Plasma weapons

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by Scottyvader

First shouldn't the rof of the flamer also be jet.
Second as far as I know it is not possible to "hose down an area" with a jet so that means that with a flamethrower you can only hit one person a round as if you were using a lever action riffle does this seem right?

The Basic Set doesn't have a lot of support for flamethrower-like weapons. A Jet is just treated as a pseudo-melee attack, able to hit any target within its reach without a range penalty. UT Flamers should be Jet weapons based on their description, but a Jet attack with a "reach" of over a hundred yards is pretty hard to swallow. The Flamers also have Acc, which doesn't apply to Jet attacks. All in all, they could probably use a rewrite.

High Tech (which came out after UT) has slightly more detail, and introduces All-Out Attack (Jet), which is similar to Spraying Fire with automatic weapons.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Varyon

I'd imagine a plasma flamer should indeed have RoF Jet, rather than 1. As for hosing down an area, I believe HT had some explicit rules for how to do that with a flamethrower, which should be easily adapted for the flamer (provided you change its RoF to Jet).

You could hose down areas with flamers in 3e. The (rather ad hoc) rules text for that wasn't brought forward into 4e.

Of course, general rules for this sort of weapon didn't replace various ad hocisms from 3e.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

a Jet attack with a "reach" of over a hundred yards is pretty hard to swallow

Huh? Contemporary flamethrowers can incinerate a target some 50–80 meters . The TL7 one is up to 75 yards in High-Tech.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Huh? Contemporary flamethrowers can incinerate a target some 50–80 meters .

The problem is the 'jet' mechanic as it exists in GURPS (which ignores range penalties), not the idea of a jet of material with long range.

[Scottyvader]

Don't those flamethrowers throw a flaming liquid explaining their long rang if this is so then plasma flamers may not benefit from the same as they do not use 50 pounds of fuel like a traditional flamethrower, instead dont they use a gasious plasma?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Scottyvader

Don't those flamethrowers throw a flaming liquid explaining their long rang if this is so then plasma flamers may not benefit from the same as they do not use 50 pounds of fuel like a traditional flamethrower, instead dont they use a gasious plasma.

The things about flamethrowers that make them need _some_ mechanic totally different from guns is that their attack is completely visible to the unaided human eye. It takes place within ranges where human depth perception is relatively good and endures long enough for human reflexes to compensate for being off-target.

I'm pretty sure flamethrowers would be even less accurately modeled if they were wedged into the system used for other Ranged weapons (especially the Rapid fire mechanic).

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I'm pretty sure flamethrowers would be even less accurately modeled if they were wedged into the system used for other Ranged weapons (especially the Rapid fire mechanic).

Actually, using some version of the rapid fire mechanics would probably improve modeling of flamethrowers, as it gives you a sensible distinction between holding the shot on target for a full second vs a fraction of a second and reasonably standardized spreading rules.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Actually, using some version of the rapid fire mechanics would probably improve modeling of flamethrowers, as it gives you a sensible distinction between holding the shot on target for a full second vs a fraction of a second and reasonably standardized spreading rules.

It sort of does, and sort of doesn't.

It breaks down depending on whether you represent a stream of plasma as RoF 300 of 1d shots, or RoF 15 of 20d shots (even for a recoilless weapon).

[apoc527]

To get this back on track, I'm kind of interested in exploring the idea of adding corr to the burn damage of the UT plasma weapons. I think that the weapons as written do a decent job of emulating the XCOM plasma weapons. For Halo guns, though, you'd need to massively reduce damage and greatly increase RoF.

I'd say that for a Halo style plasma rifle, a RoF 10, 8d(2) burn corr "plasma gun" would be about right. This gun will, on average, reduce the DR of armor by 5 per hit, while doing 28 damage per shot. Let's assume that ODST armor is about DR 60 in the torso. The first hit does nothing, but reduces the DR to 55. THe second also does nothing beyond singe the trooper a bit (1/2 point of damage, on average), but reduces the DR to 50. The third hit does 28-50/2 = 3 burn and further reduces the DR to 45. This is so far fairly accurate in terms of what happens in Halo. The fourth hit starts to hurt (28-45/2 = 5 burn, which is painful, but not a Major Wound) and reduces DR to 40. The FIFTH hit starts to really damage the marine (28-40/2 = 8 burn, which is a major wound on most humans), and cumulative damage is now 3+5+8 = 16, which is almost certainly putting the marine below 0 HP.

This is, frankly, almost exactly the pattern of Halo games on the non-Spartans. A sixth hit is striking DR 35 (28-35/2 = 10.5 burn) and causing very serious surface burning, while a seventh is probably lethal (28-30/2 = 13 burn, cumulative damage 16+10+13 = 39, enough for a couple death checks).

Now, keep in mind that this weapon is RoF 10, Rcl 1 (it's NOT Rcl 2 IMO), so a decent burst may actually hit with 5 shots.

For XCOM weapons, use the UT as written with corr instead of ex (I don't know if that's strictly legal, but I don't see why not)--3dx5(2) burn corr reduces armor by an average of 10 DR pe hit, and does 52 damage per shot. Against an XCOM operative with DR 60, the first hit does 22 burn (ouch), the second hit does 27, and the third does 32. Dead XCOM trooper. (And that's the plasma rifle...a "heavy plasma" is doing even more!)

I kind of like this model for plasma weapons a lot because it allows an armored hero to easily survive a few hits compared to the AD (5) of blasters, which, let's face it, normally put a hero into 0 HP after just 1 or 2 hits. Compare: 6d(5) vs DR 60 = 9 tbb per hit, which can hit Vitals, unlike the plasma guns above, meaning that 1 particularly well-placed blaster bolt will do 18 damage and take someone down very fast.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

It sort of does, and sort of doesn't.

It breaks down depending on whether you represent a stream of plasma as RoF 300 of 1d shots, or RoF 15 of 20d shots (even for a recoilless weapon).

I'd actually probably model it as around RoF 4. The RoF rules for high rate of fire are problematic, and all we care about is a mechanical effect, since it's not like a stream actually had a distinct RoF.