The problem of Needlers

Fred Brackin · 07-22-2018, 07:46 PM

You see "needlers" in a wide variety of SF of a certain age and from there to rpgs influenced by them.

Spring rifles that shot needles go back (at least) to Gordon Dickson's D'Orsai and from there to the Vorkosigan Saga with stops in between such as a particularly improbable version in Battletech or possibly more properly in Mechwarrior since you don't attack 'Mechs with them. Anyway needlers are in the rpgs and the fiction associated with those games.

Also, riding this sort of "In the Future only _sharp_ projectiles will be effective!" meme is the similar concept of "flechettes" whch you see in Shadowrun and Honor Harrington in shotguns and shotgun-like weapons.

Also, there's a Gurps-specific problem with very high velocity very low caliber projectiles such as many Gauss weapons whether labeled as "needlers" or not. This is the "P-" issue.

In 3e all these sorts of weapons were relativley effective because they did Impaling damage and Rapid Fire was much more effective in producing multiple hits. The fast small caliber weapons weren't ever P- either. That was meant to apply to a very limited array of guns.

Also, light and/or concealable ballistic armor (kevlar and monocrys mostly) had a special weakness to Imp weapons.

In 4e all these weapons end up as P- which results in a general reduction of tissue damage by a factor of 4. The new concept of IT:Unliving makes then even less effective on robots, drones and light vehicles.

Rapid Fire is also strongly reduced in its' ability to produce multiple hits i 4e.

We even have a greater knowledge of flexible body armor which tells us that it was mostly early kevlar which was relativley vulnerable to very thin impaling weapons.

This is all very well for when you are creating a new and original SF setting. you now know that no one would ever invent these sorts of weapons. We even ahve a coupel of pages in UT demonstrating why no one would invent such weapons.

However, when adapting certain fiction or other rpgs you have all these people actually using these rather ineffective weapons and said weapons even beign portrayed as devastaing in those fictions.

I see several possible solutions.

The first is to revert the Damage type to Impaling. This increases tissue damage a lot while not improving things v. Unliving targets. It even helps the flexible armor problem some because it moves needlers away from the P class where modern and UT flexible armor is always strongest.

Then there is the possibility of lowering the Rcl stat. This could be either an innate quality of very light projectiles or related to the Very Rapid ROF rules from HT.

The very small caliber very high velocity bullets could benifit from a second velocty threshold over which all P weapons are at least straight P rather than being P-. The normal threshold for making sub 8 mm weapons P rather than P- appears to me to be c. 600 meters. A second threshold could be 1200 meters or some similar velocity.

Then there is a problem where even some relatively large caliber guns who get reduced in P class for using AP ammo. The effect on tissue damge is probably exaggerated to create a game mechnical distinction but it is the effect on Unliving targets that is the real isue. There can be a very narrow band of DR values where it makes any sense to use AP ammo. It can even make more sense to use HP.

This problem could be miitigated by flipping the rules for P class when attacking Unliving targets. Instead of lowering P class when using AP you would raise it v. Unliving targets. You'd lower the effect of HP as well. This would refect the way you want deep penetrating hits that break hard materials over shallow ones that produce wider channels.

This would certainly be more sensible for attacking vehicles and could even be justified v. zombies as about the only way to affect a zombie with a gun is to break its' bones.

These are all just a few ideas that have been percolating in my head for a while. feedback and other ideas are very welcome.

DocRailgun · 07-22-2018, 08:17 PM

Steyr would disagree with you s dar as never inventing flechette rifles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1W8iz8DyRw

Whoever made these flechette rockets used in Vietnam too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrNyiCYKjeI

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Also, riding this sort of "In the Future only _sharp_ projectiles will be effective!" meme is the similar concept of "flechettes" whch you see in Shadowrun and Honor Harrington in shotguns and shotgun-like weapons.

This is all very well for when you are creating a new and original SF setting. you now know that no one would ever invent these sorts of weapons. We even ahve a coupel of pages in UT demonstrating why no one would invent such weapons.

