Offensive Organic Weapons System

[SaltedFish]

Producer Information
Designer:
Manufacturer:
(Suggested) Price:
OOWS-5: 25,000 KS
Nutrient bars: 15 KS
Cyst Ammunition: 150 KS each

Nomenclature Information
Name: OOWS-5
Type: Offensive Organic Weapons System
Model: 5
Role: Melee to Medium Range Antiarmor Engagement weapon
Length: 90 cm
Weight: 2.7 Kg

Discharge Information
Projection/ammo type: Organic Cyst
Firing Mechanism: Pneumatic, sphincter-controlled. Basically an air gun, but much more so. Pressurized air is kept in a large bladder worn on the back. Bladder continually recharges its supply of air, and contains enough air for three shots.
Caliber: 25mm
Effective Range: 450m
Maximum Range: 600m
Minimum Range: None
Muzzle Velocity: 450 m/s
Muzzle Blast: Rush of air and bits of phlegm extending 15cm from muzzle
Firing Mode(s): Single only
Recoil: Medium, should use two hands, if only because of weight.
Rate of Fire: Semiauto

Before firing, the breech sphincter opens, allowing one cyst to enter the firing chamber. Upon the trigger being pulled, the firing sphincter opens, the pressurized air rushes out through the barrel, pushing the cyst down the barrel. Upon impact, the cyst breaks open, splattering organic acids and enzymes over a large area. Cradled inside the cyst is a tiny beetle. The reaction between the acids/enzymes and whatever they come into contact with create nutrients for the beetle, which awakens, and uses the nutrients to bore through any armor into the body of the target. The use of hyperflagelletes helps the beetle bore through armor. These are tiny "arms" attached to the front of the beetle that "wave" very fast. This causes cavitation in the surrounding liquid. These temporary bubbles are forced over to the metal plate, and collapse, causing pitting and erosion. The beetle then follows the nervous system to the brain, killing the target. If the beetle is unable to pierce the armor it is on in under half a minute, the beetle dies.

Ammo Description:
Name: Cyst Ammo
Visual Description: Small, ovoid slimy pod. Dark brown in color. weighs 500 grams.
Ammo: 10 shots. More can be produced by the weapon(at the rate of one every 8 hours), or kept in a stasis-backpack and reloaded manually. The manufacturing plant has an enlargened version of this rifle, which can produce cysts at a rate of 1 every 10 seconds.
Damage Description: Initial impact of cyst, subsequent burning due to acids and enzymes, final death(if used on human) due to beetle.

Weapon Mechanisms:
Safety: None
Fire mode selector: None, semiauto
Weapon Sight: Varies from weapon to weapon, usually ghost-type sights.
Attachment Hard points: None
Conversion kit compatibility: None

Maintenance Information:
Field Maintenance Procedure: Only feeding the weapon is required. the weapon can repair any damage to itself. If no food is provided, the wepaon enters stasis, and eventually dies after three months of stasis.
Replaceable Parts and components: See above. In the event of serious damage, the rifle can be sent to qualified sugeons for repair.

Visual Description:
Ugly, lumpy weapon, looks fairly like a regular rifle, but with the afore mentioned lumps and protrusions. Due to its organic nature, no two weapons look the same, but all are used in the same way. The weapon gradually adapts to it's user. Over time, the pressure of the users hands and fingers on the exoskeleton of the rifle make grooves and indentations unique to the user.

Tell me what you think. No this did not come about naturally. It was engineered.

 

[Kimura]

Guaranteed-kill (except against Zesuaium) poo-flinger. I like it, though I don't think SAY would make anything like this. I don't envy the first fleet to come in contact with mishhu wielding these, though...
Also, please run it through a spell checker >.>

 

[DocTomoe]

That looks like a winner for the Misshu, least from what I can figure.

 

[Luke]

So the gun makes its own bullets right?

How does it do that, also how does it feed, where does it feed from, and what kind of food would it be, does it need like a special type of food?

I really like it, soulds weird, unusual and different, I.E. Unbeatable!

 

[Zakalwe]

I wouldn't be so sure against the Mishu, they have their own powerful immune systems and regeneration ability if I remember correctly.

How is it powered? What system does it use to launch the projectile? What is its speed?

It actually lacks quite a bit of detail, but it's a nice idea.

Uhm ... I do think it would take a very long time for it to regrow its ammo.

 

[Luke]

I ment unbeatable in concept and coolnes, but I do think that you need more detail, such as what you feed it, how long it takes to grow its bullets, weather you could have premade bullets for fast reload times and how quickly it heals itself.

 

[Vesper]

As a antipersonnel weapon I think it is a quite a interesting, as has been said, unique concept for a weapon.

However, I strongly object to it being able to penetrate armor. Organic structures cannot compete with metal alloys and ceramic for compressive and sheer strength or hardness (and in many cases, tensile strength). Think about it like this; to penetrate armor, a rail gun fires a very dense, very hard slug (such as some tungsten alloy or depleted uranium) at many times the speed of sound.* A HEAT round penetrate armor by focusing a jet of super heated metal against the armor at upwards of mach 25, burning through it. All of these methods use very large amount of energy (electrical for the rail gun, chemical for the HEAT round) to do there job, because the penetration of armor requires allot of energy, and that is with modern day armors, you could easily expect those found in SA to be much harder to penetrate.

