Questions for the Ancients.

[eclipse]

Two things.

1. We're in general agreement that a pulser pistol is generally the same as a gauss pistol.
I'm just saying it's like comparing a .50 Desert Eagle pistol to a 1911A1 .45 ACP. You don't want to get hit by either one, but odds are the Desert Eagle is going to eff you up a bunch more!

2. We're starting to compare apples to oranges.
My reference is the line from "Field of Dishonor" I quoted before, describing a single pulser round to the hand as being fatal, unless you are very, very lucky. Some of you are tossing out the stats for a gauss pistol firing burst fire.

Ya, your going to do more damage with burst, but then a pulser burst is going to do even more damage!

A gauss pistol is a regular heavy metal amp.
Pulsers are amps that go to eleven.

I'm still sticking by my view, which is if a character gets hit with a pulser dart, let along a burst, and that character isn't wearing armor, and isn't very, very lucky...it's time to roll up a new character.

Again, this is MNSHO, and your kilometerage may vary.

 

[eclipse]

Originally posted by The Oz:
I can't judge T20 since I don't have it, but as I said the 4D of a CT gauss pistol (plus the 4D of the explosive power from a snub pistol, for a total of 8D) would be enough to kill most CT characters.

Hmmm...we seem to talking two very different things here. A Gauss pistol fires a small, reasonably heavy dart at very high speeds.
It gets it's damage from a very high muzzle velocity.

A snub fires very large, very slow rounds.
[Book 4 says 10mm, 7gm, with a muzzle velocity of 100 to 150 meters per second]
CT snubs don't even list slug rounds.
Not much use at those speeds. A Snub HE round gets all it's damage from the explosive charge.

The gauss round is 4 grams, almost half the size of the Snub round, and given the need for a ferrous section for the weapon to work, a lot less room for explosives.

Heck, at Honorverse tech levels, we can bloody well handwave in a more powerful explosive to get to that 8 dice of damage.

Frankly, beyond a certain point, adding additional velocity to a projectile is counter-productive unless you expect to face armor. A very high-velocity round will pass =though= an unprotected target, transferring only a small amount of energy to the target in passing. Now if that projectile hits bone it'll shatter the bone and send bone splinters as secondary projectiles to do more damage, although I could imagine that a very high velocity projectile might pass through bone so quickly that it just punches a small hole and doesn't shatter the bone.

Very true.

In CT, gauss rounds were said to have an inner armor-piercing core of very dense metal and an outer jacket of softer metal that had a hollow-point design to cause mushrooming on hitting a soft target. I've don't recall seeing any similar description of pulser darts.

I don't recall seeing this either.


Given that we have a decription from OBS of a man taking =two= solid pulser darts and surviving for long enough to scream (and scream) his pain

He was one of the "very, very lucky" ones.


I'd be willing to say that it's the explosive the darts are made of that does most of the damage to an unarmored target, and not their hypervelocity. The hypervelocity is for dealing with armored targets.

 

[The Oz]

I agree that an unarmored character who takes a direct hit from a pulser should need to be replaced by a new character. I'm just trying to figure out how (within the rules of CT) the weapon could be made to do this.

I've never said anything about burst fire; I've always been talking single shots.

I'm aware that gauss pistols and snub pistols are two different weapons. I was using them as CT examples of weapons that do their damage from high-velocity rounds and explosive rounds respectively, and then suggesting that a CT pulser could be defined as a weapon that combined the damage of both. 8D of damage would normally be enough to require a new character, after all.

I do not know if the combination of a T20 gauss pistol and a T20 snub pistol would also produce the =effect= desired for a T20 pulser since I do not have T20.

 

[eclipse]

Originally posted by The Oz:
I agree that an unarmored character who takes a direct hit from a pulser should need to be replaced by a new character. I'm just trying to figure out how (within the rules of CT) the weapon could be made to do this.

I think you were on a good track before.
Explosive darts.

I've never said anything about burst fire; I've always been talking single shots.

Correct, it's those other fellows clouding the waters.

I'm aware that gauss pistols and snub pistols are two different weapons. I was using them as CT examples of weapons that do their damage from high-velocity rounds and explosive rounds respectively, and then suggesting that a CT pulser could be defined as a weapon that combined the damage of both. 8D of damage would normally be enough to require a new character, after all.


I caught that, I may not have made the clear enough in my reply.
I did agree with your suggestion of explosive darts


I do not know if the combination of a T20 gauss pistol and a T20 snub pistol would also produce the =effect= desired for a T20 pulser since I do not have T20.