.

Anthony · 07-22-2018, 08:23 PM

I'd say 'pi-, but treat as Imp against DR'.

lwcamp · 07-22-2018, 08:51 PM

In my setting, needlers launch hypervelocity flechettes. They are engineered so the shock of striking flesh makes the stabilizing fins strip off, putting the center of pressure in front of the center of gravity which makes the flechette tumble. After rotating through about 90 degrees (so when it is going sideways), the mechanical stresses are enough to make it fragment, allowing it to deposit all of its energy in the target and carving out a large wound channel.
http://panoptesv.com/RPGs/Settings/V...r/Needlers.php
I haven't converted this to GURPS yet (although I hope to do so eventually), but one of these needle rifles would probably do about 8d+2(2) Pi with a standard steel flechette (armor piercing flechettes would increase the penetration somewhat).

Luke

Tinman · 07-22-2018, 11:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

We even ahve a coupel of pages in UT demonstrating why no one would invent such weapons.

What pages in UT?

Fred Brackin · 07-23-2018, 09:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tinman

What pages in UT?

The ones devoted to TL10 Gauss weapons (though they probab;ly don't do it deliberately). P.142 and its' weapon stats particularly.

The inferiority/uselessness of gauss weapons has been much debated on these pages so I won't do a rehash but I'd never equip any force I was responsible for with any gauss weapons except the shotguns or the grenade launchers.

Although the Partisan Needler on p.140 had my attention drawn to it lately. It weighs 12 lbs, does 2D P- and has a 1/2D of 75. It's inconvenintly heavy for squirrel hunting and certainly not what you'd equip feisty guerillas with.

Fred Brackin · 07-23-2018, 09:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DocRailgun

Steyr would disagree with you s dar as never inventing flechette rifles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1W8iz8DyRw

Whoever made these flechette rockets used in Vietnam too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrNyiCYKjeI

The Steyr is in HT and I'd heard of it before that anyway. It has to be regarded as a failed experiment. Interesting as a curiosity perhaps but nothing anyone would ever adopt for mass use. Sunstite "adopt" for "invent" if it makes you fel better.

I know about the flechete rockets too. I even saw film of their effects (mostly on trees) on the evening news when I was young. Their equivalent isn't in UT. HT makes them do Cutting damage because they fly sideways anyway

mlangsdorf · 07-23-2018, 12:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The very small caliber very high velocity bullets could benifit from a second velocty threshold over which all P weapons are at least straight P rather than being P-. The normal threshold for making sub 8 mm weapons P rather than P- appears to me to be c. 600 meters. A second threshold could be 1200 meters or some similar velocity.

This seems the most sensible solution to me. Hypervelocity rounds have enhanced fragmentation/wounding effects compared to slower rounds on the same velocity. It's modestly possible and there's apparently some support for the idea that the .220 Swift round was improbably successful at killing medium sized game. I'd raise the cut-off to 4400 fps (1350 m/s), since there's only 4 or so commercially available cartridges right now above that velocity, and it's reasonable to believe that we don't really understand their wounding mechanisms very well.

Giving HV rounds enhanced AP performance versus synthetic body armors would also help, and again, not be too unreasonable.

So you end up with a needler firing 15-20 grain projectiles at 4400 fps at the muzzle, for roughly 4d+2 pi (2 vs soft body armor). That's pretty respectable. Sure, you're trading off barrel life and it's still a 3KJ cartridge, so you're going to feel the recoil, but it's a reasonably dangerous weapon.

Jack Sawyer · 07-23-2018, 02:07 PM

Alot of it depends on how you design the flechette to work. If you're relying on yaw to do tissue damage then length to diameter ratio and diameter ('caliber') have a major impact on performance. Flechettes can be designed to break up or 'hook' but from what I've read this tends to be with softer materials (sort of like 'soft point' bullets) The Russians had a flechette firing rifle known as the AO-27 which fired a heavier (2.4 gram) flechette at ~1 km/s as opposed to various NATO flechette weapons (SPIW, etc) which fired a .7 gram flechette at around 1.4-1.5 km/s.

