Sci-fi Weapons, Vehicles and Equipment

I'm now envisioning somebody scooping up a handful of nanomachine goo, making a snowball with it and blapping someone with it for instant Powered Armor.

Edited by MajorTom on Feb 11th 2019 at 6:44:36 AM

I think I saw that in an anime somewhere. Or was it that ridiculous Endo-Synth thing Iron Man came out with?

That's basically how the Iron Spider suit works in Avengers: Infinity War.

And now I'm envisioning a scene where a neighborhood bully throws a rock at someone, who turns around, waves their hands in the air, and conjures a large levitating ball of steel.

Now we are heading long into the fuzzy grey of sci-fi and sci-fantasy, Super Hero stuff. Which is fine. I like the mad scientist types the most.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Feb 11th 2019 at 6:58:48 AM

"They're called Sparks because they cause fires"

So what kinda weapons and gear would you as a Mad Scientist have on hand?

There's a mad scientist themed role playing game somewhere, isnt there? It would depend on the type of mad science. Anything from a transforming suticase to giant robot, to swarm of nano-attack bots, to a horde of mutant monsters.

Bel: Damn that is a tough one.

I want some sort of mad science fabricator and resource manufactuary. Something you can just shovel junk into and it spits out refined materials the other end. You can then turn around and feed it into another part to manufacture whatever you want via some sort of input.

Weapons are all over hells half acre so it would be tough to narrow it down. Everything from guided robot bombs, brainwashing ray guns, sleep weapons, disintegrators, even honking giant super science war machines.

Can it make us some Thirty Second Bombs?

That's still enough time to shoot the Mad Scientist and still escape.

Why not a Y-frame?

The idea is you have a machine that can build whatever you can specify as long as you can "feed it".

Go hog wild. 30-second bomb? Why not a flying softball sized shaped charge bomb that hits center mass on humanoid targets or flying close range high-density tungsten carbide shrapnel bombs. Or something truly crazy like mind control plant spores, mutagenic vials of something that mutates....things!.

You get the basic idea. It is a mad science logistics engine and factory.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Feb 15th 2019 at 7:07:55 AM

But it only works if you can simultaneously spout appropriate technobabble.

Nah. It works just fine. Technobabble is to cover the fact it was created by a mad scientist who honestly doesn't know how the hell they got it to work but it just does. Besides a mad cackle and some technobabble is good for flavor.

The technobabble keeps magic users from taking over the universe. Leave it out, and suddenly you have a bunch of white robed mystics spouting Earth wisdom nonsense about the power of universal harmony. And that's no fun.

Edited by DeMarquis on Feb 15th 2019 at 10:22:46 AM

FOR THE IMPERIUM MY BROTHERS!

Random, kinda crazy idea for a setting where melee weapons are more effective than projectile weapons.

• It's a very, very low-gravity setting, maybe the interior of a low-density gas giant.
• The propulsion method for jetpacks/human-sized flight suits scale up well enough to outmatch smaller projectiles, e.g. a Minovsky Particle that compresses streams of atmospheric plasma into a point charge and eject it with great force. Railgun projectiles simply can't keep up, lasers get diffracted to the point of uselessness over range, and the same technology is highly uneconomical to apply on small projectiles (accounting for volume limitation), allowing human combatants to dodge and close in faster than a bullet.
• Cybernetics have advanced to the point where the suit's flight computer can use the wearer's brain for extra computing power, allowing it to dodge and launch electronic countermeasures against guided missiles.

And yes, I fully realise that the result is probably going to look a lot like the ending of The Matrix Revolutions. Still thinking of how atmospheric vehicles are going to fit in.

The average density of Saturn is much less than that of water, yet its gravity both surface and core are much much higher than Earth.

Gravity is a function more of mass than density.

Ah, I meant to write the atmosphere (as much as there's a boundary with the liquid interior). But I really don't think that Saturn's surface gravity is that high, either.

Maybe it would work better with a hot gas dwarf in the process of losing its atmosphere, but I'm kinda spitballing here.

I think a high gravity area would work better for you than a low gravity in term of favoring melee over ballistic weapons.

Especially conditions that limit visibility. Ballistic weapons frequently limited by how far you can see. If you can't see more than 30 meters ahead of you in a fog, who cares if your Sniper Rifle can reach 3000? You won't hit anything past 30.

I think a majorly overlooked excuse for lack of ranged weapons is the presence of advanced surveillance. Sure, a two-bit boosterganger living in a nogozone might think they can get away with hover-bys all day. However, even if local police is hesitant to send their boys in blue nanocomposite clamshell into a Municipally Compromised Urban Zone, they're more than happy to send their cheapest drones to do a sector sweep if their long-range sensors pick up a gun battle. Even a marginally law abiding citizen, after defending his or her person and property with their completely legal caseless autopistol, is likely to find the barrage of interviews, paperwork and mandatory counseling to be far too grating on one's nerves after such a violent encounter. Especially if one lives in a city that never sleeps (which is usually all of them, considering how the economy got rewired after the Big Flop) and the city, in a rush to get everything done in a timely manner, decides this all has to happen at one in THE FRAKKING MORNING! Plus, they most certainly never tell you that any violent action, even in self defense, hits might hard on one's social credit score. Gotta love that no-tolerance policy and the amazing job it does pushing systemic societal problems under the rug.

Anyway, that brings us to alternatives to the God-given nine millimeter equalizers of olde. Now, melee weapons are already on one's mind. Not only is the clang of steel upon steel less audible over the omnipresent urban noise, but it gives one a certain sense of honor and nobility. While you could just beat someone to death with a pipe as they did in the old days, you're more likely to encounter trained opposition who can parry and riposte as they did in the old days. The resulting arms race has given an old world feel to the megacity slums of today. Young rakes with 3d-printed rapiers ride their jailbroken lowriders around the block on the lookout for trouble. Mall kiosks full to the brim with obscure pre-industrial weapons are surrounded by prospective buyers, eyeing each other nervously, wondering if someone killed someone else's cousin. Then a stranger walks into your arcology, here to do some business with the monokatana on his hip.

God I don't know why I made this sound in-universe. Or why I made it so long yet so lacking in actual information. Maybe I should become a Shadowrun writer.

Edited by MaxwellDaring on Feb 17th 2019 at 9:02:50 AM

Gonna steal that for one of my settings

That was... quite impressive actually.

Max: Been playing or running a game a bit much I see.

That is certainly an option for making melee a viable choice.

Anyway, it meshes real well with the usual Traveler explanation where firing a gun in a spaceship or space station is a bad idea. Not only would you have to face bureaucracy and a social credit drop, you could also straight-up die. Which might be a preferable alternative.

Edited by MaxwellDaring on Feb 18th 2019 at 10:39:03 AM