Hi listies!
I spoke with Noah D the other day about Flamers in SG2, and the topic of
vehicle mounted flamers came up. Noah made some good concrete suggestions
which I think had some value and I've expanded on those hopefully. I think the
vehicular flamethrower presents both an excellent support weapon for infantry
and conceivably a very dangerious foe for the same. It could be deployed on
FSVs, IFVs, AFVs, etc. or even (argh!) on unarmoured or poorly armoured
vehicles. But imagine the devastation!
Here are some ideas:
Treat the vehicular flamethrower as a vehicular heavy weapons (12" range band,
but has only close range). Now, whether you consider the weapon to be a
firecon weapon or not would depend on the mounting (as would whether or not
you let the weapon fire on the
move) - some WW2 german half-tracks had something akin to a pintle
mount for these weapons. So depending on the mounting, you might have this
mounted as the main weapon (turreted or otherwise), coaxially, or on a cupola
or pintle mount. The weapon would be considered to have a high firepower
(argh! the agony of bad puns) if fired (argh once again!) from a pintle (D10
perhaps?). Impact from a vehicular flamer would probably be D12 (its a pretty
horrifying weapon). This weapon would have a couple of additional grizzly
effect: If one was attempting to close assault such a vehicle using the
infantry close assault rules (SG2 WWW page), the TL to initiate
the assault is +2. If such a vehicle was executing a vehicle infantry
overrun (SG2 WWW page), Treat the TL of the confidence test as +1
(not as that much worse than just being overrun) but allow the flamer to fire
as a support weapon for the purposes of casualties if you think it appropriate
for the vehicle type. Any squad taking a TL test
from casualties from such a vehiclular flamer should test at +1 for
the horror of a burning death. And anyone whose armour is not sealed (partial
armour, unsealed full armour) should shift their armour die DOWN one when
resisting the impact of the vehicular flamer. Also, if you want to be really
horrid, modify the medic die
roll by a -1 to relfect the nastiness of trying to treat
burns all over the victim. They tend to kill you quite dead. However, on the
down side, treat a penetrating hit as more severe (don't have my rules on hand
to recall how this is done, but their is a good chance the vehicle becomes a
firey death trap).
I bring up three partially unrelated comments:
In normal infantry to infantry close assault, if the attacker has particularly
horrid weapons, such as flamers? does this merit a horror check? Perhaps the
vehicular flamer should invoke this rule at some point too. Flames are one of
the scariest ways (given no way is good) to croak it to a ground pounder or
armour crewman.
In the optional Infantry Close Assault on Vehicles rules, I notice the worst
that can happen to the assaulting infantry is suppression. Seems to me if your
guys try to board a tank to bomb it, or run up to it, or whatever, you stand a
good chance of being cut down. Not sure how to integrate that, but I'd think
you might take casualties.
In the optional Vehicular Overrun rules, there is a comment about the damage
from a VOR. It says use the size class dice OR the support weapon dice. Does
this mean you keep track of the damage results from these dice separately?
Usually, when two disparate weapons are combined in FMA, you just use the
impact of the lower rated one. (ie firing squad automatic weapons with
rifles). Should this not be the case in VOR? Or does one want to track the
damage from each separately?
And for vehicular FT, I think they should be sized as HW but because of a high
ammo size requirement should be treated as a size 2 HW for the purpose of
building vehicles equipped with them. But that's just off the cuff. Other
ideas welcome.
Perhaps list members have some comments. I can't wait to roll out my
Flampanzer.....
(And thanks to Noah for sparking this idea up!). Once we get some comments,
maybe it would be worth cleaning up and posting on Matt's web page, although
getting their today seems problematic.:)
Tom.
/************************************************
Thomas Barclay Software Specialist Police Communications Systems Software
Kinetics Ltd. 66 Iber Road, Stittsville Ontario, Canada, K2S 1E7
Reception: (613) 831-0888
PBX: (613) 831-2018
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**************************************************/
> Thomas Barclay wrote:
While I like all of your other ideas for such a weapon, this is a bit hard to
swallow. In SG, the ground scale is 1" = 10m. A 120m jet of napalm would be
quite impressive!
Now, there are a lot of ways you could rationalize this (maybe it launches big
napalm paintballs or something) but I wouldn't let a regular flamethrower have
this kind of range.
Tom
> At 02:54 PM 8/11/98 -0400, Thomas Pope wrote:
Vehicle-mounted rocket booster anyone?
