Forum:Weapon categorization

Forums: Index > Watercooler > Weapon categorization

Beginning the process of re-working the weapons system in the Wiki starts with designing a categorization system to describe each weapon. And, as per the general wiki habit, as an in-game character reference. This doesn't follow any existing rule set descriptions but tries to build on all of them to have a consistent description for each weapon.

Damage capability: How does the weapon end up affecting the target.

• Kinetic (KEW): uses a solid mass of matter traveling at speed to cause damage to the target:
  • Melee : wielded by hand (or other manipulator). Includes blades, clubs, swords, pikes, and variations thereof.
  • Thrown : wielded by hand but projected at a distance, based upon the strength of the wielder. Included throwing knives of all sorts, bows, crossbows, boomerangs.
  • Explosives: Kinetic damage caused by an explosion: Grenades
  • Guns: Slug throwers. May subdivide by motive of propulsion (explosives, rocket, Gauss)
• Directed Energy (DEW): uses a free floating energy source to cause damage.
  • Flame: a Flame thrower, energy is heat.
  • Laser: Amplified light as the medium. Masers, Xasers, Grasers
  • Plasma/Fusion: Next stage of the Flame weapons
  • Disintgrator: The high tech destruction weapon
  • Gravity: Gravity as a destructive weapon.
• Projector: These are weapons that throw something around, but not considered generally destructive. These generally have some specific unpleasant effect.
  • EMP/magnetic: Destroys electronics
  • Flash: Blind Sensors (Emmiter?)
  • Sonic: Sleep weapons or Hazers
  • Gas/liquid/aerosols: poison, tranq, sleep gas, tear gas.
  • Radiation: Radiation projectors cause illness or slow damage effects
  • Neural: Direct action on nerve interfaces.

Size: There are several ways of categorizing this, but interaction with different sized sophonts make general sizing a pain. Reverting to use the T5 size categories just because. Also indicates general damage ranges. Details within each size are determined by the Bulk (QREBS) rating.

• • Hand (size 3): Carried / used in a single manipulator
  • Carried (size 4): Carried / used with two (or more) manipulators
  • Mounted (size 5): Vehicle / Tripod mounted weapons
  • Crew served / ship (Size 6): Artillery pieces, Star Ship weapons
  • Spinal mount (size 7): Largest of the weapons, Starship mounted or permanently placed.

Rate of Fire: Indicates the rate at which the weapon can be re-used. Does not include the failure if the Quality check is failed and the weapon breaks.

• Disposable: No reuse: grenades, throwing weapons, some primitive designs,
• Single-shot: Weapon has a single shot and then must be reloaded: bows and other primitive weapons, early guns, some concealable weapons.
• Semi-automatic: Weapon has several rounds, and can be fired (relatively) slowly.
• Automatic: Weapon has several rounds and can be fired quickly. Can use the autofire rules for increasing damage.
• Continuous / High Rate: Weapon fire a continuous stream of damage, or like a Gatling weapon, has a scary rate of fire.

From here the Template:InfoboxWeapon needs to incorporate these three elements as template parameters. And will be making the values of these three into sub-categories of the Category: Weapons.

As soon as you start creating buckets, you just as quickly find things that don't fit into your nice neat categories. And I'm pretty sure I've missed one or two things.

Thoughts and feedback needed. Tjoneslo (talk)

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The categories pre-defined in Mongoose v2 might also be catered for?

BackworldTraveller (talk) 00:53, 21 June 2021 (EDT)

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