are there high tech melee weapons in any book?
- Thread starter TheUnsane
- Start date
Rikki Tikki Traveller
Cosmic Mongoose
Most of the slugthrower weapons top out at TL 11 or so. Beyond that, personal weapons tend to be Battlefield weapons like the PGMP and FGMP.
There are essentially no personal weapons in the TL 12-15 range listed.
Sounds like an OGL product to me!
There are essentially no personal weapons in the TL 12-15 range listed.
Sounds like an OGL product to me!
Once you have good ranged weapons melee weapons become less useful (but no less lethal) and thee is less impetus for improving them - excepting special cases such as non-lethal things for law enforcement.
A rather poor example. You have a knife? Bully for you but I still have a good chance of brassing you first if I have a pistol and beyond touching range a thrown knife is a one shot weapon of greatly exaggerated potency - and I still have most of a magazine to run through - for you Tommy the war is over...
If something limited the use of smallarms (off hand only the shields in Dune come to mind) then melee weapons might start evolving again but without new technology is there even very much than can be done to better a good knife or a smallsword as a melee weapon? I doubt very much if there is, everything possible has pretty much been tried already, there have been some pretty strange melee weapons made though I suppose better materials might make them workable.
Now this does beg an interesting question, what technological advances in the Traveller setting would allow new or improved melee weapons? Gravetics might allow improvements in material if not design.
Long ago I remember reading an SF novel that had a lost Earth, cut off by an alien blockade, that had gone decadent and knives were no longer recognised as weapons. Interesting but I cannot see it happening, we are too aggressive a species to miss that one.
A rather poor example. You have a knife? Bully for you but I still have a good chance of brassing you first if I have a pistol and beyond touching range a thrown knife is a one shot weapon of greatly exaggerated potency - and I still have most of a magazine to run through - for you Tommy the war is over...
If something limited the use of smallarms (off hand only the shields in Dune come to mind) then melee weapons might start evolving again but without new technology is there even very much than can be done to better a good knife or a smallsword as a melee weapon? I doubt very much if there is, everything possible has pretty much been tried already, there have been some pretty strange melee weapons made though I suppose better materials might make them workable.
Now this does beg an interesting question, what technological advances in the Traveller setting would allow new or improved melee weapons? Gravetics might allow improvements in material if not design.
Long ago I remember reading an SF novel that had a lost Earth, cut off by an alien blockade, that had gone decadent and knives were no longer recognised as weapons. Interesting but I cannot see it happening, we are too aggressive a species to miss that one.
Rikki Tikki Traveller
Cosmic Mongoose
I wasn't just thinking Melee weapons but Personal Weapons, guns as well.
Mono-Filament Blades
Vibro-Blades
Energy Swords (Light Sabres)
Guns:
Gauss Pistols
Hand Flamers
Blasters (Hand Plasma Guns like the PPG of B5)
Stun Guns (Sonic and Energy)
Disintegrators (first as starship, then vehicle then personal weapons) [These are actually Traveller Canon in the Twilight's Peak adventure]
Gravity Guns (up and down)
Net guns (like Spiderman's webs)
Probably a lot others, but those are what comes to mind quickly.
All of these, and many more, could be put into Traveller stats, but the TL might be above Imperial, usable in ATUs if not the OTU.
Mono-Filament Blades
Vibro-Blades
Energy Swords (Light Sabres)
Guns:
Gauss Pistols
Hand Flamers
Blasters (Hand Plasma Guns like the PPG of B5)
Stun Guns (Sonic and Energy)
Disintegrators (first as starship, then vehicle then personal weapons) [These are actually Traveller Canon in the Twilight's Peak adventure]
Gravity Guns (up and down)
Net guns (like Spiderman's webs)
Probably a lot others, but those are what comes to mind quickly.
All of these, and many more, could be put into Traveller stats, but the TL might be above Imperial, usable in ATUs if not the OTU.
Oops, my mistake.
Light sabres don't make sense though, why does the beam not keep going instead of limiting itself to four feet or so? Sorry but I like things to have some sort of explanation beyond 'because it's cool'. Unless it is some sort of field rather than a beam of course...
Hand flamers. The problem is the fuel supply, they are going to be basically one shot weapons (which already sort of exists as the German HAFLA) or ineffective. Would they have a military use though? People would would hate these, flame-throwers are bullet magnets for obvious reasons to the extent that the Russians had one disguised as a rifle and normal backpack.
Gravity guns could be nasty - push and pull cycling very rapidly could shake things apart. Some setting or system had these. Fortunately too high a TL for use like the Ancient's Disintergrator's that I had completely forgotten about.
Net Guns. These might be real or almost so.
Stun Guns. I think these appeared in one of the Double Adventures, the one with the flying palace on a hick planet.
The problem for the Gauss pistol and blaster might be the power requirements though did Megatraveller not have a Gauss pistol and it would be nice. Even blasters work if you use self contained cartridges like Drake's powerguns.
Oddly I would resist including weapons with a TL over 15 to stop players wanting them!
