Projectile Weapons

[Owen E Oulton]

"Now, what about a flamethrower? One of our characters uses a vintage WW2 flame-thrower as a weapon instead of his "standard" side-arm. Normaly, if he hits the target, I say "It's dead..." What would this look like in game-stats?"

It would look like the GM had drawn a large red "X" on the character sheet.

Guys, we're talking Star Trek here. Phasers make this look like a Bic lighter, and no Captain is going to put up with that sort of thing, not even a McHale in Starfleet uniform.


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[Diamond]

With a flamethrower, if you just say, "it's dead" you're missing out on a lot of drama and realistically appropriate horror. The target may be doomed, but take several turns to die. Be sure to describe the screams, the spastic, frantic convulsions, the target running mindlessly setting nearby combustables alight, the lingering burning patch, the secondary flames expanding and endangering nearby equipment and personell.

Starfleet officers using a flamethrower is about as genre appropriate as Starfleet officers using an iron maiden. Sure, it's effective at what it does. But that's not the only consideration.

[Dan Gurden]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Diamond:
With a flamethrower, if you just say, "it's dead" you're missing out on a lot of drama and realistically appropriate horror. The target may be doomed, but take several turns to die. Be sure to describe the screams, the spastic, frantic convulsions, the target running mindlessly setting nearby combustables alight, the lingering burning patch, the secondary flames expanding and endangering nearby equipment and personell.</font>

Not to mention the smell of burning napalm and the lingering smell of burnt copse after the fire has gone out...

And contrary to popular belief it does not in fact smell like victory...

I would be interested in hearing the players justification for carrying such a horrific (and terribly flawed in the era) weapon into a field of combat... That is without facing brig time and/or counselling...

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Dan.

"A couple of thoughts from a random mind!"
http://www.theventure.freeserve.co.uk

[StyroFoam Man]

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[John Raynor]

Re. flamethrowers:

"Star Trek" and flamethrowers are two great
tastes that definitely don't taste great
together (like, say, "milk chocolate" and
"hot-and-sour soup").

The Federation is a "nice" place, and I
strongly suspect that its inhabitants (yes,
even the ones serving in "quasi-military"
organizations like Starfleet) would regard
a napalm-belching flamethrower as typical
Americans would regard, say, the sacrifical
rites of the Aztec deity Xipe Totec, or the
horrific behavior of certain guerillas armies
in Africa (the ones that conscript child
soldiers, control them with regular beatings
and addictive drugs, and order them to routinely mutiliate uncooperative villagers
to terrify and demoralize the opposition).

I can see a member of Starfleet using a
flamethrower in an emergency, as an
impulsive "one time thing," but there should
be lots of disgust, guilt, and strange looks
from shipmates afterwards...

[StyroFoam Man]

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[Antonsb214]

For me, ballistic or KE weapons are the way to go when fighting the Borg. I thought of creating a hand-held pulse phaser to make things easier on my players. But that would be too simple. Then everyone would want one. But a PC replicating a firearm (with appropriate safeties offline) would show a bit more imagination if done and used in a dramatic manner. But not just any weapon. To me the Borg are heavily armored. An M-16 wouldn't cut it. An M-14 would, maybe. A railgun would definitely lay 'em low. Or a pulse rifle from "Aliens."

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"Retreat?! Hell, we just got here!"

[qerlin]

If the Borg can adapt to othre types of energy attacks, heat (infared energy) should be no problem to block against, too...

I'm surprised hand to hand attacks work...you'd think they could handle kinetic energy, too...hey, can't you just rewire the deflector disk for that?

As for the projectile weapons in Star Trek; unless I'm dealing with a low-tech world, I pretty much stick to the phaser. When you've got a Zippo that can blow apart a building on the high setting, guns seem prosaic.

[John Raynor]

Re. Flamethrowers vs. the Borg

I sense that the "flamethrower" issue is a
dead horse which has received such a beating
that it is on the verge of becoming a mere
grease-spot on the road, so let's try to
restore its relevance a bit...

Just how adaptable *are* Borg drones?

I'd say that they *should* be able to adapt
to *anything*, including purely physical
attacks (such as projectile weapons, blades
with mono-molecular edges, and so forth).
Flamethrower? Fine. The first few drones
die, but the rest develop thick, leathery,
fireproof skin, and a subcutaneous layer of
modified capillaries carrying some sort of
organic coolant (remember, Borg drones are
loaded with nanites, and perhaps "onboard"
micro-replicators, too). Slug-throwers?
Fine! Personal deflector shields "tuned" to
the molecular composition of the projectiles.

As I see it, the Borg can adapt to *any*
attack, but a given drone can't cope with
a wide variety of different kinds of attack
at the same time. A "fireproof" drone,
adapted to resist napalm, would have its
"adaptation resources" tied up in its new
fireproof skin and circulatory adaptations,
and might not be able to *also* whip up a
personal deflector shield for resisting
railgun bullets...

The Borg aren't stupid. They've met bullets,
napalm, and just about anything else that
player characters can imagine throwing at
them (they've had lots of victims). The
proper response to "Threat X" is stored,
somewhere, in the Collective's database.
It's just a matter of digging it up and
putting it to use...

[StyroFoam Man]

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[qerlin]

How 'bout spray on styrofoam?

[Dan Gurden]

This is definatly another classic example of differing GM styles...

I agree with the earlier post that states the Flamethrower is in no way an instant kill weapon.

In the first example with the Borg, in my game it would have been next to useless as the mindless drones carried on their actions, while the Biological parts simply burnt away... Until they 'died'...

Thats just how I would have run it... The important thing is that the Flamethrower was never designed as an instant kill weapon, but as a slow, lingering, painful death, and to cause horrendous injuries, and mostly as a Psychological weapon...

Thing is, in an age of forcefields and energy weapons, a short range napalm spray attached to a huge volatile fuel tank seems like a Huge, cumbersome and most importantly area effect target...

thats just another thing to think about...

As for stats, I have no idea, but if there are rules for fire damage then you have a basis, just remember that napalm is sticky and not easy to douse or wash off...

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Dan.

"A couple of thoughts from a random mind!"
http://www.theventure.freeserve.co.uk

[StyroFoam Man]

This message has been removed on request by the
poster

[Owen E Oulton]

"I'd like to see the Borg adapt to a flamethrower. Little mini water-jets? CO2 or foam emiters? Wrap'em in foil?"

Forcefields, just like they use for everything else.


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[Dan Gurden]

Styro, you may have missed the part where I gave a suggestion from where you can develop the appropriate rules from. On Page 117 of the DS9 core book and page 131 in the TNG core book there is a number of alternate sources of damage listed...

One of which is fire...

So it does 3+1D6 for a torch sized flame, and an extra +1D6 for each doubling of the size. Thats per turn.

I would also be willing to suggest tthat while Napalm is particularly nasty, it shouldn't qualify as double damage under Plasma or unusual fires...

So you are probably looking at 3+10D6 (the suggested total for a character completely immolated in a bonfire) for the initial gush of flame and then 3+XD6 per turn (this is where a dodge, clever use of cover or whatever else a character does to avoid the flame, comes in) until the character can somehow clear the sticky flamables from his body...

These rules are in greater detail in the rulebook.

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Dan.

"A couple of thoughts from a random mind!"
http://www.theventure.freeserve.co.uk