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!
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| For when you need to kill every XX121 in the room |
Designed for when things got up close and very personal. The M240 Incinerator Unit uses an ultra thickened napthal fuel that burns several times hotter then napalm. It is stored under pressure and ignited by a nozzle burner as it leaves the weapon's barrel, and is capable of shooting a stream of flame up to 30 yards, though this can be extended to up to 50 yards by firing it up at an angle (funnily enough, that is both the official range, in meters at least, as well as the range I came up with stating this thing).
The platform is very light weight, only 6 lbs fully loaded, and compact coming in at 880mm long (35 ins.). Of course this come at the cost it discharging its fuel at a very slow rate and only with moderate pressure limiting range and maximum damage potential. The low rate of discharge was also a necessity maintain a useful duration of fire from its fuel tank.
The M240 uses a 2 litter, highly
pressurized tank that provides 3 seconds of fire. These tanks are
designed to be as lightweight as possible while also being as safe as
possible to use (they have DR 8, nut any penetrating hit causes the tank to
explode inflicting 1d in fragmentation damage and spraying the now
burning napthal in a 5 yard radius causing it's normal damage to anyone in that area; Fun!) and are designed to be as easy
to swap in and out as a detachable magazine. Despite this, the tank is
over half of the weight of the weapon coming in at 3.3 lbs filled do to
the wight of napthal. Napthal is 6 lbs. and $6 per gallon.
A valve at the rear of the M240 can control the units fuel/air mixture, allowing the weapon to be adjusted for use in oxygen-poor environments. A thumb switch on the pistol grip ignites the nozzle burner, while the weapon is fired by squeezing the hand grip trigger, and will continue to fire until the trigger is released. The burner is powered by an integrated B cell that can discharge 133 full tanks before needing to be recharged.
Flamethrower Table
See pp. B268-271 for an explanation of the statistics.
LIQUID PROJECTOR (FLAMETHROWER) (DX-4 or other Liquid Projector-4)
| TL | Weapon | Damage | Range | Weight | ROF | Shots | ST | Bulk | Cost | LC | Notes | |
| 10 | M240 Incinerator Unit | 4d-1 burn | 30/50 | 6/3.3 | Jet | 1×3s (5) | 6† | -6 | $500/$6 | 1 | [1, 2] |
[1] Takes two Ready maneuvers to prepare for firing.
[2] Sling swivels ( See High-Tech pp. 154).
This was a fun little write up. I never even thought of checking out flamethrowers since, they're kinda dead ends IRL. Thermobaric and incendiary rockets have largely replaced them.... buuuuut..... they are fun weapons to use (oh don't give me that, "It's dark and messed up!", crap heh; spewing hot death is fun and you know it) . Heck, I never even read the flamethrower design rules from GURPS Vehicles. So now I'm glad that I went through on this.
Now if you're wondering, "Flamethrower design rules when?"... That's a bit tricky. While I customized the rules quite a bit.... the base rules are insider baseball so unfortunately I can't make them public as of right now. I know it sucks; I like sharing with you the tools you can use to make your own tech, but until the weapon design rules become a things (all I can say on this is don't get too excited but also don't give up all hope) I gotta respect the rights of the people who make this stuff for us.
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