Vehicular Flamethrowers for SG2

Hi listies!

I spoke with Noah D the other day about Flamers in SG2, and the topic 
of vehicle mounted flamers came up. Noah made some good concrete 
suggestions which I think had some value and I've expanded on those 
hopefully. I think the vehicular flamethrower presents both an 
excellent support weapon for infantry and conceivably a very 
dangerious foe for the same. It could be deployed on FSVs, IFVs, 
AFVs, etc. or even (argh!) on unarmoured or poorly armoured vehicles. 
But imagine the devastation!

Here are some ideas:

Treat the vehicular flamethrower  as a vehicular heavy 
weapons (12" range band, but has only close range). Now, whether you 
consider the weapon to be a firecon weapon or not would depend on the 
mounting (as would whether or not you let the weapon fire on the 
move) - some WW2 german half-tracks had something akin to a pintle 
mount for these weapons. So depending on the mounting, you might have 
this mounted as the main weapon (turreted or otherwise), coaxially, 
or on a cupola or pintle mount. The weapon would be considered to 
have a high firepower (argh! the agony of bad puns) if fired 
(argh once again!) from a pintle (D10 perhaps?). Impact from a 
vehicular flamer would probably be D12 (its a pretty horrifying 
weapon). This weapon would have a couple of additional grizzly 
effect:  If one was attempting to close assault such a vehicle using 
the infantry close assault rules (SG2 WWW page),  the TL to initiate 
the assault is +2. If such a vehicle was executing a vehicle infantry 
overrun (SG2 WWW page), Treat the TL of the confidence test as +1 
(not as that much worse than just being overrun) but allow the flamer 
to fire as a support weapon for the purposes of casualties if you 
think it appropriate for the vehicle type. Any squad taking a TL test 
from casualties from such a vehiclular flamer should test at +1 for 
the horror of a burning death. And anyone whose armour is not sealed 
(partial armour, unsealed full armour) should shift their armour die 
DOWN one when resisting the impact of the vehicular flamer. 
Also, if you want to be really horrid, modify the medic die 
roll by a -1 to relfect the nastiness of trying to treat 
burns all over the victim. They tend to kill you quite dead. However, 
on the down side, treat a penetrating hit as more severe (don't have 
my rules on hand to recall how this is done, but their is a good 
chance the vehicle becomes a firey death trap). 

I bring up three partially unrelated comments:

In normal infantry to infantry close assault, if the attacker has 
particularly horrid weapons, such as flamers? does this merit a 
horror check? Perhaps the vehicular flamer should invoke this rule at 
some point too. Flames are one of the scariest ways (given no way is 
good) to croak it to a ground pounder or armour crewman. 

In the optional Infantry Close Assault on Vehicles rules, I notice 
the worst that can happen to the assaulting infantry is suppression. 
Seems to me if your guys try to board a tank to bomb it, or run up to 
it, or whatever, you stand a good chance of being cut down. Not sure 
how to integrate that, but I'd think you might take casualties. 

In the optional Vehicular Overrun rules, there is a comment about the 
damage from a VOR. It says use the size class dice OR the support 
weapon dice. Does this mean you keep track of the damage results from 
these dice separately? Usually, when two disparate weapons are 
combined in FMA, you just use the impact of the lower rated one. (ie 
firing squad automatic weapons with rifles). Should this not be the 
case in VOR? Or does one want to track the damage from each 
separately?

And for vehicular FT, I think they should be sized as HW but because 
of a high ammo size requirement should be treated as a size 2 HW for 
the purpose of building vehicles equipped with them. But that's just 
off the cuff. Other ideas welcome. 

Perhaps list members have some comments. I can't wait to roll out my 
Flampanzer.....

(And thanks to Noah for sparking this idea up!). Once we get some 
comments, maybe it would be worth cleaning up and posting on Matt's 
web page, although getting their today seems problematic. :)

Tom. 
/************************************************
Thomas Barclay
Software Specialist
Police Communications Systems
Software Kinetics Ltd.
66 Iber Road, Stittsville
Ontario, Canada, K2S 1E7
Reception: (613) 831-0888
PBX: (613) 831-2018
My Extension: 4009
Fax: (613) 831-8255
Software Kinetics' Web Page: 
     http://www.softwarekinetics.ca or http://www.sofkin.ca or
SKL Daemons Softball Web Page: 
     http://fox.nstn.ca/~kaladorn/softhp.htm
**************************************************/