What kinds of firearms would people start making [After the End]?

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by swordtart

So that I can be more consistent, how does GURPS define the two terms. I am certain that the quoted 660 yards for an arquebus is not "effective range" and another poster advised that GURPS used the maximum range. I correspondingly used 450 yards as the maximum range of the heavy crossbow (and 330 yards for the one in your cited example).

GURPS doesn't use 'effective range' at all.

[Tomsdad]

OK right as a bit of a foot note, (and because it was driving me mad that I couldn't find any good links citing the diameter of historical mail links)

I've been looking at some of the mail items in the Royal armouries collection on the website simply because they sometimes include a reasonable physical description, and yes 9.5mm interior diameter is on the large size (although there was of course a range)

This fauld is made of rings with an overall diameter of 7mm

This shirt is outer diameter 8mm

This shirt is a mix of interior diameter 8.3mm & 7.2mm links

This one is 10mm overall diameter, but does well to show how the interlinking actually reduces the interior gap.

This one though is pretty cool. it doesn't give the actual diameter of the links, but they are certainly small. Fine mail in LT terms indeed!


Anyway sorry about that!

[Tomsdad]

Sorry I missed this one

Originally Posted by swordtart

I agree with the majority of this, but I think cost was a bigger driver than armour penetration. If your soldiers cost less, you can have more of them. Quantity has a quality of its own.

While I certainly agree in theory, in practice it's going to come down to what's the sweet spot between cost to make each weapon, supply each weapon, train each man, make each man's armour, what other benefits armour gives you. Also how many men you have available to you.

Each one of these could be primary limiting factor and change the calculation.

An example: given a huge number of available troops (and people to support them*) but limited resources then yes less well equipped troops maximises your strength while minimising your weakness. But reverse the order if your limiting factors and the reverse will be true.

"Quantity has a quality of its own" is a quote from Stalin, a man who had access to a huge population and a system that allowed him to mobilise it.

I.e he played to his strengths

AtE could have a very different situation in place



*one downside to quantity is that it eat's a lot, and can be hard to concentrate on to a smaller force in order to get the benefit in the field

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by swordtart

Actually I was never that concerned with the effectiveness of crossbows vs armour compared to smooth bores. I was commenting on ATE, where I don't think historical armour will figure to any great extent.

Between raiders wearing stop-sign armor (and/or wielding stop-sign shields), mutants with incredibly tough skin, and killer robots, armor is likely to be something to consider in an AtE campaign. For motorized raiders, you may need to shoot through doors to hit drivers, or engine blocks to disable vehicles, and in both cases penetration is very much going to matter. Even ignoring armor, that Medieval Crossbow I mentioned before doesn't even manage a Major Wound on an average hit (assuming a foe with HP 10+), while an average hit from the poorly-performing arquebus will drop anything with HP 12 or less into negative HP and scores a Major Wound on anything up to HP 26. Good shot placement can improve the Crossbow's wounding - average of 7.5 HP for a Vitals shot, average of 6 HP for a Skull shot, average of 10 HP for an Eye shot - but the arquebus sees even more of a boost (as it starts with a lower wounding modifier), for 27 HP for Vitals, 28 HP for Skull, and 36 HP for Eye.

Originally Posted by swordtart

I was more concerned with smoothbores being less precise than crossbows.

What do you think about the suggestion I made above? I'll probably split it off into its own thread for discussion, but I'm curious. I should note that the initial 1d-4 can probably be safely simplified to a -1, basically just meaning the Range penalty is simply doubled beyond a certain point.

EDIT: It's now in its own thread. In fact, further discussion of this aspect of muskets should probably go there rather than continue to derail this one.

Originally Posted by swordtart

Come the apocalypse I'll be the one with the crossbow.

Granted, a crossbow isn't a bad choice of weapon - it certainly has some advantages over a musket - but I think your assertion that nobody will bother with firearms without repeaters and/or rifling is a flawed one.