"Alternative weapon effects...your ideas? " Topic

Generally weapons on the tabletop are made to kill the enemy.
Other ideas: In Riddick, some weapons blast the target backward. In Rogue Trader shuriken catapults had a munition that made the target explode shortly after being hit.

What other effects could be useful in battles? I am thinking of but not restricted to skirmish level fights.

I always liked the idea of the old "anti-plant" round from Rogue Trader.

"Shhh, we have cover in these woods"..POOF.."Uh oh."

Freeze Ray. Not to be confused with Freeze Frame by J Geils. Space Ghost used his very effectively

EMP effects – affects command and control (initiative, leadership by affecting radio communictions, sensors, etc)

Static/Ionic field effects – negates stealth/camo by giving anything in the AOE a field that attracts dust and dirt?

Just my initial thoughts.

Rogue Trader had all kinds of interesting weapon effects. A group favorite had been the haywire grenade. Before the red compendium came out limiting its use, you would roll against the tech level of the equipment in the blast. We routinely used tarantula platforms with twin grenade launchers to attack Space Marines with haywire grenades. We'd discussed what would happen if the power assisted sealed suit and life support systems seized and figured the marines would be in powered armor coffins, suffocating unless an adjacent marine could pop his brother marine's helmet.

I also liked the tanglefoot grenades and graviton gun. Webbers were another non-lethal weapon.

There's always the Dally Gun link which also had the ability to throw the 'technically nonlethal' subsonic jelly bags, if I remember the story correctly. That whole site is full of great speculative ideas!

There are also various experimental foam or glue guns that have been tried as non-lethal agents. Tear gas, pepper spray & the like are also incapacitating without fatality. Aerosol sprays to negate laser weapons have also been mooted.

Ian Douglas's Legacy trilogy has nanite clouds as offensive weapons; they drift around pretty much dissolving everything.

I think it was Traveller that had meson-beam artillery wherein two beams were fired through intervening objects (hills, buildings, whatever), and where they met, there was a tremendous explosion. No lag time, no point-defense losses -- the perfect non-line-of-sight weapon.

Microwave weapons could be nasty, especially if they could be focused or broadened (say, high damage/pinpoint target vs. low damage/multiple targets).

Another interesting weapon might be a "subversion pod", designed to hack rather than destroy unmanned combat vehicles. Such a device would attach itself to an enemy drone, interface with its control computer, and use a targetted virus designed for that model to reprogram it.

What could you do then? Well, obviously, getting it to switch sides would be nice. But there are other sneaky things you could do.

1) Provide prior (from memory) and continuing (realtime)intelligence about the enemy's position (perhaps gleaned from its intel downloads or its IFF system).

2) Send misleading intelligence reports UPSTREAM to the enemy intelligence grid.

3) Distribute further Subversion Pods to other enemy units. Enemy command might not be aware that subversion pods are being used until a whole battalion goes offline.

4) Over-draw logistics resources, perhaps even diverting them to your force.

5) Conduct suicide assassination missions.

6) Underperform tactically; although it seems to be on the enemy's side, it makes critical mistakes at key moments to get its buddies killed.

7) Sabotage.

If the Martians can have a gun that vaporizes people but saves their clothes, why can't we have a gun that vaporizes clothes but saves the people?

I always liked the Andromedan displacer beam from SFB.

Also, in Rogue Trader, if you were hit but not killed by a shotgun you were forced 2" backwards. There were also Stasis Grenades, which caused a temporal distort over the blast radius; and Neuro Disruptors, aka, Confuse Rays.

And, of course, Hallucinogen Gas:

"6: That tree/building/other suitable object moved….why can't the others see it? You'll have to save the day….blast hell out of it! The effect lasts until next turn,t hen roll again if the model remains within the gas."

• C-Plus cannon – Fires a projectile (energy or solid) that "skips" across realspace. This anti-starship weapon is designed so that the projectile reenters realspace within the target. – Saberhagen's "Berzerker" series

• Rage Ray/Berzerker Gun – originally designed to "motivate" penal troops, this weapon is also effective on provoking an attack by an enemy. While this may seem counterintuitive, it works really well when the enemy is on the opposite side of a minefield, or under cover.

• Goober Gun – fires non-lethal blobs of nanite gel which expands to cover the target and bind it to itself or an adjacent surface. Police versions are programmed to not cover mouths/noses/blowholes/sphericals, etc. – Schlockmercenary

• Maser – Microwave Laser – blinds sensors and eyes (permanently or temporarily)

Wyatt

Irritant – targeted unit immediatly moves into closest open area to avoid the effect.

Muck-ray – bogs down area of terrain, slowing enemy progress.

Ion/EMF beam – disable vehicles only.

