Anti-Bullpup Design to Reduce Recoil

[Varyon]

This is something I've been thinking about for a bit, and wanted to see what others think.

From my understanding, the reason recoil causes the barrel to climb is because while the recoil impulse is straight back, the fact the barrel is above the wrist means this causes the wrist to bend up. There have been a number of weapon designs that have tried to minimize the distance between the barrel and wrist to mitigate this somewhat. This idea takes that to the extreme, putting the barrel completely in line with the wrist. However, to do this, you'd have to have the barrel, as well as anything that reciprocates (like the bolt), well in front of the hand. I'm thinking you'd have the handle kind of wrap around the hand, then the barrel and bolt assembly in front of that, probably looking something not entirely unlike the Type 51 Carbine from Halo.

I'm not certain what all effects this would have on the weapon's stats. -1 Bulk is probably a given (it's basically the opposite of a bullpup, and those give +1 Bulk), although a worse penalty may be appropriate if redesigning a particularly-small pistol (maybe just say -1 to Bulk, and Bulk cannot be better than -3). In theory, reduced recoil should reduce MinST, but at the same time, this will result in the barrel extending further, which in turn should increase MinST, so those effects may cancel out. The actual Rcl stat seems to be more about bullet spread than actual recoil, so I'm not certain it would be appropriate to reduce that. So it kinda feels like this might be an increase in Bulk (and possibly weight) with no real benefit. Might it be appropriate for this to give a boost to things like Follow-Up Shots (so retain full Acc rather than half Acc between shots at RoF 1, even without being Braced, because the barrel isn't moving up with each shot) and perhaps Fast-Firing (no boost to Rcl, again because the barrel isn't moving up with each shot, and maybe a +1 offset to the penalty for RoF 3+)?

As for name, I'm leaning toward calling the design "borzoi" as a counter to "bullpup." "Whippet" would also work if that weren't already a designation for shotguns. Pretty much any breed with a long snout could work.

[Rupert]

When it comes to long arms, it's the barrel line compared to the shoulder, and to a (much) lesser extent the firer's centre of gravity. The shooter's hands, especially their firing hand, should not be soaking recoil.

That's why modern military rifles, and those derived from them, tend to have high sight lines. In order to get the barrel low enough that the recoil thrust is through the shoulder the sights have to be well above the barrel.

I don't think your design brings much, if anything. It puts the gun's centre of mass further out from the firer, making the gun harder to hold steady and harder to move quickly (though this also helps reduce muzzle climb). It might extend the sight radius a bit, but with modern optical sights that's not important any more.

[Sam Baughn]

This seems essentially similar to one of the recoil-management elements in the Kriss 'vector' SMG.
An alternative is to have the grip to the side of the recoiling elements, as on the Denel Neopup PAW-20. Or you could put it on the top, which seems popular in sci-fi but not something I've ever seen on a real gun (but then recoil may push the muzzle down, could be as bad as pushing it up).

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Rupert

When it comes to long arms, it's the barrel line compared to the shoulder, and to a (much) lesser extent the firer's centre of gravity. The shooter's hands, especially their firing hand, should not be soaking recoil.

Yeah, I wasn't certain if this would work for longarms, considering they're braced against the shoulder. But then the recoil impulse there clearly results in the barrel rising, as with pistols, so I thought maybe this might be able to help there. But maybe just a normal rifle with a riser or whatever for the sights works better for that.

Originally Posted by Rupert

I don't think your design brings much, if anything. It puts the gun's centre of mass further out from the firer, making the gun harder to hold steady and harder to move quickly (though this also helps reduce muzzle climb). It might extend the sight radius a bit, but with modern optical sights that's not important any more.

Yeah, that's kinda what I was afraid of - increased Bulk for no real benefit.

Originally Posted by Sam Baughn

This seems essentially similar to one of the recoil-management elements in the Kriss 'vector' SMG.

That looks like it's still a bit high of center (the barrel looks to be in line with the trigger, but that's the top of the hand, not the middle), but yeah, that's probably an example of a "Borzoi" weapon. Looks like they may have reduced the overall length compared to my suggestion by having the bolt basically going down rather than straight back, although I suspect the KRISS Vector would still have worse Bulk than a more traditional SMG with the same barrel length.

Originally Posted by Sam Baughn

An alternative is to have the grip to the side of the recoiling elements, as on the Denel Neopup PAW-20. Or you could put it on the top, which seems popular in sci-fi but not something I've ever seen on a real gun (but then recoil may push the muzzle down, could be as bad as pushing it up).

Having the barrel to the side will pull to the side, on the bottom will pull to the bottom. I suspect the latter would probably work better than the former, but I'm not certain.

[Donny Brook]

In context, you mean manage recoil for accuracy rather than reduce it. Given similar bullet energy, there is much more climb shooting a large automatic vs. a large revolver but the revolver will beat the user up more.

An issue with some of what is suggested is that it makes sighting inconvenient or impossible and offsetting sights makes its own priblems.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

In context, you mean manage recoil for accuracy rather than reduce it.

Correct - it's reducing the effects of recoil rather than actually reducing recoil.

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

An issue with some of what is suggested is that it makes sighting inconvenient or impossible and offsetting sights makes its own priblems.

Yeah, that's another concern I'd have. I know raised sights are workable for many firearms, however, so I'm not certain quite how problematic it would be. It seems to me that any sights would basically have an optimal distance they are zeroed for, with the bullet hitting high the closer the target is and low the further it is from that zero. The more the sights are raised, the worse the deviation from zero is (because what you're looking at is where line-of-sight crosses with the trajectory of the bullet, and the higher up your eyes are compared to the barrel, the steeper the angle). But considering the distance between your eyes and the barrel is going to be a great deal smaller than the distance between the muzzle and the point of zero, I'm not certain this would be enough to have a substantial impact.

The riser is probably going to make the weapon rather difficult to conceal, of course, but that ship probably sailed when you made it a borzoi!

[DeadParrot]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Yeah, that's another concern I'd have. I know raised sights are workable for many firearms, however, so I'm not certain quite how problematic it would be. It seems to me that any sights would basically have an optimal distance they are zeroed for, with the bullet hitting high the closer the target is and low the further it is from that zero. The more the sights are raised, the worse the deviation from zero is (because what you're looking at is where line-of-sight crosses with the trajectory of the bullet, and the higher up your eyes are compared to the barrel, the steeper the angle). But considering the distance between your eyes and the barrel is going to be a great deal smaller than the distance between the muzzle and the point of zero, I'm not certain this would be enough to have a substantial impact.

Most properly sighted rifles have two zero points. From memory, for an M1 Garand, you set a 25 yard zero and that will also give you a 100 yard zero. Assuming military ball ammo. Between the 2 zero points, the bullet is above the zero. Before and after it will be below. The advantage of knowing your close zero point is that is usually much easier to sight then the far one. Most shooters can see the hole at 25 yards. Most of us will need some kind of aid to see the hole at 100 yards.

In addition to sound mitigation, most suppressors also reduce recoil since they capture a lot of the expelled gas.