We all know I have a love affair with flamethrowers. Kill it with fire is my go-to method of problem solving in games, even for situations where it's completely inappropriate (Though in those cases it's generally just to keep up my image or make a joke).

So I was thinking: How would I build a better flamethrower?

Ignore tech limitations for the moment.


Well, the first thing I want out of a flamethrower is range. After all, if it doesn't have range you may as well just make it a glorified cigarette lighter and be done with it.
The second thing is accuracy. Don't want to set fire to the wrong thing after all.
The third part of our beautiful blazing blaster is boom! (Ok, damage. I just had to do alliteration, you know?)

So, how do we get this to happen?

Well, a stream of molten Lithium or Sodium travelling at about mach 4 should do the job. Range, tick. Accuracy... not so sure on that one. Damage? It's a stream of supersonic molten metal that catches fire when it reacts with air/blood/rain/pretty much anything!

Unfortunately, I have my doubts about the practicality of such a weapon so I am asking Dumpshock to:
A) Evaluate its viability
B) Either improve this idea or come up with an alternative super flamethrower using futuristic tech.

Have fun

i would imagine travelling at mach 4 would cause the stream to spread out and become not very stream shaped. and you would lose a lot of kinetic energy as it did so.

but that's just a guess. i mean, obviously i've never actually *seen* molten lithium or sodium travelling that fast.

FD, it depends upon the constraints. Your idea is pretty much infeasible short of Mass Effect technology, but a better flamethrower is not out of the question with even modern tech, let alone 2070s technology. (Remember that flamethrowers have been banned for decades.)

Does this need to be troll-portable? Man-portable? Gnome-portable? Or may it be vehicular? If it can be vehicular, then range is possible with more than one or two short bursts, by having a vast ammunition storage and the machinery nessessary to maintain an incredible projection pressure until the ammunition is expended.

If not, then range is out the window if you want a stream of fire. I'd suggest you get yourself a grenade launcher and incendiary grenades. Air-bursting white phosphorus, assuming you're using sane rules that mirror real-world air-bursting grenades rather than ridiculous Shadowrun rules, should more than satisfy your "I want to set that person over there on fire" requirements. If you want even more firepower (pun intended,) and aren't too concerned about spewing toxic rocket fuel everywhere, hydrazine and an oxidizer give a nice, vigorous combustion.

I should probably add at this point that in addition to being for shadowrun I'm also looking into how this sort of thing would work for my Sci-fi novel. In other words, mass effect technology isn't necessarily out of the ball park for some of the more extreme ideas for this thread.

I'm certain that the corps are almost as concerned about that ban as the shadowrunners are.


Only limits are approximate physics and imagination. If a design is vehicle only, that's no reason to dismiss it out of hand. Ditto for low ammunition efficiency: a one shot underbarrel flamethrower is already canon in shadowrun, let's see if we can improve the design. I mean seriously? Tazer ranges?

Banned? By who? Both the Russians and Chinese armies have them in service.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=91c_1343317937

You could do a version of TEA rockets.

I'll say one thing for America. You fellows certainly know how to set people on fire.

Depends on what you want the flamethrower to do. My first thought would be to design a system that douses it's target with an unlit stream of fuel, igniting it at the end of the firing cycle. Give it a pulsed firing rate so that instead of a continuous stream of (hard to control) fire you get a jet of liquid that bursts into flames after hitting the target. (Or a moment before.) If we're talking shadowrun tech, the ignition source could be anything from a single stick-n-shock or explosive round to a short laser pulse.

If you really want your fuel to be on fire en-route to the target, and you don't mind going a bit more sci-fi, I'd say go with a plasma rifle. First use microwaves or laser pulses to burn an ionized, low pressure channel through the air--then fire a stream of superheated, electrically charged gas down the same path. The combination of pressure and opposing electrical charges keeps the plasma contained as it travels downrange. If you're concerned about your target continuing to burn after the initial hit instead of just having a hole burned through them, either use a gas that will react with the air and keep burning or suspend fine particles of something like phosphorus in the plasma stream. Of course, the kind of precision focusing and high-density power source required to pull that off is beyond even shadowrun tech--but it's definitely feasible.

