[Old Hunch Arbat]

To those who know such things...given what we've been told about the size of Moranth munitions (i.e. cussers) and what we have been told they've blowed up *good* - do you have any idea how powerful they might be compared to TNT, plastic explosives, etc.?

OHA

[HoosierDaddy]

It obviously ranges.

Cussers seem like an extremely oversized grenade of death, or a fricking 500 lb bomb.
Sharpers seem like plastique in function (controlled boom), but less powerful in it's destructive force.
Flamers are obviously incendiaries i.e. molotov cocktails but with way more flame.
Melters: Your guess is as good as mine.

[amphibian]

Inigo Montoya, on Mar 6 2009, 01:14 AM, said:

It obviously ranges.

Cussers seem like an extremely oversized grenade of death, or a fricking 500 lb bomb.
Sharpers seem like plastique in function (controlled boom), but less powerful in it's destructive force.
Flamers are obviously incendiaries i.e. molotov cocktails but with way more flame.
Melters: Your guess is as good as mine.

Crackers are the plastique - except they're a bit more like claymores with "this side towards enemy".

Sharpers are the fragmentation grenades.

[HoosierDaddy]

Ah, thanks Amph. Thought I had something wrong there.

[Aptorian]

The Cussers are so big and heavy that you can't throw it far enough that it won't kill you. I'm guessing it packs a punch like an RPG or something. It's not extremely powerfull but it will destroy anything within... say, a radius of five meters or something and knock everything down further away

[HoosierDaddy]

Only 5 meters, Apt? That seems drastically underpowered to me. Cusser's take out entire ranks of soldiers... a 15 foot radius seems entirely too small, to me considering the efficacy of other munitnions.

An alternate theory on cussers could be that they are so deadly a human doesn't have the physical capability to throw it beyond lethal range. That's always how I've considered it.

[Hinter]

Inigo Montoya, on Mar 6 2009, 06:14 AM, said:

Melters: Your guess is as good as mine.

I get the impression they are similar to napalm, i.e they'll stick to the target and continue burning. Ouch!

[beru]

i have always thoght flamers to be bottles of greek fire or naftan... wich is liquid that can burn for a long time and is hard tu put out...
melters... have we seen them used (or at all mentiond?)

[Aptorian]

Well, I think the problem lies in their size and weight. You need a oversized crossbow to launch them which makes me think they're the size of a handball or an ostrich egg. You can't throw one of those things very far if it's also heavy.

What I ment about it's destructive force is that it's sort of like a giant handgrenade, it will pulverize anything within those say 5 meters radius and the blast will knock anything down around it. That fits with knocking down rows of soldiers to me.

[Mushroom]

Aptorian, on Mar 6 2009, 09:02 PM, said:

Well, I think the problem lies in their size and weight. You need a oversized crossbow to launch them which makes me think they're the size of a handball or an ostrich egg. You can't throw one of those things very far if it's also heavy.

What I ment about it's destructive force is that it's sort of like a giant handgrenade, it will pulverize anything within those say 5 meters radius and the blast will knock anything down around it. That fits with knocking down rows of soldiers to me.

I've thrown Grenades that have a lethal radius of 5m. It is very easy.

If I would put the cusser down to a military sense I would say it would have;
a Lethal radius of about 30 metres - that is everything in that area Is dead
a Casualty radius of 50-60 metres (that is 20-30 metres after the lethal radius) - that is everything in that area will be lightly to severly injured.
a Fragmentation radius of say 100 metres (that is 70 metres out of the lethal and 40-50 out of the Casualty) may be lightly to moderately injured.

That would be how I would see the effect of a Cusser.
That is using the same range classification for some explosive weapons out there in the real world.

Like Inigo said, they have taken out whole ranks of Soldiers before as in say MoI and RG.
In say the case of Leoman's mate who is in Fid's squad now, when he put a helmet over a Cusser(?) in HoC and it just blew him into the air. Personally I would say that is entirelly plausible to survive doing that in the real world, but I dare say you should be knocked out from concussion at the least.

This post has been edited by Mushroom: 06 March 2009 - 11:34 AM

[Aptorian]

Mythbusters tested the helmet over handgrenade trick. didn't work, you just get additional shrapnel flying through the air. Killed by your own helmet is a humiliating death

[Karnadas]

They can't be that bulky - Trull clutches one in each hand when the Liosan and Imass are talking about using his blood to open a path from the Nascent...

Will have to read the part where they find the case again - there was a description of what they looked like to untrained eyes in that section.

[beru]

agree i had the same thoghts about cusser power
/history freak mode engaged
a crossbow from medival times (then im talking crossbow not arbelest) had a leathal range shorter than a good bow (so i was dangerus for poorly armored soldiers at a ca 300m MAX 200 vs plate MAX) and a from the mecaniks of the oversided crossbow (HoC or tBH) the lobber will have a shorter range but more force to the shot (a strong car doesent need to be fast) and the cusser shots are hevier than normal so i will say it shots a cusser ca 100m. in HoC fidd tells his squad to keep their heads down when he fires somthing that means that it can hit things ca 100m away...
/history freak mode disengaged

edit: it was to mushroom...

This post has been edited by beru: 06 March 2009 - 11:43 AM

[Mulch]

I imagine cussers to be the size and weight of a womens shott put

[Xardean]

Smokers i see as being like a white phosphorus grenade.
Melters..... Thermite!

[Sinisdar Toste]

actually cuttle leaves a sharper smoking in corabbs lap, and a pair of cussers side by side were once describes as "looking like an ample pair of breasts"

[Rath'Thrash]

Cussers have a range of about 10m or so from what I remember; I think I read that somewhere in DG. I always imagined them like a football-sized egg, so essentially a small unguided bomb. I remember in MoI during the assault on Coral the Moranth, on Quorls, were dropping cussers on the city like old-school biplane bombers, and that image stuck in my head ever since

This post has been edited by Rath'Thrash: 08 March 2009 - 08:55 PM