Diesel-punk Q-Branch

[hooligan x]

I am running a 1930's game I have described as Buckaroo Banzai meets Sky Captain. One of my players is interested in a diesel-punk version of James Bond's Q. What sort of gadgets would be just a bit beyond the tech of the time? I'm thinking she may have developed radar a few years early and may be tinkering with jet engines.

[Yansuf]

Re: Diesel-punk Q-Branch

 

Most anything available before 1955 is reasonable. Of course leave out nuclear weapons unless you are prepared to deal with the consequences.

But a nuclear power plant for a ship, sub or base is possible. Jet planes and helicopters advanced enough for practical use are reasonable. Heat seeking missiles, beam riding missiles and wire guided missiles are feasible. Radar is certainly reasonable. Ballistic nylon which allows much better personal armor, primitive thermal imagery sensors, tasers, pepper spray, tiny radios (ala Dick Tracy), TV and amphibious cars are all possible. Binary liquid explosives and poison/sleep gases, VTOL aircraft of various types, antibiotics, practical air conditioning, primitive computers (Very primitive), rockets, hydrofoil boats, air cushion vehicles, and photocopy machines are possible.

[csyphrett]

Re: Diesel-punk Q-Branch

 

yansuf is right. Doc Savage had a bunch of things that later became reality during the war like missiles.

CES

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Diesel-punk Q-Branch

 

The classics are the wristwatch radio and gyrojet pistol. Some other cutting edge technology would include a good autopilot, blind landing system and air position indicator. Your superscience aeroplane should have a 2000+ hp engine (especially a diesel one), is classic 30s supertech. It should be a twin-prop type, with the engines in the fuselage (so the engineer can look after them!), driving contra-rotating, feathering and reversible props set into the wing via interlinked drive shafts, so that you only have to run one engine at a time for maximum efficiency. The plane should have a tricycle undercarriage, optical plastic windows, a functioning electrical system, wing de-icers, and structure of an advanced aluminum alloy with a secret ingredient. "This is no ordinary aluminium! I have discovered how to alloy zinc with it to give it unprecedented strength."

 

An engine-stopping ray (working by causing the spark plugs to misfire and wrecking the engine) is a good villainous armament. The 100mpg carburettor comes out of this era, and is, bizarrely enough, linked to the early development of the computer. (The Dowty Live-Line Carburettor of 1937 was "the carburettor that thinks for itself." The electromechanical brain itself should be at HQ.)

 

Hmm, how about an autocannon? Perhaps a chain-driven Gatling gun, with extra destructiveness guaranteed by shells filled made with pure RDX, also the propellant for extra muzzle velocity, with a chromed and carbonitrided barrel to resist the erosive gasses, and an automatic sight. And a black box that dials untraceable, free calls within local exchanges? An indetectable radio microphone "bug?" A telephone voice scrambler? A hollow charge explosive that punches right through barriers? Plastique? Shoe phone? Clothes that are actually a nitrocelluloid high explosive?

 

I can probably do this all day --but I don't think I should.

[Tom Carman]

Re: Diesel-punk Q-Branch

 

Hmm' date=' how about an autocannon? Perhaps a chain-driven Gatling gun, with extra destructiveness guaranteed by shells filled made with pure RDX, also the propellant for extra muzzle velocity, with a chromed and carbonitrided barrel to resist the erosive gasses, and an automatic sight.[/quote']

 

I read recently that Gatling experimented with a electrically-driven gun. While it had an extremely high firing rate, its size and weight couldn't compete with contemporary gas- or recoil-driven machine guns. At least, not until the firing rate became important in trying to hit very fast agile targets.

[lapsedgamer]

Re: Diesel-punk Q-Branch

 

Of course all this stuff would have to be mounted on a classic roadster at some point.

 

Also, how about a built-from-kit autogyro. That was one of my all time favorite Bond gadgets.