10-06-2019, 06:07 PM | #21 |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Maitland, NSW, Australia
|
Re: [Pyramid 3/52] LT Armor Design: Mail vs Pi (Guns)
Probably. They would likely have purchased the lead from a munitions supply shop along with the powder and other supplies. It isn't pure lead; it is an alloy of lead, tin and antimony, which is harder than pure lead but just as easy to melt and cast. I agree that pure lead should not have behaved like it did on that Mythbusters episode.
__________________
Compact Castles gives the gamer an instant portfolio of genuine, real-world castle floorplans to use in any historical, low-tech, or fantasy game setting. Last edited by DanHoward; 10-06-2019 at 06:50 PM. |
10-06-2019, 08:55 PM | #22 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
|
Re: [Pyramid 3/52] LT Armor Design: Mail vs Pi (Guns)
Quote:
That almost certainly would have been something other than pure lead. Of course, old gun users who did cast their own bullets may not have used pure lead either. A couple of times I read modern gun writers (or at least guys from only 30-40 years ago) discuss where to scavenge lead for hand-casting from and their preferrence seemed to be "linotype metal". A quick Google turns up an 84% lead, 12% antimony and 4% tin recipe. People could easily heve been raiding old print shops for metal to melt down for several centuries before this one. Guns and movable type are about the same age. There were also old tales about an early elephant hunter who had a 4 bore muzzleloader and he apparently used some kind of campfire alchemy involving mercury to harden his musket balls for greater pentration. No doubt the poisoned himself like most other people who fooled around with mercury. There's no telling where he learned the trick or how old it was either.
__________________
Fred Brackin |
|
10-07-2019, 02:16 AM | #23 | |
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
|
Re: [Pyramid 3/52] LT Armor Design: Mail vs Pi (Guns)
Quote:
In GURPS terms some arrow with heads designed for this count as P anyway (see the deadly spring in Pyramid and Bodkin points). Now given the different construction of mail vs. plate, those different constructions failing might look different but it doing the same thing. What not helping here is that when mail, plate and guns coincided historically even the best steel had to be pretty thick to stop bullets. As bullets got more energetic armour had to get thicker. Now with plate while there are some technical issues with making thicker plate in general it's construction meant you just made it thicker and thicker* increasing it resistance to penetration. Obviously weight becomes a factor! But with mail because of the way its constructed i.e the rings link (and move) you can't just keep making the rings thicker and thicker. What you can do of put multiple layers of mail on. But ultimately as per the article plate is more efficient at DR per weight in abstract. Magical stuff like orriculum might well change all that. A metal resistant enough might well make bullet proof mail a thing. It will still be less efficient than plate in terms of DR per weight which means it will be worse than plate, but you have the advantage of it being flexible**! And if it can still do it's job worse is relative term. FWIW the later articles with much harder materials allow for bullet proof flexible armour again with HT/UT scale, but it's still fundamentally little bits of armour mosaic-ed together onto a backing (some UT versions might do away with the backing I guess) *and/or did stuff like angling. fluting, ribbing. All basically increasing the amount resistance via effective thickness and/or deflection and thus protection from incoming force without uniformly increasing the thickness of the plate. Mail can't really do all this (although it has it's own tricks). **yes OK blunt trauma, but also no chinks, no gaps, pretty much
__________________
Grand High* Poobah of the Cult of Stat Normalisation. *not too high of course Last edited by Tomsdad; 10-07-2019 at 09:59 AM. |
|
10-07-2019, 08:45 AM | #24 |
Doctor of GURPS Ballistics
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Lakeville, MN
|
Re: [Pyramid 3/52] LT Armor Design: Mail vs Pi (Guns)
Note that this is just TDS repeating the canonical bodkin formulation. My overall impression was that the arrowheads which were forged and hardened (and there's a line repeated in - i think - one of Hardy's books about fines being leveled for improperly hardened arrowheads) as armor piercers did not suddenly count as high velocity, low momentum projectiles with dull points in real life. I get what pi vs imp is trying to do, but from what I understand about the lozenge-shaped or Type 16 warheads, they really should just cost a bunch and do (2) imp.
