GURPS Steampunk 2: Steam and Shellfire

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by johndallman

That could be, and occasionally was, handled with visual signalling, via flags or heliograph.

Let's not forget temporary telegraph/telephone wires, too. Hand-laying those round the battlefield seems to be one of the less obviously glamorous but sometimes hair-raisingly dangerous bits of TL6 land warfare.

And I do wonder what exactly happened during that incident at Waterloo. I kind of imagine the officer who acted as a spotter yelling himself hoarse "LEFT FIFTY YARDS ... NO MY LEFT...."

Originally Posted by johndallman

That was much more the problem. Until you have rifled guns with shells manufactured on machine tools, you don't have sufficiently consistent performance. It gets a lot better when your guns have hydraulic recoil mechanisms, because that makes it far easier to fire consistently.

To be honest, I'm not sure now that calculating machines have a lot to do with this TL development, as opposed to all the improvements and refinements in gun design. But in a Babbage-engine-obsessed steampunk game, the idea of having a calculating gadget that can compensate for all the cumbersome dated gun tech and usher spotted indirect fire in early seems appropriate. And calculating machines can help gunnery; those mechanical shipboard fire control systems are entirely historical.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

And calculating machines can help gunnery; those mechanical shipboard fire control systems are entirely historical.

Absolutely, although they started being invented around 1902, and were definitely analogue computers.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Absolutely, although they started being invented around 1902, and were definitely analogue computers.

Very much so, and they were just as important a component of a TL6 warship's fire control system as the rangefinders.

[Michael Thayne]

Re-reading High-Tech, High-Tech does indicate indirect fire is a TL6+ thing, but High-Tech makes it sound like no one had the idea of indirect fire before TL6. I honestly wonder if there's some truth to that—when warfare consists of lining up across an open field wearing brightly-colored uniforms and exchanging volleys of musket fire, indirect fire is going to have less role to play.

Stats-wise, High-Tech seems to think the key development is the shift from smooth-bore cannons like the Bourges Mle 1853 (presented as representative of cannons used since the 18th century) and rifled cannons like the Screw-Gun (which has notably better Acc and range in spite of being a black powder muzzle-loader). If TL6 saw big improvements in artillery beyond rifling, smokeless powder, and faster rates of fire, High-Tech is unaware of this fact.

You could require fancy steampunk gadgets for indirect fire at TL5, and have those gadgets do nothing beyond making indirect fire possible at all. But I don't know how useful that would be in the "lining up across an open field wearing brightly-colored uniforms and exchanging volleys of musket fire" scenario. Maybe it would be more useful in naval warfare? I did notice that 3e Steampunk had specialized rules for naval warfare unlike anything I've seen in 4e, which makes me wonder again if the stuff about mechanical artillery aids is some kind of relic of 3e somewhere.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Re-reading High-Tech, High-Tech does indicate indirect fire is a TL6+ thing, but High-Tech makes it sound like no one had the idea of indirect fire before TL6.

Indirect fire was knwon before TL6 but was mostly used for going over castle walls. "Real" TL6 indirect fire moslty goes over the horizon and earlier TL artillery won't do that. Huigh angle fire agaisnt visible targets isn't really the same thing.

Also needed on your TL6 artillery list are dependable high explosives and fuses. Just without the HE artillery shells do something like 1/2 the damage.

Even the most elaborate TL5 mechnized naval warfare looks quite different. Blackpowder guns mean 1/4 the range and steam engines rather than turbines mean 2/3rds the speed. You might see more decisive combat when it did occur though. Mostly due to the shorter ranges and lower speeds more thna any calculating engine for the aiming..

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Indirect fire was knwon before TL6 but was mostly used for going over castle walls. "Real" TL6 indirect fire moslty goes over the horizon and earlier TL artillery won't do that. Huigh angle fire agaisnt visible targets isn't really the same thing.

That's purely because of range, right? Would make sense given High-Tech—if Wikipedia is to be trusted, "the horizon" is at least 3 miles away, which the Screw-Gun won't do, but most TL6+ artillery can do.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

To be honest, I'm not sure now that calculating machines have a lot to do with this TL development, as opposed to all the improvements and refinements in gun design.

Like many technologies, it doesn't have a single ancestor. As far as calculating machines go, though, what they do is make the calculations faster, you don't really have anything that actually can't be done by hand before TL 7.

Of course, any society able to build a calculating machine can probably build most of the other necessary components.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Even the most elaborate TL5 mechnized naval warfare looks quite different. Blackpowder guns mean 1/4 the range and steam engines rather than turbines mean 2/3rds the speed. You might see more decisive combat when it did occur though. Mostly due to the shorter ranges and lower speeds more thna any calculating engine for the aiming..

Reciprocating steam engines were good for 18+ knot battlehsips in the first decade of the 20th century, while turbines were good for about 21 knots in otherwise similar ships. Even with smokeless powder ranges were short until good fire control was invented and introduced. HMS Dreanought's sinle-calibre main armament was only the first step in solving to problem. Good range finders, centralised fire direction and control, accurate ballistic tables including allowances for temperature, the Earth's spin, barrel wear, and so on, and then a good solution for the fire control problem (how to get the shells to land on the target, allowing for all the various variables) was required. A mechanical computer helps enormously in solving this last part, because they're faster than doing it by hand, and you can continuously (or nearly so, depending on the design) run the problem, getting a real-time solution.

Such computers were at first introduced only in battleships, but by WWII even destroyers had them in well-equipped modern navies, as did submarines (they were what let submarines usefully attack ships at range from the sides with torpedoes, rather than just from bow or stern).

The mechanical and electromechanical computer (analogue in this case) was the key to long range naval gunnery, and also to effective anti-aircraft fire. They weren't so necessary for land-based indirect artillery fire missions at early-mid TL6, though they'd certainly be helpful. Good maps and good ballistic tables are the main requirement here if you've time. At late TL6 and TL7 they become increasingly necessary because the artillery and the targets are likely to be moving more and there's less time to come to a solution (and it's trickier if the target is moving).

[ravenfish]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

That's purely because of range, right? Would make sense given High-Tech—if Wikipedia is to be trusted, "the horizon" is at least 3 miles away, which the Screw-Gun won't do, but most TL6+ artillery can do.

To be fair, in the terrain where a screw-gun is called for, the horizon may either be even farther away than normal or a great deal closer. Your point is taken, though.