How could an organic beetle even approach these kinds of power outputs? Its metabolism could not even approach the energy density of gunpowder (or other explosives used as propellants and warheads), nor could its mandibles withstand the pressures it would need to apply to damage armor plate (assuming its muscles could produce said strength). If you guys are going for any faint, dim light of realism, I cannot see how this weapon can be approved if it posses the ability to penetrate armor with a beetle.

Also, I'm not sure how it would be able to locate the brain through the entire tissue mass of the organism (as local nervous discharges would likely confuse it), but that doesn't really matter. It rummaging around eating things in a creature's abdomen is assured to cause a very painful, slow death. So, beyond the eating through the armor part (and possibly the muzzle velocity, though I don't want to deal with pressure calcs atm), good job Saltedfish.




*-[In actuality, these weapons penetrate hard armors because they exceed the strength of alloys (and pass through them like butter) and superheat due to friction, this superheated cloud of metal is what will kill the occupant.]

 

[Luke]

Vesper has a point, maybe have a acidic outlining on the bullets to burn through armour?

I don't know if that would work for sure, but it might.

 

[Kimura]

1.

Cradled inside the cyst is a tiny beetle. The reaction between the acids/enzymes and whatever they come into contact with create nutrients for the beetle, which awakens, and uses the nutrients to bore through any armor into the body of the target.

Sounds an awful lot like your suggestions have already been covered...just not explained quite clearly enough.

2. As for organic substances chewing through armour, just assume that there are 00ber reactive nitrates in the mucous and they make armour nitrates which dissolve easily in the mucous.

3. I hate how my complex sentences always lead to people misunderstanding; what I meant was, it sounds more like something the Mishhu would make.

4. "a lot" is two words. See http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=allot.

 

[Luke]

I think that the main problem is that if the bullets are grown then the reload times would be slow, so maybe have pre grown clips that you can insert for fast reload times.

 

[SaltedFish]

Yeah sorry bout the spelling, this was a first draft written totally in the posting tool. The comp I'm on has no word processors, and I had to start work fairly shortly after writing it.

*rubs hands briskly together*

As for the food, there is a, for lack of a better term, "spot" where high nutrient bars can be pushed in to feed the weapon. Standard rations can be used, although they do not yield the necessary nutrients to allow the weapon to operate at full functionality.

As for the rate of bullet production, it is about one every eight hours, at peak production. As mentioned before, more bullets, kept in a stasis container, can be force-fed into the weapon, seeing as three shots a day is a rather low rate of fire.

As for the armor piercing, there is the acid/enzymes themselves, which do considerable damage on their own. NSD: Hyperflagelletes. These are tiny "arms" attached to the front of the beetle that "wave" very fast. This causes cavitation in the surrounding liquid. These temporary bubbles are forced over to the metal plate, and collapse, causing pitting and erosion.

That helps the whole armor-piercing bit. The combined effect of the acid/enzymes and the erosion due to cavitation helps punch through most armor. If you don't believe that little bubbles can do that to armor, look up "cavitation" on Google(or Wiki it), and read the bits about the Navy's sub propellers.

*origional post edited. hopefully that makes things all nice and clear*

 

[Vesper]

As I see it here, these flagellates would be exposed to the cavitations shockwave just as much as the armor (since the low-pressure area would collapse just after the flagellate completed its cycle, or when the low-pressure are passed into a area above the vapor-pressure). If the cavitations was severe enough to cause damage to high strength alloys and ceramics, than it would probably tear the beetle (or at least its flagellates) apart much faster than it would get through the armor.

Also keep in mind that cavitations very rarely cause catastrophic failures in short durations (this is a assumption, I'm assuming a very powerful motor could cause a catastrophic failure in short order, but two things need to be remembered; 1) the energies involved would probably destroy the plate through other mechanisms before cavitations could do it, and 2) a biological could not approach the kind of energies needed for this kind of failure). What I have read so far talks about severe cavitations "dramatically reducing the lifespan of a pumpâ€

 

[Luke]

It was a very cool idea but there are quite a few things that just don't work, Vesper has gone through them all so I will put in is that if you want this to work you need to go away and work through all those kinks so it is feasible then come back and re post it!

 

[Wes]

Note that flagella go on the BACK of things they're pushing. See: Sperm

 

[SaltedFish]

Note that flagella go on the BACK of things they're pushing. See: Sperm

A mere technicality. But we'll just drop the idea of flagellates altogether, Vesper convinced me that they wouldn't work anyway. But I still get points for originality.

 

[Vesper]

I never said you didn't saltedfish, and I think this weapon would be terribly effiective against unarmored personel, I was just disagreeing with its ability to penetrate armor.

 

[Luke]

Well depending on what he is planning on using to get the bullets through armour it could work up to a certain degree.

 

[Zack]

The damage discription in the ammo section says only initial impact, and acids which dosen't seem threateneing to modern power armors. Even present day bullet proof vests should be enough to stop one of these rounds (and if the acid is strong enough to eat through the ceramics/metals/whatever provide plenty of time to take off the splashed peice of equipment.).

So, Vesper is right.

 

[Luke]

Fair enough
With all that information I think you can say that it would be a non armour peicing gun only.

 

[Kimura]

Unless what you're shooting is uranium-coated or contains uranium...heh heh heh...
Yeah, sad to see a neat idea shot down :/