I wonder if you could modify a Thunderstruck Gauss Rifle to fire magnetic-cored shards of group-1 metal at people? Cos that would be fricking awesome for anti-personnel work. Or dealing with water elementals.
"Welcome to earth, you water-based b****!"

So I have two ideas, both would essentially be incendiary rounds. You get the range and accuracy you have from a bullet (well, less so because the weights less, but still much better than a typical flame thrower)

1. The bullet is a compacted thermite with a more typical incendiary mixture to ignited it, with a magnesium to boost the temperature high enough to start the thermite reaction if necessary. When the bullet hits the thermite reaction will deliver lots of burning in a compact package. Molten iron enough flames for you?

2. A hollow bullet containing a pressurized solvent-polymer solution that's highly flammable, with an incendiary charge to ignite it. When the bullet hits and deforms the pressurized solvent-polymer will burst out (like foam from an aersol can, but you'd probably want it at even higher pressure) and be ignited. Instant napalm, though only a small amount of it.

Alternatively, if you're going Sci-fi. You could say that you have rounds loaded with an unstable isotope and you have bullets that are designed to combine a critical mass of this isotope when the bullet strikes. This creates a burst of heat and radiation in the target. Basically a small run away nuclear reaction inside the target. Note that in real life the size of a bullet is way to small to actually reach a critical mass, unless you were using an isotope that would decay to useless before you could/would actually fire it. Also, the radiation poisoning would probably kill a person before the heat/flame would.

Well, fair enough, but I'll note that if you're accelerating molten metal to four times the speed of sound through someone, they're probably not going to particularly care whether or not it then catches fire, considering they've been sawn in half by what is essentially the Normandy SR-2's cannon upgrade weapon from Mass Effect 2 writ small.

I mean, unless it's a vehicular target. Then they might survive the cutting-jet of metal.





Well, flamethrowers mounted on armored, tracked vehicles and even boats have been used to effect by militaries the world over since their advent... Though I will point out that long before the U.S. ratified the treaties which prohibited their use, the U.S. DoD unilaterally ceased their use, citing questionable efficiency (for any work other than clearing entrenched positions or simply setting fires, they're pretty shite, and in modern times there's better ways to do both,) and the fact that they inevitably cause a public relations disaster when used.

Even corps and runners care about that. Corps care because a PR disaster hits them far harder than it hits a nation, because you can be very sure that Horizon will need an amount of time measured in Planck time units to brand it the "Ares Baby Barbeque" or "Renraku Trog-Roast," or what-have-you. The company organ that handles sales to the general public, at the very least, will be hiring out Shadowruns on the jackasses who decided to employ flamethrowers as a nice "fuck you and the horse you rode in on" note to the morons responsible for their stock suddenly becoming radioactive. Remember, even AZT's massive PR organs were starting to lose ground in the Yucatan conflict after they went total scorched-earth, and that's AZT. Nobody else will fare quite so well.

And of course, Runners care because that's the kind of thing which leads to survivors, family of victims, and interested NGOs pooling money to hire a Prime Runner team to go after you.


[e]Mind you, the kettle of fish smells entirely different when dealing with things which are universally- or near-universally reviled. Then Kill It With Fire becomes the preferred method for keeping up morale amongst the troops and back at home, for quite obvious reasons. Any Great Dragon who needs to restore his P.R. in a hurry just needs to find a confirmed bug nest or other thing-that-nobody-not-literally-insane infestation, like toxic spirits or what-have-you, show up in the scales and start roastin.' This works for other folks, too; practically anyone can be hailed a hero if they find an unambiguously horrible, 100% vilified target, and light the fuses.

Say it with plasma. Generating it is a pain and you will need some heavy magnetics to properly channel, but when you want it to burn like the sun, plasma is the right item for the job.

Actually I am a bit surprised this wasn't your go to choice to start with since I believe you were familiar with Traveller style tech already and Plasma weapons are just a space age version of a flamethrower at it's heart.

By accuracy I am going to assume hitting the target at the end of the stream, because you are usually causing some destruction along it's path...

for pretty Booms as well, you can go with the spinoff Plasma concept of PASS. Maybe not as powerful, but it is pretty and with some ramping up could be fun.