If the flechette doesn't yaw (IE designed more for armor penetration) then it will make a small hole (Fackler's limited discussion of flechettes highlights this drawback) but you can say the same of a lot of bullets if they don't yaw, deform or fragment.

It also depends on the number of 'shots' fired and how quickly they strike since multiple wound channels (especially if they hit vital areas) can be just as severe as one big one. There was one flechette source on dtic.mil which mentions 'synergistic' effect for 'hyperburst' flechette weapons (like the SPIW project, I believe) but I have yet to track down the original source. Best guess I can make is that they think multiple rounds hitting in close proximity and succession might exacerbate wound cavities through tearing via the temporary cavity (much as what happens with fragmenting rounds or shotgun buckshot, only using multiple projectiles) - but that is wholly surmise.

I'll have to see if I can track down some of the sources I might have for all that. Best I can do on short notice is:

Martin Fackler - Patterns of military rifle bullets

Globalsecurity flechettes

There may be ways to improve these things. We know that for autocannons there is the Penetrator with Lateral Effects design (courtesy of National Defense Industry Association powerpoints) and Frangible Armor piercing technology (full caliber and discarding sabot - also courtesy of NDIA). I'm not sure if it scales down, but for a sufficiently advanced sci fi setting you probably can handwave it on the grounds of 'possible/plausible.'

Also if you're setting deals with 'hard armor' targets then an 'eroding' penetrator design (sort of like APFSDS - relying on partial hydrodynamic penetration) could also produce spall/fragmentation damage (from the eroded armor and penetrator. In terms of armor vehicles I usually hear this described as 'behind armor effects'.) Something in the 2-4 km/s regime should qualify for this handily.

Edit: I'll also note that armor penetration is a pretty complicated subject in and of itself and there are alot of nuances and variables in it. For example if you confine yourself to 'non-eroding' penetrators (modern small arms basically) you can have different kinds of ammo perforate different kinds of ballistic armor plate depending on the construction of both. Steel plates stopped M855 steel 'tip' but polymer plates didn't at close range. Steel didn't stop M193 at close range but it stopped M855. Both can be perforated by the newer M855A1. And all those plates can be rated to stop M80 7.62 NATO ball (that is in fact NIJ level III). Ceramic armor of all kinds can stop those rounds too, but because of the way it works it has poorer multi-hit than a steel plate (and most ceramic plates - heck most rifle plates I've seen - are rated by shot spacing as well. If the shots land too close to each other, or on the edge, they may not stop the round. This is part of NIJ standard as well.)

That means if you have multiple hits landing in close proximity you could probably defeat certain kinds of armor that way, as well (one of the supposed 'benefits' of a hyperburst rifle like the AN-94 or G-11)

Rupert · 07-23-2018, 05:25 PM

In my view, needlers/flechettes/gauss darts having pi- is a feature, not a bug. When equipped with highly penetrating designs (reflected in GURPS by making them APEP, hyperdense, or whatever it is that gauss rounds are) this gives them a large ratio between penetration and wounding, which valuable for being able to injure PCs wearing armour without killing them horribly dead.

A gauss rifle will chew up an unarmoured person quite handily without a shot or two turning them into pink mist, yet will threaten someone in DR65. I consider this a great GM tool.