Light sabres don't make sense though, why does the beam not keep going instead of limiting itself to four feet or so? Sorry but I like things to have some sort of explanation beyond 'because it's cool'. Unless it is some sort of field rather than a beam of course...
Hand flamers. The problem is the fuel supply, they are going to be basically one shot weapons (which already sort of exists as the German HAFLA) or ineffective. Would they have a military use though? People would would hate these, flame-throwers are bullet magnets for obvious reasons to the extent that the Russians had one disguised as a rifle and normal backpack.
Gravity guns could be nasty - push and pull cycling very rapidly could shake things apart. Some setting or system had these. Fortunately too high a TL for use like the Ancient's Disintergrator's that I had completely forgotten about.
Net Guns. These might be real or almost so.
Stun Guns. I think these appeared in one of the Double Adventures, the one with the flying palace on a hick planet.
The problem for the Gauss pistol and blaster might be the power requirements though did Megatraveller not have a Gauss pistol and it would be nice. Even blasters work if you use self contained cartridges like Drake's powerguns.
Oddly I would resist including weapons with a TL over 15 to stop players wanting them!
Rikki Tikki Traveller
Cosmic Mongoose
Actually there was a TV show on the Science of Star Wars that looked into Light Sabres.
Take a plasma generator and wrap in a force field and you have a light sabre. A magnetic bottle would contain the plasma.
HOW you get those things is not really explained, but with artificial gravity around, how much can you really argue about things like capped magnetic fields?
Take a plasma generator and wrap in a force field and you have a light sabre. A magnetic bottle would contain the plasma.
HOW you get those things is not really explained, but with artificial gravity around, how much can you really argue about things like capped magnetic fields?
captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
Rikki Tikki Traveller said:
All available evidence suggests quite a bit.
Talon Brightmane
Mongoose
klingsor said:
Or the danger of breaking the airtight seal on a non-armored spaceship or destroying delicate equipment (such as bridge controls) on an armored one.
Traveller has a history of using melee weapons in boarding actions/defense to avoid damaging a ship. A stray bullet to a power plant can leave you limping on emergency power (if your lucky) until repairs can be made.
CosmicGamer
Mongoose
My thoughts exactly. "This ship isn't falling into enemy hands!"zozotroll said:
"Kurt Jameson. Captain. Code zero zero zero. Destruct. Zero."
According to another thread: 1 Hull point is equal to 50 damage.
So any regular weapon up and including grenades can't hurt a spacecraft in any significant way. Only furnishing and control panels would be in danger, besides using grenades to clean your hold after you drop off that last delivery of alien cattle seems pretty convenient.
When it comes down to the use of firearms in boarding action I'd be far more worried about ricochet. Last thing you'd want to do is shoot the captain in the head and yourself in the ass with the same bullet.
So any regular weapon up and including grenades can't hurt a spacecraft in any significant way. Only furnishing and control panels would be in danger, besides using grenades to clean your hold after you drop off that last delivery of alien cattle seems pretty convenient.
When it comes down to the use of firearms in boarding action I'd be far more worried about ricochet. Last thing you'd want to do is shoot the captain in the head and yourself in the ass with the same bullet.
Light sabres – I still don’t think they fit in Traveller but you have eased my mind about them – I can see now how they could work in Star Wars – silly I know, but I worry about that sort of thing.
OK. Small arms are not much of a threat to a ships hull or maybe even the drives – I cannot help but see these as big as castings as if there were marine diesels, wrong I know but the image is there (and the smell), all painted in either gloss white or that odd shade of green with pipe runs picked out in other colours. Pipes are a potential target as are control systems and cable runs. At least we don’t have live steam to worry about, unless of course they still use steam turbines to go from heat produced by the fusion plant to electrical energy for the drives. Unlikely in the extreme I would think. If they still lay pipes the British way [1] then damage to pipes could be tricky to deal with but not as bad as some muppet putting a burst through the control system for the fusion plant – which is a good argument for having such critical systems very well protected.
Notes
1. British Olympic pipe laying, the first man gets a clear run, everyone else has to work around those who beat him too it leading to increasingly Byzantine pipe arrangements.
OK. Small arms are not much of a threat to a ships hull or maybe even the drives – I cannot help but see these as big as castings as if there were marine diesels, wrong I know but the image is there (and the smell), all painted in either gloss white or that odd shade of green with pipe runs picked out in other colours. Pipes are a potential target as are control systems and cable runs. At least we don’t have live steam to worry about, unless of course they still use steam turbines to go from heat produced by the fusion plant to electrical energy for the drives. Unlikely in the extreme I would think. If they still lay pipes the British way [1] then damage to pipes could be tricky to deal with but not as bad as some muppet putting a burst through the control system for the fusion plant – which is a good argument for having such critical systems very well protected.
Notes
1. British Olympic pipe laying, the first man gets a clear run, everyone else has to work around those who beat him too it leading to increasingly Byzantine pipe arrangements.
