Quick question here.......

Mono-wire is stretched across a hallway so it will cut through anything moving through that hallway. Sounds good so far.

But wouldn't such a wire vibrate when exposed to the open air of the hallway? Wouldn't that vibration create a high-frequency noise? And now for the kicker wouldn't someone with high freq hearing mod be able to hear it?

damn people that know what they are talking about and type faster than i do.
in other words Austere Emancipator covered what i was going to say.

Why would monowire hum to begin with? Does dental floss hum when you string it up in a hallway? Barbed wire? Thread? Piano wire? Spider webs? I've never heard any of those hum when I've seen them out in the open (well, for those I've seen -- never saw someone string a piano wire outside).

The physical properties of barbed wire, piano wire or spider webs are quite unlike those of monowire -- any monowire. I'm pretty sure you could make dental floss or thread hum if you stretched it rather stout across a hallway and then blew at it with a fan. Not exactly likely to happen accidentally with wind or air conditioning, and monowire would still likely be too thin to make any significant sound. How flexible is monowire, BTW?

Stretchiness was what I was looking for, yeah. With that in mind, making monowire hum would be nearly impossible simply because a taut monowire would snap if vibrated even a little bit.

Wow. Nice discussion that's sprung up Been very informative.

THRREEEEEEAD NECRO!


Anyway, I had some ongoing questions of similar nature re: Monowire, and wanted to see if any new information/ideas have popped up in the...*giggle*...6 years (TO THE DAY) this topic last saw air.

Silly string.

If your commlink starts randomly expounding upon the virtues of Ares brand monowire, stop and thank the Security team for not using tag erasers.

Oh god thread necro

The easiest way to protect yourself from monowire traps is still the same - a really high perception check. That, or a Radar/Ultrasound system a tacnet, which should notice it and point out OH GOD DON'T STEP THERE.

Am I the only one bothered by the physical impossibilities of a one micron thick mono-filament being used as a whip?


For any who have a dumb look on their face after reading that: mass to surface area ratio of such a filament would mean that it would not move so quickly in a direction perpendicular to the direction the end is pointing. It would simply follow the path of the hand trying to use it.

Well it is weighted at one end other wise yes it would be totally unusable even if you hit it will have so little force behind it to use. Whighted to use the path of the whitgh to drag the cable its less a whip more a weapon we don't really have an anaolg for.

Side question re: monofilament stuff. How much strength/force is required to use it? Example: Lets say you had a 'switchblade' like 'knife', the push out type instead of the flip type. Instead of a blade, the knife pushed out an holding bar with a secured monofilament.

For an appropriate visual, check out images for the wii game No more heroes, but instead of the 'lightsaber' imagine that sword is smaller scale, and the light-sword part is the monofilament. The resultant blade would be only as thick as the securing 'spine', less than the diameter of a pencil, for example. Consequently, would you be able to slip that blade under a restraint like handcuffs, etc, and simply do a counter or clockwise turn of the 'blade' so the monofilament presses up against the restraint. You'd be protected from 'accidentally' turning it into your flesh as the top and bottom brackets securing the monofilament would be initially flush with the plane of your flesh. You'd have to use an alternate 'saw' method like taking a paper cutter to paper if the restraint were too big to get all at once.

Voran I like the idea but in combat it could only cut as deep as the distance between the mono and the thing holding it.

Also as for armor I had a thought.

Imagine a chain link fence that for the sake of argument was strong enough to stand up to the mono filament. Try to hit something immediately on the other side of it with a whip. Or the slash (not stab) of a sword. Now imagine that wrapped around armor. Embedded into it. it would work well on flat parts like the main trunk of the body, but on more rounded areas it would need to be a tighter weave of mono resistant materiel. What you would have is like a chain link fence. No protection from bullets, lasers, or arrows. Little to no protection from blunt attack but increased protection from slashing attacks where directly contacting the blade to the target matters.

It would be like an armor mod that added to armor just against slashing and mono whip. But it should probably be stated specially and not just remove the armor value cut in half and comes in rating up to 6. For 6 more points of impact armor against swords and whips.

Yeah, the mono-switchblade isn't really intended for combat, though it'd be great for cutting someone's ear off Ideally, it'd be something you could stash in an arm or leg 'smuggler' compartment to pop out in case you got captured and restrained. Due to the thickness (thinness) of the 'blade' you could likely slip it between the space of the restraint, then turn. Then 'snip' kinda like superpowered scissors.

Just as true today as the day it was written.

Facilities might not use monowire on their fences:

• monowire is detailed on SR4a p260 with damage code 8P
• microwire is detailed on SR4a p337 with damage code 8P, however its availability is 4 and it can be handled with Rappelling Gloves

If you're going to be stringing up a kilometre of perimeter defences you're going to pick microwire for cost and insurance reasons. Rappelling Gloves aren't too hard to acquire.

By the same token, if you're a Shadowrunner and want a small spool of rather sharp material without the risk of monowire's legality rating, you'd also pick microwire.

Well fence wire resonates in the wind. At least, I've heard it do so when I've seen it out in the open. The phenomenon is known as aeroelastic flutter. If you've seen a shopping trolley wheel flutter or accelerated a motorcycle without a steering damper you've observed a similar system on a much larger scale.