07-22-2018, 07:46 PM	#1
Fred Brackin Join Date: Aug 2007	The problem of Needlers You see "needlers" in a wide variety of SF of a certain age and from there to rpgs influenced by them. Spring rifles that shot needles go back (at least) to Gordon Dickson's D'Orsai and from there to the Vorkosigan Saga with stops in between such as a particularly improbable version in Battletech or possibly more properly in Mechwarrior since you don't attack 'Mechs with them. Anyway needlers are in the rpgs and the fiction associated with those games. Also, riding this sort of "In the Future only _sharp_ projectiles will be effective!" meme is the similar concept of "flechettes" whch you see in Shadowrun and Honor Harrington in shotguns and shotgun-like weapons. Also, there's a Gurps-specific problem with very high velocity very low caliber projectiles such as many Gauss weapons whether labeled as "needlers" or not. This is the "P-" issue. In 3e all these sorts of weapons were relativley effective because they did Impaling damage and Rapid Fire was much more effective in producing multiple hits. The fast small caliber weapons weren't ever P- either. That was meant to apply to a very limited array of guns. Also, light and/or concealable ballistic armor (kevlar and monocrys mostly) had a special weakness to Imp weapons. In 4e all these weapons end up as P- which results in a general reduction of tissue damage by a factor of 4. The new concept of IT:Unliving makes then even less effective on robots, drones and light vehicles. Rapid Fire is also strongly reduced in its' ability to produce multiple hits i 4e. We even have a greater knowledge of flexible body armor which tells us that it was mostly early kevlar which was relativley vulnerable to very thin impaling weapons. This is all very well for when you are creating a new and original SF setting. you now know that no one would ever invent these sorts of weapons. We even ahve a coupel of pages in UT demonstrating why no one would invent such weapons. However, when adapting certain fiction or other rpgs you have all these people actually using these rather ineffective weapons and said weapons even beign portrayed as devastaing in those fictions. I see several possible solutions. The first is to revert the Damage type to Impaling. This increases tissue damage a lot while not improving things v. Unliving targets. It even helps the flexible armor problem some because it moves needlers away from the P class where modern and UT flexible armor is always strongest. Then there is the possibility of lowering the Rcl stat. This could be either an innate quality of very light projectiles or related to the Very Rapid ROF rules from HT. The very small caliber very high velocity bullets could benifit from a second velocty threshold over which all P weapons are at least straight P rather than being P-. The normal threshold for making sub 8 mm weapons P rather than P- appears to me to be c. 600 meters. A second threshold could be 1200 meters or some similar velocity. Then there is a problem where even some relatively large caliber guns who get reduced in P class for using AP ammo. The effect on tissue damge is probably exaggerated to create a game mechnical distinction but it is the effect on Unliving targets that is the real isue. There can be a very narrow band of DR values where it makes any sense to use AP ammo. It can even make more sense to use HP. This problem could be miitigated by flipping the rules for P class when attacking Unliving targets. Instead of lowering P class when using AP you would raise it v. Unliving targets. You'd lower the effect of HP as well. This would refect the way you want deep penetrating hits that break hard materials over shallow ones that produce wider channels. This would certainly be more sensible for attacking vehicles and could even be justified v. zombies as about the only way to affect a zombie with a gun is to break its' bones. These are all just a few ideas that have been percolating in my head for a while. feedback and other ideas are very welcome. __________________ Fred Brackin

07-22-2018, 08:23 PM	#3
Anthony Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Berkeley, CA	Re: The problem of Needlers I'd say 'pi-, but treat as Imp against DR'. __________________ My GURPS site and Blog.

07-22-2018, 08:51 PM	#4
lwcamp Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: The plutonium rich regions of Washington State	Re: The problem of Needlers In my setting, needlers launch hypervelocity flechettes. They are engineered so the shock of striking flesh makes the stabilizing fins strip off, putting the center of pressure in front of the center of gravity which makes the flechette tumble. After rotating through about 90 degrees (so when it is going sideways), the mechanical stresses are enough to make it fragment, allowing it to deposit all of its energy in the target and carving out a large wound channel. http://panoptesv.com/RPGs/Settings/V...r/Needlers.php I haven't converted this to GURPS yet (although I hope to do so eventually), but one of these needle rifles would probably do about 8d+2(2) Pi with a standard steel flechette (armor piercing flechettes would increase the penetration somewhat). Luke

