05-11-2016, 12:55 AM | #11 | |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: Handling Long-Range Musketry
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Its possible that TS uses Acc to calculate maximum possible Aim bonus and skill because its the most appropriate game stat, not because if Hans were building a model from scratch, he would use one number to represent pointability, accuracy from the shoulder over iron sights at medium range, and accuracy prone from a rest at extreme range.
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"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature Last edited by Polydamas; 05-11-2016 at 01:25 AM. Reason: Added link to FAQ |
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05-11-2016, 01:58 AM | #12 | |
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
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Re: Handling Long-Range Musketry
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Because my first thought would be to adjust that mod for certain weapons (To be honest I would tend to adjust that mod for changes in circumstantial factors anyway) |
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05-11-2016, 02:19 AM | #13 | |||
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
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Re: Handling Long-Range Musketry
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Last edited by Tomsdad; 05-11-2016 at 05:55 AM. |
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05-11-2016, 02:25 AM | #14 |
Join Date: Jun 2008
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Re: Handling Long-Range Musketry
I think this is a specific muzzleloader issue and possibly only muzzle-loaders firing round ball(rather than say Minnie Ball).
As such I don't think a whole scale revision of every gun in the game is required. The games has exception conditions all though it (one of the reasons we like it is that whilst the stat lines are fairly constant there are sidebar comments that allow additional complication if you want to do the extra work). With modern guns, you can probably plug in some fairly consistent formula and get a number that is close enough to the real life performance (given the granularity of the stat lines). Modern snipers have tables to allow for wind and gravity. This suggests that modern guns are fairly precise and fairly predictable and thus can be modelled (so you can get good groupings, even if they all hit a foot below and 6 inches left of your point of aim). With smoothbores firing round ball the arc gets increasingly erratic and not just in the vertical. You can easily add a cumulative penalty, but I think the key point is that this penalty should not be offset by greater skill (or skill enhancing modifiers - like better sights and aiming). With a predictable change you can compensate (aim higher for longer range, ain off to allow for wind etc.) and this is a function of skill. No amount of skill can compensate for the projectile having an unpredictable flight path. You could simply apply a flat rule that says at x range the maximum chance to hit including all modifiers is Y. Y decreases by 1 per additional z range interval. It should also be fairly simple to model the historical test results. We know the target size in GURPS terms. We know the percentage hits. The only thing we need to do is decide the skill level of the shooter and any situational modifiers and work out what the GURPS chance to hit is and work out the required modifier to bring it down to the test chance. For simplicity you could just average the results rather than try to do this per specific gun (as better performance in a particular test could be from better training, better equipment, favourable conditions on the day or any number of unrecorded variations. Arguably the MSc trial shows the effect of maximum skill. The gun was braced in a fixed mount and laser sighted. It wasn't testing if the ball could hit a specific target just the grouping from a consistent aim point. You could allow that a skilled musketeer might be able to improve on the results a little if he had the foresight before the battle to select the roundest most consistent ball, carefully measure his powder and load carefully to avoid any distortion of the ball and reduce windage. |
05-11-2016, 03:05 AM | #15 | |
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
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Re: Handling Long-Range Musketry
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05-11-2016, 06:46 AM | #16 |
Join Date: Jun 2008
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Re: Handling Long-Range Musketry
Indeed, I was suggesting that this might be the only action that might allow you to improve the precision of the musket.