Even so, considering a resonating string on an electric guitar not plugged into an amplifier is very quiet, a resonating monowire's harmonics will easily be drowned out by background noises such as the character (with the high-frequency hearing)'s heartbeat, clothes rubbing on each other, capacitors in worn / implanted tech, etc. Since the wavelength of the sound depends on how wide the hallway is, one couldn't learn to identify it based on a specific typical frequency the way one knows 50Hz mains hum whenever it rears its ugly head.

Perhaps a more practical detection method would be to encourage condensation, as that will cause water to bead on the wire and drop off once sufficient has collected to overcome surface tension. That might be as simple as using the building's fire-extinguishers for a while and watching where condensation forms.

Just look up Rappelling Gloves.

Mark the calendar now for 2022. A tradition is starting.

Get a Tower-Shield.
Carry it in front of you.
Problem solved?
Have no shield?
Use the groups Elf.
The groups Elf also doubles as a handy detector for electric fences.
Or if no Elf in group, try and find a guard instead.

Or for the more "humane" option:
The adventurers 11' Science Pole.
For stuff you would not touch with an 10' Pole.
Now available in collapsible/telescoping/folding.
Available in Densiplast, Ceramics, Titanium/Alluminium-Alloy.

Bit more expensive:
Drone with vehicular Armor to drive in front of you.

Bit more inhumane than the Elf:
Use a Spirit, preferably Earth/Stone/City-Spirit materialized for the same purpose.

That one might be a problem. Spirits are (arguably) people, or at least deserving of the same rights.

Yeah, at least in Denver you will get into big, scaly trouble for that.

Silly string! You shoot a good length out in front of you, if it snags or cuts in half, you know about where to look. ( apparently the US military has been using silly string in Afghanistan to check for trip wires attached to IEDs, same principle should work for the monowire trip wire ...when you have time and space to check. The real nastiness is to herd runners into running down a trapped hallway, running it just in front of a door handle, trapping air ducts, etc)

Your evilness is weak.
Staircase.
Slipspray at the top.
Monowire at the bottom.

That seems like a very dark sequel to home alone.

Wasn't that the movie where people left their kid at home because they were too busy/tired of his crap to think about him? Then the kid torments some burglars instead of calling the police? I'm not sure there's much room to complain if there was a dark sequel to that. It'd just be more entertaining.

Or how about just spray-paint? At least that way you can move at a decent speed spraying it ahead of you. It's a lot lighter to carry than a fire extinguisher for starters.

Or how about just spray-paint? Anything it unexpectedly beads on and drips along alerts you there's something there, and it might throw the clean-up crew / investigators off your professional scent, especially if you spray pink. "Random gangers did it!"

Just as true today as the day it was written.

Where it gets really nasty is if they electrify the carbon buckytubes monowire fencing. Then you take 7S for grabbing the wire (SotA63.96) +4DS from Shock (p95) each Turn until making a Body(6) test to let go. And if you twitch in convulsions you probably take aggravated damage.

Another hazard of harvesting perimeter fencing for fun and profit is getting whipped by its ends when the cutting tool releases all that tension:You need to make a Qck(6) test to avoid taking 10S. Seems like a bit of a risky way to make an income when you could be face-tanking panther rounds and Dikoted ally spirits.

All that being said, I think everyone would agree that the most indispensable skill on the character sheet of someone ripping off monomolecular fencewire to sell to the unscrupulous has to be: Street Knowledge: Fences.

I was afraid this was me. I have been going through the posts to the "new" forum from back in 2003. I think I missed a bunch of 3E posts for a while and there is not a lot of Old School traffic out there.

I guess it WAS me posting to mark the calendar for tomorrow.

Happy thread day!

And @Bodak? <groan>... "Street Knowledge: Fences"??? There's suddenly a Pun Background Count in the room....

Good catch.

As long as he stays in the background...

I'll show myself out.

Since it was brought up early in this thread can anyone tell me where to find two stage laser systems in 3E? I'm running a module and planning to run another that refer to site that has this system, but neither adventure gives any stats or references.

If I understand correctly, this is referring to a field of tripwire beams which sense intruders and, when they do, they amp up the intensity in order to slice, as per Resident Evil. (Make sure to pack your Snake Mesh Socks from TWL.118!) If that's the sort of thing you're looking for, check out SotA63 pp97-98 / 83-84 and CC p30. Perception TN12 to notice it; Quickness (DIY TN) to weave through it; Quickness TN16 to defeat it with smoke and mirrors unless you spend a week calculating the angles which reduces the TN to 8; Reaction TN6 to set up a proxy emitter (200Y); and 10M if you fail (ignores Ballistic; halves Impact, round down). The benefit is you can switch your security array off during work hours and back on again overnight in a way you just can't with monowire. The drawback is you might face nasty lawsuits and a reluctance for staff to come to the office after your LTG is compromised and the field comes online during working hours.

For the benefit of the OP though (and Voran, I really hope you're paying attention) it would be much harder to steal LASER beams than to steal monowire. Deflecting the former while detecting the latter might be as simple as wrapping yourself in tinfoil (shiny side outwards, of course), wearing your safety specs (that LASER is reflecting in an arbitrary direction now), and walking slowly.
Ech; you can't have it all.