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Old 11-09-2017, 08:43 AM   #61
Tomsdad
 
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
Default Re: Making more ammo stuck on a low tech world.

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Originally Posted by Kalzazz View Post
The notion that the limiting factor is the ability to get to materials to the machine and the products away from it, not the speed the machine runs wouldn't surprise me

I've personally dealt with a soil handling machine which stayed idle half the time because it's ability to handle said soil far exceeded the ability of men and trucks to keep up
That kind of lag can at least in theory be tackled by application of low TL manpower
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Old 11-09-2017, 10:23 AM   #62
Ulzgoroth
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Default Re: Making more ammo stuck on a low tech world.

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Originally Posted by Kalzazz View Post
The notion that the limiting factor is the ability to get to materials to the machine and the products away from it, not the speed the machine runs wouldn't surprise me
Interestingly, I doubt that will come up here. The spaceship mining system only produces 1.5 tons per hour of products - I'd expect a well-organized TL5 work force to be able to deal with 50 pounds per second of output. And the factory...well, it's a machine shop. Unless you're building particularly large and non-self-propelled projects, your most likely non-production chokepoint is procurement of the required components, not transporting them.
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Old 11-09-2017, 10:39 AM   #63
Kalzazz
 
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Default Re: Making more ammo stuck on a low tech world.

Possibly. To keep the soil handler operating full bore would have been an exercise of thousands of men and hundreds of trucks, instead it involved dozens of trucks and a few hundred men (plus a slew of various bits of yellow iron and other miscellanies) and the machine idled a lot

Cranking 30,000 rifle rounds an hour will be 1 ton of supplies an hour or so. With oxcarts trundling at move 1 and oxen only working part of the day will need a LOT of men and oxen

If you can setup near a port so ships can bring stuff much the better
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Old 11-09-2017, 12:11 PM   #64
Ulzgoroth
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Default Re: Making more ammo stuck on a low tech world.

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Originally Posted by Kalzazz View Post
Possibly. To keep the soil handler operating full bore would have been an exercise of thousands of men and hundreds of trucks, instead it involved dozens of trucks and a few hundred men (plus a slew of various bits of yellow iron and other miscellanies) and the machine idled a lot

Cranking 30,000 rifle rounds an hour will be 1 ton of supplies an hour or so. With oxcarts trundling at move 1 and oxen only working part of the day will need a LOT of men and oxen

If you can setup near a port so ships can bring stuff much the better
Producing nearly 10 rifle rounds per second seems improbable in a single-person, multipurpose workshop, though I see how it follows from the Spaceships stats.

One ton just isn't all that much - it's not even two oxcart loads per Low Tech p137. Bringing in two cart loads per hour to the fabricator isn't that big a burden.

Concentrating all the materials you need nearby using Low Tech land transport, sure, that's a nightmare pretty much regardless of the subject.
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Old 11-09-2017, 12:22 PM   #65
mr beer
 
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Default Re: Making more ammo stuck on a low tech world.

Mass manufacturing modern rifle rounds is the difficult part, is that correct? Is it comparatively easy to build a machine gun that uses the same ammunition as your rifles?
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Old 11-09-2017, 12:28 PM   #66
Fred Brackin
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Default Re: Making more ammo stuck on a low tech world.

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Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
Producing nearly 10 rifle rounds per second seems improbable in a single-person, multipurpose workshop, though I see how it follows from the Spaceships stats.
You don't use the TL8 "machine shop" (which probably is CAD-CAM capable) to make the ammo directly. You use it to build one of the reloading presses from p.174 of HT.

A hand-operated one from TL6 could do 1000 rounds per hour but the TL7 power-operated version can do 5000+. That's only 20 lbs and $1000 of machinery too.

Make multiple presses if this ends up being the bottleneck. I suspect the bottleneck would be somewhere up the line in the "making the components" stage.
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Old 11-09-2017, 01:05 PM   #67
Verjigorm
 
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Default Re: Making more ammo stuck on a low tech world.

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Originally Posted by mr beer View Post
Mass manufacturing modern rifle rounds is the difficult part, is that correct? Is it comparatively easy to build a machine gun that uses the same ammunition as your rifles?
Most machineguns use the same ammunition as the typical service rifle for a nations military.
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Old 11-09-2017, 01:10 PM   #68
Kfireblade
 
Join Date: Dec 2015
Default Re: Making more ammo stuck on a low tech world.

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Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
It occurs to me that if you are going to make smokeless powder we've overlooked a critical feedstock - cellulose. It's not remotely easy to synthesize, which we neglect here on Earth because God already did all the ridiculously hard chemical engineering necessary to put together a commercially viable total synthesis from water and carbon dioxide using self reproducing nanoassemblers, but alien ecologies don't necessarily have a source of it.
I'll have access to plenty of cellulose, the planet is very earth like and in fact has several plants and animals that where transplanted from earth.
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Old 11-09-2017, 01:15 PM   #69
Kfireblade
 
Join Date: Dec 2015
Default Re: Making more ammo stuck on a low tech world.

There is a chemical refinery system in the spaceships book and the purpose of this vehicle was supposed to help with ammunition and weapon production in places where a small force was operating away from modern infrastructure If local resources could be found and fed into it. So obviously I should add a chemical refinery that is set up for making the prepelent. I still have time to edit things and I can't imagine my GM would have issue with that.
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Old 11-09-2017, 01:15 PM   #70
Ulzgoroth
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Default Re: Making more ammo stuck on a low tech world.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
You don't use the TL8 "machine shop" (which probably is CAD-CAM capable) to make the ammo directly. You use it to build one of the reloading presses from p.174 of HT.

A hand-operated one from TL6 could do 1000 rounds per hour but the TL7 power-operated version can do 5000+. That's only 20 lbs and $1000 of machinery too.

Make multiple presses if this ends up being the bottleneck. I suspect the bottleneck would be somewhere up the line in the "making the components" stage.
If you do that, the 'carrying away the products' problem seems an obvious non-issue because you don't need your presses to be all in one room.
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