Actually, with enough power the PASS idea could work as a space-age flamethrower. Instead of having the laser focus right in front of the target, have it's focal point sweep through the air from min range to max after pulling the trigger. That way you get a series of plasma explosions that all run together, effectively forming a column of glowing, superheated air extending in a straight line from the barrel.

Of course, figuring out how to focus the beam through all those plasma explosions could be tricky.

Also, if we're going vehicle mounted you could grab one of those Lone Star riot control vans with the full auto water cannons. Just load it with something other than water. Add a laser turret to ignite whatever flammable goodness you're spewing and there you go. I once had the idea to do this with liquid explosives, but the rest of the group didn't like the idea of driving around in a giant bomb.

The fun thing is it's possible to retune the wavelength (say around 1.06 μm) for something that could also work underwater.

Fishies go boom.

Think I have now found my new favourite fishing device.

What?

YOU go fishing in some parts of the Bay and see if you don't need it.....

I stayed away from plasma because, well, everyone does plasma. I wanted to be a bit different.

Which is why you are failing. There is no greater flamethrower than a nice heaping helping of THOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM, best brought to an enemy near you by the muzzle of a Strohl Munitions plasma handgun.

If you're not close enough to watch all the things you're not setting on fire burn, why do you even want a flamethrower at that point?

Plasma doesn't cling and burn. Also, it tends to dissipate in atmosphere. Don't get me wrong, plasma is awesome. It's just not really that practical much of the time.

In a vacuum, with no air in the way and no convection to reduce its energy? Now you're talking.

Well one could argue that any projectile in atmosphere will not perform as well as in vacuum. Flamethrower especially dissipates as distance goes, the Mythbusters flamethrower versus fire extinguisher was fun example of this.

Still think the PASS above with a bit of tweaking might be for you. It's just the synchronized laser beams travelling to the end point, then generating the superheated vapors from the target and then the Boom.

So you get your range, accuracy and still lovely burning (20,000 Kelvin+) with boom.

I prefer the Fully Automatic Man-Portable Plasma Ejector from Space Master... Wish I could remember the name of the Manufacturer.

Bruce. From the university of Sydney. He's also in charge of the sheep dip.

No thank you. The Strohl Munitions BH-series of plasma cannons have a moment's spin-up time, accompanied by a delightful glow-o-doom from the barrel and a distinctly pleasing (if you're on the right side of the barrel) Ominous hummmmmm that is soothing to you and excessively demoralizing to your enemies, before it begins immediately emitting a stream of hot plasma that can range from a 2cm precision bolt useful for precision cuts or shots, to a 1m magnetically-bound stream of plasma suitable for melting deck plates, burning straight through bulkheads and pressure hulls, and can even be set to "Rocket mode," by magnetically coupling the stream to the chassis, thus achieving significant amounts of thrust capable of propelling you away from danger at high velocity (or propelling you straight through danger, trailing hot thooooom everywhere you've been.)

The only problem is the weight and bulk; they're monsters, especially the 250i version. You can get versions powered by microannie plants at equal output to a BH-209i and the size and weight of a derringer, or even ones the size of a heavy pistol which equal and exceed the output of a BH-250...

But you don't get the glow or the ominous hum. Fortunately, despite the antiquity of the line, consistent demand for the product from devoted users has led to Strohl Munitions continuing to manufacture both products in short runs as well as maintaining service for existing units, and of course, anyone with a good fabber can make you a knock-off that, depending on how good his fabber is, how good his ability with said fabber is, and whether or not cutting corners is a concern, can be literally as good or even potentially superior to models that come out of Strohl's own lines. (Or can be cheap crap that will blow up the third time you pull the trigger. Use knock-offs at your own risk, Strohl Munitions is not liable for any damages caused by proper or improper use of unlicensed copies.)

(Alternatively, you can get an AP-130 or an AP-250 mounted in a big round case with some speakers by the gunsmiths at your local Planet Mercenary or Weapons World outlet, who are always happy to customize your weapon for you!)

Just make sure you don't get the BH-209m instead of the BH-209i, especially if you're an alcohol-guzzling amorph who likes to store his weapons of choice in his gullet.





('Cos Mormons don't really care for alcohol, while the Irish....)