:)
> At 02:54 PM 8/11/98 -0400, you wrote:
I would think that something closer to 20-40m would be appropriate.
> Tom
**********************************
Tom spake thusly upon matters weighty:
> > Treat the vehicular flamethrower as a vehicular heavy
Well, since I don't have any hard guidelines on the kind of range one can get,
I base it off two things: 1. My estimate of old style ranges from WW2 by
eyeballing and what I think might be progress in this over a few hundred years
2. My estimate of new ranges of modern high-pressure chem soup pumps
used in fire suppression. I've seen them throw chem soup a long, long way.
If anyone has hard data on these ranges, I'm more than game to take a
suggestion.
/************************************************
Thomas Barclay Software Specialist Police Communications Systems Software
Kinetics Ltd. 66 Iber Road, Stittsville Ontario, Canada, K2S 1E7
Reception: (613) 831-0888
PBX: (613) 831-2018
My Extension: 4009
Fax: (613) 831-8255
Software Kinetics' Web Page:
http://www.softwarekinetics.ca or http://www.sofkin.ca or
SKL Daemons Softball Web Page:
http://fox.nstn.ca/~kaladorn/softhp.htm
**************************************************/
Los spake thusly upon matters weighty:
I wouldn't think so. I'm not ruling out Napalm rockets either, but it's a
different beast. The Vehicular Flamethrower would be driven by a high
efficiency, high pressure pump like the kind used to throw chem foam up to
about 50m (I'd guess) high and a long distance away in fighting fires. The
only difference is it would be hurling a burning sticky fuel. Maybe 12" is too
long, and 6" or 9" is more realistic. This isn't necessarily wasteful. And,
for the purpose, which is infantry support and supporting urban actions, it is
a great toy.
But as I said, my range figures may seem a little unreal. But I have seen the
firefighters shoot chem goo an awful long distance.
> Thomas Barclay wrote:
> Thomas Barclay wrote:
> > While I like all of your other ideas for such a weapon, this is a
Wouldn't a Napalm Rocket be more efficient. Like the M202 flash? Sounds like a
lot of fuel and pressure much of it wasted, would be required for a
flamethrower that shot that far.
> Thomas Barclay wrote:
...Snip...JTL
> > Thomas Barclay wrote:
In WWII the German 251-16 halftrack mounted 2 1.4cm flamethrowers
with a range of 35 meters.
lets consider the increase in range over time to be a given
and say that 120 meters/yards is not impossible.
(However the DFFG is more likely to be used on a small unit and may exist in
man portable short range versions.)
Bye for now,
> On Tue, 11 Aug 1998, John Leary wrote:
> In WWII the German 251-16 halftrack mounted 2 1.4cm flamethrowers
Sounds all right to me...
> (However the DFFG is more likely to be used on a small unit and
It does - the Infantry Plasma Projector (or similar), in the SAW portion
of the SG2 weapons table...nasty weapon...
[quoted original message omitted]
> Glover, Owen wrote:
...Snip... The following is slightly rearranged to facilitate comments.
JTL...
> > In WWII the German 251-16 halftrack mounted 2 1.4cm
> Hmm, so are we saying that we have a stream of the incendiary liquid
As far as waste goes, that is what war is about. (People, material, countries,
planets, ect.) The only time one worries about fuel is when you don't have
any.
a means of delivering an incendiary ordnance to a point
> 120m away?
... The answer here is a little more difficult: Terror, The fear of being
burned alive is in all of us.
If given the choice of someone 3000 meters away shooting an incendiary
projectile at you or somebody 30 meters away shooting flaming substance at
you.... which would you choose?
Bye for now,
Modern (2185) forces would use Incendiary rockets, Plasma Guns & somesuch for
flame delivery (knock knock...). But I want to write up traditional
flamethrower rules for low-tech troops (see pending Low-Tech SG2 rules)
and cause FTs are really cool. On the miniature battlefield. ANyway, how hard
would it be for a local insurgency to get a hold of firefighting equiment from
a local aerospaceport, and convert it to a big flame projector? And I
just can't see my ESU Garrison Engineers without a close-in, nasty
weapon like an FT.
Some figures for real-world flamethrowers:
UK WW2 Crocodile- on test, 200 yards, in service typically 120 yards.