07-23-2018, 02:07 PM	#9
Jack Sawyer Join Date: Jul 2018	Re: The problem of Needlers Alot of it depends on how you design the flechette to work. If you're relying on yaw to do tissue damage then length to diameter ratio and diameter ('caliber') have a major impact on performance. Flechettes can be designed to break up or 'hook' but from what I've read this tends to be with softer materials (sort of like 'soft point' bullets) The Russians had a flechette firing rifle known as the AO-27 which fired a heavier (2.4 gram) flechette at ~1 km/s as opposed to various NATO flechette weapons (SPIW, etc) which fired a .7 gram flechette at around 1.4-1.5 km/s. If the flechette doesn't yaw (IE designed more for armor penetration) then it will make a small hole (Fackler's limited discussion of flechettes highlights this drawback) but you can say the same of a lot of bullets if they don't yaw, deform or fragment. It also depends on the number of 'shots' fired and how quickly they strike since multiple wound channels (especially if they hit vital areas) can be just as severe as one big one. There was one flechette source on dtic.mil which mentions 'synergistic' effect for 'hyperburst' flechette weapons (like the SPIW project, I believe) but I have yet to track down the original source. Best guess I can make is that they think multiple rounds hitting in close proximity and succession might exacerbate wound cavities through tearing via the temporary cavity (much as what happens with fragmenting rounds or shotgun buckshot, only using multiple projectiles) - but that is wholly surmise. I'll have to see if I can track down some of the sources I might have for all that. Best I can do on short notice is: Martin Fackler - Patterns of military rifle bullets Globalsecurity flechettes There may be ways to improve these things. We know that for autocannons there is the Penetrator with Lateral Effects design (courtesy of National Defense Industry Association powerpoints) and Frangible Armor piercing technology (full caliber and discarding sabot - also courtesy of NDIA). I'm not sure if it scales down, but for a sufficiently advanced sci fi setting you probably can handwave it on the grounds of 'possible/plausible.' Also if you're setting deals with 'hard armor' targets then an 'eroding' penetrator design (sort of like APFSDS - relying on partial hydrodynamic penetration) could also produce spall/fragmentation damage (from the eroded armor and penetrator. In terms of armor vehicles I usually hear this described as 'behind armor effects'.) Something in the 2-4 km/s regime should qualify for this handily. Edit: I'll also note that armor penetration is a pretty complicated subject in and of itself and there are alot of nuances and variables in it. For example if you confine yourself to 'non-eroding' penetrators (modern small arms basically) you can have different kinds of ammo perforate different kinds of ballistic armor plate depending on the construction of both. Steel plates stopped M855 steel 'tip' but polymer plates didn't at close range. Steel didn't stop M193 at close range but it stopped M855. Both can be perforated by the newer M855A1. And all those plates can be rated to stop M80 7.62 NATO ball (that is in fact NIJ level III). Ceramic armor of all kinds can stop those rounds too, but because of the way it works it has poorer multi-hit than a steel plate (and most ceramic plates - heck most rifle plates I've seen - are rated by shot spacing as well. If the shots land too close to each other, or on the edge, they may not stop the round. This is part of NIJ standard as well.) That means if you have multiple hits landing in close proximity you could probably defeat certain kinds of armor that way, as well (one of the supposed 'benefits' of a hyperburst rifle like the AN-94 or G-11) Last edited by Jack Sawyer; 07-23-2018 at 02:21 PM.

07-23-2018, 05:25 PM	#10
Rupert Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Wellington, NZ	Re: The problem of Needlers In my view, needlers/flechettes/gauss darts having pi- is a feature, not a bug. When equipped with highly penetrating designs (reflected in GURPS by making them APEP, hyperdense, or whatever it is that gauss rounds are) this gives them a large ratio between penetration and wounding, which valuable for being able to injure PCs wearing armour without killing them horribly dead. A gauss rifle will chew up an unarmoured person quite handily without a shot or two turning them into pink mist, yet will threaten someone in DR65. I consider this a great GM tool. __________________ Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history."