Quote:
Originally Posted by jason taylor
I should think it the reverse. Smokepowder is way to valuable to use as a glorified blowpipe. It should be used for siegework and naval warfare. The only reason anyone ever thought of gunpowder small arms was that it was cheap enough.
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Small arms are
also useful for siege work and naval warfare. As most sieges were resolved by means of treachery, it is by no means to be despised to have a few blunderbusses and pistols ready for the scuffle for the gate once your pet traitor opens it for your men. And Nelson was shot from the rigging.
The expense of smokepowder strongly supports using it only in quality weapons, with more accuracy than at low TLs and skilled users. And to never use more powder than is needed. There
are roles for cannon, but battering wooden ships with poor accuracy is probably not one of them.
Note also that the wasteful Giff weapons above were developed on another world, where normal black powder works, but have been brought to the campaign world and there loaded with the cheap kind of smokepowder (equivalent to good TL5 black powder, if much more expensive).