Fictional Firepower: M240 Incinerator Unit (Aliens)

Aliens is an awesome movie, I don't think I'll get to many counters to that statement (and if you do; hey! It's a free country, you can be wrong if you want to :P). And, it had some amazing looking guns and tech. From the pulse rifle, to the power loader, to the Sulaco (a design that launched a thousand HALO ships), it pretty much set THE standard for that gritty 80's sci-fi look we all know and love. And this is before diving into the Colonial Marines Technical Manuel which expanded on that considerably! 

Well, it's just dawned on me that I have zero posts on any of the tech from it! How the heck don't I even have stats for the PIG when it's me, THE GURPS plasma gun guy?! So, what sparked me to realized that I had a lack of Aliens content? 

Two things. 

First was getting asked for some help with TL 8+ flamethrowers on Discord. Then I saw this video on Youtube that ran through an Aliens themed game of Space Hulk (which also had liberal usage of a flamethrower). What do these two things have to with each other? Welcome to how my brain works! You see, helping with those flamethrowers had me thinking about stating a flamethrower for my blog already, then that video made me realize that I had 0 Aliens content. My first go too, of course, was the pulse rifle, buuuut, Douglass and Hans have already beat me to it... dang... Then I was like, "Oh right,flamethrowers were a pretty big thing in the movies (except for III buuut... we don't talk about III) AND the game I just saw.". That and I already had someone tickling my tism' about stating up flamethrowers. Which brings me to now... the thing you actually care about and not my questionable state of mental heath: Liquid propelled war crimes!

Quick update. There was a miscommunication. Christopher R. Rice, is thankfully, still alive

 Quick update. There was a miscommunication. Christopher R. Rice, is thankfully, still alive. I've updated the other post so it doesn't spread anymore confusion. This post is to get the attention of those who have already read the old post.

Ultra-Tech Firepower: The GenTech Five Five and the KRAK SK 92. Gauss Weapons Chambered in 5.5×22EM

 Well gang, I'm finally at the point I feel I am able to start diving into designing regular old guns guns for more efficiently and confidentially then before, making them far easier to work with (though they are still far more complicated to stat up then energy weapons). 

In this post I'm covering a pair of gauss guns though their gonna feel a little different form the ones I did in the past as well as what is seen in Ultra-Tech. This is on purposes as these figures are much closer to the level of detail you see in High-Tech, rather then trying to stick with the ones in Ultra-Tech. Those were more or less guesstimated while the ones made in High-Tech has a logical design system, I think it's time to move on from trying to limit myself to trying make those numbers try to work.  

I've also been coming up with ways to give you more hard stats on these weapons for better immersion, let me know how you like the new format and the information it gives!  

Follow me after the jump to check out some new elector-magnetically accelerated lead throwers.

Ultra-Tech Gun Noodlings: How to Figure Bulk and Magazine Length

Sup fam. Got some quick but tasty nuggets for you today.

First off I've come up with a way of figuring a weapons bulk that gets good results. This is NOT official by any means but it seems to work. It is a bit fiddly though. 

First you're gonna have to fi
gure to values:

Bul and Buw.

Bul is based on the weapons length in millimeters and can be figured as:

6 × LOG₁₀(Wl/305) + 2

Wl is the weapons length is millimeters. 

Buw is based on the weapons weight (unloaded if mounted) in pounds and can be figured as:

2 × LOG₁₀(Ww) + 2

Ww is based on the weapons weight (unloaded if mounted) in pounds. 

The weapons actual Bulk then can be figured by taking the average of Bul and Buw and then slapping a negative signto it. 

For example: A FAMAS G2 is 757mm long and weighs 8.4lbs. This gives us a Bul of 6 × LOG₁₀(757/305) + 2 or 4.4 and a Buw of 2 × LOG₁₀(8.4) + 2or 3.8. This gives a Bulk of (4.4 + 3.8)/2 or -4. While there are no stats for a FAMAS in any official book, HANS was kind enough to provide the forum with a write up and sure enough it's bulk is -4. 

 And while we're here, might as well throw in a quick way to estimate a magazine length, just so you can get an idea if your magazine modification is practical (and should let you know you're not going to see a huge increase in the number of caseless rounds a standard magazine can hold).

Magazine height can be estimated as number of rounds × rounds actual diameter (this might differ from the listed one, a 5.56 NATO round is actually ~5.7mm) × the polymer/plastic magazine type weight modifier for a given magazine type found on High-Tech p.155 under Extended Magazines. Multiply this value 0.7 for curved magazines like most military rifles use.Adjust the height by +/-10% as needed.

Why am I getting some casting couch energy form this pic?

For Example: a 20 round magazine for a FN Five SeveN is about 126mm (~5 in.) tall. The actual diameter for the round is 5.7mm and used a high-density magazine which has a polymer/plastic weight modifier of 1.1. This gives us a height of 20 × 5.7 × 1.1 or 125.4mm (4.9 in.). Close enough for government work.

So why am I thinking of gun stats all of a sudden? Well, I know, bad question. When am I NOT thinking of gun stats after all. Well I may or may not be working on expanding the kinetic side of Ultra-Tech firepower in my next few posts. I do hope to get some stuff out soon but I am also working on some non blog related projects so  maybe that might be more on the soonish side of things but they'll get there.

Blog is back on drip freed for the next few weeks because Zelda happened

 Soooo... you might of noticed I had a bit of a roll going with blog content...

Well sadly... "something" has come up that has eaten up all my free time for the foreseeable future.

 

The "something".... and yes I am mentally 12... don't at me...

