The Origin of the "Shuriken Gun" ?
- Thread starter rust
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far-trader
Mongoose
kristof65 said:
Nope, hollow points will expand (and typically fragment) upon impact, even with soft tissue. They are specifically designed to create more damage and reduce over-penetration. They are less able to defeat armour though as the trade off. This usually only matters for actual bullet resistant armour and the target will still suffer the concussive effect of course. How it performs against the natural armour of you K'kree will be up to you
kristof65 said:
Yep (I think I edited on the fly adding that
), and your ideas of it as a terror weapon could work. I can see that.Krap - minor correction - my aliens are the K'klk - I don't know why I typed K'kree.
So have we established one viable use for shuriken guns - terror weapons? Or would a shotgun loaded with shrapnel be more effective? I'm thinking it would depend on the effective ranges of both weapons.
So have we established one viable use for shuriken guns - terror weapons? Or would a shotgun loaded with shrapnel be more effective? I'm thinking it would depend on the effective ranges of both weapons.
OTOH, wounded soldiers (of the human variety) can carry a grudge against the enemy that wounded them a long, long time...DFW said:
Still looking around at other uses for the shuriken gun - how would they be in shipboard combat? We've established that a conventional bullet of equal mass probably has better penetrating power than a disc, but might that be a good thing on a ship, where you're probably probably looking to damage the occupants or intruders more so than the ship itself?
far-trader
Mongoose
kristof65 said:
:lol: I like the "K" but did you mean "K'krap - minor correction... "
No worries, that makes it cooler. I thought you'd just modified the K'kree. A whole new alien species is even better. Care to share (or did I miss it?) a writeup? Unless you're saving it for publication.
kristof65 said:
I think it's a fair candidate/idea.
far-trader
Mongoose
kristof65 said:
Now that you mention it...
...I have a vague recollection (or it could be simple suggestion on your part playing tricks with my memory) of that being proposed. That a slash in a vacc-suit is more effective at removing a combatant than a hole. It's a bigger leak, harder (or impossible) to patch/antileak. And doing less damage to the ship is a good thing. Does the weapon stat present in such a way though? Is it a (vacc-suit) armour defeating slashing weapon with little penetration?
Hmm, another thought. Stolen from infomercials, what if instead of a simple spinning disc it were two closely fitted counter spinning discs with armour biting toothed blades. Like that powersaw with the two counter spinning blades? Would the impact be enough for the blades to cut? Or would it bounce off? Or either depending on the variables? Or am I treading too close to the rocket powered chainsaw above
That's fine for long range weaponry, but if I'm close enough to an enemy to be in range of his small-arms fire or grenades, I want that guy dead, dead, Dead!
Regarding space suits, suppose I have a choice between two weapons. One is designed to penetrate the suit and kill the guy inside. The other is designed to slash up his suit - if doesn't hit something solid like a controll panel or coupling ring, and might make a tear big enough to defeat the auto-seal mechanism, and could possibly therefore cause an irrepairable air leak (which if it's on a limb might be defeated anyway by the limb being sealed off) and therefore may or may not lead the target to be disabled or possible killed as a third-order side effect. Guess which one I'm going to go for? The suit isn't a big priority for me, if it gets damaged or not doesn't relay bother me becasue it isn't the suit that is shooting back at me, it's the guy inside that's doing that. Give m a weapon that will take him out, please.
Terror weapon. Terrorists get the big headlines for how many poeple they kill, not how many people get sent to accident and emergency with a nasty cut.
Now, shipboard combat I can see being a possibility, but I still think shotguns would be more practical. They might also be a useful hunting weapon for some types of prey, so some millitia or criminals might have them because it's what they have to hand.
Simon Hibbs
Agreed. Aside from being good at scaring people (seeing a flurry of shurriken firing at you), the big advantage will be in causing long, narrow 'wounds' rather than a through-and-through wound like a bullet. In most cases this won't be that great - it helps where you're trying to do damage to a surface layer, such as a vacc suit, or to slice up lots of tentacles/cables/whatever
The weapon stat doesn't present it in any such way, though. It's essentially a higher TL gauss rifle* (and frankly, if you object to the kewl factor, it's easiest just to treat it that way)
* In fact I think it's currently the highest TL solid projectile weapon in MGT
DFW said:
I don't think it's quite as simple as that. It is true that various militaries have experimented with and even deployed 'non-lethal' and 'low lethality' weapons of various kinds. Generaly these are either designed for use in police actions, or they are long range area-of-effect weapons.
