Logistically Viable Weapons AtE

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Equipment is irrelevant. It is all about tactics and logistics. A blade will win against modern firearms if it is deployed properly and wielded by men who are aware of its tactical advantages. Modern firearms can expand the list of tactical options but they won't guarantee a win.

That is demonstrably untrue except on a very small scale at very limited engagement ranges. What can you possibly do with a blade in Hiroshima, Aug 6th 1945 that would remotely defend the city? Sure if you could teleport on to the Enola Gay you might be able to do something, but teleportation is an even more sophisticated weapon then atomic bombs.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by talonthehand

This sounds a lot like the arguments some martial arts aficionados make - “sufficiently skilled, a weaker person can defeat a stronger foe”.

There’s this unsaid condition though - the other side has to be sufficiently unskilled.

My dad tells a story about a battalion commander of his. They were in the field and a lieutenant was going on about how badass his sensei is, "My sensei can do this, my sensei can do that."
The colonel says "Can your sensei run faster than a bullet?"
"Uh, no sir."
"Good, then I can still kill him."

[mr beer]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Equipment is irrelevant. It is all about tactics and logistics. A blade will win against modern firearms if it is deployed properly and wielded by men who are aware of its tactical advantages. Modern firearms can expand the list of tactical options but they won't guarantee a win.

That is extremely untrue. If it were so, modern armies wouldn't bother buying and maintaining incredibly expensive war machines and weapons.

Of course, in the right circumstances a knife and aggression is more effective than a mobile artillery battalion but given the option most war leaders would prefer to turn up with approximately all of the firepower.

[Phoenix_Dragon]

Originally Posted by Minuteman37

It's an After the End Falloutisk scenario and I'm a tactically adept warlord trying to arm my conscripts with a cheap to manufacture, reliable, easily maintained weapon as we try and build an Autocratic state out of the ruins of america.

Considering barely trained conscrips armed with this weapon will be the bread and butter combatant my PCs will be facing I'm not looking for a weapon that's "good", ideally it would be reliable and cheap at the expense of other traits like wounding ability, accuracy, and weight.

I suppose it's going to depend on what they have access to. Presumably they'll have basic milling and metalworking tools, since those should be easy enough to find or make. That lets you build pretty much any kind of firearm. So it's more a question of what kind of ammunition they have access to.

You can always make do with black powder, which gets you up to flintlock level. Even the most basic settlement could make simple flintlock (Or matchlock) weapons and minni-ball ammo. Rifled barrels wouldn't be hard, either.

If you can make primary explosives, you can make some form of percussion cap (Though some schemes might be a little unstable...) and open up a wonderful wide world of firearms. At this point, basic manufacturing ability gets you at least up to manual-feed weapons such as breach loaders, and paper cartridges should be easy, too. If you have enough people to spare the labor, they could even make metal casings. If they don't have access to brass they might make do with steel (Corrosion could be an issue, but if you can make something like lacquer, you can handle that).

And once you have metal casings, you can make more weapons. Manual-loaders are probably still ideal, though you can get away with more. The Maxim gun started out using black powder, for instance.

Making smokeless powder is more complex, but if you've got the resources to make percussion caps, you're probably most of the way there. Now you can make basically any weapon. Once again, however, smokeless powder will require more work, so you'll need more people working on that to support the same number of troops.

If they've got access to large quantities of pre-war ammo, you've got a few more possibilities, so long as they last. Any settlement should be able to make simple firearms that use existing ammo, even if they're just simple removable-bolt breach-loaders. In fact, a rugged bolt-action rifle is probably the best choice for such limited ammo supplies, as they're very rugged and reliable, and won't tear through great quantities of ammo.

Unfortunately, scavenged ammo is a very limited resource. Say your warlord has just 100 people to equip. Even if you find, say, a literal ton of 7.62x51mm, that's only a bit over 300 rounds per person. That has to cover training in addition to use in battle. That might do to equip town guards or something, where you're rarely expected to have to fire your weapon but it's not going to support a serious military campaign beyond a couple of engagements, and possibly not even that long. If your army grows larger, that's fewer rounds per soldier, and naturally, those rounds aren't coming back. It's just not sustainable.

So to sum up, I'd basically put things into three categories:

Minimal infrastructure: black-powder rifled flintlocks firing minni balls. If outfitting a large force, muzzle-loaders. If outfitting a relatively smaller force relative to your worker population, maybe breach-loaders.

