Messing with drones with out any cash., Trouble with drones and no weapons. Options

[Mutie]

[Darkest Angel]

That would probably fall into the catagory of vicious blow. Sure you could probably damage a car enough to interfere with it's performance with a baseball bat, but it'd be nigh on impossible to actually disable it with one. That would be imho very well represented by the normal reduction in damage code and power, and increased number of successes required for staging up.

[Nikoli]

Not to get nit picky, but a baseball bat can bugger a normal car quickly, smash the tail pipe flat.
My point being, this may be a time to make called shots to specific parts for specific effects.

[fctarbox3]

I once had the opportunity to take a bat to a car.... those things are tough.

It was at an amateur carnival/fundraiser ("Destroy the car! 5$ for 10 swings!"). After my go round, I started offering $10 for anyone who could dislocate the steering wheel. Many tried ("How hard can it be?"), no one collected. I did manage to get the steering wheel cover, however. Still have it. It's a Dodge.

But yeah, you can do a helluva lot of cosmetic damage. Broken windows, bent panels, yadayada.

I think the called shot rule that lets you target windows/wheels separately from the main vehicle is what's really important in this case.

[Fahr]

wan't the whole point of the mythbusrter that a frozen chicken imparted no more impact than the thawed chicken? they shot them against steel plates and measured the deflection, it was identical.

-Mike R.

[Austere Emancipa...]

You'll also get about the same deflection in a steel plate when you shoot it with a deforming 9mmP and a FMJed one. The FMJ will still penetrate kevlar better.

The difference might not significant, though, because even a defrosted chicken is pretty dense and not very prone to "fragment upon impact".

[Lindt]

Forget a bat. Doing any REAL damage to a car with even a 10Lb sledgehammer is pretty tough. Again, lots of cosmetic damage, not much else.

[Austere Emancipa...]

You could try your inherited ancestral katana. I'm sure it could cut through the drones like some other katana through a fire hydrant.

That would also split the engine into a bazillion pieces without even touching it.

This post has been edited by Austere Emancipator: Mar 11 2004, 04:22 PM

[Nikoli]

[fctarbox3]

So, I realize backing and filling makes my story seem artificial, but now that Lindt mentions it, I believe it was a sledgehammer, not a bat, that this amateur carnival was using. If the car could've started before they started beating it (It was a donated junker, wasn't going to start no matter what), I'm reasonably sure it still would've started after they finished beating it, mostly because no one thought to pop the hood and go at the engine directly. Although I suddenly (after 8 years) wish I had...

OTOH, unless they really improve paneling technology by 2064, the cosmetic damage will cost as much or more to repair as just buying a new car...

[Raptor1033]

[Shockwave_IIc]

Monster city. i think.

[Nikoli]

Demon City Shenjuko (sp)

[Moonstone Spider]

The "No stun track" bit can lead to some really odd situations in Shadowrun.

Big Willy the Troll is pissed off at his Fixer, so he decides to total her car. He pulls out a sledgehammer and spends 20 minutes beating on it, with no effect. Cooling down, he decides to play it smart and pulls out his trusty Cougar Fineblade. In around 30 seconds the car falls apart, sliced to bits by the pocketknife.

[Kagetenshi]

Sledgehammers do Physical, I believe.

And Fineblades are definitely more combat-knife style than pocketknives. Still silly that they can total a car, but not pocketknives.

~J

[Panzergeist]

Does the confusion power work on drones? I wouldn't think a mental power would, since it's rather equivalent to a mana spell.

[Jaded]

Yes, the entire point of that episode of Mythbusters was the NASA myth about the frozen chickens. Results: Frozen birds hit no harder than thawed birds.

They also showed the air cannons that shoot pumpkins a mile in that episode, lots of fun. :D


The skycar uses vectored thrust generated by a ducted fan system.

http://www.moller.com/skycar/m400/

Generally, from what I gather, the advantages of a ducted fan are:

It's significantly quieter than a standard prop.
A ducted fan is much more compact than a similar power prop.
They're safer. Especially when compared to the blades of a helicopter.

The downside seems to be they are tricky when it comes to handling and stablity.
They seem to provide less lift than a similar heli system <skyjeep>
There was mention of them being more fuel greedy.


They definitely are a huge part of the model airplane market. Apparently as engines become better, the ducted fan becomes more of a viable solution.

On the taser thing...you had best get an extremely lucky shot for a taser to have any effect. Zap the hell out of a RC car with a taser and it'll work fine. Go take the heaviest duty stun gun you can find and zap the **** out of your car. Unless you pop the hood or get inside and start shoving it in the dash, you're going to have no effect.

[fctarbox3]

Hmm... even if you only attach one pole to the antenna and hope for it to ground through the car?

I mean, if you put both poles on the antenna, yeah, it's probably going to short right there... fry the antenna, car reasonably safe...

So you gotta make sure that the circuit completes in the car somehow.

I think. I'm pulling this all out of physics classes I took years ago, of course.

Anyone got an RC and a taser they're willing to test with?

[Backgammon]

Jammers, even not very strong ones, will make many drones completely useless. Ground drones also tend not have a very high clearance, so if you can climb somthing somewhere, you should at least buy yourself some time as the drone has to back up to get you.

Of course these are defensive techniques rather than offensive, but you gotta start somewhere :)

[Nikoli]

Actually the effects of tasering a car vary by teh taser type and the location of the hit. You pop a normal car on a body panel with a normal store bought taser and yes, you'll just torq the driver. You pop same car on piece of frame with normal taser and you torq the driver and fry the stereo. Pop the same car, in the same spot (frame or metal attached to frame) with a taser meant for dealing with folks during a psychotic episode and you've got a dead auto. Unless the car is turned off, then you'll just kill lo-jack.

[Darkest Angel]

If you hit a vehicle with anything electrical, 99 times out of a hundred you'll do squat since the frame will just act like a faradays cage, then earth the current through the tires.

Why do you think the advice given when caught outside in a major lightning storm is to sit in your car?