deviation (thanks to wind or whatever) will send you disk flying at random as soon as it tilts off it's motion axis

You might alleviate this by having it spinng on itself real fast dor some gyroscopic stabilisation, but i'm not sure this would be enough 'an it il tend to add much to design's complexcity)

Effect on targets : really messy flesh wounds, a monocristal-based disk is likely to chew through kevlar, but the circular shpe will also mean a tendancy to bounce off hard armor, unless it hits exactly perpendicular to the surface.

All balanced, I see this rather as an exercise in pervert engineering rather than a practical weapon.

If you want to dispatch lightly armored guys in a gory way, better use an autoshotgun with flechette ammo. Dogmeat time, and way more simple and cheap.

They tend to usually go along in a peaceful, but tense manner - packing a .50 on a vheicle without proper permit is tecnically illegal, and a HiWay cop sould, by law, coerce the nomad doing so to remove it. And from a nomad pow, HiWay are tools of The Man, who would like to stomp hard on their ability to defend themselve.

What saves them is that they tends to dislike the same kind of peoples (raffens shivs and other scums), this makes wonder to defuze the situation. A nomad won't mind telling some HiWai cop about a really nasty gonk nearby, both to rid the world of some scum and rid himself of a nosey cop.

Not what I would call a cordial relationship, but one that works. Both know about each other and take steps to prevent open conflict.

Max Tac is another name for Psycho Squad alias C-SWAT - those big-guns happy borderline psychos who handles rampaging borgs or any other cases too though for you regular SWAT, and too small-scale to require the army to stomp it's boots on the problem

HiWay Patrol are charged with securing the Interstates and other higways. Since most people moved to the large towns, most of rural USA is either extensive corporate farms (where soil is good), a dustbowl on it's way to turn Mad Max when you can't scrap money out of it. They have much leeway in how to handle criminals, and usualy don't bother hauling them 200 miles to the next police station. Considering the amount of nomad packs, go-gans and the like roving the interstates, they tend to be well equiped and very though.

Looks like another declination of the hollowpoint concept - fine to trash nudies in as messy a way as possible (buckshot being ideal), but it will splat miserably on any decent body armor.

I just stumbled on the post and would put my grain of salt in it

What really irked me in the initial post was the "automatic called shot" - that's plain insane, as bow are, on average, less acurate than bow, and the flight time of the arrow makes called shots at a moving target a really tricky business. Any gn should get the same benefits.

On memory materials

Having a arrow that gets pointyer when hitting a hard armors sounds weird  - this would take a shock-activated, exceedingly fast shape change.

Better get a really sharp and pointy arowhead (AP arrow), which, once stuck in flesh, react to a hot and salty environnement to broaden and grow nasty anchoring points, giving a really nasty wound and making it a real pain to pull out.

This remove the 'instant shape change' problem out of the equation, and makes the design way more credible.

Depednign on the players, but I think that the basic go there/grab that approach won't help them growing out of 'dungeons & drug dealers' approach.

I have no british-oriented scenarios, but I'll look to what I've around if I find something usable

Question : are you using england as described in 'rough to the UK' or your own declination of it ?

A quick and dirty way to add up armor lyaers (worn and implanted, cover is added at face value)

full value for the strongest armor + 1/2 of second-thickest layer + 1/3 fo the third and so on.

In the light grade skinweave + costume case, this would net 6+2 = 8 (which is lower than simple addition, not higher as per layering rule)

skill should play only a marginal role in supressive fire - the whole point is to lay down a hail of lead and let the other idiot fet into harm's way, not actually pointing your gun at anything.

Looks like a great way to totally mess up someone in a short time frame. Prefect for suicide squads, but nobody in his right mind would use such stuff (well, if informed of the drawbacks).

Is there a way to sustain the treatment to avoid croaking off two years later ?

well, I don't see an anti-tank railgun ever being an infantry weapon - the amount of kinetic energy required to kill an MBT is such that the recoil would send the poor schmuck flying appart.

Today's APFDS tank ammo shoot a 5 kg projectile at somehting like 1 000 m/s. Which means the recoil from the projectile, barring gases, sabot and all, will throw back a 100 kg peon at 50 m/s (150 km/h...). Obviously massive recoil compensation is required there.

note : these are quick and dirty calculation to check the magnitude of the problem

well, those designs simply use Joules effect (generating heat by passing electricity through a resistive medium) to build up heath and pressure into the gun in a more controlable fashion than by burning stuff.

The basic idea is to pump energy after the pressure spike to get a better 'push' on the porjectile.

Fire them three times in arow to destroy your arms (8+ damage points...)...

Once it's done, get two cyberarms and keep using the guns - or get meat replacement and use more reasonable guns.

To get a look inside and/or grab the guy, you can also fall back on the tried-and-true Invisibility suit : pizza guy clothing... Just don't forget that it will not work on a 7'+ feets, half-metaled solo.

This should work fine with a netrunner who's likely to get most of his stuff delivered rather than facing the hassles of meatwalking.

Juste make sure to operate the substitution far enough from the target to reduce the likelihood of videosureveillance spotting you.

Not that I know of - it's from FASA

They also published the Renegade Legions/centurion/

leviathan sci-fi combat tabletop games, as well as the very funny Circus Imperium (when Ben Hur meets Predator... half joking only)

I tend to play fairly realstic games - if you do something stupid, you face serious problems, and probably die. But I halso have a fondness for underdogs, and don't like players who pull off an equipment sheet rather than a character.

this means I tend to be more favorable to peoples who think creatively and use A-team styel tinkering, and tends to penalize people who tell 'well, I put $$$ in a cyberarm fire system, an accurized ETE Malorian with cyberbetic triangulation so I can get that +5 to shoot no matter what...', packs on as much armor as possible and then go on a terminator-stryle shooting spree.

I had a lot of fun with some scenario where the players (or me as a player) begun the game stranded in sme unpleasant place, with about the clothes ont heir backs and a knife, and had to 'borrow' equipmement from the bad guys before getting serious with business.

The main problem with allowing relatively powerfull HEP rounds for pistol caibers is the effect it should logically have on larger ammo.

If you can pack enough explosive in a .44 bullet (about 1 to 2 cm3) to get an efective HEP efect, imagine what kind of mess could be caused by that same explosive packed into a 40mm grenade (something like 50 cm3) - roughly 30 times more explosive should yeld at least 10 to 20 times the damage. which would blow up about anything including fully armored vehicles. Don't even think about peoples.