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Dumpshock Forums _ Shadowrun _ Stealing Monowire
Posted by: mmu1 Jun 5 2006, 03:00 PM
I came across this article: http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/manufacturing/2006-06-05-copper-usat_x.htm
| QUOTE |
Skyrocketing copper prices have led to a rash of thefts across the USA of everything from electrical wires to plumbing pipes to vases from grave markers as vandals seek to sell the pricey metal to recyclers. |
And was once again reminded of the argument about the sense of putting monowire on the top of a perimeter wall. If there are people out there able to make money stealing copper wire...
I need to have a talk with the other players in our game, and see if we can't re-focus our efforts... We'll steal security systems, never actually breaching the perimeter of the target building.
Posted by: Crusher Bob Jun 5 2006, 03:01 PM
Yes, this is also one of the reasons cell phones have more or less taken over the phone market in places like the Philippines. You can put armed guards and a fence around your celluar phone repeater and be pretty sure it won't wander off in the night.
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jun 6 2006, 02:08 AM
Yeah, I always thought how it was pretty ninja you could just steal monowire and make a huge profit. That's why as a GM I would mostly used normal barbed wire.
Posted by: Kagetenshi Jun 6 2006, 02:32 AM
Corps in my game use monowire. Corps are also generally not entirely stupid. I'll leave the reader to make the conclusions.
~J
Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Jun 6 2006, 02:39 AM
Electrified monowire.
Posted by: Voran Jun 6 2006, 02:42 AM
Its pretty bad here in hawaii too. Copper wire and such getting stolen from highway lights, schools. Kinda sad actually.
Posted by: mmu1 Jun 6 2006, 02:54 AM
| QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685) |
| Electrified monowire. |
Nah... It'd never be able to carry enough current to matter - anything meaningful would burn it out, like a lightbulb filament in the open air.
Posted by: mmu1 Jun 6 2006, 02:58 AM
| QUOTE (Kagetenshi) |
| Corps in my game use monowire. Corps are also generally not entirely stupid. I'll leave the reader to make the conclusions. ~J |
Well, where's the fun in putting it indoors, where it'd make most sense?
I can see some common-sense uses for the stuff, but in general, it just seems like such a hassle to set up and maintain... And has a little too much of a D&D trap feel to it for my taste.
Posted by: Fix-it Jun 6 2006, 03:22 AM
| QUOTE (mmu1) | ||
Nah... It'd never be able to carry enough current to matter - anything meaningful would burn it out, like a lightbulb filament in the open air. |
yeah, but the high-voltage 60 hz buzzing is a nice psychological deterrent.
Posted by: toturi Jun 6 2006, 04:06 AM
A burnt out wire doesn't buzz anymore.
Posted by: mfb Jun 6 2006, 04:18 AM
i always figured the best use of monowire is in places no one's supposed to go anyway. when the lights go out at night, string a few lines of monowire around the yard. barbed wire is great because it's visible; almost anything you'd use to bypass it will stand out to a casual observer--like, say, a guard on patrol. monowire, though, isn't much use unless its presence and location are not generally known.
and while you couldn't run any serious amount of voltage through a monowire line, you could run enough to detect if it gets cut. there are ways around that, too, of course, but it's one more thing for infiltrators to deal with.
Posted by: Kagetenshi Jun 6 2006, 06:52 AM
| QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685) |
| Electrified monowire. |
That's one of the best ways to protect the stuff, actually, though probably not the way you're thinking. Put it this way: if a current is running through monowire, and the wire is cut, what measurable thing happens to the current?
~J
Posted by: mfb Jun 6 2006, 07:20 AM
it grows an organic jetpack. i'm not going to get into all the scientific details, but it's very true and very scary.
Posted by: Slump Jun 6 2006, 09:34 AM
I think the most horrendous use for monowire that I've come up with is actually quite a simple idea. In fact, I can sum it up on one word: Netgun.
Monowire also makes an appearance at any time when you can't easily stop, such as a pit or a vertical shaft (air conditioning or otherwise).
Wide-swath lawnmowers (for very, very large fields) are also made using monowire. Nothing like a lawnmower that's about the same size as a floor buffer being able to mow a path 100 yards wide. Just don't step off while it's running...