USSR ATO-200 in TO-55 flame tank 180m
USSR WW2 OT-130, OT34 and KV-8 all 80 to 100m
USA WW2 several types, typically 80 yards claimed USA M132 (M113 derivative)
180m USA M67 (M48 derivative) "claimed 80 to 250m" UK WW2 Cockatrice 300 feet
UP in AA mode (!)
Most German WW2 vehicular flamethrowers seem to be very much on the puny side;
perhaps they used unthickened fuel more?
Rob
> You wrote:
> UK WW2 Cockatrice 300 feet UP in AA mode (!)
Actually that's not the *stupidest* idea the Brits came up with during that
panicy period after the Dunkirk when they were convinced the Germans were
going to cross the Channel Any Day Now.
Rob spake thusly upon matters weighty:
> Some figures for real-world flamethrowers:
So maybe 12" is more than reasonable.
> USSR WW2 OT-130, OT34 and KV-8 all 80 to 100m
Who in heck came up with the FT as an AA weapon? Very unorthodox (might work
against helicopters though).
Tom.
/************************************************
Thomas Barclay Software Specialist Police Communications Systems Software
Kinetics Ltd. 66 Iber Road, Stittsville Ontario, Canada, K2S 1E7
Reception: (613) 831-0888
PBX: (613) 831-2018
My Extension: 4009
Fax: (613) 831-8255
Software Kinetics' Web Page:
http://www.softwarekinetics.ca or http://www.sofkin.ca or
SKL Daemons Softball Web Page:
http://fox.nstn.ca/~kaladorn/softhp.htm
**************************************************/
> > UK WW2 Cockatrice 300 feet UP in AA mode (!)
It was designed a little after the Battle of France.
I have a vague memory it was designed to be used on enemy paratroops.. Any
Winston really liked flame weapons..
Actually, I would think that would be terrifying from a VTOL pilot's point of
view. Especially on an SG2 battlefield. "OK, gonna disembark you guys here
and"-WHOOOOOOOOSH-"HOLY S*** WHAT WAS THAT WE'RE ON FIRE?!?!"
Noah
[quoted original message omitted]
> Thomas Barclay wrote:
> > Some figures for real-world flamethrowers:
> > UK WW2 Cockatrice 300 feet UP in AA mode (!)
The Cockatrice was designed and built in the dark days of 1940. One threat was
large scale drops of Paratroops onto airfields... And the
defence had to be quick, easily made, out of non-weapons.
The Cockatrice was therefore a large truck, with armour plate bolted on,
and a turret with a flamethrower on. The idea was that when the Ju-52s
came over, after all the Spitfires had been KO'd, one of these would motor
onto the runway, and as the Fallschirmjaeger came down on the airstrip, would
motor on past, casually crisping them (or at least giving them something to
think about while trying to undo their harnesses). As the Germans dropped
their weapons in separate canisters rather than with them, this was actually a
good idea.
> At 23:27 13/08/98 -0500, you wrote:
I agree- the Cockatrice was intended to help defend airfields in the UK
against airborne/airlanding assaults, so it seems reasonable to be able
to
point the thing up (the nozzle, that is- the whole rig being an armoured
6x4 truck)
Rob
Alan spake thusly upon matters weighty:
> The Cockatrice was designed and built in the dark days of 1940. One
Mental Note: I might drop Fallschirmjager into a hostile LZ, but I'd sure
soften it up with bombing, guns, etc, and give them close air support. So if
your fighters are all shot down, your airfield will be a smoking wreck (except
for the runways) before my troops land. And if your little truck pulls out, my
stukas and junkers and messerschmidts will chew it to pieces (it go boom real
good) before it gets anywhere too near my jump troops. I don't think its that
great of an idea - a desperate one -yes. Good.... probably not -
except for the first time when it surprises the enemy if it can manage.
Tom.
Howdy!
> On Mon, 17 Aug 1998, Thomas Barclay wrote:
> Mental Note: I might drop Fallschirmjager into a hostile LZ, but I'd
I wouldn't want to be a Fallschirmjaeger anywhere *near* a hot LZ... Remember
Crete!:)
Ken
> Kenneth Winland wrote:
Given the two cases above as the only choices, I'll pick
number two. The hot drop zone is vastly preferable to having MY
fighters strafing and MY dive bombers bombing while I am in the chute.
Bye for now,
> On Mon, 17 Aug 1998, Thomas Barclay wrote:
> > sure soften it up with bombing, guns, etc, and give them close air
You would, would you? I rather imagine every general in history has wished the
same. What one can accomplish is not necessarily what one would wish.