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Old 10-24-2018, 01:33 PM   #31
mlangsdorf
 
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Default Re: [AtE] Wasteland vehicle improvised weaponry

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Originally Posted by acrosome View Post
I'm really amused at how some people want to make this sound impossible (that is, improvised vehicle armor) when people have been doing it effectively for about a century.
Say again? I just put out some numbers. I think it's very feasible to armor up a vehicle that can handle the weight, like the honking big truck or a premium automobile from the early 20th century.

No one is saying that you can't do this, or it's even hard. We're just talking about the trade-offs in various optimizations: armor the back of a truck? Slope the armor for potentially better performance? Use soft boiler steel or find or heat treat something harder?

Who in this thread is saying that it's impossible?
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Old 10-24-2018, 02:55 PM   #32
exalted
 
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Default Re: [AtE] Wasteland vehicle improvised weaponry

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I'm really amused at how some people want to make this sound impossible.
It certainly not impossible not even hard, I could do it in my garage easy but even professional attempts are usually unreliable, have poor performance, poor protection and problems from too much weight in the wrong places. In most cases you will end up with a armored behemoth that is more a mobile bunker then a fighting vehicle, without stabilized mounts for weaponry accuracy of fire will likely be atrocious when not staying still especially offroad.

In the wasteland I'd say speed, endurance and reliability might not be as fun but a lot more useful. In the worst case just run from what you can't hurt.

If you want to armor up go with maximum number of wheels, rated load, if possible duel powersources (with the highest hp/ton ratio you can get) and drive on four or more wheels also unless you have a electronics supplier any recently made car is likely to be a nightmare eventually so pre 90s is likely the best option. To me it seems simpler find an armored vehicle and get it going should be a few around nearly everywhere from WW2 historical artifacts to modern military and police vehicles.

Last edited by exalted; 10-24-2018 at 03:03 PM.
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Old 10-24-2018, 07:21 PM   #33
Luke Bunyip
 
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Default Re: [AtE] Wasteland vehicle improvised weaponry

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Originally Posted by exalted View Post
... In the wasteland I'd say speed, endurance and reliability might not be as fun but a lot more useful. In the worst case just run from what you can't hurt.
Point.


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Originally Posted by exalted View Post
... To me it seems simpler find an armored vehicle and get it going should be a few around nearly everywhere from WW2 historical artifacts to modern military and police vehicles.
(The following is specific to my setting, which is outback South Australia. YMMV)
Not as much as you'd possibly think. Possibly one or two Ferrets, and possibly some decommisioned M113 APCs. The Australian Army's's Boxers etc will be elsewhere, like on the other side of large deserts.

Armoured vehicle use by the various state police forces is extremely rare down here.

What the setting does have is the former home base of a mechanised infantry battalion, so there could be some stuff to scrounge from old stores and the armoury.
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Old 10-24-2018, 07:34 PM   #34
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Default Re: [AtE] Wasteland vehicle improvised weaponry

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Originally Posted by mlangsdorf View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by acrosome View Post
I'm really amused at how some people want to make this sound impossible...
Say again? I just put out some numbers. I think it's very feasible to armor up a vehicle that can handle the weight, like the honking big truck or a premium automobile from the early 20th century.

No one is saying that you can't do this, or it's even hard. We're just talking about the trade-offs in various optimizations: armor the back of a truck? Slope the armor for potentially better performance? Use soft boiler steel or find or heat treat something harder?
I'm ruminating upon what's offered upthread, and I'm just hearing that you have to pick the right chassis and powerplant. And given there's very little petrol in my setting (limited LPG), the later appears to be the kicker. But I must say, this thread has been very useful for me...
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Old 10-25-2018, 03:16 AM   #35
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Default Re: [AtE] Wasteland vehicle improvised weaponry

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You can use a small engine to spin a small wheel at very high RPM just above a second, freely rotating wheel... basically a baseball pitching machine, but it's sufficient to get crossbow bolts up to a couple hundred miles per hour, and it's almost an automatic weapon.
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Compressed air (spud gun 'o death, ammunition limited only by barrel dimensions)
Anyone game to try statting these, and a paintball gun adapted to fire darts?

Spoiler:  


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oxy acetylene powered vortex cannon (big, loud, short range dubious effect)

Water cannon (the unwashed masses may have spare water)
Yeah, nah. The former would be too valuable for car repairs/modifications, and as for the later... mmmn. Maybe not for a vehicle mounted weapon, but for a settlement would work for me. Something salvage from a former urban fire engine something.
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Old 10-25-2018, 04:38 AM   #36
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Default Re: [AtE] Wasteland vehicle improvised weaponry

Riffing off the water cannon idea, it doesn't have to just fire water (which if potable might be too much a valuable commodity for this) but other less valuable liquids might even have other useful knock on effects. A thicker opaque liquid might obscure windscreens, or just in general be more unpleasant, distracting and off-putting to be engulfed in.

Say for instance septage.


Quote:
Originally Posted by acrosome View Post
I'm really amused at how some people want to make this sound impossible (that is, improvised vehicle armor) when people have been doing it effectively for about a century. The original Rolls Royce armored car was built on requisitioned Silver Ghost chassis, and was actually pretty awesome for the era. A number of others were similar. And, no, you don't end up with the equivalent of an MBT, but you do end up with better small arms and fragmentation protection, which does count for a lot. (Especially in an AtE setting where you're hardly going to encounter RPGs behind every bush.) So now, just as when we all posted links to Khyber Pass copies to refute the people who thought it was impossible to build a functioning firearm yourself, here we go:

The Kurds have made quite a few impressive examples recently.