__________________
My blog:Gaming Ballistic, LLC My Store: Gaming Ballistic on Shopify My Patreon: Gaming Ballistic on Patreon |
10-07-2019, 09:56 AM | #25 | ||
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
|
Re: [Pyramid 3/52] LT Armor Design: Mail vs Pi (Guns)
Quote:
Quote:
I guess you could look at there arrow heads in relation to the Pi, Pi+ & Pi++ diameters in HT.
__________________
Grand High* Poobah of the Cult of Stat Normalisation. *not too high of course |
||
10-07-2019, 10:19 AM | #26 | |
Doctor of GURPS Ballistics
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Lakeville, MN
|
Re: [Pyramid 3/52] LT Armor Design: Mail vs Pi (Guns)
Quote:
Anyway, some of the warheads would qualify for pi++ or imp; most hunting arrows would too.
__________________
My blog:Gaming Ballistic, LLC My Store: Gaming Ballistic on Shopify My Patreon: Gaming Ballistic on Patreon Last edited by DouglasCole; 10-07-2019 at 10:34 AM. |
|
10-07-2019, 10:29 AM | #27 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
|
Re: [Pyramid 3/52] LT Armor Design: Mail vs Pi (Guns)
They're distinct penetration mechanics, but it's a distinction that only matters on targets soft enough to be cut, which is generally not the case for metal armors.
|
10-07-2019, 12:35 PM | #28 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
|
Re: [Pyramid 3/52] LT Armor Design: Mail vs Pi (Guns)
Quote:
In terms of armor penetration, the first is Imp, the second is sort of like an Imp/Cut fusion, and the third is Pi. For DR that differentiates, if you want to have really high resolution, the second would probably give DR roughly halfway between what the target has against Imp and what it has against Cut (if it somehow has better DR against Imp than Cut, just treat it as Cut). Note this is probably is only appropriate if the sharp edges are fairly wide (enough so that if they were blunt the projectile would have trouble pushing material aside to get past the armor). In terms of wounding, the first and third are fairly similar, primarily involving a wound channel that consists of a lot of crushed tissue. The second is a bit different, as the wound channel is likely wider but thinner, and also consists more of cut tissue than crushed tissue. All three rely more on going deep to hit something important than on outright wrecking the body, so all three would be susceptible to reduction from IT:Unliving and IT:Homogeneous. When IT:DR and Vulnerability are involved, however, they could be treated differently. IT:DR/Vulnerability to Cutting (representing tissue that's harder or easier to cut) would probably apply normally to the second option. IT:DR/Vulnerability to Imp (representing tissue that's harder or easier to punch through with a sharp tip) would probably apply to the first and second, while IT:DR/Vulnerability to Cr (representing tissue that is rarely or easily crushed/broken) could probably apply to the first and third. You could also have a general IT:DR/Vulnerability to Imp and Pi (representing redundant/resilient internal organs, or those particularly susceptible to disruption) that would apply to all three, and would basically be the IT:DR/Vulnerability equivalent of the Living-Unliving-Homogeneous progression. Pricing would be difficult to work out, but then pricing for limited IT:DR/Vulnerability is kind of already a bit broken, particularly when comparing to Unliving/Homogeneous (IIRC, IT:DR that would protect against one of Imp or Pi is around twice as expensive as equivalent protection from Unliving, or Homogeneous if you take out the price for its add-ons).
__________________
GURPS Overhaul |
|
10-07-2019, 03:15 PM | #29 | |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Maitland, NSW, Australia
|
Re: [Pyramid 3/52] LT Armor Design: Mail vs Pi (Guns)
Quote:
http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.p...4&postcount=15 http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=33436
__________________
Compact Castles gives the gamer an instant portfolio of genuine, real-world castle floorplans to use in any historical, low-tech, or fantasy game setting. |
|
10-07-2019, 10:15 PM | #30 |
☣
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Southeast NC
|
Re: [Pyramid 3/52] LT Armor Design: Mail vs Pi (Guns)
They tried making mail for protection in WWI, but found that the bullet tended to push shattered fragments of links into the wearer. They did find that if draped rather than worn close to the skin, it stopped fragments pretty well. There are some examples of face masks for tankers.
__________________
RyanW - Actually one normal sized guy in three tiny trenchcoats. |
Tags |
low-tech ii, pyramid #3/52 |
|
|