Posted by: Platinum Jun 6 2006, 01:09 PM
| QUOTE (mfb @ Jun 6 2006, 03:20 AM) |
| it grows an organic jetpack. i'm not going to get into all the scientific details, but it's very true and very scary. |
LoL ... so you were the one that got me hooked on Dr. McNinja.
Apparently mimes are will be important in the fight against jetpacks.
Posted by: Platinum Jun 6 2006, 01:14 PM
| QUOTE (Slump) |
| I think the most horrendous use for monowire that I've come up with is actually quite a simple idea. In fact, I can sum it up on one word: Netgun. Monowire also makes an appearance at any time when you can't easily stop, such as a pit or a vertical shaft (air conditioning or otherwise). Wide-swath lawnmowers (for very, very large fields) are also made using monowire. Nothing like a lawnmower that's about the same size as a floor buffer being able to mow a path 100 yards wide. Just don't step off while it's running... |
I was reading a story about grenade slicers. Those would be nasty. Does anyone know what source book they come from? Rounds that fit into a grenade launcher, when fired they split and the two weighted ends separate with a length of monowire floating in between.
Posted by: KarmaInferno Jun 6 2006, 02:51 PM
Heck with grenade launchers. There's already bolo-style ammo for shotguns today.
Monowire shotgun bolo rounds?
-karma
Posted by: Moon-Hawk Jun 6 2006, 05:20 PM
What a fantastically complicated way to shoot someone.
Posted by: mfb Jun 6 2006, 05:21 PM
maybe you could rub the monowire with garlic, so it poisons your targets.
Posted by: hyzmarca Jun 6 2006, 05:49 PM
Nah, wooden monowire is best. It causes extra damage to vampires.
Posted by: KarmaInferno Jun 6 2006, 07:11 PM
Well, the Frag-12 shotgun round is also a fantastically complicated way of shooting someone too, but it's still being developed.
Back to the grenade thingy, a number of models of fragmentation grenades in the past have used notched wire wrapped around the explosive charge as part of the "fragmentation" part of the device.
Is there any reason you couldn't substitute monowire?
-karma
Posted by: Moon-Hawk Jun 6 2006, 07:20 PM
Because monowire, having virtually no mass, has virtually no momentum. It's like throwing a hair at someone to kill them. Monowire, even if we're willing to believe it could exist, still needs to be weighted.
Posted by: mmu1 Jun 6 2006, 07:50 PM
| QUOTE (Moon-Hawk) |
| Because monowire, having virtually no mass, has virtually no momentum. It's like throwing a hair at someone to kill them. Monowire, even if we're willing to believe it could exist, still needs to be weighted. |
It'd also probably melt / burn as a result of the explosion - think of a cobweb exposed to a flame... I'm sure there could be ways around it, but that's just one more strike against an already impractical idea.
And if you weighed it down to make sure it had enough momentum, it'd basically end up being no more effective than a shotgun simply firing a shell full of the weights, since the wire wouldn't penetrate deeper than the weights would.
Posted by: Protagonist Jun 6 2006, 07:50 PM
| QUOTE (Slump) |
| I think the most horrendous use for monowire that I've come up with is actually quite a simple idea. In fact, I can sum it up on one word: Netgun. |
William Gibson had something like this in All Tomorrow's Parties.
It wasn't monowire, but shot packs of razorwire out. The guy that gets hit with it becomes mush.
I'm honestly surprised that I haven't seen it stolen in a shadowrun book yet.
Posted by: mmu1 Jun 6 2006, 07:53 PM
| QUOTE (Protagonist) |
| It wasn't monowire, but shot packs of razorwire out. The guy that gets hit with it becomes mush. I'm honestly surprised that I haven't seen it stolen in a shadowrun book yet. |
Actually, IIRC it was something that fired lengths of chainsaw chain, wasn't it? Chain of some kind, anyway... It was basically a sci-fi blunderbuss, if it could've shoot that, it could have fired jagged scrap metal, or a couple of pounds of buckshot, but it wouldn't have sounded as cool.
Posted by: Protagonist Jun 6 2006, 08:01 PM
| QUOTE (mmu1 @ Jun 6 2006, 02:53 PM) |
| Actually, IIRC it was something that fired lengths of chainsaw chain, wasn't it? Chain of some kind, anyway... It was basically a sci-fi blunderbuss, if it could've shoot that, it could have fired jagged scrap metal, or a couple of pounds of buckshot, but it wouldn't have sounded as cool. |
I couldn't remember exactly myself, so here's the quote from the book:
"packed with four hundred two-foot lengths of super-fine steel chain, sharp as razor wire."
