Different Gyroc Designs

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Sorry, when I said 'estimate how fast the target is moving' I actually meant angular velocity, not absolute velocity (and I was unclear). Angular velocity is readily available -- it's how fast you're moving your weapon to continue tracking them. The lead angle is equal to (target angular velocity) * (travel time).

As angular velocity is equal to target velocity/distance, and travel time is equal to distance/projectile speed, this happens to be equal to target velocity/projectile speed, which is as you note range-independent, but that's not the actual calculation you'd use.

Fair enough - but I think you're actually mistaken about what's more practical to measure or estimate. While in principle angular velocity is readily available, I don't think it's easy for a human to work with quantitatively while tracking a target. (Unlike a mechanical gyroscopic sight, of course). Whereas leading the target by an angle based on its presumed speed is easy if your sighting apparatus marks out angular increments, and the speed of a given type of target is more predictable than one might expect.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Fair enough - but I think you're actually mistaken about what's more practical to measure or estimate.

It's the sort of calculation humans do all the time, any time you're trying to grab or hit a moving object you have to aim for where it's going to be, not where it currently is, and how much forward you have to aim depends on how fast the thing you're using to hit it is.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

So you can make exotic weapons that require special skills the new 'normal', but certainly that will have no bearing on the 'norm' for combat range?

And why do you even want to use laser-guided rounds at close quarters?

I'd issue guided Gyrocs to beat cops, Possibly with Sleep Gas warheads but even with lethal ones. You'd cut down on how many shots they fire and way down on how many miss.

So if every cop has a Gyroc in his holster it's not an "exotic" weapon any more. It's a common one.

It also won't change the usual engagement range for police and probably won't for soldiers either. Even if the "Air Force" is all drones in the future they'll still be the ones handling really long range combat. The hotiles the drones don't get will be the ones that are good at hiding and that will certainly cut down "normal" engagemnt range. You can't shoot somebody you can't find.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I'd issue guided Gyrocs to beat cops, Possibly with Sleep Gas warheads but even with lethal ones. You'd cut down on how many shots they fire and way down on how many miss.

Guided doesn't help if weapon doesn't know what the target is. At typical police shootout ranges pistols can be treated as hitscan weapons, if you miss it was because you weren't pointing at the target at all, and possibly not pointing at anything at all.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Guided doesn't help if weapon doesn't know what the target is. At typical police shootout ranges pistols can be treated as hitscan weapons, if you miss it was because you weren't pointing at the target at all, and possibly not pointing at anything at all.

Training to make single accurate shots might be a very significant element but traing to do almost anythig other than what US cops are doing now might be an improvement.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Training to make single accurate shots might be a very significant element but traing to do almost anythig other than what US cops are doing now might be an improvement.

If you want a technological improvement to things that actually matter, design bullets that disarm themselves after a certain distance downrange. Low hit probability simply doesn't cause that many problems compared to, say, incorrectly identifying targets and thus shooting innocent people.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Training to make single accurate shots might be a very significant element but traing to do almost anythig other than what US cops are doing now might be an improvement.

If Sleep Gas gyrocs are a feasible option for police (they may not be for normal carry, as they'd necessitate police wearing full body protection, which isn't good for PR, to avoid dosing themselves; an inhaled-only variant of sleep gas may be more doable, with police quickly donning low-profile gas masks at the start of combat), they probably don't need to be Guided/Homing. Those are most useful for long-range shots, which police typically don't participate in anyway, and using sleep gas means you just have to hit somewhere within a yard of your target (15mm aerosols release in a 1 yard radius). If you're shooting well enough the guided/homing would work, you're probably shooting well enough that the +4 for targeting an area would result in a hit, and likely at a fraction of the cost. The sleep gas used would ideally need to be a variant engineered to disperse - or at least become inert - rapidly, to avoid the risk of drifting air currents resulting in bystanders being affected.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Frankly, I'm doubtful if the shooting is being done by a human without some kind of ballistic computer.

I don't think there's any straightforward way to use range information in manual deflection shooting.

There is, and people do it all the time - it's called 'experience'. It's part of what having a high skill represents, in my opinion.

[Kax]

For the technical side, how's about we start with the actual Gyroc round, which is what the UT weapon's based on, and assume that those stats describe a early to mid TL 8 attempt at a gyroc that needs some more development and better rocket propellant?

That gives us the dia and length and mass (before and after burn) stats, and its speed (which will have to increase for it to be useful), easy.

Quick burn and short range for pistols, slower burn and much longer range for longarms.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Kax

Quick burn and short range for pistols, slower burn and much longer range for longarms.

Except that for Gyrocs, it's not the weapon the round is loaded into but the round itself determines characteristics. So as long as the rounds are the same size, they can be fired from any weapon.