The Yeti

[Eric]

The Yeti sniper rifle.

The Yeti was a custom weapon built for a notorious political assassin know only as Ice Tea.
Shortly after his arrest on Zdetl this exotic firearm found it’s way to the black market. Within a few years the design was copied and the Yeti was distributed underhanded throughout the imperium.

The hallmark of the Yeti’s design is the method for acquiring ammunition. Just add water to an empty clip and in a couple of hours you’ve got five untraceable armor piercing ice bullets. The rifle’s five round clip contains a small cryo and ice shaping unit. This is why Ice Tea was such an effective assassin. By the time the victim got to autopsy all evidence of what killed him had melted. This is also desirable to travelers and scouts who may go for months even years before restocking supplies.
Obvious ice bullets don’t hold their own propellent like conventional bullets. The Yeti incorporates compressed air. This also makes it easy to silence which it does by design.

Addons and accessories.

The Yeti is usually equipped with an Electronic Telescopic sight.
Spare clips attach to the side where the rifle powers their cryo unit to keep the ice rounds cool. The Yeti can hold two spare clips.
A special fluid to mix with the water for more AP value. This fluid is however traceable.
An independent air compressor.

One more thing. Rumor has it that Ice Tea escaped from prison under suspicious circumstances. Some say that he is tracking down every Yeti in existence and eliminating the owners in an attempt to find the original.
But you don’t believe is ghost stories like that do you. As long as you have the proper paperwork you have nothing to fear from owning a Yeti.

TL 8 Cost KC150 weight 5kg Rof 1 Range 100m (with out sight) DMG 2D8+1 Crit 19-20 (x3) Size large Type exotic Recoil yes Ammo Rnd 5 Cost KC2 for spare clip.

notes, master work weapon AP value 3

 

[Straybow]

Somebody mentioned this before, and mythbusters actually showed that firing an ice projectile doesn't work. No matter how cold you freeze the ice, it can't stand up to the thousands of gees in a rifle barrel.

As an aside, a friend of mine built a potato cannon, and naturally thought of using short segments of the same 3½" pvc pipe to form ice projectiles. The superior projectile-barrel seal coupled with reduced friction enabled superior range and accuracy compared to the potato. But we're talking about a ~100 m/s weapon with a longer barrel.

Then again, a head shot from one of these things could very well be fatal.

 

[mike wightman]

How about a crossbow bolt made out of ice then?

 

[far-trader]

Yep I'd have to agree it wouldn't be as good as all that, at least not at TL8. Maybe TL13, or TL15.

Certainly normal ice is not going to do the trick in a high powered rifle, but what about Ice-six* or Ice-seven* instead? High tech could make that easy to produce and its higher density might be enough to work as a high velocity rifle round.

Pretty cool (oh, sorry, must be late if I'm punning ) idea though.

*web page

 

[Todg]

The question is, why? There are countless materials that make superior projectiles. So what of ice dissolves. It's going to be pretty obvious that a projectile was involved. You could just as easily use a hunk of lead, So what if it leaves striations or rifling marks. That's only important if you can do something with it.

The killer simply drops the weapon, which could have been made in some shop, bought on a far away planet or stolen. matching the bullet will tell you absolutely nothing.

And a shotgun leaves no useable markes on buckshot, is far cheaper, and is fairly ubiquitous in the OTU.

Ice bullets gain you absolutely nothing and require major handwaves to work. why bother?

 

[Eric]

far-trader

Yep I'd have to agree it wouldn't be as good as all that, at least not at TL8. Maybe TL13, or TL15.

noted.

Certainly normal ice is not going to do the trick in a high powered rifle, but what about Ice-six* or Ice-seven* instead? High tech could make that easy to produce and its higher density might be enough to work as a high velocity rifle round.

Okay that makes sense. Thanks for the tip.

