| Gear: Flamers | |||
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FlamersFlamers are specialist weapons. Relatively short ranged and with little armor penetration, they are used to rapidly clear enclosed places, to set fires, clear brush, destroy structures, for use against swarms of small-size Squirms, and as a rough pass for in-field sterilization of Squirm-contaminated areas. The wide area they affect allows the flames to reach around and leak through cracks in armor, although they have little effect against heavy sealed armor. In enclosed areas, care must be taken that a flamer's user isn't engulfed by the fireball it produces. In a plasma flamer, a turbopump sucks in surrounding air and heats it to a plasma with a microwave antenna. This plasma is then expelled through a magnetic rocket nozzle to produce a high speed jet. This jet is visible as a glowing flame for several meters from the nozzle. Beyond that, the air jet is invisible, save for the distortions from its turbulence; yet it is still hot enough to cause flammable materials to burst into flame for tens of meters. The hot, high speed jet acts like rocket exhaust, producing substantial recoil thrust and requiring a strong hand to control the gun. Flamer jets sustain very high output discharges, with powers more than an order of magnitude higher than other energy weapons. The relatively broad jet concentrates the energy less, however, resulting in less penetration. The jet produces very high temperatures over the area it directly impacts, and a fireball from the billowing gases scattering off the impact point produces burning damage and starting fires over a wider area. Because flamers rely on sucking in the surrounding air and heating it, they do not work underwater or in vacuum.
Flamers shoot out a continuous jet. Their effective ROF is usually 1 but can be any positive integer the attacker chooses by sweeping the beam from side to side. No more than three actions can be used to shoot a flamer in one combat round. A flamer's Wound score is the defense roll of the target plus the Range score, down to a minimum of the score listed in Brackets under the Wound column. The attacker can voluntarily increase the minimum Wound score by slashing farther with the jet during his attack. The Penetration is 2d6 row shifted by the number under the Pen column, minus the Wound score, minus the Score of [ROF]. Decrease the Pen before you account for the maximum Wound Score for the target's Size. Goodies can be spent to increase the Pen roll or to decrease the Wound Score by 1 (thus increasing the Pen as well). Against a stationary target, you automatically cause the Wound Score you want down to the score listed in brackets, and the Pen is figured as if you had rolled a 15 on the 2d6 roll (yes, that's higher than is possible against maneuvering targets). At the nozzle, the plasma jet has a Temperature score of +8 and causes the listed damage. Flamer jets spread out with distance. For every range band beyond the range score listed under Focus, increase the minimum Wound Score by 1, row shift the Pen by -1, and decrease the Temperature score by 1 down to a minimum of +4. Within the first range band, where the Temperature score is +8, 5 points of Pen is in the form of radiant heat, which will ignore deflectors. At Temperature score +7, the radiant Pen is 1, and at Temperature score +6 it is 0.3. The jet is visible as a glowing plasma at ranges where its Temperature score is 7 or higher. Wherever the jet hits, it produces a backsplash of scalding gas that expands as a burning engulfing area attack from that point to the listed radius. Backsplash is always Temperature score of +4, regardless of the distance. The backsplash fireball will be visible as a yellow-orange flame.
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