Wheellocks and Flintlocks

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Fire pistons are, in my opinion, the most interesting, but I suspect they'd be beyond TL 4 capabilities. You would need some mechanism that reliably opens a small "window" in the bottom of the piston to eject the burning material to ignite the gunpowder, which is probably a bit too complex (a fire piston needs to be a contained system to build up sufficient heat to light anything, but then whatever it lights needs to light your powder).

It has since occurred to me that I may have been looking at this all wrong. If the wadding is packed tightly enough, you could have the "exit" be blocked by the bullet itself. You'd load the weapon and, rather than having a flashpan, you'd have a piston that lowered (probably after being struck by a hammer) into the chamber itself, compressing things enough to ignite the powder (you may need a ratchet mechanism to prevent the explosion from throwing the piston back up), which then propels the bullet, as normal. Such a self-contained system could result in earlier development of fixed cartridges (and could serve as an interesting way of making such ammunition more expensive, as well as more difficult to autoload, if the cartridges have built-in fire pistons).

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Just to pick up on this, weapons as status symbols tended not to be status because of inherent complexity or expense of basic manufacture (that said if new technology was fashionable you might well be invested in paying over the odds for it), but because they were bespoke or blinged up.

Swords were a status symbol due almost entirely to inherent complexity and expense of basic manufacture. They required very high-quality materials and a higher level of craftsmanship than most weapons. They didn't need to be bespoke or "blinged," although they were indeed often both.

If the only disadvantage a wheellock has comes down to cost (both for manufacture and maintenance), it could easily become a status symbol - it will always be more expensive than a comparable flintlock. You can also make the wheellock mechanism look much more impressive than a flintlock, at least in my opinion.

The weapons being a bit more fragile might not prevent them from being status symbols, particularly if you can use more expensive parts to offset/negate this penalty. If they have a higher Malf, however, they'll be abandoned.