CX55 Caltrop Launcher

Primary Fire: Spread of Caltrops

Secondary Fire: Mini Flash

Special: None

Ammo: 60 caltrops, 6 used each time. Can hold 120 caltrops in terms of reloads.

Brief Description:
The Caltrop Launcher is used to throw off vehicles or just to poke at the feet of your enemies. A good combo is to flash your opponent, shoot, and run off. If the opponent is deliberate, he will probably run onto the caltrops and slow himself down (as well as damage).

The caltrops can also be used like a shotgun, with the caltrops being the shrapnel. The main use, however, is anti-vehicle. Since the caltrops themselves have an integrated cloaking system, it is difficult to spot a caltrop field in the heat of battle. Aside from hovercraft and aircraft, caltrops can effectively disable any vehicle quickly. That means tanks, buggies, and personnel carriers can be stopped by the caltrop field, or at least the popped tires will make it harder to drive and control the vehicle.

To avoid a caltrop field, it's simple. Walk around it. Back then, it was easier, but now cloaking technology has helped these small but deadly weapons to remain quite invisible. So keep your eyes peeled.

My comment:
This seems to be a lot more of a defensive weapon, and the ROF should be slow so it's harder to spam. Maybe make it have a faster load-up animation, so that someone can quickly pull it out and put it back in. However, putting in caltrops will take a moment, so reload animation should take longer.

I like this idea. Maybe try some kind of magnetic caltrops, so they can clog up manta fans and tank treads as well as pop tires.

Also: Cloaking fields? On caltrops? That's a hell of an achievement...

Cool, now they are much cooler than normal.

Cloaking caltrops is silly.

How so? I was just thinking about how visible it would be on the snow, but if it's not, then I guess we can expend it.

It's not that it is not useful, it is just somewhat impractical to put tiny cloakers on hundreds of caltrops. Of course, mechanised factories and future super-tech could fix that nicely.

If you can put a cloaking device on what is essentially two nails stuck together, why not a landmine? A person? A vehicle?

Additionally, would caltrops really be that effective as weapons against vehicles of the future? I imagine tank treads and APC wheels are a heck of a lot tougher than civilian tires of today. To be at all effective, I imagine they'd have to do a lot more than poke holes into things.

There would always be a anti-vehicle primitive device in war. What, you think they'd just keep iron caltrops and toss it around? HECK NO! We can be talking about a lot more stronger of a material. It's not only vehicles that advance over time anyway. If possible, maybe the caltrops are made of a hard, searing hot material?

Additionally, the caltrops shouldn't be explosive. That's silly too .

Why a gun, though? Why waste the space on your arsenal or lug around the weight when you can simply disperse them by hand? How would you propel these things with a gun? How do you reload it?

I also highly doubt these would be made of something tougher than tanks and armored vehicle tires. I bet soldiers' boots would be made out of something stronger too.


This just doesn't sound like something a future human military would employ against evil aliens and whatnot. However, it does sound like something evil aliens might employ against a battered human resistance.
The Skrith do love their ambushes and pointy things, and you can use any weirdo alien technology excuse on it.

they can be energy caltrops, that way it would make it easier to make them magnetic too.

If it's alien, then it would be made of some energized, magnetic material from their planets, as siavash (spelling?) stated. It then could come out in magnetically attached clusters that scatter on the ground. How it would launch would be a lot harder to think off, especially when caltrops have that irregular shape.

So I'll edit it to be alien. That way we can avoid the technology issue.

By the way, I don't think tanks or vehicles will be running on titanium tires and treads anytime soon, if that's what you're insisting .

I like the idea,just make sure to relize the silliness of the gun and stress the gameplay element over the realism.I have found Dwarf fortress so expect me to start spewing 'beyond quality' ideology throughout the forum.

I'd imagine by the time Future Time rolls around they'd be able to do something like this with them.



Also, an idea somewhat taken from PDZ, you could make the caltrops out of four bullets stuck together, so that when a tire or boot or something touches it, they fire off and pierce it (then you could make this into a special fire mode for an already existing gun maybe? ).

Reminds me somewhat of the nailbomb ammo mode on the Claw2 of ChaosUT. Either shotgun fire with spikes that hang around awhile, or sticky time delayed shrapnel bombs with the shrapnel spikes hanging around awhile.

A caltrop gun would be more original than a standard grenade launcher - though caltrop ammo could be applied to such a grenade launcher. Not so sure the caltrops themselves should cloak - where is the room to stick a power source and a cloak field generator on a hunk of sharp metal?

What about a secondary device that conceals stuff on the ground in a small radius/very low dome?

The device it self should have a glowing light in the center that should be easily visible, and shooting it would destroy it, causing a small explosion that could compromise nearby traps that were formally hidden.

Think of the uses.

It could conceal traps, but if used ineffectively might end up making the trap more visible, you could bluff with them, mount on on the corner of a wall and conceal yourself from the enemy, though the concealment would be rather limited, or if you want to get really extravagant, mount one or two on the front of a vehicle and let the last thing your target sees be a glowing dot or two.

Though to be honest I'd have no idea how this would be achieved, code-wise. Perhaps make it work similar to real life cloaking devices with a camera mounted on the back that would get the image to display over the dome, using some code similar to the M50's camera. Dunno how that would work for concealing the ground though. Maybe it could be a two part item? One camera component to get the visuals and a second component, the dome thingy, to display the image.

This way it could be used for so much more. You could make something like a central ops that has large screens displaying combat situations and whatnot, and for the crafty, a form of cloaking or diversions. Would definitely need some skill to use effectively, but I imagine it could be very powerful in the right hands. Can't imagine bot support would be easy to figure out for it though. Perhaps bots simply can't see beyond the screen, blocking their view.

Xavious...

1.You stole my idea before I could think of it.

2.This would be a great addition.

3.I love you... (well, not like that...)Traps are some of my favorite things in gaming.

Of course this would be called the Arbiter Device,I mean that name is perfect for stuff like this.

You stole the name Arbiter from Starcraft, didn't ya?

Anyways, I wouldn't mind this. A big, heavy caltrop-machinegun/shotgun would be marvelous, not to mention nice and gory. A bullet is one thing, but a caltrop-bullet that first goes in you, then splits outwards with three little prongs? That's even worse!

No I stole it from Tribes.
Or rather a mod for Tribes,which has a Arbiter Device much like this.They probably stole it from Starcraft.