 

So in the mean time things are gonna be moving a bit slow. This game has consumed my life... I dream about, I think about it work, I play it on the way to work... I... I might have a problem... but that's an issue for future me to deal with. Present me is about to see how many Zoni rockets I can merge with my tank until either the game crashes or I reach relativistic velocities!

Ultra-Tech Ultra Quickie: Experimental Melee Rules Part II: Power Weapons

Ok, looks like my last post is getting some traction. I'm in inspired mode so let's keep this content train ah-chuggin!

Power Weapons (TL 10)
Power weapons use some form of force field to increase their impact force, be it gravitational, electromagnetic, or some other energy herein unknown to modern science.

Power weapons let off a glow that can provide some light but also give their users position away when activated. They will act as a light source that is bright enough to give a modifier of LOG₁₅(damage adds) -3 or if you want more details they will be as bright as a light with a lux of 5 × LOG(damage adds). See GURPS Powers: Enhanced Senses p. 13 for more information on how light levels translates into light level modifiers. 

For weapons that do cutting, impaling, or piercing damage they increase the weapons Armor Divisor by one step (to a max of 10) and add TL -3 points of damage adds, crushing attacks only get the damage adds. +13CF.

They also worsen the odds breaking for  a non-force weapon on a parry by 1.

This can be increased to TL -2 for +1 CF, TL -1 for +4 CF,  TL for +9 CF, or TL +1 for +19 CF.  
 

Power weapons need a power source to function, usually power cells.

A standard C cell will power a power weapon for TLp/divide by weapons weight in seconds. TLp is 75 at TL 10, 150 at TL 11, 225 at TL 12.

A +1 power weapon halves this duration, a +2 one cuts it by a 1/3 , a +3 one cuts it by  1/5, and  +4 one cuts it by 1/8th.
 

Legal class worsens by 1 to a max of LC 2.

DR Steps

Find your weapons base Armor Divisor (AD) on the below table and for each step your modifiers adds, move down one step on the table. For example if you have a base AD of 2 and have one step worth of AD modifiers you will move down one step and your weapons now has a AD of 3.

 

Step AD

0 1

1 2

2 3

3 5

 

Ultra-Tech Ultra Quickie: Experimental Melee Rules Part I: Updated Vibrobalde Rules

Update: Formatting issue fixed. I guess you just can't copy your text over from Google Docs and need to paste it in a simple editing tool like notepad first >.>. Like Google owns both Docs and Blogger.... you'd think they'd be integrated... but then again Google is utter trash trash. 

Update 2 Electric Boogaloo: Fixed a typo. The cost factor for upgrading damage to TL -3 was wrong (have no idea why I had it at +3) and has been changed to the correct +9 CF.

Another quick one since the inspiration hit me out of nowhere. Here's a experimental reworking of the rules for Vibroblades found in Ultra-Tech p. 164 that cleans it up a bit and makes it more modular. If you like this I'll  make other posts covering this stuff and update other options such as Super Fine and Hyper Dense and even add some new options.

Vibro/High Frequency Blade (TL 9)
Only available to weapons that do cutting, impaling, and or piercing damage (though optimized for cutting weapons). Vibro and High Frequency (or HF) technology are two means to reach the same end; to vibrate the blade at ultra high frequencies to better slice through objects. Vibro weapons use ultrasonic waves while HF weapons use high powered alternating current but otherwise their effects are identical (though HF tech has uses outside of just making blades effectively sharper).  

A downside is the vibrations make an audible humming sound when activated. Make a hearing based Per roll to detect. See below to figure out the base range that someone can hear the weapon but in most cases the sound level will be that of a normal conversation for detection purposes.

To find out the exact range you can hear a vibro/HF weapon first find out its decibel rating.

Decibels Rating equals 20 × LOG( weapon weight in pounds × TLm×Em × 10). TLm is 2 at TL 9, 1 at TL 10, 0.5 at TL 11 and 0.25 at TL 12. Em is 2 if you upgrade to TL -5, 3 at TL -4, 5 at TL -3, 8 at TL -2.

Then take the Decibel Rating and look it up on the Hearing Distance table in High-Tech p. 158 or Loudness Levels in GURPS Powers: Enhanced Senses p. 21.

Characters with Ultra-Hearing can detect a vibro/HF weapon at 10× its normal range.

If your character wouldn't know what a vibro or HF blade is then a further IQ roll is needed to figure out why you hear a humming noise. On a failure you write it off as a ringing in your ear or something similar.

If a character has either enhanced time sense or perception at 20+, they can simply see the weapon oscillate.

For weapons that do cutting, impaling, or piercing damage, when the vibro/HF function is turned on  they increase the weapons Armor Divisor by one step (to a max of 10)  and only for cutting damage they add TL -6 points of damage adds.  When turned off the weapon does its base damage. +9 CF.

This can be increased to TL -5 for an additional  +1 CF, TL -4 for +4 CF,  TL -3 for +9 CF, or TL -2  for +19 CF.

Vibro/High Frequency Blades need a power source to function, usually power cells.

A standard C cell will power a Vibro/High Frequency Blade for TLp/divide by weapons weight in seconds. TLp is 37.5 at TL 9, 300 at TL 10, 600 at TL 11, 900 at TL 12.

A +1 vibro/HF weapon halves this duration, a +2 one cuts it by a 1/3 , a +3 one cuts it by  1/5, and  +4 one cuts it by 1/8th.

Legal class worsens by 1 to a max of LC 2.

 

DR Steps

Find your weapons base Armor Divisor (AD) on the below table and for each step your modifiers adds, move down one step on the table. For example if you have a base AD of 2 and have one step worth of AD modifiers you will move down one step and your weapons now has a AD of 3.

 

Step AD

0 1

1 2

2 3

3 5

4 10