TL4 vs. TL7 melee weapons

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Toptomcat

I suppose you could make a thrusting weapon with a marginally thinner profile and harder tip without as much risk of snapping it off as TL4 metallurgy, which would improve penetration.

Originally Posted by DanHoward

A thinner profile might increase penetration but reduces the wound channel. The chance of breakage doesn't affect damage, it affects the malfunction rate.

I suspect that reach would be the benefit you're actually going for in this configuration. TL 4 and TL 5 designs tend to be long and thin, a design that early times don't have the metallurgy for.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by ericthered

TL 4 and TL 5 designs tend to be long and thin, a design that early times don't have the metallurgy for.

Of course they did. All of these steel swords are over 2000 years old.

https://www.tf.uni-kiel.de/matwis/am...tene_large.jpg

A few of them can be flexed almost double and spring back to their original shape. I've seen one of the blades dredged from Lake Neuchâtel flexed like this.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Of course they did. All of these steel swords are over 2000 years old.

https://www.tf.uni-kiel.de/matwis/am...tene_large.jpg

A few of them can be flexed almost double and spring back to their original shape. I've seen one of the blades dredged from Lake Neuchâtel flexed like this.

Oh, I'm aware that the long swords we normally associate with TL3 go way back. I'm taking about swords with the profile of a rapier or cavalry saber. None of the weapons in your image are quite so narrow as that.

[Dragondog]

Originally Posted by Apollonian

Important question: Is this society actually TL7 in other fields, or is it otherwise TL4, with TL7 weapons (somehow)?

There has been some interesting responses from those that assume that that is the case, so please feel free to continue discussing that option too.

My original question only assumed that the advanced faction could produce TL7 melee weapons at the same rate the other faction produced TL4 melee weapons. Other fields, in my original question, could be assumed to be at the same level.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Dragondog

There has been some interesting responses from those that assume that that is the case, so please feel free to continue discussing that option too.

My original question only assumed that the advanced faction could produce TL7 melee weapons at the same rate the other faction produced TL4 melee weapons. Other fields, in my original question, could be assumed to be at the same level.

There are only a tiny handful of muscle powered melee weapons that are TL7, and they're not particularly useful battlefield weapons. I suppose you could upgrade to titanium blades, which are moderately lighter and less breakable - but that's only worth it if the 'same rate' is in terms of number of weapons rather than cost, otherwise you'd do better with twice as many steel ones which are all-around TL3 weapons merely made with TL7 technology.

Being able to replace utility knives with folding knives might be a quality of life improvement in some cases.

If you were allowing TL7 muscle-powered ranged weapons it'd be a whole different game, since there is such a thing as a TL7 bow.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

T
If you were allowing TL7 muscle-powered ranged weapons it'd be a whole different game, since there is such a thing as a TL7 bow.

TL7 crossbows too. Fiberglass is far superior to both wood and steel for making crossbows.

[Dragondog]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

There are only a tiny handful of muscle powered melee weapons that are TL7, and they're not particularly useful battlefield weapons. I suppose you could upgrade to titanium blades, which are moderately lighter and less breakable - but that's only worth it if the 'same rate' is in terms of number of weapons rather than cost, otherwise you'd do better with twice as many steel ones which are all-around TL3 weapons merely made with TL7 technology.

Being able to replace utility knives with folding knives might be a quality of life improvement in some cases.

If you were allowing TL7 muscle-powered ranged weapons it'd be a whole different game, since there is such a thing as a TL7 bow.

By "same rate" I meant the amount of time it takes to craft a weapon. Now at least I know why they haven't taken over the world.

It was brought up earlier, the advanced faction has much fewer people than the less advanced faction.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

TL7 crossbows too. Fiberglass is far superior to both wood and steel for making crossbows.

I hoped bows would be taken to include that, but yes, certainly.

Originally Posted by Dragondog

By "same rate" I meant the amount of time it takes to craft a weapon.

...I'm not even sure what that means. Making a TL7 weapon takes the same time as an equivalent TL3 weapon, whatever equivalent means? They've got equal weaponsmithing man-hours and can ignore differences in material and capital costs? Either way we really don't have information to translate that into actual availability.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Dragondog

By "same rate" I meant the amount of time it takes to craft a weapon.

I'm also confused. At TL7, the amount of time it takes to craft the weapon will be far less. You've got mass production of steel, so can get thousands of tons in the time it takes a blacksmith to hand-craft one lot. You've got powered automatic hammers to help with the forging, even if the blanks are guided by human hands, so they don't get tired or sloppy. (And the blanks don't need to be guided by human hands, really.) You've got assembly lines and standardized interchangeable parts to speed up the production of large numbers of weapons.

If you mean these swords are produced by exactly the same process at the TL4 ones -- manual smithing one at a time with hand tools, including producing the steel itself -- but the only difference is use of steel alloys known at TL7, then there's no difference in crafting time. For that matter, there's not much difference in the steel alloys you can use. The ones that have trace amounts of molybdenum or vanadium all imply the existence of TL7 extraction industries to have those metals. But worldbuilding could always claim that TL4 supersteel society X just happened to have ore with the right amounts of trace metals and had the same benefit; you wouldn't need TL7 to excuse that.

You'd have better and more consistent process control at TL7 making exactly the same alloy, but that raises overall quality and makes things cheaper (as was already covered).

So exactly what's available at TL7 in the TL7 society?

[Dragondog]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

So exactly what's available at TL7 in the TL7 society?

My original question was all about the results. In what way the weapons were different. How they got there was not important in that question. But I find the discussions in this thread interesting, so I don't feel that the answers have to be bound to the intent of my original question.