The underlying mechanics are the issue, which I think you already addressed with the exploding darts.

Hmmm...I do recall some issue with exploding pulser darts. I'll have to do some searches through the books.

There is a Honorverse RPG being developed right here, so this is an applicable thread to the game designers.

 

[eclipse]

I've done some digging through the books for references to explosive pulser darts:

Honor of the Queen
Someone else's hands locked on her forearm, shoving frantically, and the sharp, spiteful explosion of a pulser dart pocked the mess hall roof as her pistol whined.

Yu turned, and his pulser whined. Its darts were non-explosive, but it was also set on full auto, and the colonel's back erupted in a hideous crimson spray. He went down without even a scream, and the same hurricane of destruction swept through his troops.

The Short Victorious War

Kanamashi had put twelve explosive pulser darts into Frankel's chest, requiring a closed-coffin state funeral.

It was as well she had, for her mind was still trying to catch up with what was happening when she heard the snarling whine of a pulser. Explosive darts ripped their way up the stairs the waiters had used-the stairs Nimitz would have used-and shredded the end of the dining platform, and Neufsteiler cried out as a jagged splinter drove into his back.

Honor Among Enemies

the 2,000-plus MPS at which a modern pulser punched out its darts

In Enemy Hands

Like her Grayson vests, her uniform tunics were made of a fabric tough enough to resist light pulser fire-not because she expected assassins to lurk on her flag bridge, but because Nimitz's claws required it.

Changer of Worlds

A stream of pulser darts cascaded off his battle armor, but he turned straight into them and triggered his flechette gun.

A couple of interesting things caught my eye.
1. 2,000-plus MPS -- Like Wow!

2. The mention of light pulser darts. Which means there are probably heavy pulser darts. I'll bet that is what a tri-barrel pulser uses, or a Mil-spec Marine Pulser rifle.

3. Someone in Battle Armor knew that it was resistant to pulser fire.

 

[eclipse]

Originally posted by Capt. Blacklight:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by bryan gibson:
yep, in the Honorverse, it seems personal combat more advanced than fisticuffs results in instant hamburger, and thats not much of an exaggeration.

Hell, Bryan, even fisticuffs seem to be on the evil side of things. </font>[/QUOTE]Personally, I looking forward to Martin's take on Coup de Vitesse

 

[The Oz]

I think we're pretty much in agreement, Eclipse.

I'm not sure about the difference between light and heavy pulsers. I was thinking that "light" pulsers were the "holdout" style weapons, like the little concealable pulser that Andrew has to surrender at the Dueling Grounds in "FoD". I imagine the pulser built into Honor's cybernetic arm is probably also a "light" pulser, although we're not given any specifics.

I tend to think of tribarrels as being the HH equivalent of a VRF gauss gun: using the same principle but with (maybe) a heavier round and certainly higher velocity.

 

[eclipse]

Originally posted by The Oz:
I think we're pretty much in agreement, Eclipse.

I'm not sure about the difference between light and heavy pulsers. I was thinking that "light" pulsers were the "holdout" style weapons, like the little concealable pulser that Andrew has to surrender at the Dueling Grounds in "FoD". I imagine the pulser built into Honor's cybernetic arm is probably also a "light" pulser, although we're not given any specifics.

That's works for me too. Weber was never too detailed on this subject.

I tend to think of tribarrels as being the HH equivalent of a VRF gauss gun: using the same principle but with (maybe) a heavier round and certainly higher velocity.

Exactly! A VRF multibarrel battle armor shreader!

 

[The Oz]

As a side note, there are at least two variants on the tribarrel: in EOH Ens. Clickscales uses a "light" tribarrel as a personal weapon, while in IEH the weapon that injures Honor is described as a "heavy" tribarrel.

I would think that a "light" tribarrel might use the same ammo as a pulse rifle, but has the three barrels and so a higher rate of fire but probably not much greater muzzle velocity. A "heavy" tribarrel does damage more like the TRAVELLER VRF gauss gun.

According to Mercenary (LBB# 4), the gauss rifle has a muzzle velocity of 1500 meters/sec, and the VRF gauss gun does 4500 m/s. So the "2000 meters/second" of a pulse rifle fits in there real nice.

Tribarrels, at least "light" tribarrels, cannot penetrate powered combat armor. In the short story "Nightfall" one of Pierre's guards is using a light tribarrel on an armored Marine and the darts just bounce off. I can't recall a case where a battle-armored Marine faces heavy tribarrel fire, so those might penetrate battle armor.

In STRIKER terms, battledress is invulnerable to gauss rifles but can be penetrated by VRF gauss guns.