If you apply a skill cap, this could improve it by one. If you choose a maximum chance to hit this could increase it by one. I also think that it is something that needs to be prepared for in advance by aquiring the equivalent of Match grade ammunition (probably casting it yourself with a custom mould and fettling it). With an imperfect ball, loading carefully won't help. Loading fast with a perfect ball may turn it into an imperfect ball. From experience, a perfect ball also needs to be protected. Musket balls rattling around in a pouch quickly aquire flat spots (though interestingly it also knocks off the mould lines and sprue stubs). Cartridges provide adequate protection and allow you to carefully measure the powder in advance. They can also be weather protected more easily than loose powder. Loading with a cartridge (with a correct size ball - undersized balls were used to speed up loading) can take longer than with a collar of bottles and loose ball so this may fit well the rule cited by Tomsdad. You will also need to load your own in advance. Ordinarily cartidges are mass produced in factories and so are not tailored to a particular gun. This is ideal for regimented armies using a similar bore who want to fire quickly and cheaply, but not so useful for the targeteer who wants to maximise his chance of hitting. Loading a mass produced cartridge forgoes the benefit of loading carefully as you have no control over the size of the ball, whether it was well formed, or the quantity and quality of the powder (which could vary significantly between cartridges of different batches and storage times). You also need to be wary of the manufacturer who may have cut corners to increase their profits (replacing a portion of the powder with soot or sawdust for example), especially as you can't really check a cartridge without opening it. |
05-11-2016, 08:31 AM | #17 | ||||||||
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Handling Long-Range Musketry
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Of course, you don't have to be a master shooter (Skill 20, Braced, Aiming for 3+ seconds, and using an All Out Attack to reach 26) for the ball's scatter to mess you up, which is why I have it as a penalty, rather than just a cap. *It's hard to find decent data on musket MoA using a few quick Google searches, but from what I can tell they typically have higher MoA than the 5 implied by a skill cap of 26. If we assume MoA 36 is typical of a smoothbore musket (as I saw claimed in several of my results), that's a skill cap of either 20 or 21 (the musket from the thesis, based on performance at 50 yards, appeared to have a skill cap somewhere in the vicinity of 23 or 24). Note this markedly changes to above probabilities - assuming a cap of 21, 70 yards means maximum skill of 12 - 75% - and 200 yards means a maximum skill of 9 - 37% - and my suggested rule drops the 200 yard shot to 6 - 9%. It also means we only need skill 15 - an expert shooter - to be able to hit our cap. As period rifles apparently had MoA's somewhere around half those of muskets (at the worst), that's a cap of at least 23, and helps explain why you'd want a rifle for distance shots. Quote:
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05-11-2016, 09:48 AM | #18 | |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: Handling Long-Range Musketry
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It would have been better if they had clarified how cheap firearms work in HT, but GURPS is very complex, and because citing sources is against house style, books which are compiled from earlier GURPS products or contain a lot of technical details are hard to write and edit.
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"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature Last edited by Polydamas; 05-11-2016 at 10:55 AM. |
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05-11-2016, 12:28 PM | #19 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Handling Long-Range Musketry
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For pretty much any modern weapon, hit probability for a correctly aimed shot at 100 meters will be 100%. In the real world, shots at 100 meters do not hit anywhere near 100% of the time. This tells us that most shots are not in fact correctly aimed -- i.e. the issue is shooter error, not anything about the gun. GURPS skill is mostly about error rates. A more realistic version of accuracy than what GURPS does would be an aim bonus that is completely determined by the ergonomics of the weapon, and then a maximum skill that is determined by the intrinsic accuracy of the gun. |
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05-11-2016, 12:31 PM | #20 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Handling Long-Range Musketry
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That said, the above is likely more useful to answer the question of "Why bother with rifles when muskets are only marginally less accurate and can be loaded more quickly?" which is, as you noted, more a GM/setting question than a player question (where "+1 Acc on a weapon I can only use once per combat anyway? Yes, please" is the answer). *Assuming I'm figuring out maximum skill correctly, anyway. I figured out how it goes a while back and am basing my current numbers off of old posts, as I don't remember exactly how it's meant to be calculated. MoA 36 is a grouping of around 1 yard at 100 yards, meaning you can just barely hit a circular target with a 1 yard diameter, which would be right around SM 0, at 100 yards (-10 to hit). A roll of 10.5 implies normal conditions; a higher or lower roll means luck was (perhaps slightly) for (lower roll) or against (higher roll) you. Round this up to 11 (implying luck being slightly against you), or use the optional "Taking 11" rule, and that means effective skill of 21. (EDIT: Looks like MoA actually refers to a 69% hit rate, which is more like a roll of 11.5 or 12. That would mean effective skill of 21.5 or 22) Yes, please. Last edited by Varyon; 05-11-2016 at 12:54 PM. |
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high tech, musketry, realism, tactical shooting |
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