[AtE] Best bang for your Warlord buck?

[Luke Bunyip]

Originally Posted by (E)

Why would a warlord be making the best guns for the situation?

Wouldn't they rather be making weapons that serve their personal requirements best, as interpreted by the individual(s) who are doing the designing and manufacturing.

Exactly. But it then begs the question, what is the environment and circumstances where these firearms will be used? Possibly best isn't the appropriate criteria, but what's good enough is what needs to be considered.

Originally Posted by (E)

For example an Air Rifle might be useful as it requires less logistics, but conversely a warlord might prefer to have his(or her) goons reliant on the ammunition he or she provides.

Before I posted the OP here, I had a wee chat with one of my players that is a gun owner that hunts. We specifically discussed air rifles (one of the other players wants one), and the question was why bother making a complex repeating air rifle, when you could have a number of single shots?

Originally Posted by (E)

...they could decide that a large sight radius is critical and insist that all the rifles are long barreled like Kentucky long rifles or Jazails.

Tactically, I'm looking at a setting with a very flat alluvial plain, bordered by sandy hills / sand dunes, or a rocky range of hill country. Not much cover.

Originally Posted by (E)

A third issue is surpluses...there might be hundreds of a specific automotive part available...

Apparently there was a 1950s era sedan made in Britain, which got shipped to the UK's West African colonies. When some enterprising bright spark realised that the internal diameter of this car's axle was very similar to that of a certain pistol calibre ammunition, the repurposing took a number of vehicles off the road.

Originally Posted by (E)

Or going back to your original question, how about a lever/pump/bolt action repeater that fires a pistol calibre round because of the lower stresses on gun parts.

Break action double barrelled sawn off shotguns? Revolvers?