Bullet flight time conventions

[Joseph Paul]

EDIT - Oh my! Such mathy endeavors! Response below written before seeing these.

Nope, pretty much I understand homing. Pretty sure a lot of people are influenced by popular depictions of it though and I am nixing that.

Problems I see with rifle sized homing are that they stop accelerating once they leave the barrel - they are on a glide path with a steadily shrinking area they can reach. I am dubious of any kind of wing or fin arrangement for the 10-15mm range which leaves active skin or maybe a memory metal jacket that forms a lifting body shape. How that works while spinning several hundred times a second I am not sure. I am not sure if the Copperhead spins or not once the glide wings are deployed but I doubt it. I have my doubts about stability of spinning rounds that try to change direction. Heck they might get into a tumble if CG and CP get out of whack. And I don't know what it costs the round in range to make a turn.

Playing with a triangle calculator and assuming that the 15mm AM rifle does 1000 yps making a 1 deg change at 1000 yards after firing allows the round to move left or right ~139 yards over 8000 yards of travel. Making a 1 deg shift at 8000 yards it only covers ~17.5 yards. A 10 degree shift at the same ranges allows ~1410 yards of shift and ~176 for the last 1000.

These rules for time of flight and how hard a round can turn have to deal with more than paltry humans - various vehicles, powered armor with Superjump, Supers with enhanced move, Teleporters, magic (hello Wanda!). It pays to ask the questions and nail down how it works and of course it is GURPS so it can work lots of ways. I am just skeptical of some of them. :)