Other interesting stuff has come out pf the Syrian Civil War, too. Some look suspiciously like an A7V, built on construction-machinery chassis. In the video you can see them obviously being used en mass with combined arms tactics.

Drug cartels are getting into the act as well.

The Poles in WWII.

If you have some organization you can make pretty decent examples, like the Soviets did in WWII in some besieged cities. Though, those were almost official types, frankly.

So don't think so much about bolting plates onto an F-350. Instead, think of stripping the entire body off of the F-350, leaving only the chassis and powertrain. Then you can get a lot more creative and effective in your armored body design, including incorporating some slope. Or even better use a 10-wheeled dump truck or Caterpillar D7 or D9 dozer instead of the F-350. For inspiration, look what the British and Serbians did with the Caterpillars. The Israeli D9R at the top is even more impressive, though again that was more of an official type standard.
Nice!

Perfect is the enemy of the good and all that

Or the unofficial slogan of AtE is "make do and mend"
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Old 10-25-2018, 08:01 AM   #37
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Default Re: [AtE] Wasteland vehicle improvised weaponry

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Originally Posted by Luke Bunyip View Post
Anyone game to try statting these, and a paintball gun adapted to fire darts?
Bolt pitcher - This is a 6.5HP/kW lawn mower engine running a wide drive disk linked to a much smaller impulse wheel. The impulse wheel is rotating at about 300 mph. A gravity fed hopper feeds crossbow bolts onto the impulse wheel, at which point they're accelerated to 300 mph and sent downrange. It's heavy, bulky, unreliable, and not particularly accurate, but nevertheless a useful semi-automatic anti-personnel weapon.

Code:
Weapon        Damage  Acc  Range  Weight  RoF  Shots  Cost  ST  Bulk  Rcl  Notes
Bolt Pitcher 2d+2 imp  3  500/750  50/5    3   64(10) ???  16M  -10    2  [1, 2, 3]

[1] Unreliable. Malfunctions on a 15+
[2] 3i to reload the hopper magazine, can be topped out while in operation
[3] Requires 1 gallon of gasoline per hour to operate; engine takes an ST+2 roll, at 5 seconds per attempt, to start via hand pull
A bolt pitcher fires standard GURPS crossbow bolts.

Design Notes
* Each bolt has about 500J of energy at the muzzle, so this thing is only about 35% efficient in turning engine power into kinetic energy downrange.
* Damage was calculated using the realistic scale formula from the Deadly Spring, Pyramid v3 #33 p 8. Increase damage to 4d-1 if using the cinematic scale.
* Range was eyeballed against the compound crossbow from TDS.
* ST was eyeballed from High-Tech machine guns of similar weight.
* Bulk was eyeballed from High-Tech machine guns and then penalized for an extremely awkward shape.


Paintball gun adapted to fire darts
A paintball is a ~17mm diameter sphere, weighing less than 4 g, fired at around 90-110 m/s. That's about 50J of energy, the same as the Olympic Recurve Target Bow from TDS. Cinematic damage for a dart/bolt is around 1d or 1d+1 im, realistic damage is 1d-1 im.
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Old 10-25-2018, 08:13 AM   #38
exalted
 
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Default Re: [AtE] Wasteland vehicle improvised weaponry

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Originally Posted by Luke Bunyip View Post
Point.
(The following is specific to my setting, which is outback South Australia. YMMV)
Not as much as you'd possibly think. Possibly one or two Ferrets, and possibly some decommisioned M113 APCs. The Australian Army's's Boxers etc will be elsewhere, like on the other side of large deserts.

Armoured vehicle use by the various state police forces is extremely rare down here.

What the setting does have is the former home base of a mechanised infantry battalion, so there could be some stuff to scrounge from old stores and the armoury.
No fun vehicles in private ownership, museums or for film prop purposes? Guess it might be harder to import to Australia but there are usually a few nuts anywhere who want to drive a tank or AFV on their private land or want a tiger tank replica in their indie music video or short zombie film.

Around here in not very military Sweden I know of at least some Sherman tanks, a T-56 disguised as a Tiger, some soviet AFV's within 100km and that's just along roads I occasionally drive...at the same time all of those are fuel hogs so not much use if you don't have fuel to spare.

Last edited by exalted; 10-25-2018 at 08:17 AM.
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Old 10-25-2018, 09:21 AM   #39
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Default Re: [AtE] Wasteland vehicle improvised weaponry

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Bolt pitcher
<snip>
Paintball gun adapted to fire darts
Ta muchly. Just the ticket...
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Old 10-25-2018, 09:33 AM   #40
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Default Re: [AtE] Wasteland vehicle improvised weaponry

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No fun vehicles in private ownership, museums or for film prop purposes?
Two collections, one of which is open to the public.
The tanks, both current and historical, at Puckapunyal (which is off limits) and the private museum up in Cairns, QLD.

Mind you, there must be some M113s lurking around, as they would have needed some for the recent filming of Danger Close, the movie about the Battle of Long Tan.
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