Yansuf

Re: Hudson City Streets

Depends on how long ago they made the elevated highways. Many were 4 lane (2 each way), but using 6 lane is probably reasonable. Unless they were made/renovated after the 1960's more than 6 lanes are unlkely.

Re: The Things I've Learned Playing A Mentalist

Illusions should be used for misdirection.

Example: an illusion of the wall and door with the door moved 4 ft to the side can really ruin the martial artist's day when he runs through it.

Re: Mercy Bullets

So it's like a spiffed up Scooby Doo?

Not being a big Scooby Doo fan I'm not sure, but possibly.

However, Doc and team did deal with villains that had what was "super tech" in their time period, and did find a number of "lost worlds."

Re: Martial Arts in the Pulp era

I have just been reading some things on WWI unarmed combat training. While it was usually (in the US and UK) based on boxing, it seems that a considerable amount of jiu jitsu was included.

The site: http://ejmas.com/jnc/jncframe.htm

has an electronic copy of a 1920 book by "Captain Allan Corstorphin Smith., USA"; which was supposed to be what he had taught as an instructor in WWI. It was very similar to the "Combat Judo" holds and throws taught in WWII.

Therefore, it would seem Pulp Hero characters could learn jiu jitsu with the background "taught it in the great war."

I'm not sure if this interests anyone, but I thought that I would throw it in.

I had a friend (he is now dead) who did a lot of work on modern day wargame scenarios, etc. He found that he could get excellent technical and order of battle info from military attaches of the various embassies. The trick was, he didn't ask them about their armed forces, for security reasons they wouldn't give out much; he asked them about their enemies' armed forces.

He got detailed data on the Syrian order of battle from the Israeli embassy, and detailed info on the Israeli forces from the Syrian embassy.

Re: Mercy Bullets

In most campaigns' date=' the Attack should not affect any target with rPD and/or the appropriate Life Support. Even if there were no apparent cases of Doc shooting someone who happened to be immune, it might just be because he was smart enough to recognize such targets (robots, zombies, guys in hazmat suits, etc... don't know what he really went up against though). If there truly weren't [i']any[/i] targets that had STUN and the appropriate LS, then absolutely, an NND versus that immunity would be just like saying "not versus orcs" in a campaign where there were no orcs.

Actually, Doc Savage very rarely used any gun, the machine pistols were his design and were normally used by his aides or associates.

As an aside, his six associates were all of a level to make good PCs.

Offhand, I cannot recall their every going up against robots or anything supernatural, although they often dealt with things that were apparantly supernatural, but always turned out to be fake, with either trickery or advanced (for their period) technology faking it. But then, I haven't read all the Doc Savage stories, just most of them.

Re: Mercy Bullets

As I recall their discription in Doc Savage, the defense against the NND should be any resistant PD, not life support. While life support would work in a supers game, in the entire Doc Savage run I do not believe they ever had anyone with an imunity to posion or tranquelizers.

BTW, Doc's machine pistols also fired explosive bullets, but they only used them on objects, like airplanes.

Re: Wunderwaffen!!! - Secret German Warmachines of WW 2

Just a minor nitpick: Dr. Gerald Bull was not British, he was Canadian.

Re: Pulp Era Journalists

In the pulp era (and for some time thereafter) many reporters started out as copyboys. If you remember the TV show "Lou Grant", which was in the period when the old manual system with typewriters was changing to the new, computerized systems, in one episode he commented "Well, I started out in this business as a copyboy."

Re: Player problem - opinions ....

Chastity is not having sex. Celibacy is not getting married. D

Websters gives Celibacy as a synonim for chastity.

Don't catholic priests take a vow of celibacy, not chastity?

Re: Favorite Sci-Fi Weapon

Drake's cone-bore rifles (not really "rifles" I think) were more man-portable antiarmor gear than standard military small arms. I got the impression that that mercenary company was a bit specialized in the sort of jobs they did. They were a defense force for a military HQ, not field troops.

 

The engagement (cone-bore cannon against laser-armed tanks) near the end of the book was pretty interesting.

Actually they were standard (but very powerfull) "rifles", or standard shoulder weapons, because of course you are correct, they weren't rifled.

In "Hammer's Slammers" here are sections discussing other weapons besides the ones that the Slammers use, the cone-bore rifles are discussed there.

Re: Wolfs, Dogs And Their Noses

I agree completely, dogs depend on their noses almost as much as their eyes.

Re: Favorite Sci-Fi Weapon

Why not?

The cone bore rifles in David Drakes THE FORLORN HOPE are very high tech with diamond barrels and everything, but the basic high-velocity "squeeze bore" technology was invented back in the 1930's by the German army.

And the Germans found many problems with them.

A simple level answer why: you have to compress the projectile (or its sabot) which is absorbing energy which you want to go into kinetic energy.

(There are more reasons. but that one alone is a killer.)

The Germans tried many ideas in WWII, they "shotguned" their R&D, trying everything any fool thought up. They had some good ideas, most of them are still in use. They had bad ideas too, this "cone bore" was one of the bad ones.