Basic machining and chemical manufacturing: percussion-fired rifles. If outfitting a large force, breach-loaded with paper cartridges. If outfitting a relatively smaller force relative to your worker population, bolt-action (Possibly magazine-fed) with metal cartridges, possibly supplemented by a very small number of machine guns if ammo production is high enough.

Good machining and chemical manufacturing: semi-automatic, magazine-fed rifles with cased, smokeless-powder ammo. If manufacturing capacity permits, specialized weapons can be designed (Marksman, automatic rifles, etc), though keeping the number of ammo types down to a minimum would be ideal. The main throughput concern would probably be the production of powder.

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Equipment is irrelevant.

Okay, I'm all for promoting logistics and tactics as being hugely important, but saying equipment is irrelevant is as wrong as saying equipment is everything--except nobody has been saying the latter. Even the OP wasn't asking for the highest-quality weapon, he was asking for a weapon that would be cheap and reliable for outfitting a conscript force, which sure sounds like he had logistics in mind...

The OP was talking about an after-the-end scenario. Selecting the best people for extensive training might work for developed nations, but when you're talking about factions that might have a few dozen or hundred people in total (maaaybe a few thousand), you either make do with what you can get or do without. This isn't a case of comparing elite troops with pointy sticks against morons with AKs. It's a case of having a fixed group of people and choosing what equipment gives them better performance without being too expensive, too hard to use, or too hard to supply. Making that choice also doesn't mean ignoring other choices, such as tactics and training.

So yes, equipment is certainly relevant.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Phoenix_Dragon

The OP was talking about an after-the-end scenario. Selecting the best people for extensive training might work for developed nations, but when you're talking about factions that might have a few dozen or hundred people in total (maaaybe a few thousand), you either make do with what you can get or do without.

Yup. When you have thousands of people rather than tens of millions, and your agriculture has been knocked back a TL or three, the number of people who can be extensively trained in soldiering and kept in training as a nearly full-time job is very small, heading for zero.

[acrosome]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Equipment is irrelevant. It is all about tactics and logistics. A blade will win against modern firearms if it is deployed properly and wielded by men who are aware of its tactical advantages. Modern firearms can expand the list of tactical options but they won't guarantee a win.

Ok, Dan. You started with a perfectly reasonable point about the importance of discipline, motivation, and training and you've taken it someplace very strange. I know you're talking about pikes vs muskets, but its coming across as advocating the superiority of swords over battle rifles. You're losing credibility, here, and sounding like a mall ninja or something. Bow out.

[(E)]

One thought for a support weapon, a Boer war era Pom Pom gun.

[Phantasm]

If they're able to make their own guns, a pump-action rifle (such as the Remington Model 19) may be the way to go. You get the accuracy of a rifle with the simplicity of a pump action, though the periodic reloading after something like every ten shots (depending on cartridge used and length of the cylinder) would make it less useful in sustained combat. Although, ten to twelve shots with only a second or two between volleys before affixing bayonets and charging would make them better than the muzzleloading musketmen who have to take half a minute to reload between volleys. Of course, they'd be at a disadvantage against neighbors who had automatic weapons.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Purple Haze

...Last American cavalry charge, and a successful one at that, was by G Troop, 26th Cavalry Regiment in the Philippines 16 January 1942. They scattered superior numbers of armour supported Japanese infantry...

That's missing a bit of context in regards to the overall effect of horse charges in Bataan in 1942:

This last mounted pistol charge was led by Ed Ramsey in command of G troop, 26th Cavalry. It was the last mounted charge in America's annals, and proved the climax of the 26th Cavalry's magnificent but doomed horseback campaign against the Imperial Japanese Army during the fall of the Philippines in 1941-42.


The point is not that outstanding examples of success don't exist it's that they tend to be rather unusual, and anecdotal in terms of relevance. They are great stories about extraordinary people doing extraordinary things, but they don't actually tell us much beyond sometimes in war extraordinary things happen.

Originally Posted by Purple Haze

The Battle of Mount Tumbledown, 13-14 June 1982, Falkland Islands featured several successful bayonet charges even though both sides were equipped with automatic weapons (the FN-FAL)....

This is one I referenced earlier, the bayonet charge happened at night, and was not plan A.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Equipment is irrelevant. It is all about tactics and logistics. A blade will win against modern firearms if it is deployed properly and wielded by men who are aware of its tactical advantages. Modern firearms can expand the list of tactical options but they won't guarantee a win.

Nothing guarantees a win. But lots of things affect the odds of the outcome and equipment is one of them, and the larger the gap in one area the harder it can be to compensate with others.