Questions tagged [weapons]
For questions about existing weapons or designing new ones.
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Would Dicyanoacetylene Make a Good Flamethrower Fuel?
Ok so I've been working on researching a flamethrower fuel that can burn at extremely high heat so it melt through high heat resistant materials, such as Tungsten, Osmium, and so on. I've looked into ...
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What would be a good weapon to use with size changing spell
Partial setting summary
It's a mage-centric world where spells are treated as family secrets (secrecy refers specifically to chants and moves needed to cast a spell, more experienced mages can omit ...
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World Building Knowledgebase - How to write good Military World Building
This is a migration or re-post of something I posted in the Meta, which received good reviews:
Here is the Meta Post - go check the Meta out, it is where us cool-kids hang out.
This is going to be a ...
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what happened to the gunpowder because of the delay [closed]
So gunpowder is one of those inventions that could have easily been delayed, because there was no logical reason to mix those ingredients together for an intended purpose. It thus seems reasonable ...
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How do you "stealth" a relativistic superweapon?
There are questions about stealth in space and I have reviewed them; to me this is a much more niche case with different parameters that I think make this merit a different question.
What I want to ...
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Fully electric ice thrower
Flamethrower and Icethrowers are common weapons used in my story. I know how a Flamethrower works and I have already implemented the Flamethrower but I am having trouble thinking of how an "ice ...
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Is it practical to wield a bladed weapon in mouth?
In the vast army of famous swordsmen, there's someone who's very well known for a certain community, and completely unheard for the rest.
He's Roronoa Zoro, from the anime One Piece.
His possibly ...
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Preventing the dispersion of a particle-beam behind the target
Ranged plasma weapons can't work effectively, due to certain issues, so I want to replace them with their closest relatives, Neutral Particle-Beam Weapons (hereby referred to as NPBW)
There would be ...
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Looking backwards to navigate forwards
We often have questions here about objects moving at relativistic speeds through real space and one issue that always comes up is particle interactions at those speeds. This creates a bow shock of ...
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How can I kill off 75-90% of humanity by a non-biological weapon, but leave structures standing?
I'm making a world where approximately 75-90% of humanity was taken out by a non-biological weapon (i.e., no viruses or bacteria), but the majority of major structures, such as tall buildings, exist ...
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Would ETC be useful for precision small arms in the near future?
I'm still working on that campaign from my other question about bio weapons and I've started working on coming up with weapons.
Brief summary: Its 2065, the world is in a state of constant proxy wars ...
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Would a 'premature detonating' forcefield-type device be effective against shaped charge warheads?
As I've been thinking over how I might go about implementing forcefields into my setting, I considered the idea that 'early' shield designs might operate differently from the usual ability for shields ...
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How would I calculate the damage someone suffered from various strikes? [closed]
So, I’ve been developing a TTRPG and am wanting to present a realistic fantasy world. This doesn’t mean fantastic things wouldn’t happen - demigods can swing swords at the speed of light. But when ...
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What would be the best material to make gauntlets out of? [closed]
If a character trained to fight like a boxer wanted to bring weighted gauntlets to combat in a fantasy setting what material would be the best to do so with? Something heavy to increase the mass on ...
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Point defense weapons on bio-mechanical spacecraft that part of von Neumann machine horde
I am currently working on a concept for a science fiction novel about interstellar warfare in the 24th century.
I am wondering about the best point defense weapons for biomechanical space combat ships ...
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Ideas for an alternative to nuclear weapons as a deterrent? [duplicate]
I posted a question a couple days ago about the use of bio-weapons as an alternative to nuclear weapons as a deterrent for a D&D campaign I'm working on.
I got some really good answers explaining ...
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Spearguns without rubber?
I want a medieval civilization to be able to hunt under water. However every weapon I can find to spearfish under water seems to be rubber based. I don't want to introduce rubber to my world as it ...
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What are some of the longest effective one handed weapons?
Writing about a character who used to be a veteran infantryman who was skilled with a two handed spear, both as part of a spear wall and in battlefield combat. Due to the loss of his non dominant arm, ...
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"Infantry" main weapons for the setting described below?
What would be a suitable choice for "infantries" (the quote unquote is because it is not necessarily a real person, possibly just a rover with a gun doing the job of a footsoldier) for this ...
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"Infantry" main weapons for the setting described below? (NOT a duplicate for reasons explained in the post)
(before anybody decide to flag this post as a duplicate, there's an explanation of why it looks identical at the bottom of this post)
what would be a suitable choice for "infantries"(the ...
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Does it make sense for giants to use clubs or swords when fighting non-giants?
Many settings feature creatures of vastly different heights; for the purposes of this question let 'giants' mean any humanoid creature that is significantly larger than a regular human. Let's say 'at ...
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Can we combine a laser with a gauss rifle to get a cinematic 'laser rifle'?
So, I've been trying to think of ways to have a sci-fi "laser beam" in a setting that at least gives a fig leaf of realism. After reading through many other posts here it's become clear that ...
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How much better would metallic hydrogen be than conventional explosives?
How much more effective (if at all) would metallic hydrogen explosives be against armored targets?
In this setting metallic hydrogen can be cheaply manufactured and contained in a metastable state ...
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Effects if a human was shot by a femtosecond laser
Laser guns in science fiction are extremely common to the point of being a common cliche. According to atomic rockets lasers would be much more effective as pulsed lasers compared to continous-wave ...
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How to Quickly Direct a Dragon’s Fire while Piloting her in Battle?
In this world, some dragons are bred by humans, some are feral. Some are domesticated and trained for work or war, while others are free, and can make lifelong friends with humans and their families. ...
