Flame Pistols - any suggestions?

[ffutures]

One of the weapons that appears in several of Weinbaum's Planetary stories is the flame pistol (the name is hyphenated in Parasite Planet but not the other stories):

the experienced Venusian frontiersman is very careful with the flame-pistol.
   It has to be charged with a diamond, a cheap black one, of course, but still an item to consider. The crystal, when fired, gives up all its energy in one terrific blast that roars out like a lightning stroke for a hundred yards, incinerating everything in its path.
[parasite planet]

who'd risk firing a flame-pistol indoors? It would simply blow out one wall of the building.
[ibid]

He was cornered between the monster and an impenetrable tangle of vegetation, so he did the only thing left to do. He snatched his flame-pistol and sent a terrific, roaring blast into the horror, a blast that incinerated tons of pasty filth and left a few small fragments crawling and feeding on the debris.
   The blast also, as it usually does, shattered the barrel of the weapon. He sighed as he set about the forty-minute job of replacing it—no true Hotlander ever delays that—for the blast had cost fifteen good American dollars, ten for the cheap diamond that had exploded, and five for the barrel. Nothing at all when he had had his xixtchil, but a real item now. He sighed again as he discovered that the remaining barrel was his last; he had been forced to economize on everything when he set out.
[ibid]

Inferno burst. The tiny diamond, giving up all its energy in one terrific blast, shot a jagged stream of fire that filled the canyon from wall to wall and vomited out beyond to cut a fan of fire through the bleeding-grass of the slope.
   Idiots' Hills reverberated to the roar, and when the rain of debris settled, there was nothing in the canyon save a few bits of flesh...
[The Mad Moon]

OK, so I have to develop game stats for this thing. In particular I need to explain where it gets its energy from (maybe bond energy or something), why it takes five minutes to reload if the barrel survives, or half an hour if it doesn't, and why the barrel (or in one story the chamber) bursting doesn't kill the person firing the gun.

My description of it in game terms currently reads:

Flame Pistol; Range 300ft radius 20ft, Effect 30; A:I B:C/K C:K
Fires 1 shot per 3 rounds; ammunition industrial diamonds value $10
Barrel (cost $5) shatters on 11-12; changing barrels takes 45 minutes.
Use in confined spaces is not recommended!

I need to change this a little - I think "1 shot / 5 rounds" and "Barrel shatters on 10-11, Chamber shatters on 12" would work for game purposes. It's still way too fast and reliable, going on Weinbaum's description, but I'm not sure that the rules will easily work with something that falls apart more often than not.

The trouble is that it's about as powerful as a War of the Worlds Martian heat-ray, but apparently hand-portable and usable without protective clothing (although I will add a note to the effect that if it's used in confined spaces the flame will spread in all directions, not just forward, which ought to discourage people from trying to use it inside buildings). In destructive power it's comparable to weapons like the Traveller PGMP(?) or Doom's BFG, but it's a pistol sized weapon.

When I ran my play-tests at Dragonmeet someone insisted on firing one of these at night and just after a friendly Martian had jumped into the air. The flame burst incinerated their enemies, the Martian (who was hurtling down to attack the enemies from above) and a large area of the Martian countryside, and was visible well beyond the horizon, which made their attempts to sneak inconspicuously a bit futile.

Any suggestions on ways of handling this would be greatly appreciated. I think, for example, that on Earth the authorities will not take kindly to people carrying around hand-portable weapons of mass destruction.

Comments

[glove-puppet.livejournal.com]

I have a shoddy novel on my book shelves that deals quite well with the concept of flintlock versus matchlock pistols, it might be useful. I'll dig it out.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Not quite sure of the relevance - this is more like a small nuke - except for loading time, but any and all suggestions gratefully received.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

It has to be said that Weinbaum's description sounds rather odd - who on earth would come up with a weapon that (a) suffers critical damage more often than not, and (b) takes 40 minutes to fix when it does? It's basic military hardware usability engineering - if a part needs frequent replacement, you make it quick and easy to replace!

In terms of effect, this sounds like a half-way house between the RPG-7 and the Davy Crockett. I have it on good authority that firing the RPG-7 in confined spaces is not recommended either (as some enthusiastic but ill-trained insurgents in Iraq have learned the hard way...)

