Emerging smokepowder weapons in my fantasy

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by johndallman

That should work fine. Bronze is easier to melt and cast than iron. Iron is usually cheaper, when both are available, because its ores are much commoner.

Do you know if it would be possible to melt down really old bronze armour, shields and weapons and reuse the metal? Or would cleaning the impurities out of it be too difficult?

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

Unless we have somebody who does professional work with explosives come in, I'd say get the thickness to the point where it has enough DR for the minimum damage. So 1d explosive would need a 1 DR shell, 2d needs 2 DR, etc. Probably not entirely accurate, but workable.

So, how thick does DR 2 or DR 6 ceramic or glass need to be?

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

Good thing you won't have to worry too much about ammo reserves, then.

At least a 100 highly skilled glassblowers and almost a thousand apprentices, assistants and journeymen are available. These numbers can be doubled or tripled for the ceramic trade.

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

Once enchanted, a ballistic projectile is also much more functional around low/no mana zones and any sort of mana dampers.

Not in my campaign, no. Anything that prevents wizards from casting spells will probably interfere with Delay (GURPS Magic p. 130) and Ignite Fire affected by it.

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

It should also be noted that the guy with enchanted ammo for his sling doesn't stand out anywhere near as much as the mage. Standing out when a few hundred archers are looking in your general direction is generally a very, very bad idea.

True enough.

[Kalzazz]

What rules are you using for slings and enchanting?

If you are already supposing that the slingers in question can make called shots to unarmored areas, they could also make called shots to the vitals, and throwing a bit of Penetrating on a sling pellet could well allow it to crack armor to get to the vitals for much cheaper than the contact kaboom spell to crack unarmored areas

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

What rules are you using for slings and enchanting?

I'm working on the sling rules, but they'll be based on reality, which means that penetrating heavy clothing will be unlikely for normal humans at range without using magic.

Slings also do cr damage, not pi. Yes, they can cause bleeding, but so can flanged maces. The wounding mechanisms of slings are comparable to other blunt weapons much more than they are to bullets from firearms. The speeds are 30m/s to at most 90m/s, even in the most optimistic models, which simply isn't enough to cause meaningful wounding using a firearm scale designed to perform plausibly* for projectiles between 4mm to 13mm or so.

On the other hand, even light war projectiles for slings are a whole ounce and they range up to 1-lb, so momentum is more important for sling wounding than bullet wounding. It all points toward cr damage being the best model.

*While Doug's firearm model can reach much further than that, the WCM rules don't match the rest of GURPS and yield funny results in many cases.

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

If you are already supposing that the slingers in question can make called shots to unarmored areas, they could also make called shots to the vitals, and throwing a bit of Penetrating on a sling pellet could well allow it to crack armor to get to the vitals for much cheaper than the contact kaboom spell to crack unarmored areas

The cost of a sling bullet with Penetration 1; i.e. AD(2), in my campaign would be $750, as the spell must usually be accompanied with Accuracy +1 and Puissance +1, and the cost of enchanting is more than the assumptions in GURPS Magic.

[Kalzazz]

Fair enough, thats why I was asking

In my Fantasy with Gundpowder campaign grenade slingers are primarily thought of as a means to try to and break up enemy ranks and such by flinging grenades their way, but for the 'expert slinger takes out high value targets' the preferred method is to fling slingstones with AD 2 or AD 3 at the vitals, using the slings ability to deal Sw Pi wallop and the AD 2/3 penetration to help bypass armor

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

Fair enough, thats why I was asking

In my Fantasy with Gundpowder campaign grenade slingers are primarily thought of as a means to try to and break up enemy ranks and such by flinging grenades their way, but for the 'expert slinger takes out high value targets' the preferred method is to fling slingstones with AD 2 or AD 3 at the vitals, using the slings ability to deal Sw Pi wallop and the AD 2/3 penetration to help bypass armor

I'm trying to avoid giving slings a magical ability to deal sw pi damage without any enchantment or effort by mages. Since I'm moving the performance closer to real-world benchmarks, it will become much more competative to use alchemical or magical payloads instead. If I was using the RAW, slings are already magic.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Do you know if it would be possible to melt down really old bronze armour, shields and weapons and reuse the metal? Or would cleaning the impurities out of it be too difficult?

I can't imagine that re-using the material as grenade casings would be particularly sensitive to any impurities.

Also, I understand early modern-ish artillerymen had a tendency to melt down bronze churchbells to make new cannon, and they would care about metal quality a bit...

[Kalzazz]

I try not to worry about realism to much other than in things that seem to defy my feelings of realism in truly traumatic ways (the repeating crossbow is the only item I've changed the stats from their Low Tech stats in my game, because it egregiously defies my feelings of realism (whether or not my stats are more accurate who knows))

Are there alchemists matches in your games? (or DnD tindertwigs), I think they exist in some flavors of FR or DnD rulesets

Most of my fantasy pistols used alchemist's matches as the firing mechanism which permitted them being carried loaded and ready to go

[martinl]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Is there a particular reason to have the iron wire on the outside?

Properly wrapped, it strengthens the container AND adds nasty frag. It can also strengthen whatever cap you have over the filler hole. If you use a wax coating to protect the fuze and powder, it can also be arranged to protect that from wear.

Of course, iron wire is expensive to make until TL6. I have no idea how the price compares to cast iron, using the TL5-ish (magically-assisted)* manufacturing that the PCs are adopting.

Or, for that matter, how it compares to using TL3 methods to make an iron shell in several parts and fastening them together.

Yes, that's a couple of kettles of worms right there. However, downthread you mention a local abundance of bronze, which is much more ductile and easier to make into wire. It doesn't need to be good wire of uniform cross section and strength, so perhaps even something like a shot tower only with a thin stream of molten bronze hardening into a wire could be managed...

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

I try not to worry about realism to much other than in things that seem to defy my feelings of realism in truly traumatic ways (the repeating crossbow is the only item I've changed the stats from their Low Tech stats in my game, because it egregiously defies my feelings of realism (whether or not my stats are more accurate who knows))

Sling glandes going through ranks of armoured people play havoc with my supension of disbelief. I don't have a problem with supernaturally strong characters using magical slings and ammunition to achieve this effect, but it bothers me that a ST 13-14 character (or just a ST 11 one with an equivalent of Strongbow for slings*) has already exceeded the penetration of typical black powder pistols as modelled in GURPS.

This is particularly jarring in a game, such as mine, where both are used and it's obvious to the players that they are using more or less similar ammunition. They are bound to ask why the slower projectile is penetrating so much better.

*Which realistically ought to exist, in that slings are even more dependant on technique than bows, as far as velocity goes. In both cases, the people who can achive the longest ranges and highest velocities are not the ones with the bulging muscles and power lifts (high ST), but ones who have trained extensively with the weapon (high skill and perhaps specific Perks).

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

Are there alchemists matches in your games? (or DnD tindertwigs), I think they exist in some flavors of FR or DnD rulesets

There are, yes. At $10 per in areas where they are commonly made, such as where the PCs are.

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

Most of my fantasy pistols used alchemist's matches as the firing mechanism which permitted them being carried loaded and ready to go

This allows Malf. 16, but is expensive in use, as each shot costs at least $10, in addition to the smokepowder.

Not that this will bother many adventurers, but when you're equipping an army, you think about these things.