The idea was to increase muzzle velocity, but in any gas expansion weapon the muzzle velocity is limited to something well under the rate of detonation of the propellent. The Gauss Gun does not have such a limitation.

Modern tanks use smooth bore barrels to minimize friction, which decreases the lost energy and thus increases muzzle velocity.

The "cone bore" idea wasn't abandoned because it was a good idea, it was abandoned because it was, in fact, a really silly idea.

Re: Artificial gravity produced.

There is a basic incompatability between quantum mechanics and relativity.

In the real world, it can only be found experimentally at the atomic or subatomic (its been many years since I looked at this, I'm and engineer, not a physicist, and Newton is good enough for me) level.

Most likely final outcome, both theories are shown to be special cases of a more general theory, which (as of now) no-one has a clue about.

BTW, there is NO reason that FTL is not possible. It is assumed to be impossible because relativity seems to say that if you can move FTL, you can send messages back in time. Since that is assumed to violate causality physicists say FTL is impossible. As one SF site says:

Relativity, Causality, FTL. Pick any two."

OF course, to date the record of physicists saying something is impossible, except for things that are impossible by definition (there cannot be a 4 sided triangle), is pretty dismal.

Concerning "cold fusion" there is still work being done on that in Europe and Asia. It may not be fusion, of course, but something is happening.

The statement that "results could not be duplicated" is not quite right. The exact results could not be duplicated, but about half the major labs that tried got results that did not make sense in light of all known theories.

In the US, where too much of our idiot scientific community thinks that if you don't have a theory, it isn't science; we abandoned the subject. Elsewhere, there are still people trying to get enough data to form a theory.

Re: Supernatural Special Forces

Concerning Fuel-Air Explosives, have you ever seen a (accidental or otherwise) natural gas explosion? It's the same thing.

Re: Floorplans for a Military base?

There is a big difference between army bases, air force bases and naval bases. Then (as was mentioned) it matters what the bas is for, and what the mission of the unit(s) based there are.

Can you be more specific as to what you want? An army base where a major combat unit is based? A base that is mostly an R&D center? etc.

Re: Space elevators

Actually, a skyhook would be easier to build than a beanstalk. The strength to mass ratio required for the material is significantly less.

In Martial Grab, is the +10 STR just for holding on, i.e. to revent escapes, or do you get the same +10 STR to doing damage with the grab?

Re: Disads for "Cheese Champions!"

OISID: ...

(And if you want even worse, one character is male, the other female...).

Oh, that one is evil!

The rules in UMA for making new manuevers (pg 91-92) do not seem to give a cost reduction (or restrictive element)for "Maneuver does No Damage." Is that correct?

I have been looking at simulating wrestling maneuvers such as "takedown" differently than in UMA, to include that normal wrestling takedowns do no damage. But it seems they will cost the same as the UMA ones that do damage. Is that right?

Re: Favorite Sci-Fi Weapon

OK seriously,

 

Drake's Cone Bore Rifles from Forlorn Hope

 

Power Guns from Drake's Hammer Slammers series

 

Vibro Blades - Gamma World. The blades were made from focused force fields.

Well, the cone bore rifle won't really work well. A gauss weapon ala H. Beam Piper's from the second story in the Verkan Vale series, or from the "Andromeda" TV show, would be much more effective. Or a grav gun (uses gravitic energy or a pressor beam to accelerate projectiles to hypersonic speed) such as the hand pulser in the Honor Harrington series, or the grav guns in the "Moon of Mutiny" series (both by Weber.)

Drake's power guns are nice, but the projectile weapons above would make better military small arms.

The "Gamma World" blades were used by many previous authors, called "Force Blades". They show up in many of Andre (actually Alice) Norton's stories.

For non-military use, I have to agree with the "Star Trek" (original) phaser. For military small arms the gauss rifle or grav gun would be my favorite. Unless you are will to put up with some lack of reliability, in which case the "dally-gun" from "Tactics of Mistake" is great.

Re: Beyond LXG

This is what I started with:

 

 

Bantan is a Tarzan wannabe

I have never read the Bantan books, but if you are interested a local bookstore has the complete collection,

Want me to send you the contact info?

Re: WWYCD: Registration

I would like to interject a note on registration. Several post on this thread said something like "feeling sorry for my Yankee friends", and others talked about the "repressive Bush administration."

NOW, I REALLY DON'T want to get into a discussion of real world politics!

However, what are you people talking about?

Per Chanmpions and related books (I just read Champions Worldwide for instance) most countries in the developed world have superpower registration laws. While I haven't seen info on the "Official HERO Games position" on Canada, I have Canadian relatives, so I keep up on their affairs, and the probability that Canada would require registration before the US approaches unity.

Similarly, the various Champions books (I believe PRIMIS for example) make clear the US registration laws date from the 20th century, so cannot be laid at George Bush's feet.

Sorry, but the reflective America bashing and Bush bashing in those posts irritates me. Lets keep our discussion here to events in the Champions Universe.

Re: WWYCD: Registration

You could make a lot more trouble for either of them though!

Re: WWYCD: Registration

Reply to Egyptoid:

PLEASE, do NOT get us into a discussion on gun control!

Or at least, if you must, start a new thread.