On the other hand if you were to ask your average squaddie on his way to the theatre of battle whether he'd rather carry this here weapon designed to hurt the enemy realy bady, or this here other weapons designed to kill the enemy stone dead, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind which they would choose and doctrine be damned.
Now try telling said squaddie that sorry but the top brass say he has to carry weapon one, while the other side equipped their soldiers with weapon two, and see what happens to his enthusiasm for The Cause.
When I wass in the TA one of the recruits asked our NCO if the then new SA80 caused as much damage to the target as the old SLR. He said probably not, but it don't half make their eyes water and you get twice as many bullets so just shoot the b***ger twice.
Edit: I have hard of the theory that 5.56mm assault rifles were introduced due to this doctrine of wound don't kill. I don't believe that's true. It was a reasoned tradeoff between higher magazine capacity and automatic fire on one hand and marginaly lower lethality (per bullet). However the tradeoff is the important point. They didn't just choose a less damaging weapon, rather they chose a more effective weapon overall that happened to be a bit less damaging per individual shot (but you get more of them). That's not an argument for simply choosing or making weapons that are less damaging with no other counterballancing benefits.
Hmm ... from a logistics point of view a wounded soldier is a much bigger
problem than a dead one - the wounded soldier requires resources and
manpower, the dead one is buried.
Moreover, once the field hospitals are overflowing, the wounded soldiers
without adequate care also become a much worse morale problem than
the dead soldiers - most soldiers tend to consider a slow death because
of a lack of medical care as worse than death on the battlefield, and so
do their relatives.
A good historical example could be the Crimean War, where the conditi-
ons at the field hospitals were considered a much worse scandal than the
losses on the battlefield, and in a democratic society the suffering of the
wounded soldiers might well have forced an end of the war.
So, the soldier in the field would perhaps prefer a lethal weapon (I am not
sure about that, in my view many would prefer to disable their enemies
without killing them), but many strategists would doubtless prefer a type
of weapon that wounds as many enemy soldiers as possible to overload
the enemy's medical facilities, binding resources and undermining morale.
Which, by the way, is the main reason why certain types of weapons and
ammunition that do that are outlawed by international treaties.
problem than a dead one - the wounded soldier requires resources and
manpower, the dead one is buried.
Moreover, once the field hospitals are overflowing, the wounded soldiers
without adequate care also become a much worse morale problem than
the dead soldiers - most soldiers tend to consider a slow death because
of a lack of medical care as worse than death on the battlefield, and so
do their relatives.
A good historical example could be the Crimean War, where the conditi-
ons at the field hospitals were considered a much worse scandal than the
losses on the battlefield, and in a democratic society the suffering of the
wounded soldiers might well have forced an end of the war.
So, the soldier in the field would perhaps prefer a lethal weapon (I am not
sure about that, in my view many would prefer to disable their enemies
without killing them), but many strategists would doubtless prefer a type
of weapon that wounds as many enemy soldiers as possible to overload
the enemy's medical facilities, binding resources and undermining morale.
Which, by the way, is the main reason why certain types of weapons and
ammunition that do that are outlawed by international treaties.
rust said:
This is true, but such weapons are generaly long range, as I said. They wouldn't be suitable as infantry small arms except possibly in police actions but then you want non-lethals anyway. On the battlefied, not a chance.
Unless it's changed in the last 15 years, the actual training given to soldiers is that untill an enemy explicitly surrenders, precisely according to the methods of surrender detailed in the Geneva Convention, that enemy is still a combattant no matter how badly injured and you keep pumping rounds into him untill he either properly surrenders or stops moving. An enemy that can move is an enemy that can pull a trigger, release a grenade or radio in fire support and is therefore still a threat. I know this, because that's the training I was given at Strensall base in Yorkshire by serving regular soldiers.
I remember seeing video taken by a journalist in Iraq of some American soldiers clearing a room. They saw a guy lying on the floor, one of the yan.. er.. Americans said 'He's moving' so they immediately fired down into his body a few times. There was a bit of a fuss about it in the press, but that's what we were trained to do as well. Most civilians have no idea how brutal it is.
If you'd told our training staff that they should realy try carrying these weapons that wound people and stop trying to kill them so much, they have laughed you off the base.
Pop Quiz: An enemy soldier drops his weapon and starts running away. Your commanding officer orders you to shoot him in the back. What is the correct response, consistent with the Geneva Convention?
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