[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Varyon

This would hardly be an issue for defensive engagement, where you can safely sling such monsters from behind the safety of rather thick walls. For offense, if may be worthwhile to assign the specialists given such weapons a dedicated pavisier, probably using a special two-handed pavise that is angled upward to increase effective DR against the fragments. Sling the bomb, then duck behind the portable cover. The big issue here is going to be one of friendly fire (as your less-elite troops in the area aren't going to have a dedicated pavisier to hide behind).

It's more dense than a rock and a 3-lb rock can be slung out to 80m by a man with some skill with a sling and decent muscle mass. A more typical ST 10 slinger ought to manage at least 55m, I should think, at least if he's using a two-handed staff sling and has been using sling since childhood. In any event, anything over 30 yards is probably more-or-less safe, if you're on a battlefield (in which case nothing is really safe, but a risk of injury or death that's way below 1%may be worth ignoring if there are other, more serious risks to worry about).

All the same, it's a weapon to treat with care and respect on the battlefield. Only issue it to sensible and level-headed specialists.

Originally Posted by Varyon

I would have suggested this earlier, but your previous comparison of alchemist's fire to Greek fire / naptha made me think you weren't going the "ignites when opened" route with your alchemist fire.

There is Thayan Fire, which is re-named Greek Fire from LT at $10 per pint, and there is Alchemist's Fire, from DF1, at $100 per pint. The latter self-ignites.

Originally Posted by Varyon

An issue with using alchemist's fire is that you pretty much have to have the outer shell made of metal, as otherwise cracking the vial is going to require cracking the shell, at which point you no longer have a proper explosion. If you want to be able to use an alchemist fire contact fuse with glass/ceramic bombs, some clever mechanism of a pin being pushed into the alchemist fire vial upon impact may be necessary. You'd need to design things so that aerodynamics favor the head of the pin being struck upon impact, however.

Impact will involve going from 30m/s up to 90m/s down to 0m/s in a very short period. That's a far greater shock than the acceleration of launch, which happens over a comparatively long time, relatively speaking.

I'm sure it's possible to design a mechanism which crushes a tiny glass vial inside it upon very rapid deacceleration. It might, however, have to be fairly expensive so as not to expose the troops to unreasonable risk of catastropic failure.

I'm thinking about a price range of $25 to $200 or so per fuze, with the sweet spot being around $50-$100. If they come out more expensive, the more reliable magical fuzes win out, whereas anything cheaper will likely be too dangerous to use and it's better to stick with a carefully made and measured quick-match with a cover of some sort.

I'm cool with there being two kinds, at least, a more complex pin-based one and a less complex one which works through deformation of metal casings. The former would be closer to the high end of pricing while the latter might approach the low end.

Originally Posted by Varyon

As for the size of the glass vials, I'd imagine experts could make truly tiny glass vials. If needed, a 1 mL glass vial would likely be possible, with very thin walls to facilitate breakage.

How much ought that cost?

Originally Posted by Varyon

The biggest issue with using alchemist fire for fusing is that the weapon is always "armed." Older grenades could be dangerous, but you typically need to actually light them before they were ready to go - accidentally dropping an alchemist fire fused bomb is going to most likely result in an explosion. For safety it may be possible to have some sort of "arming" step involved (for metal-cased bombs, a removable-but-resealable cork might work, wherein you pop it open, toss in the vial, close it and seal it up; for bombs using the pin mechanism, maybe the pins could be removable?), but this may result in an increase in mass...

I imagined that they'd insert an elongated tiny glass vial into a slot for a fuze just before engagements.

I imagine that the slot for the vial could be designed so that upon suddenly going from 30m/s to 0 in a sharp impact, the vial breaks, releasing the Alchemist's Fire to catch fire and leak into the shell. For any kind of projectile likely to deform, even slightly, this is an all but certain result of impact.

Others may require a more clever design, incorporating, as you say, some kind of pin.