Items · Ranged Weapons · Campaign Defining
Static Smoke
A highly banned and controversial substance in the Cosmic Era
Static Smoke
Static Smoke is a signal jamming substance, a mixture of electromagnetic reflective materials suspended in a vision obscuring vapor. While largely harmless to people, this smoke interferes with the operation of machines, and completely disrupts Cognitive Network signals.
Usage:
Static Smoke was originally designed by the Eurasian Alliance as an answer to the Atlantic Federation's increasingly powerful cybernetic and robotic forces. It was technically successful, but the smoke was indiscriminate in function, and there were no channels or frequencies that could shoot through it. This hindered Alliance forces as much as it proved a deterrent to the Federation. It was later stolen through Shadowrunning ops, and made it into the hands of insurgents and terrorists. This would open the door for the substance to be used in terror attacks.
Static smoke obscures wireless signals of any sort, with the exception of extremely low frequency radio waves. Any automations, ships, or other devices that require CogNet linkage, are cut off from their servers. This includes shutting down short range communications between units separated in a smoke cloud. This is indiscriminate, and affects vital systems, military systems, and intelligence systems. Terrorists have used this to disrupt both military ops as well as causing terror and chaos through knocking out civilian systems.
Static Smoke Deployment
C-10 Canister round: the C-10 canister launcher is a basic issue weapon for anyone with level 3 or better security clearance and is best known for being used to fire tear gas grenades, smoke grenades, and flashbangs. The venerable weapon would receive major upgrades in ammunition choices with the introduction of the C-10 Haywire and C-10 Static rounds. The EMP Haywire is an anti-robotics round, while the static smoke round creates a large cloud of smoke, typically large enough to scramble communications for a mech or shut down ops inside a large chamber inside a megastructure.
GB-S Airburster: the GB-S is a guided smoke bomb carried by drones or light craft. The Airburster was designed to to used against clusters of automated troops and to shut down spec ops units. The round is now only available through the black market again through disreputable sources. These are most commonly used in terrorist actions, being detonated IED style, shutting down major cyber events, snarling civilian traffic.
The Fumigator: a cobbled together device, a Fumigator is a large canister of static smoke that is placed near an air dispersal system, letting air ducts and fans pull the smoke through the vents of a building or facility. While this weakens the effect of the substance, it does hinder the quality of wireless signals and digital streams.
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This is interesting, and would best be combined with IR blocking smoke as well.
Countermeasures could include the simple expedients of fans, or mini-drones with trailing ariels.
The best counter for static smoke is patience, and that is a rare commodity in the Cosmic Era. The people who are likely to use it are the people who are not dependent on tech for vital activities, plus in combat a remote device cut off from it's signal is either going to crash, go into a holding position, or be forced to run solo on whatever processing power it carries internally. Regardless, it's either a sitting duck or wreckage.
Fans are a neat idea, especially considering there are electric fan aircraft. Ironhand missions could be these guys swooping in in their orcas, low to clear the smoke, but still taking dumb weapons fire, like rifles and unguided missiles, or like you mentioned, heat seekers.
Cool - don't have much to add to this one.
As far as deployment goes, are we talking smoke bombs or aerial firefighting?