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

About what I thought. If it's that unreliable, it makes no sense to build it as a reloadable weapon - about the only justification I can think of is that carrying a gun plus barrels and ammo weighs rather less than carrying several one-shot guns.

The trouble is that these things are in three of his stories at least - I pretty much have to include them in the game.

[armb.livejournal.com]

Is it possible that the military treat it as a one shot weapon, but an adventurer who manages to get hold of one of the rare black-market scavenged main mechanisms has no choice but to reuse it by replacing the not-designed-to-be-field-replaceable barrel?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

That sort of works except that the barrels seem to be fairly readily available. Both of the characters in Parasite Planet have several.

The idea I'm coming around to is that the military version is designed as a vehicle weapon, not hand-held, and is a lot more reliable. The version sold to civilians etc. reduces weight by taking off most of the safety mechanisms.

Still doesn't explain why the barrels are so difficult to swap though.

[ggreig]

The grip's made of softer metal - survives the expected failures without shattering in the hand, but needs bent back into shape afterwards. Implausible? Not necessarily more so than casting your own lead shot in the days of flintlocks.

[armb.livejournal.com]

Barrels, at least ones that only last a single use, are something that anyone with a decent machine shop can knock up, so if you get hold of the main mechanism, spare barrels are easy. But they have to be compatible with the much harder to duplicate main mechanism, so can't be quick to change.
And you can't make the barrel as a two part thing, one compatible bit that survives and one quick change sacrificial bit, because, um, I don't know, but there must be an engineering reason the military have to put up with them being single use and don't have quick change barrels.

Or maybe it's military barrels that last multiple shots that are the bit that adventurers can't get hold of at all, but that doesn't seem to fit the description.

[ggreig]

I'm not familiar with the novels, but it sounds from the description like it's a powerful but portable weapon of last resort for people who may be in extremely dangerous situations with limited access to supplies.

Those circumstances might mean that its power, portability and (limited) ability to reload outweight the inconveniences and cost.

It's difficult to see it as an everyday military weapon under any circumstances, true, but it might be indispensable for some specialist if the culture hasn't developed a better alternative.

Maybe the mechanism is shielded against the expected failures, and if they're considered unavoidable then the barrels could actually be designed to burst in a manner least likely to harm the holder.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Sounds about right - on Venus the people who use them are traders in the hotland swamps who spend most of their time on the move using "mud shoes" - like snow shoes - to avoid sinking. Keeping weight to a minimum would definitely be a plus.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

"and why the barrel (or in one story the chamber) bursting doesn't kill the person firing the gun."

Well, given its designed to blow up regularly, it must have a mechanism to vent the explosive forces away from the firer, and out to the sides. Presumably to the detriment of whoever might be standing to each side of the gun, as well as the poor sod it was pointing at.

If you can make it a sufficient pain in the ass to use, players might avoid it. Unless they have mistakenly adopted a Paranoia game style...

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Side vents? OK, that might work, though the impression I get is that they either work or fail, venting doesn't quite fit. This definitely wants to be a pain in the ass - I've just got to work out all the reasons why.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

Properly-designed flame-pistols are indeed illegal to own or manufacture on Earth, and the off-Earth market just isn't big enough to make it worth setting up an off-Earth factory.

The bullets, however, are not illegal (through one of those legal quirks), and can be loaded into an ordinary pistol and fired. Firing the diamond-plus-whatever-makes-it-go-floom round usually wrecks the chamber, ruining an automatic, but with a revolver you can just unscrew the cylinder and replace it with a spare. Sometimes the barrel is warped beyond even flamer use, and that takes a little more time to replace.

Oh, and you don't put more than one round in a revolver just in case it misfires and sets off every other round in the cylinder.

IANA gun-bunny, so feel free to correct me on anything that's genre-breakingly wrong with the above.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Doesn't quite work - it's a special gun, special barrels, etc. I really want this to be a pain to use, so I'm not looking for a way out - I'm looking for a plausible excuse for it being rubbish!