 

[eclipse]

I did some more digging and found some more to muddy the waters.

With One Stone by Timothy Zhan writing the Honorverse

"Yes, Ma'am," Metzinger said, her voice suddenly grim. "He says they're looking for a shipment of shredder pulser darts. Apparently there's a special order on its way to the Ellyna Valley government."
"Yuck," Venizelos muttered under his breath.
"Agreed," Honor said with a disgusted feeling of her own. Pulser darts were lethal enough without adding in the shredding capability that could take out whole clusters of people with a single shot. All civilized nations, including the Star Kingdom, had banned them long ago. So, for that matter, had the Silesian Confederacy, at least on paper.


A Crown of Slaves by David Weber and Eric Flint

A pulser dart mangled his shooting arm at the elbow in the split second before several more darts ripped into his legs. They lacked the full velocity of military-grade weapons, but even civilian-grade darts attained a velocity no chemical-powered firearm could have hoped to match. The darts were more than sufficient to reduce bone to splinters and rupture flesh. Griggs went down hard, his entire body screaming with agony, and his pulser landed on the floor beside him.

So we now have regular darts, explosive darts, and now the uber-nasty shredder darts.

In addition we have civilian grade and mil-spec pulsers. I'll put forth the mil-spec are what we have been specing out, and for game terms, civilan grade pulsers would be the equivalent of standard Traveller gauss weapons.

 

[eclipse]

Originally posted by The Oz:
As a side note, there are at least two variants on the tribarrel: in EOH Ens. Clickscales uses a "light" tribarrel as a personal weapon, while in IEH the weapon that injures Honor is described as a "heavy" tribarrel.

I'm trimming the rest since I'm in complete agreement with it. An excellent summary.

 

[The Oz]

Originally posted by eclipse:
I did some more digging and found some more to muddy the waters.

With One Stone by Timothy Zhan writing the Honorverse

"Yes, Ma'am," Metzinger said, her voice suddenly grim. "He says they're looking for a shipment of shredder pulser darts. Apparently there's a special order on its way to the Ellyna Valley government."
"Yuck," Venizelos muttered under his breath.
"Agreed," Honor said with a disgusted feeling of her own. Pulser darts were lethal enough without adding in the shredding capability that could take out whole clusters of people with a single shot. All civilized nations, including the Star Kingdom, had banned them long ago. So, for that matter, had the Silesian Confederacy, at least on paper.

Yes, those do sound very nasty. Probably a type of dart intended to separate into smaller "flechettes" after it leaves the muzzle, turning the weapon into a high-velocity shotgun.

A Crown of Slaves by David Weber and Eric Flint

A pulser dart mangled his shooting arm at the elbow in the split second before several more darts ripped into his legs. They lacked the full velocity of military-grade weapons, but even civilian-grade darts attained a velocity no chemical-powered firearm could have hoped to match. The darts were more than sufficient to reduce bone to splinters and rupture flesh. Griggs went down hard, his entire body screaming with agony, and his pulser landed on the floor beside him.

So we now have regular darts, explosive darts, and now the uber-nasty shredder darts.

In addition we have civilian grade and mil-spec pulsers. I'll put forth the mil-spec are what we have been specing out, and for game terms, civilan grade pulsers would be the equivalent of standard Traveller gauss weapons.

Military pulsers are indeed mostly what we've been talking about, but it's possible that "light" pulsers may be the same (at least in performance) to civilian pulsers.

Without access to DW's tech bible we can't say for certain.

 

[jasper]

you could ask at baen bar under the honorverse folder.

 

[lightsenshi]

Let me think...
As I recall explosive rounds add another dice of damage. A four round burst adds two dice of damage. So anyone shot by a gauss pistol will end up taking at least four dice of damage. Not many traveller characters can take that kind of damage.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Actually in CT 4D won't neccessarily kill you but it will certainly render you mission killed. The first hit you take is applied to one stat alone. As the max rating for a stat is F (15) and the average damage from 4D6 is 14, applied to Strength, Endurance or Dexterity (chosen at random) reducing one stat to 0 renders you unconscious. You might not be dead but unless your side wins you might as well be dead. In my experience CT combat was always won by the side that shoots first and asks questions later. (Though if you are equipped with FGMP-15s it is usually shoot first and the hell with the questions.

)

Originally posted by The Oz:
I don't know T20, so I can't answer that, but I can say that the CT gauss pistol was usually =not= lethal with a single direct hit, doing only 4D damage.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Higher velocity is only useful to a point then the bullet does less damage and passes through That is correct, however at much higher velocities, you get, at least in theory, a hydrodynamic shock effect. Since a human is made up of mostly water, and cells are effectively bags of water, a hit at hyper velocity can cause a ripple similar to dropping a stone in a pond. In this case though shattering cell membranes and doing serious damage.