One of Tom Clancy's novels has lots of non leathal munitiona.
A super slippery spray so the enemy cannot hold a weapon or even stand.

A sonic beam that induces fear making them literally scared! And very easy to track

These are weapons that are being tested now for police and civilian use

Virtual Scratchbuilder said:
"If the Martians can have a gun that vaporizes people but saves their clothes, why can't we have a gun that vaporizes clothes but saves the people?"

Wouldn't that be "The Nude Bomb" of Get Smart fame?

I'd like to be able to launch a reconnaissance drone out of a grenade launcher. The first ones will probably just be remote cameras hanging from the same parachute they use for the flares, culminating in a miniaturized version of the little robot that they chuck through windows.

I think a Star Trek transporter beam would make a great weapon – teleporting the enemy to places they'd rather not be could be extremely effective, and as pacifist as you want to be. Give the invaders a free ticket home, especially if they have to walk back to invade again. Send their supplies into your own depots. Beam their leaders into your capitol for emergency peace talks (mention how unfortunate the climate is in orbit).

Virtualscratchbuilder 18 Nov 2009 4:51 p.m. PST:

If the Martians can have a gun that vaporizes people but saves their clothes, why can't we have a gun that vaporizes clothes but saves the people?

If one wants for weird stuff like that, Mystery Men with its shrink ray, blame thrower etc. are the ticket. Superhero comics are also a good source for the weirder stuff, a Superman comic for example had a beam that increased the target's inertia extremely (so much that even Supes himself couldn't force a swerve for a while after being hit by it). OTOH Charles Stross managed to make a basilisk gun (turns people to stone, essentially) almost believable in The Atrocity Archives.

For the bit less odd, depending on the game being played disintegrators such as Alistair Reynolds' hypometric weapons might or might not be "exotic". For most miniature games they wouldn't be of course. Causality violating devices such as tachyon guns would also be sufficiently exotic, but I don't personally really see how one could play such effects in a normal tabletop battle game.

An episode of Deep Space Nine had a sniper rifle with x-ray scope that teleported its projectile through obstacles, to within a few feet of the target.

Wow! Thanks for all the answers. Lots of thought and consideration from the great TMPers. I will see how much I can adapt to the tabletop and see how it goes. So much to consider, it's a little overwhelming at first. Thanks again!

one of my favorite weapons in space marine is the shock attack gun. send a bunch of ed off, drugged up, little guys into a tank via a LOS teleport device and let the fun begin. makes me giggle when i think about it. Can be altered to any setting (killer bees, rabid bunnies, tribbles, ect)

I forget where I read it, but there was a weapon that when fired at a vehicle was designed to do minimal damage to the vehicle but leave a disguised bomb/device that was meant to go off when disturbed by the repair crew fixing the vehicle.

The concept was that the repair crews were much more vulnerable than the vehicle and crew, and if you took out enough, you start causing logistic problems in your opponents for not only getting their vehicles repaired but also now protecting the repair crews when back at the repair depot. It was the "it's better to wound a soldier then kill him, because a wounded soldier ties up all the medical staff and resources to heal him" view applied to vehicles.

Mystery men Blame thrower , Clothes shrinker , Tornado in a can ,

If the Martians can have a gun that vaporizes people but saves their clothes, why can't we have a gun that vaporizes clothes but saves the people?

That would be Arlo Guthrie's Un-Neutron Bomb. Weapons, tanks, and even buildings vanish, but living things are unharmed. Green warfare!

Don't forget the alleged "gay bomb" that's supposed to ignite uncontrollable passion in the victim.

Red paint. Not effective against Tigers but paints pretty pictures.

Red paint. Not effective against Tigers but paints pretty pictures.

Makes things go faster too, I believe.

Red paint. Not effective against Tigers but paints pretty pictures.

Makes things go faster too, I believe.

…only with go faster stripes (or is that just a british thing?)!

Infinity has a whole list of interesting munitions:

Adhesive launchers
EMP weapons (either emplaced, hand-thrown, or launched)
Monofilament weapons (ignores armor and kills outright)
Flash pulse (using your laser-target designator to fry someone's eyes)
Guided rounds for the normal use of your LTG
two varieties of nanotech attacks (turn you into goo or hack your brain and make your friends kill you)
AHEAD-style shotgun rounds (go downrange and then spread!)
and my personal favorite, chain rifles. Cross a tree chipper with a shotgun, that's a chain rifle.

The last one was also used in Roger Rabbit, only they went the wrong way – Dum Dum bullets.

Actually, my all-time favourite weapons system is Lexa 'I am a warship' Doig:

link

There is also the smart munition used in "Runaway" where Gene Simmons is the baddie and he has a pistol that locks onto it's target, and the bullet follows it even if it ducks behind cover or around corners.