Corejob

The question is, why? There are countless materials that make superior projectiles. So what of ice dissolves. It's going to be pretty obvious that a projectile was involved. You could just as easily use a hunk of lead, So what if it leaves striations or rifling marks. That's only important if you can do something with it.

Most governments can.

The killer simply drops the weapon, which could have been made in some shop, bought on a far away planet or stolen. matching the bullet will tell you absolutely nothing.

First of all we aren’t talking about a street punk hired to rough someone up. This gun was made for a high price professional killer. If it helps, think of this as the Traveller version of “The Man With The Golden Gun”.

And a shotgun leaves no useable markes on buckshot, is far cheaper, and is fairly ubiquitous in the OTU.

How many snipers do you know of that use a shotgun?

Ice bullets gain you absolutely nothing and require major handwaves to work. why bother?

Why not? Yes I admit it, the Yeti was inspired by the urban myth. I just figured, why not?
As I said before the benefit is that you will never have to buy bullets again.

So is summary. Why? Because....Because I can.

 

[Todg]

Originally posted by Zanrain:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> The question is, why? There are countless materials that make superior projectiles. So what if ice dissolves. It's going to be pretty obvious that a projectile was involved. You could just as easily use a hunk of lead, So what if it leaves striations or rifling marks? That's only important if you can do something with it.

Most governments can.

</font>[/QUOTE]Actually, they can't. And I speak as someone who has both worked for a long time in the firearms field and who is married to a Senior Special Agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

About the only thing you can do with a recovered bullet is match it to the gun that fired it. But this requires that you have a sample bullet fired from that particular gun. You may be able to identify the make and model of the firearm from the striations if you have a very well preserved bullet. For a very large proportion of recovered slugs, you can't tell anything at all.

Ballistic fingerprinting and cataloging bullets from every guns sold is a very new concept, and only a few states or municipalities have tried it. None has lead to a presecution purely from 'ballistic fingerprinting.' There are simply too many fireams. Before Ballistic fingerprinting was firtst demonstrated there were already over 250 million firearms in the hands of Americans alone.

Ballistic fingerprinting is a spin off of the Bulletproof/Brasscatcher program funded by and adminsitered by the ATF and using the IBIS (Integrated Ballistics Imaging System) developed by Foresic Technology, Inc.

To defeat the system, a 'pro' need do nothing more than the following:

1) Obtain a conventional gun locally. 2)Use it to eliminate the target. 3)Dispose of gun.

He could even leave it at the crime scene and simply walk off. If he were careful, there won't be any traces to tie the gun back to him. He only has to wear gloves. And even if he doesn't, chances are they won't recover a latent print from the weapon. Contrary to TV, it's rare to get a good print off a gun. Most firearms are covered with penetrating lubricants that dissolve fingerprints - many by design because skin oil is acidic and destructive to gun finishes.

By using a specialized weapon, he has to worry about smuggling it in and out, and a weapon such as the Yeti clearly has no legitimate purpose. Mere possession marks the holder as a criminal.

First of all we aren’t talking about a street punk hired to rough someone up. This gun was made for a high price professional killer. If it helps, think of this as the Traveller version of “The Man With The Golden Gun”.

This is pure Hollywood BS. The favored weapon of the 'professional' killer is the .22 pistol, because it is small and can be suppressed easily. The second favorite is the so called 'sterile', a gun that cannot be linked to the user. Typically this is a stolen gun.

How many snipers do you know of that use a shotgun?

Snipers and professional killers aren't the same thing. And the shotgun is another favorite tool of the professional hitman.

No sniper will be using an ice bullet. The crossectional density of ice makes it unusable for anything other that point blank range - assuming it would be effective even then. Ice is not dense enough to make a long range projectile. Even a faily long ogive bullet won't retain enough velocity to be useful at even moderate ranges.

 

[womble]

If you have to get the tech level higher to make useful ice bullets, why not just make the weapon a gauss gun. Still no 'ballistic fingerprint'; easier to silence than gunpowder, easier to charge with 'propellant' than an air rifle; already accepted as standard, so no overt criminal purpose.

