[Sorenant]

Originally Posted by Rupert

If you can make steel melee weapons and armour, you can make guns (in terms of having metal available). The existence of iron/steel weapons and armour says there's a fairly large charcoal-making industry already. Medieval Europe was massively deforested well before guns were a major product because of demand for steel - it's one reason why kings and nobles were so touchy about forestry rights.

If steel production is fairly limited, guns and cheap plate won't transform the battlefields the way they did in Europe's renaissance and early modern periods. They'll be expensive tools for specialists, and full metal sets of armour will remain the province of the wealthy knights.

Very good point I was missing. I don't want to limit steel production, so I suppose steam engines are inevitable, and increased human logging activity antagonizing elves makes an interesting plot hook.
Alternatively, Spaceships is a completely different genre but SS7 contains Mana Engines which requires no fuel as it gathers ambient magical energy. This could work as a rising new fantastic renewable technology that's more reliable than its real counterparts. On one side it kinda starts making the "lack of fossil fuel" moot, though you could say it's still inefficient and far from capable of powering industries and urban centers, but on the other hand it creates a new interesting political dynamics as rulers starts seeking high mana areas to set up their new industries and research labs.

Originally Posted by Rupert

However, that doesn't mean that the guns won't steadily improve, and them being a specialist tool will probably mean that improvements will spread through the user-base faster - if guns are rare, expensive, and used only by professional hunters and snipers, it's a lot more reasonable to kit all your guys with the latest in rifled wheel-locks than if you're trying to outfit an army of 100,000.

Speaking of armies, would the supernatural threats in Yrth affect the value of firearms? What I means is that volleyfire against Abydos' skeleton knights won't be really effective, and mostly useless against insubstantial foes. I think it wouldn't, though, as these enemies are fairly rare and there's no reason a division specialized in dealing with those wouldn't exist. At best sword bayonets would be a little more popular.

Originally Posted by Rupert

The original metallic cartridges were hand-made, so lack of mass-production industrial plants doesn't preclude them. You can hand-make guns to use cartridges and bullets of consistent size (which will probably be the hardest things to make in quantity without serious industrial plant).

I've been watching some videos about ammo making, both industrial and hand made, and I had the same impression as what you're telling me. Making ammo is straightforward, the hard part is making it in bulk.
The other thing that drew my attention is the primer, it's a very small but important part that I all the loaders I've seem used ready-made ones. Granted, all of them were using "garage" tools, no one had specialized machinery like, say, a press.

Originally Posted by Rupert

As for automatic weapons, simple ones are actually simpler than semi-automatics or magazine-fed bolt-actions, so Sten guns and PPS-43s are possible, probably using black powder in a large bore round (.44 long colt or similar) to get good performance and give reasonable fouling resistance, though smokeless is possible. Such guns will be great for mowing down commoners, but a full plate harness would provide decent protection (but not from rifle fire, but as long as that remains limited, it's all good).

Are automatic guns still a good idea if you can't mass produce ammo? If you can only get one or two reloads per campaign I'd guess you'd be so careful with it that might have been a better idea to get a semi-auto.
I don't know who modern gunpowder is made, but Yrth has fantasy alchemy on their side so I don't think it's out of reach for them. In fact, while looking up about gunpowders to reply to this post I was reminded of the concept of caseless ammo, which might be perfect for Yrth. Sprinkly some magic on the issues real caseless ammo has and it might make manufacturing easier.

Originally Posted by (E)

Match locks and wheel locks may be inconvenient/expensive enough for a version of the create fire/ignite fire spell to take their place in early firearms. If this does happen there may not be the impetus required to develop flint locks.

Other simple spells might remove the need to clean out black powder residue. This may decrease reload time. It may also (arguably) remove some of the reason to progress past black powder.

Having even cheap enchantments required to manufacture a firearm makes for some interesting ramifications.

Originally Posted by WingedKagouti

It seems to me that people who think mages are too expensive to hire for these tasks may be the ones who will look for non-magical solutions to the issues with early firearms. Or maybe those who don't trust mages. Or those who want a non-magical backup in case the weapons are needed in a No Mana zone or in case something happens to the mages.

It'll likely only take one incident where the magic or mages in question were a liability, for the leaders of an army to want to look into non-magical solutions.

Unless Magery 0 is common enough that you could potentially hire several hundreds of people with the ability to learn the spells needed in most large cities, enough gun-mages to support a small elite force are going to be more expensive than outfitting the entire army with guns. Some will certainly jump at the opportunity, but most would likely prefer a safer path than joining an army in most circumstances.

I like Kromm's view that Magery N is as common as IQ+N. It probably makes Magery 0 fairly common, but I agree with WingedKagouti that it's still hardly optimal to depend on user's magical abilities to fire a gun. Even if you got twenty thousand men with IQ10 and Magery 0 to be your gunners, 200 hours training them "Ignite Fire" (or similar entry spell that can fire the gun) would only result in SL-8, which is nothing but useless.
Allowing a powers-based approach could partially solve this, as Ignition perk is much more reliable and technically doesn't require Magery, but the problem with no mana zones still exists.

Originally Posted by (E)

Conceivably this could make something like the whitworth rifle (hexagonal bullets, very accurate, but prone to fouling) represent the pinnacle of mage-lock firearms. Spells to do with measurement could also increase the accuracy of early firearms, both directly as enchantments on a weapon and as engineering tools.

Having even cheap enchantments required to manufacture a firearm makes for some interesting ramifications.

[Edit] Air rifles might also be greatly improved with a few simple spells.

Originally Posted by WingedKagouti

What feels more likely is mages setting themselves up as manufacturers of high quality guns, using Shaping spells along with other utility spells like Measurement, Find Weakness, or Enlarge Object (for precision work). Or researching ways to make it easier for themselves to do whatever tasks their job requires. TL-less versions of Schematic and Reveal Function would very likely be attempted to make it easier to understand the technology that does make it to the world. If you have a modern firearm and understand how it's put together, there's a high chance it becomes a lot easier to make improvements to the weapons you can make.

Reading about Whitworth rifles was very interesting, and I really like the idea of alternative arms development leading it to be mainstream. From what I've read fouling doesn't seem to be a problem with modern/magical gunpowders, so the remaining issues with it would be that it needs to me match-grade, requiring a lot of precision, and that it prevents (semi)automatic fire as it requires being indexed to the barrel.
Again, WingedKagouti's approach is sensible and can make some things work. Instead of training soldiers to do some magic, it makes more sense to train them to be gunsmiths, using spells to increase their precision and make impossible possible.
I'm really liking the idea of hexagonal rifles shooting caseless ammo, it's pretty wild.