The only thing about that one was that the guided missilettes were coded to the victim's DNA, weren't they? So how the heck did they find someone based on that? Sniffing?

In the Palladium Rift's Phase World books there is a weapon called the T'Zee Piranha gun. It fires a grenade that covers the target in a gel which is actually made of nano-bot that destroy material for so many turns.

How about some kind of scent marker round? Something that draws big ugly space bugs (or tiny vicious nanites) like bees to honey. Probably scarier if it's carnosaur sex pheromones…

I suppose the Dune "thumper" (worms are drawn to vibrations) served a similar purpose.

My idea comes from the movie 'Explorers'
Create a small force field bubble and launch it at targets at near light speeds. All the inertia and kinetic damage.

Cke1st 19 Nov 2009 9:21 a.m. PST:

Don't forget the alleged "gay bomb" that's supposed to ignite uncontrollable passion in the victim.

I thought it was gay gas, actually…

Anyhow, the force field bubbles are used as nonlethal weapons in the first full length Valerian album La Cité des Eaux Mouvantes (or The City of the Moving Waters for those who need to ask pardon for their French). They activated mid-way to target and encased them in semipermeable energy fields. Presumably fitted with some sort of life support unit and an antigrav device, they then floated away with their load so in game terms one would like to introduce some way of gaining victory points for captives.

Thanks everyone. Although I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of any these devices it would be intriguing to see them tested. Looks like I have a pile of ideas to try out. BTW- I am going to try to use them in the Forge of War rules.

From the Macross series: sing songs at the enemy and make them give up fighting*. Also, "life force" draining beams. Not as much fun as the big giant cannons that vapourise entire fleets.

*Unless your enemy is Martians, in which case their brains explode. J-Pop should be at least as powerful as "I'm calling yoooouuuuuu…"

Judge Dredd features a weapon with a voice-activated shot selector, with among other things armour-piercing, explosive, incendiary and heat-seeking rounds.

Yeah, Lampyridae. Then in Macross II the Marduk show up using singers called Emulators to inspire their Zentradei to fight harder. The Minmei attack has failed.

What about the zephyr particles from LoGH. You can scatter them over an area making discharging weapons dangerous to any one in that area, which forces you to bring combat close and personal. Of course it's also good for clearing mine fields.

I've always loved the 'Sniper' boardgame spinoff 'Bug Hunt'. In that game the Alien player draws a series of cards that dictate the aliens' attributes, so that aliens were never quite the same in any game (needless to say, I always end up with pathetic, tribble-like aliens that are scared of humans and can't fight). Cards could have armour points, hand-to-hand attack points, intelligence (the ability to use human weapons), the ability to exist in anaerobic environments and lots more, including my personal favourite: Random Weapon Effects…

If this card was held by the alien player, a card was drawn whenever a new type of weapon hit an alien – the card could make that weapon type more or less effective (up to 100% auto-kill or 100% inneffective) or could just make it angry… It was always quite entertaining, as the human player, to dicover that your standard assault rifles just ed them off, but electric cattle prods were 100% deadly! :o)

"The only thing about that one was that the guided missilettes were coded to the victim's DNA, weren't they? So how the heck did they find someone based on that? Sniffing?"

Ummmm . . . I think the mini-missiles in question homed in on the specific IR signature of the targetted person, and were therfore like a combination medical scanner and Sidewinder missile.

Great ideas indeed. I covered a few of the chemical weapons types mentioned before in an article for the RAGNAROK many moons ago called "Better Warfare Through Chemistry". Might be on the SFSFW site archives . . .

Yeah, Lampyridae. Then in Macross II the Marduk show up using singers called Emulators to inspire their Zentradei to fight harder. The Minmei attack has failed.

Ahh, but Macross II was decided to be so awful that it officially "never happened" :P

At least in Robotech, subsequent alien races only responded to being shot full of holes!!

Actually I liked Macross Frontier. Yes, music doth have charms to soothe the savage beast (Zentradi, in one case), but when certain people's music carries a wave that interferes with the alien's hive-mind…

And that final assault on the planet was awesome: Son Tay writ planetary scale!

Honestly I found the whole music as a weapon thing to be silly. I guess that's why I rate Gundam, LoGH or even AT Votoms way about Macross.

The only unusual weapon from Gundam comes the Solar System, but it's too big to hold. A series of mirrors maneuvered to focus all sunlight on a designated point, like a giant magnifying glass. Nasty to anything in it's area of effect, not even the I-fields can shield against it. The Zeons had the Solar Ray which was just a colony converted into a giant laser cannon. In Gundam Seed they had it become a giant gamma ray laser.

But it's Gundam and all the fancy stuff are too big for a human to hold.