CleverRaven / Cataclysm-DDA

Cataclysm - Dark Days Ahead. A turn-based survival game set in a post-apocalyptic world.
http://cataclysmdda.org
Other
10.63k stars 4.18k forks source link

Rework napalm and flamethrower fuels #66867

Closed randomtyper closed 1 year ago

randomtyper commented 1 year ago

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Current recipes for flamethrower fuels are mostly unrealistic/have little sense.

Napalm-B IRL is just gelled gasoline, often further dissoluted in a solvent (acetone, benzene, toluene, ~20% benzene for original Napalm-B). The napalm recipe in game, though, uses almost the whole old ingame periodic table that includes oxidizer powder, lye powder and bleach. If ammonia was used, it would be complete. There were enhancements of napalm compound IRL, though, mainly by adding oxidisers (powdered magnesium, aluminum, there is information that Mark 77 bomb uses alcali metal additives), increasing flame temperature to ~1200-1600 C. Addition of natural rubber can increase smoke generation and act as thickener, too.

There is an alternative way to make base napalm IRL that uses aluminum soap (and it was the original Napalm-A).

Gelled gasoline should be just named napalm, as as I said, original Napalm-B is literally just gelled gasoline.

Flamethrower fuels IRL almost never were a gasoline-diesel mixture, but either used pure gasoline/diesel or added a viscous substance to those fuels, such as tar, creosote or residual fuel oil (also named mazut in Russian). For example, German WW2 era flamethrowers such as FmW 41 used tar-gasoline Flammöl 19 mixture. Soviet ROKS flamethrowers used such mixtures and pure fuels too.

Solution you would like.

Describe alternatives you have considered.

Splitting Napalm-A (naphthalene and palmitate thickener) and Napalm-B (polystyrene thickener).

Making Napalm-A take the place of current gelled gasoline, and (enhanced?) Napalm-B replace the current napalm (as polymer gelling agents are superior to the original Napalm-A formula in terms of stickiness, burning properties and storage).

Add more flamethrower fuel variations, with differing smoke generation and damage values.

Having old and unrealistic flamethrower compounds that use materials I really want to be axed (looking at you, oxidizer powder).

Additional context

A comprehensive guide on incendiary compound history, napalm in particular, page 97 has a table with possible components of gelled fuel incendiary compound: https://archive.org/stream/Incendiary_Weapons_Lumsden_Malvern/Incendiary_Weapons_Lumsden_Malvern_djvu.txt https://archive.org/details/Incendiary_Weapons_Lumsden_Malvern/page/n93/mode/2up image

On fuel thickening agents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thickening_agent#Flame_fuel_thickening_compounds

Napalm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napalm

History of napalm: https://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/napalm/napalmh.htm

Page 198 describes gelled fuels and possible compositions: https://www.gichd.org/fileadmin/uploads/gichd/Media/GICHD-resources/rec-documents/IEDD_Handbook_Chapter_5.pdf

About soaps, aluminum soaps listed as ones used for early napalm: http://www.chem.uiuc.edu/organic/Fats/Chapter%2012/sec12-6/12-6.htm

Homemade napalm, check the comments to videos: https://thesurvivaldoctor.com/how-to-make-napalm

Wood tar and pine wood tar production: https://www.britannica.com/science/wood-tar image

More about tars, those could have quite a lot of use; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar

Another source of acetic acid would be nice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyroligneous_acid

github-actions[bot] commented 1 year ago

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions. Please do not bump or comment on this issue unless you are actively working on it. Stale issues, and stale issues that are closed are still considered.