Quote:
Originally Posted by SimonAce
Being clockwork is already TL5 in this setting suggests good metallurgy and that wheel-locks and maybe even flintlocks might be already available skipping the whole matchlock phase
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For certain experts in the richest areas, this is true. On the other hand, these experts can replicate TL5 results with their personal experience and intuition, not a body of advanced theory that is easily transferable to mass production.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SimonAce
Likely something akin to a wheel-lock mechanism for firestaring might already might be available to the wealthy as a convenience items and modifying it for use on a whatever muskets are called would not be hard.
The matchlock was cheap and and easy to make but that was its only real upside . In a setting where its ammo is rare and expensive as well as there being advanced clockwork no need for the developmental steps.
In such a case I'd use the stats in High Tech or Low Tech
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This is true and the PCs are already investing in wheellock and even magelock* weapons. On the other hand, while you can train TL2-3 bronzesmiths to cast bronze matchlocks fairly easily, they can't make TL4 iron/steel guns with advanced TL5 clockwork trigger mechanisms.
When you need a 1000 weapons
yesterday, that's a real concern. Of course, that's a rare situation, but for PCs, somehow, it seems to be the standard. Nothing ever happens fast enough for their purposes.
Happily, some of them are merchant princes, warlords or aristocrats with impressive administrative, social, mercantile and organisational skills, and they are successfully leveraging an initial technical advantage into a very successful naval and military campaign. But since the other side has a much larger reserve of men, wealth, magic and material, even if they are slower to mobilise it, the PCs need to maximise the benefit from their newfangled weaponry and tactics while the other side is still figuring out the ramifications.
Hence, solutions that can be made with a few TL4 (advanced)/TL5 (some fields) engineers instructing TL2 and TL3 craftsmen, using TL 3 tools and infrastructure.
Sling-launched grenades appear very promising, as the PCs can recruit plenty of skilled slingers and train them to use the new weapons. And while the PCs are unlikely to buy new firearms with a matchlock mechanism, they do have 300 of those in their arsenal**. It's possible that they'll convert them to wheellock eventually, but it's not as if they have any spare engineers available now that don't have more important tasks.
I don't know how long they'd take to convert or how easy it would be to train blacksmiths to do it, though. If TL3 blacksmiths can do it with TL3 blacksmith tools, once you show them how, that means they'd change over instantly. But I suspect wheellock mechanisms are finicky and require more skill and more advanced tools than a typical TL3 blacksmith in a society where copper and bronze is used more than iron and steel will be likely to have.
So it's use them as matchlocks or not use them at all, at least for the upcoming battles. Unless you can order a conversion kit from abroad which handy soldiers could fit themselves, but that's probably not an option.***
*A minor cantrip provides the spark necessary to fire the powder.
**They are equipping their by-now experienced and elite caliver corps with magelock weapons, but they won't throw away their old weapons.
***The PCs would probably spring for up to $500 per gun to change over to wheellock quickly, but most of the best smiths in all the neighbouring cities are already making armaments for one side or the other, ranging from steel arrowheads to TL2+2 mechanical artillery.