Talk:Needlegun

2005
Why is there a mention of the gun from Halo in here? It's called the needler, not a needle gun. If it needs a spot, it's in the Halo page, on a page about Halo weapons, or on its own page.

Im pretty sure there are needle guns in the Dune series by Frank Herbert as well. What about the nailgun in Quake? Does that qualify as a 'needle gun'? Bertus 08:14, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't think that the nailgun in Quake can really be considered a needlegun, as the nails aren't significantly smaller (they may even be larger, IIRC) than normal bullets. The needler also doesn't seem to have very much to do with the article, as firing 'slow moving, homing, explosive projectiles' makes it the exact opposite of a needlegun, which fires high speed unguided projectiles that use kinetic energy to inflict damage. It should probably be removed.

The Quake I nailgun fired projectiles that were rendered as a stretched tetrahedron, quite rapidly, didn't home, though the individual projectiles travel slower than the shotgun's blast. I don't recall anything about the projectiles being explosive. (I liked it because you were given lots of ammo, and it's more frugal to fire off a single nail to hit a distant button than anything else.) The nailgun wouldn't qualify as a needlegun, if only for the sheer size of the individual projectiles (though on a 640x480 screen, you couldn't draw them much smaller and still have them visible...) --MartinRudat 14:59, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

I don't think the Halo reference is worth mentioning, especially as it's not a needlegun as described in this article. However, there probably are a lot of games with this concept... another Bungie game, Marathon Infinity, has its own implementation of a "true" needlegun.

One concept for a needlegun I've come across (can't remember where) is delivering needles made of frozen poison, fired with compressed air, to be able to penetrate light clothing, and to leave minimal trace of the projectile. A stealth weapon, rather than a machine-gun replacement. -- The "ice bullet" concept was shown to not work in an episode of Mythbusters - search for "ice bullet" on that page.

Mythbusters while an entertaining show is far from definitive scientific proof, testing a principle merely proves that the method of testing attempted didn't succeed. and myth busters does not undertake the laboratory controlled testing to prove definitively that while their test failed there isn't another test that would have succeeded. not to mention that the laws of logic state that once you accept a false assumption as truth then logic loses all value. i can guarantee that their testing didn't include a custom build self cooling compressed gas air gun — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.66.32.17 (talk) 15:16, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

What about Isaac Asimov's Nightfall? It featured some sort of needle gun, that seemed to project incendiary projectiles, as in one scene a house is set afire by it.

re: why the halo weapon?
a fictional firearm that fires slivers of metal, ice, glass, hard plastic, or any other rigid, sharpened material I added the needler because it fits the basic description. The description does not limit a needlegun to "weapons called needlegun by their creators." A rose by any other name.

French railgun in WWI?

Where did this come from? There is no reference and unless my knowledge of Great War weaponry is sadly lacking, nothing like this entered combat.142.59.26.35 04:54, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

This may oddly be quasi-true (no references to it being used but a small test device may have been built), only real source I could find is this:

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel4/20/15929/00738413.pdf?arnumber=738413

Andre Fauchon-Villeplee would be the guy in question, although whomever copied this page http://www.antipersonnel.net/sdllc/001.html into the wikipedia didn’t seem to have the common sense to include the reference.

It’d be nice if someone verified the references in the above paper and added this to the wiki. 128.12.90.56 15:18, 20 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't have access to the ieee.org page, but the other link doesn't reference its sources for that claim. Since google's hits for Andre Fauchon-Villeplee don't turn up any other results, and since railgun doesn't mention it anywhere, I've removed "[Flechettes] were also used as ammunition for the first electromagnetic rail gun by the French against the Germans". If someone can verify this claim, feel free to put it back in, with appropriate references. 82.25.205.211 02:41, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Merger proposal
The Hyperion Cantos series features flechette rifles, and so a page was created for those. It seems pretty clear to me that that page should be merged into this one. Discussion, please? - Banazir (talk) 07:09, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

NERF FAR
I added link to http://nerfhaven.com/homemade/boltsniper_far/ This article can form basis of a new section in article: DIY manufacturing —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.182.175.118 (talk) 12:19, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

size, rate of fire, other claims about the weapon.
What's with all the statements about needlers being compact high rate of fire weapons? Anything that fires a spike, which has to be big enough to maintain aerodynamics, would have a large resiveur for the projectiles, plus whatever is supposed to propel a spike, be it magnetism, air pressure, explosives. If it's compact, it wont have a high rate of fire and vice versa, exceptions being bulpup assault rifles, but still, spikes need space; so it'd still have a huge clip. Unless someone can post some schematics for something that meets these claims, I vote we just remove these claims.71.94.63.105 (talk) 08:11, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

the statement is in reference to a weapon firing a similar performance bullet, in which case the only advantage to the flechette is that is smaller size which reduces recoil allowing for faster rates of fire and lack of requirement to adhere to barrel rifling means that muzzle velocity is massively increased or conversely that the same muzzle velocity can be attained with a short barrel. these 2 factors combined mean than anyone seeking to use flechette based ammunition is doing so because to achieve the same results with a conventional bullet would increase the recoil and size of the weapon. hence flechette weapons are compact high rate of fire weapons. Also your use of the term Spike is incorrect as a Spike is a Cylindrical piece of material, where as a flechette is a Aerodynamically self stabilizing projectile. as for your comments about Magazine sizes this is entirely dependent on the weapon in question but in most cases a flechette's long thin profile and lower mass than an equivalent performance bullet will usually result in a smaller lighter magazine

On disadvantages
"Flechette projectiles do not deflect off typical surfaces as easily as regular bullets due to the longer distribution of mass and reduce the danger to bystanders."

I'm not sure if this means that the projectiles are more dangerous to bystanders (a disadvantage in law enforcement) or less dangerous to bystanders (a disadvantage on some battlefields). Probably the former, but :-P --Kiz o r  20:30, 22 May 2012 (UTC)