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designing an elven magic system that blends with a WW1-esque world [closed]
I'm having issues designing a balanced magic system.
let me elaborate.
a handful of nations have allied against a big empire, and the fighting has regressed into trench warfare. Tech level is early ...
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How speedy is a temporal weapon’s destruction of a planet?
In my world there is such thing as a temporal weapon: a device which radically alters the flow of time in a given region by fueling a warp drive-like device with the concentrated energy of a ...
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Is wood porous? [closed]
Steps to make a bomb in a fantasy world.
Take a piece of wood.
Wood is porous. Saturate these pores with oxygen.
Saturate the wood itself with Pyro Mana(Mana that provides heat when released).
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UV radiation from conventional blasts? [closed]
Continuing from this question
Blast will produce shockwaves at a close distance, so earplugs are a given. But what about the UV glasses? Temperatures exceeding 2500K are required to produce UV ...
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How to fight effectively on a space station [duplicate]
So the question here is fairly simple. What kind of weapons can you use on a space station that can kill someone in advanced body armor, and even the occasional person in powered armor, without too ...
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Fastest way to do damage/kill with wind
Wind powers in fiction are often extremely powerful with the ability to kill or even level objects with a single attack. In real life wind is typically weaker than the wind in fiction and unless the ...
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With modern technology would it be possible to build an HG Wells style Martian tripod?
With modern technology would it be possible to build an HG Wells style Martian tripod?
It should approximate to one of the HG Wells war of the worlds style tripods at roughly 30m high and have a “heat ...
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What are the advantages of a coilgun v.s. a railgun?
I want to know the pros and cons of hand held rail guns versus coil guns. They will be given to infantry who can easily lift the weapons. If need be they could have twice the strength of a normal ...
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Ball lightning projection as an alternative to plasma weaponry
Plasma weaponry is a staple of science fiction, but is often objected to on the basis that it expands too readily. There's no way to effectively deliver it to a target without spending a lot of effort ...
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Maximizing the destructive potential of an acoustic weapon
Acoustic weapons are directed energy weapons used by the government to incapacitate and end crowds and protests. They use loud sounds to disturb the ears of those affected and some people even think ...
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is there any way to make firearms work in a fantasy setting alongside swords and armor and stuff?
So, I'll try to keep this simple. I've had an idea about adding firearms in a setting alongside sword users and the like with the caveat that everyone in this setting is capable of some type of magic. ...
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What would be the next logical step after crossbows?
In this world I'm making, I'm trying to avoid firearms (to keep things like melee weapons more balanced), but also be more industrial. I'm justifying it by the simple idea of 'we never discovered ...
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Creating a portable nuclear bomb launcher?
So, in my story the United States Army created a large amount of new weaponry and armor to protect its troops while they marched into the resource rich countries of South America. They invented ...
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Effectiveness and impact of hypersonic needles replacing supersonic bullets
I have been thinking about realistic sci-fi small arms of future. Usually authors make use of lasers and other vague laser-like rifles. But if you think about it kinetic projectiles have a lot of ...
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Why do the police forces in my world use antiquated weaponry?
Here's a little background:
My science-fantasy world has been devastated by monster attacks coming from various enormous pits inside the planet. The first led to a total collapse of civilization and ...
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Minimizing bleeding, maximizing killing
In this world there is a species of Apex predators that roams every corner of the planet, creatures basically unkillable... Oh, and it flies, very fast. But they have only one weakness, they are blind ...
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Would a Glass "Rupert Drop" Weapon be Plausible?
Can a large glass Rupert Drop somehow be manufactured into a useful and effective weapon in medieval warfare, such as a club?
I've developed a society that primarily lives in the desert with sand in ...
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How can I make a military that largely enlists spell swords viable? [closed]
I really need help trying to get this to work. I'm working on a faction that primarily employs spell swords as their Frontline force.
They have other parts such as artillery, combat medics, and other ...
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What is the best handheld/portable weapon for a person who is 1 inch(2.5 centimeters) trying to take down an 6 foot man?
I am back in a 'shrinking/being small is neato' phase, so I have been thinking about things at small scale.
Anyway, my question is what would be the best choice of weaponry for a 1 inch tall man that ...
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How would a scaled-up ballista designed to launch 50-foot spears function?
This question is for a story in which society’s most advanced technology is basically identical to that which Europeans possessed in the Middle Ages, particularly around the last 50 years of said time ...
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How can my weapons kill enemy soldiers but spare civilians?
In my RPG, an engineer is working on an energy weapon that kills enemy soldiers but leaves civilians and noncombatants unharmed.
During the game, he takes the weapon designs and goes on the run, out ...
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What would be the best melee weapon(s) to emphasize arboreal mobility?
I'm currently trying to come up with various different Melee weapon "load outs" for the creatures in my world, and have come up with a few different ones for certain situations already. The warriors ...
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How might weapons and armor evolve in a world where Humans coexist with Dinosaurs?
I'm thinking of writing a story where due to magic, a bunch of Neolithic tribes get sent to the Late-Cretaceous Period.
While I was coming up with the idea, I realized that living with dinosaurs may ...
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How would I create a reason for melee weapons (swords, polearms, et cetera) to be used and effective in a science fiction setting? [duplicate]
While I enjoy the "rule of cool", I enjoy having reasoning for everything being the way it is in my settings. My current reasoning is melee as a tertiary weapon, and as a weapon used by ship ...
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Why are scout bots only used for reconnaissance?
Why would scout robots be used for recon only, not general combat?
I have a situation in which scout robots akin to mars rovers are used for military applications by forces residing on a foreign ...
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