"Why/why not?"
Because it's science fiction... There are better ways of doing it that don't trample so many basic physical laws.

As ever, having said that, it's YTU...

 

[Todg]

As I noted, ballistic fingerprints aren't all that useful anyway, unless you are talking about a planet where every single weapon is printed and those prints matched to an owner. This still won't help you if the weapon is stolen. So ehat if the police know that the bullet came from a gun registered to John Smith. Your supplier stole the weapon from John Smith this morning. John Smith is picked up by the police and questioned. His gun has been stolen, Where it is or who has it? He doesn't know.

And there's no gurantee that gauss weapons have no 'fingerprint' Perhaps at the TL when such weapons become available, the authorities acn match the residual magnetic signature of the bullet to a particular weapon.

 

[TheBrain]

Originally posted by Corejob:
"As I noted, ballistic fingerprints aren't all that useful anyway, unless you are talking about a planet where every single weapon is printed and those prints matched to an owner."


And of course thanks to the industrial revolution wonder of interchangable parts you could always just swap barrels.

 

[jasper]

um Brain the barrel rifling is what gives the bullet the fingerprint.

 

[tucker2]

Is there some kind of ice besides water ice that would have the proper cross-sectional density to be an effective high-velocity bullet? Maybe?

I'm still favoring a throw-away or patsy.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by jasper:
um Brain the barrel rifling is what gives the bullet the fingerprint.

Pretty sure that's his point jasper. Just get a new barrel and slag or toss the one you used for the crime. I've also seen a couple simple techniques used (by HollyWood so take them for what that's worth):

run a rough reamer down the barrel a couple times and you change the ballistic fingerprint

or fire an oversize round down the barrel (sounds more like a way to blow the gun up to me)

or have the barrel rebored for a slightly larger round

 

[far-trader]

Certainly from a science fiction perspective I prefer my "game" to be more science than fiction but Zanrain has come up with a cool treatment of a (oh what the hell, I'm in a punny mood now, might as well play it out...) very cool idea. Sure its pretty much not going to work, at least as we understand the science now (and hence my suggestions above), but that doesn't mean Zanrain shouldn't run with it and so I threw in my two creds in support.

And I have no problem with all the critiques against it either, they help to answer possible player issues and of course as was said are Zanrain's to use or ignore (as well as my own ideas for it of course).

Sure even with the science part of it handwaved as doable by sufficient tech there are reasons to not worry about traceability, unless perhaps as the tech increases such capacity also increases.

As to using an off the shelf weapon, in the Imperium (at least IMTU and I'm pretty sure its been noted in several publications) to have such a weapon requires a permit and the weapon has a built in barrel-cam that records every shot, saving it digitally and uploading it wirelessly to law enforcement. Naturally that's for civilian weapons on specific worlds. So even theft of such a weapon is not an easy option. I expect even military weapons would have a similar system for their own reasons (iff, post action analysis, etc.) so those won't be so easy to use either.

In fact that brings it back to any weapon suitable for a crime is going to be recognized as such by authorities. Which brings us back to (what I saw as) Zanrain's original idea (based on the Golden Gun) for a weapon that makes it own munition (the ice bullet) and propellant (either hydrogen gas or just compressed air was my thinking, not sure what Zanrain was thinking), both from the same common and usually freely available substance (water). The weapon itself (again as I see it) would be broken down into several seemingly innocent parts that when assembled form the weapon (remember the Golden Gun again, what, a lighter, pen and I forget the rest).

Anyway, I still think its a cool idea. I don't know if I'd use it but its possible, even if just as an exotic survival rifle.

Oh yeah, one final pun parting shot (or is that one two ) I think the name is very cool too

 

[Straybow]

Certainly normal ice is not going to do the trick in a high powered rifle, but what about Ice-six* or Ice-seven* instead? High tech could make that easy to produce and its higher density might be enough to work as a high velocity rifle round.