Originally posted by The Oz:
I can't judge T20 since I don't have it, but as I said the 4D of a CT gauss pistol (plus the 4D of the explosive power from a snub pistol, for a total of 8D) would be enough to kill most CT characters.

Frankly, beyond a certain point, adding additional velocity to a projectile is counter-productive unless you expect to face armor. A very high-velocity round will pass =though= an unprotected target, transferring only a small amount of energy to the target in passing. Now if that projectile hits bone it'll shatter the bone and send bone splinters as secondary projectiles to do more damage, although I could imagine that a very high velocity projectile might pass through bone so quickly that it just punches a small hole and doesn't shatter the bone.

In CT, gauss rounds were said to have an inner armor-piercing core of very dense metal and an outer jacket of softer metal that had a hollow-point design to cause mushrooming on hitting a soft target. I've don't recall seeing any similar description of pulser darts.

Given that we have a decription from OBS of a man taking =two= solid pulser darts and surviving for long enough to scream (and scream) his pain I'd be willing to say that it's the explosive the darts are made of that does most of the damage to an unarmored target, and not their hypervelocity. The hypervelocity is for dealing with armored targets.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by lightsenshi:
Let me think...
As I recall explosive rounds add another dice of damage. A four round burst adds two dice of damage. So anyone shot by a gauss pistol will end up taking at least four dice of damage. Not many traveller characters can take that kind of damage.

Whoa! I thought gauss rounds were these tiny little darts and the rules said no explosives of significant amount can be added, so I don't think you can have HE gauss rounds. I'm also skeptical about them having the capability of AP (armor piercing) rounds. I think most AP rounds depend on a core pentrator deliverd by the larger round, again not something gauss rounds have. I think this is already factored into the gauss weapon's damage and other effects. Though of course I could be wrong on this OTU wise.

 

[BetterThanLife]

A Heavy Tribarrell cuts up bulkheads on a warship, I seriously doubt any body armor would be up to that range of lethality. (In Enemy Hands.)

Originally posted by The Oz:
As a side note, there are at least two variants on the tribarrel: in EOH Ens. Clickscales uses a "light" tribarrel as a personal weapon, while in IEH the weapon that injures Honor is described as a "heavy" tribarrel.

I would think that a "light" tribarrel might use the same ammo as a pulse rifle, but has the three barrels and so a higher rate of fire but probably not much greater muzzle velocity. A "heavy" tribarrel does damage more like the TRAVELLER VRF gauss gun.

According to Mercenary (LBB# 4), the gauss rifle has a muzzle velocity of 1500 meters/sec, and the VRF gauss gun does 4500 m/s. So the "2000 meters/second" of a pulse rifle fits in there real nice.

Tribarrels, at least "light" tribarrels, cannot penetrate powered combat armor. In the short story "Nightfall" one of Pierre's guards is using a light tribarrel on an armored Marine and the darts just bounce off. I can't recall a case where a battle-armored Marine faces heavy tribarrel fire, so those might penetrate battle armor.

In STRIKER terms, battledress is invulnerable to gauss rifles but can be penetrated by VRF gauss guns.

 

[The Oz]

I don't think any body armor would stop a heavy tribarrel, either.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Everything I read says they are 4mm hollow point needles. You aren't goint to pack much of a charge in that. Doing so would not add much lethality and would render your ammunition unstable in flight. Greatly decreasing accuracy, penetration and ability to strike, reliably point first. The problem with loading a round with explosives is the weight becomes less consistent, the balance less consistent, and would tend to induce tumbling. In a hypervelocity round tumbling would tend to cause the round to fracture and break up. As well as generally miss what you are aiming at.

Originally posted by far-trader:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by lightsenshi:
Let me think...
As I recall explosive rounds add another dice of damage. A four round burst adds two dice of damage. So anyone shot by a gauss pistol will end up taking at least four dice of damage. Not many traveller characters can take that kind of damage.

Whoa! I thought gauss rounds were these tiny little darts and the rules said no explosives of significant amount can be added, so I don't think you can have HE gauss rounds. I'm also skeptical about them having the capability of AP (armor piercing) rounds. I think most AP rounds depend on a core pentrator deliverd by the larger round, again not something gauss rounds have. I think this is already factored into the gauss weapon's damage and other effects. Though of course I could be wrong on this OTU wise. </font>[/QUOTE]