[sirernest.livejournal.com]

Could be the barrel suffers terminal material fatigue due to the shot, literally crumbles away when the gun is fired. It's generally not an issue of safety as the debris is carried with the shot.
Supposedly the original designs and materials for this weapons (whoever of whatever species came up with them) allowed for longer-lasting materials but what you can get nowadays (and what you can build yourself - it's easy enough with the right tools and skills) is back-alley junk. Cheaply produced, cheap on the market, with a far too high firepower and in a design easy to produce but not very user-friendly in maintenance. Heck, 90% of these things are designed as one-shots (well, nominally six-shots with the manufacturer's "guarantee" of the barrel lasting up to six shots) and you have to take half the gun apart to replace the barrel. Then comes the fiddly business of putting it all together again. You'd really need two more hands to do it right, especially to keep the parts aligned. You probably could do it in fifteen minutes on a workbench but out in the field? I hope you got experience, patience and it's still early enough for good light.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

The difficulty of working without proper facilities can certainly be a contributing factor - thanks!

[sirernest.livejournal.com]

No prob.
It made me think of the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP-45_Liberator]Liberator pistol[/url] a bit.

Heck, you could probably even get away with claiming it was originally an excavation tool used in mining and tunnel digging. Until some bright boy got his hands on a box full of these things, replaced the original tripod mount with a crude pistol grip, tied all the control lines, that were making the output in its original function more manageable, back into a crude feedback loop, put a simple trigger on it and successfully marketed it as a personal weapon. It became popular because it was cheap and you could take absolutely anything down with it.

If you want a comparison - it's like somebody selling a gun built out of a pipe (gas, water, maybe scaffolding), the next best rock as projectile and a stick of dynamite as propellant.

[ggreig]

The similar Deer Gun, linked to from that article, looks quite sci-fi.

[johnreiher.livejournal.com]

I agree with sirernest that the Flame pistol is a repurposed excavation tool. Sort of how the paintball pistol was created.

As a weapon, it's a great sledge hammer. It has no finesse, no control, you vaporize everything before you, friend or foe. If the barrel breaks, more often than not bits of the fractured barrel is still in the chamber, and have to be pried carefully from the chamber and the body of the pistol. Normally, changing a barrel is couple of actions, but with a shattered one, you have to disassemble the pistol and chamber and remove every bit, from every crevice. If you don't clean it up thoroughly, you take a chance of a fatal explosion if the diamond fractures incorrectly due to the shards of broken barrel.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

That works too - OK, I think I now have some reasonably good ideas how to describe it and explain its more eccentric features, I'll post the full description and stats in a day or two.

[sirernest.livejournal.com]

Sorry to abuse this thread for a non-related comment. Just thought this would be the quickest way of getting the message to you.

A while ago (okay, a long while ago) you had been looking for microscopes to connect to a PC. Dunno if you still need some but I just saw Lidl will be offering some from next monday.
http://www.lidl.co.uk/uk/home.nsf/pages/c.o.20081215.p.Microscope_Set.ar1

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks - I'm pretty much sorted since I got the microscope adaptor for my Nikon, but work may be interested.

[thoughtsdriftby.livejournal.com]

Like the mining re-use comment and would add some military bits.
Sounds like a real lash-up of a high-tech zip gun. The barrel may have a lining that can crack and shatter, say a glass laser-like gas tube and projecting with and through a generated gas plasma. Not sure how this goes about breaking carbon bonds to generate the effect, but then if it was easy anyone could cobble one of these together. Seems like it would take a fair bit of instruction and skill just to piece it back together when it fails.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Carbon bonds is just my guess - since they didn't know about lasers in the 1930s I'm guessing that isn't what they had in mind. There was an idea (which I've come across several times) that the sparkle of diamonds represented some sort of stored energy, bond energy sounds good, though in practice I doubt it would be much more energy than is released by burning a similarly-sized piece of coal.

[thoughtsdriftby.livejournal.com]

On bond energy it would have to project the effect breaking bonds as it goes to release enough energy and devastation. ,No they wouldn't know lasers or gas plasma details of the science, just that they had stumbled into a very risky and at times practical effect.

Flamer (like unleashing a flame from the sun). It could be the only practical words available to explain it to the lay person, be named after the discoverer of the effect (or his burning remains once discovered) or be an unconnected colloquialism.