It was actually pretty compact.
Edit: left out a word or two there by mistake >_>
Posted by: Sicarius Jun 6 2006, 08:03 PM
I've always figured the substantial difference between razor or barbed wire and monowire, was that barbed or razor wire is meant to serve as a deterrent against climbing a barrier or fence.
While monowire was to cut the intruder off at the shins after he's on the property, and let him lie in a pool of his own blood until the morning shift comes in and discovers him.
Posted by: hobgoblin Jun 7 2006, 12:13 AM
hmm, a gun shooting razorwire. im thinking SLA industries here
Posted by: Shrike30 Jun 7 2006, 11:45 PM
I was thinking that too... can't remember the name of the weapon, though. "KPS Mangler" comes to mind, but I think that was a shotgun...
Posted by: PBTHHHHT Jun 8 2006, 04:25 PM
| QUOTE (hobgoblin) |
| hmm, a gun shooting razorwire. im thinking SLA industries here |
How is that better than a gun that fires flechette rounds? The flechette is easier to make, the razorwire will involve more research and development for questionable appreciation in performance over flechette, and no, coolness factor does not always supersede practicality and economics realistically.
Posted by: Austere Emancipator Jun 8 2006, 04:32 PM
If you're talking about the standard cyberpunk-style flechette (basically, a sharp cloud of crap), then how's either better than bullets?
Posted by: Moon-Hawk Jun 8 2006, 04:45 PM
| QUOTE (Austere Emancipator) |
| If you're talking about the standard cyberpunk-style flechette (basically, a sharp cloud of crap), then how's either better than bullets? |
Because it's Sharp! And a cloud. And, um, crap, uh, comin' at 'cha . . . y'know? I got nothin'.
Posted by: Kagetenshi Jun 8 2006, 04:49 PM
| QUOTE (PBTHHHHT) | ||
How is that better than a gun that fires flechette rounds? The flechette is easier to make, the razorwire will involve more research and development for questionable appreciation in performance over flechette, and no, coolness factor does not always supersede practicality and economics realistically. |
Huge increase in impact on observers.
~J
Posted by: KarmaInferno Jun 8 2006, 04:55 PM
I do like that idea of a monowire net-gun.
Especially if the target has enough time to stand there and blink in surprise for a moment before sliding apart into hamburger.
-karma
Posted by: PBTHHHHT Jun 8 2006, 06:05 PM
| QUOTE (Austere Emancipator) |
| If you're talking about the standard cyberpunk-style flechette (basically, a sharp cloud of crap), then how's either better than bullets? |
How is the monowire/razorwire gun better than flechettes or bullets is what I'm implying rather than just flechette. I just use flechette as the example since they want something that spreads out in a large thing of razorwire.
Posted by: hyzmarca Jun 8 2006, 06:23 PM
| QUOTE (KarmaInferno) |
| I do like that idea of a monowire net-gun. Especially if the target has enough time to stand there and blink in surprise for a moment before sliding apart into hamburger. -karma |
Sort of like the two-blink/two-blink death ray. The target blinks twice, then crumbles into a pile of dust except for his eyes, which land intact at the top of the pile and blink twice again.
Posted by: Toptomcat Jun 8 2006, 07:06 PM
The razor-wire weapon was designed less as a weapon of ULTIMATE DESTRUCTION then as something that's designed for people with no clue how to use a firearm (and makes itself a danger into everyone in your freakin' frontal arc to compensate.)
The best comparison is not a netgun or shotgun, but a directional frag grenade.
Posted by: Shrike30 Jun 8 2006, 07:30 PM
Wow, I'd hate to be anyone resembling an innocent bystander downrange of that gun, especially since it's intended for those who don't have a clue how to shoot in the first place. At least with the conventional weapon, they might miss...
Posted by: hobgoblin Jun 8 2006, 07:43 PM
SLA industries are not about realism by a long shot.
if anything is a nightmare with cyberpunk elements.
the gun in question si one GAB chopper.
the wire is basicly stored in a similar manner to a coiled spring. it can either allow one end of the wire to be connected to the weapon after firing, or it can release it so that it can wrap around the target.
much of the equipment in SLA is designed to be cool, in a gothic kinda way...
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