[Low Tech] TL4 Rifles

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by acrosome

It's possible to make a smoothbore reasonably accurate, but it was rarely done. You just need a tight fit of the projectile in the bore. One way to do this is with a tight patch around the projectile, but this sort of reintroduces the problem of slow loading that one gets with a rifle. It's one argument for having that first shot be the best, of course. But the reason that tight musket bores were rare is because black powder causes massive fouling. If the bore was too tight then after a few shots you wouldn't be able to load the musket. And as has been discussed being able to fire a lot and reload quickly was what was desirable. A musket that couldn't be loaded after half a dozen shots wouldn't be very useful in a line of battle.

As I recall, the typical musket line formation of the Colonial (TL5) era was about two or three volleys before bayonets were affixed and melee entered.

In TL4, which the OP specified, and which I (and GURPS) take to be the Renaissance and Age of Sail Exploration, the muskets (which were heavy things needing a musket rest) and their smaller cousins the caliver and carbine tended to hide behind pike walls to protect them from charging infantry and cavalry forces. Being a musketeer required a lot of upper body strength (Low-Tech gives the Musket an ST score of "12R†"; even with ST 12 you needed a musket rest to fire it and withstand the felt recoil.) The Colonial-era muskets people are discussing (described in High-Tech) are closer to the Caliver listed in Low-Tech rather than Low-Tech's Musket.