Electrothermal-chemical Handguns, etc

#1

A technology that might or might not become practical sooner than railguns, Electrothermal-chemical technology could be considered an intermediary between gunpowder and electromagnetic ballistic propulsion, which is also limited by constraints in power storage and generation within modern technology, but not as much as a coilgun or railgun. This mod adds a bunch of infantry arms using such concept and common calibers like 9x19mm and 5.56x45mm, plus means to hand load such cartridges mostly with cannibalized parts from conventional rounds.

Furthermore it adds extra guns including some that may be awesome but impractical like one that is sort of like the “Saiga-12” of the Gilboa Snake, a double barrel magazine-fed automatic shotgun, plus subsonic loads for 5.56x45mm more or less inspired by the subsonic 5.45x39mm loads except more efficient by using tungsten and depleted uranium to cram as much mass as possible in the small volume of a 5.56mm round, two milspec coilguns with one capable of, with less efficiency, using nails and crafted flechettes, new professions that may be a bit OP despite costing at least 8 points, and two new scenarios with one including a very !FUN! start location worth not spoiling, and a few other things.

Latest release

Thoughts, comments and criticisms always welcome.

2 Likes
#2

Just a reality check that you may or may not care about for your mod.
There is no indication in your source material that this would ever be considered for firearms. The technology requires a significant amount of hardware added to the gun to act as the ignition system, which is fine for a tank gun or emplacement, but out of the question for a carried weapon.

#3

ETC is going to be used in small arms as soon as they figure out how to miniature the components to the point where ETC only adds a few lbs to the weight of conventional rifle. The ability to optimize the round for either light weight without giving up performance or better performance without increasing mass and barrel wear is just too tempting. A 5.56mm round with the ballistic performance of 7.62mm but no additional weight? Yes please.

However, since ETC is still fairly experimental for 125mm installations, there’s no reason to believe it’s been miniaturized during the CDDA timeline.

#4

Hey there, I just wanted to first say that I am absolutely loving your mod, the module weapon systems are really cool (always wished LW had more) and the guns seem well designed (even if ETC isn’t realistic or what not).

Some errors I’ve had:
The Skinny tie for the professions gives a error about not finding the item (removing it from professions was easy to fix).

Any starting UPS has no charge, which is really awkward when you realize your gun is only going to click at the nearby zeds.

The Corporate Spy profession doesn’t have a weapon that uses all the magazines it starts with, just a holstered one and a EMP rifle (with no UPS charge)

The Vault start just plain doesn’t work, it’ll give an error of “Could not generate game world location” or such and exit to main menu.

The first three I was able to fix through some JSON edits, though I don’t know if I stayed true to your vision. The final one, with the Vault start, I couldn’t get working no matter what I tried and even though I know where it starts, I’m not sure how to work it.

All in all, anyone that wants new guns to play with, that have a wide variety of types without overloading the drop tables, you should definitely check this mod out!

#5

“skinny_tie” was renamed “tie_skinny” during an effort to drive people mad.

For the life of me, I couldn’t get the UPS to start with a charge. So I worked around it by having them start with a battery for the UPS instead. Plug this in with any value you like up to 10000 in the charges section.

      { "item": "heavy_atomic_battery_cell", "charges": 2900 },

May I just say that the spymaster seems a bit overarmed? Anyway, I deleted one of the s-pistol mag lines and added this hacky fix. Probably needs a holster to be at all believable.

      { "item": "etc_ocg_spistol", "contents-item": "spistol_mag", "ammo-item": "22etc_apt", "charges": 7 },

What is the deal with the necropolis? There’s about 50 different pieces and no way to address it as a starting location?

#6

Ah, I just removed the tie for ease of use (aka I’m lazy and not great at this).

both": {
    "ammo": 1000,
    "items": [
     "UPS_off"
       ]

I found that gives the UPS 1000 charge, and didn’t break anything else so I considered that a victory.

The spymaster is certainly a walking arsenal, but if you are going to steal as much as you can from the big companies, may as well grab all you can? It does cost more points, but I’m no judge of balance.

I’ve never even seen the necropolis myself, and don’t know where one would start if following the flavor text. The included location seems to be in some cave, but I think that’s an error anyways. This was the only one I couldn’t duct tape fix up (to a satisfactory degree).

#7

What kind of battery does that stuff in the UPS? And I suppose if you grab a bunch of stuff on your way out there’s no guarantee you’d get a gun for your mags either…
For a brief moment I had what I thought was a working necropolis start, but it just dropped me into a car on the side of the road. Looking at some PR’s the necropolis is required for some missions so it should always spawn inside the initial overmap tile if my understanding is correct. How to start there though…I dunno. I tried stealing the necropolis starting location from Arcana with no luck.
An alternative starting location would be an office tower maybe?

#8

Oh I have no clue, it was just a technique I borrowed from another mod that did have UPS charges on character gen.

Well supposedly the character stole something from all three major weapon corporations, which is why they are loaded with three different guns. I think not having anything from OmniCorp was an error in the class, but I’m just guessing at what the creator was thinking.

I was able to place myself in front of the vault entrance, but that doesn’t sound like how the scenario is supposed to play out. It sounds more like you are supposed to escape the place. I don’t know how the necropolis is arranged so I decided to just leave that one alone.

The office tower start is actually the other scenario haha, and it loaded in fine when I tried it. Hopefully the mod creator will notice these replies and look into it. I’ve been having a lot of fun over all with it regardless!

#9

Oh? What did the code look like to place yourself by the entrance?

#10

In the start location JSON I changed the target from

  {
"type": "start_location",
"ident": "necropolis_entrance",
"name": "Vault Entrance",
**"target": "necropolis_b_37"**  }

To

  {
"type": "start_location",
"ident": "necropolis_entrance",
"name": "Vault Entrance",
"target": "necropolis_c_29"  }

I’m not at my computer to confirm, but it was either “_c_29” or “_c_20”, but that was all I did since i decided not to mess with it further to not spoil the location too much for myself.

#11

Didn’t work for me :frowning: Even started a new world to test, got Couldn’t find location error. Necropolis is weird, yo.