Exotic forms of ice only exist at temperature-pressure extremes where one is unlikely to find sophonts to serve as targets or shooters.

We use dense metal for projectiles because their high density (eg, 11.4 g/cc Pb) provides superior ballistics (preservation of momentum vs air resistance). We don't use light metals (eg, 2.7 g/cc Al) and ices made from body-temperature liquids are of no use.

A wooden arrow/crossbow bolt achieves high sectional density by length, so I suppose you could make one out of ice. It won't stay sharp. It will have to do its damage mostly from KE penetration.

Still, it seems like the hard way.

 

[Straybow]

I'm sure the image capture and data transmission circuitry of a tagged weapon can be disabled by any master gunsmith or electronics master tech. If you've got the connections for contract killing, you've got connections for "sterilizing" a weapon.

Also in any universe where interstellar trade is nearly unregulated and weapons can be made on worlds of any tech level (such as the OTU), finding untagged weapons can't be much of a difficulty.

 

[Pagan priest]

If an arrow or bolt can have a high sectional density due to lenght, then so could a bullet, and if the rifle is going to be custom made to use such any form of ice bullet anyway...

As an alternative, consider an ice sabot around a heavy metal penetrator rod. The ice sabot would insure that there would be no ballistic fingerprint available while the rod would retain KE. Has the disadvantage of leaving the penetrator rod inside (or behind) the target.

 

[Todg]

Originally posted by Straybow:
Also in any universe where interstellar trade is nearly unregulated and weapons can be made on worlds of any tech level (such as the OTU), finding untagged weapons can't be much of a difficulty.

Firearms are ridiculously easy to make in any place that has reasonable machinery. As I used to joke, a submachinegun requires manufacturing technology slightly ahead of what is required to make an ash tray. Consider the STEN smg of wwII, which was made by many companies that have never had anything to do with firearms before the war. C'arbine' Williams supposedly made his rifle while in prison. The ammunition is actually more difficult to make, because it requires specific chemicals.

True, you won't be making the greatest, most accurate weapon. Drilling precise barrels, and then rifling them does take special machinery. But iof you aren't too picky, you can make a pretty good weapon with hand tools. The Afghans have been making small arms this way for many years.

On a high tech planet, a pro may just have a chip with some designs. He sends out individual parts to comuterized machining companies, who have no idea what they are making, because they only see one part (which doesn't look anything like a gun).

When the packages arrive, the killer simply assembles that parts. Voila!

There are endless ways around the system.

 

[Todg]

Originally posted by far-trader:
Certainly from a science fiction perspective I prefer my "game" to be more science than fiction but Zanrain has come up with a cool treatment of a (oh what the hell, I'm in a punny mood now, might as well play it out...) very cool idea. Sure its pretty much not going to work, at least as we understand the science now (and hence my suggestions above), but that doesn't mean Zanrain shouldn't run with it and so I threw in my two creds in support.

Your point is well taken. How can we make this work without bending the laws of physics too badly?

Which brings us back to (what I saw as) Zanrain's original idea (based on the Golden Gun) for a weapon that makes it own munition (the ice bullet) and propellant (either hydrogen gas or just compressed air was my thinking, not sure what Zanrain was thinking), both from the same common and usually freely available substance (water). The weapon itself (again as I see it) would be broken down into several seemingly innocent parts that when assembled form the weapon (remember the Golden Gun again, what, a lighter, pen and I forget the rest).

The innocuous bit is good. I've used it myself, in the PEG - a high tech, stealth gauss weapon for assassination. It isn't that hard to make a gun appear ungunlike, particularly when unassembled with a few desgn changes.

 

[jasper]

thanks corejob for the memory while in the air guard my ncoic was making a sten gun(I believe) just using hand tools. Only the barrel had to be tapped out with a bench drill. He was still working on when my enlishment was up.