05-01-2020, 12:14 PM | #31 | |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Charlotte, North Caroline, United States of America, Earth?
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Re: [AtE] Best bang for your Warlord buck?
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It'd be far easier to just reproduce modern designs, than to go back to percussion caps and try to re-engineer that whole mess. And you've still got all the problems associated with cartridges, with no real advantage.
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05-01-2020, 02:14 PM | #32 |
Join Date: Aug 2014
Location: Snoopy's basement
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Re: [AtE] Best bang for your Warlord buck?
I think making ammo in quantity is more likely to be the main constraint rather than the capabilities of gunsmiths. So if I was getting my warlord army started in earnest, after supplying my initial horde with flintlocks, I'd explore the technical limits of paper cartridges with the objective of getting as high up the ladder of rate of fire systems as I could on the spectrum from break-open to auto.
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05-01-2020, 02:32 PM | #33 | |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Charlotte, North Caroline, United States of America, Earth?
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Re: [AtE] Best bang for your Warlord buck?
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Examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfzQ4uKvE7c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL0Y_ivmfRE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuE0jkq4_1o So gas-operated are out, but there's a lot you can do with semi-autos without gas operation. M3 Greaseguns, Stens, Sterlings, Thompson guns, the design of PA Luty, etc, are all AUTOMATICs that are blowback systems and should function fine once you tune in your powder load. The first Maxim gun designs were before smokeless powder, and used blackpowder for operation. The MG42 uses a delayed roller blow-back system, and should be able to use blackpowder, though if you have trouble manufacturing cartridges, a machinegun that dumps them downrange at 1200 rounds per minute might not be ideal.
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05-01-2020, 02:34 PM | #34 | |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: near Houston
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Re: [AtE] Best bang for your Warlord buck?
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05-01-2020, 02:44 PM | #35 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: [AtE] Best bang for your Warlord buck?
Not a realistic one. A common rule of thumb for substitutions is about a factor of 3 by volume. So in principle you'd get something around 50 to 60% of the range and damage if you substituted the same amount of black powder for smokeless. But note that quite a lot of common rounds were in fact actually designed for black powder - when you buy the smokeless version the case is partly empty, so you can fire them from a gun designed for the original loading without it blowing up. In those cases filling the case with black powder gives you exactly the same performance as the partly filled smokeless round did, you just use more of it.
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05-01-2020, 02:48 PM | #36 |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Charlotte, North Caroline, United States of America, Earth?
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Re: [AtE] Best bang for your Warlord buck?
Can you provide a citation or example? Ian McCollum claims that the prototype Maxim gun was quite reliable, and the Maxim 1pdr Pom-pom used black powder, as well. And I'm not aware of any great reputation for unreliability associated with with either of those designs.
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05-01-2020, 03:44 PM | #37 | |||||
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: near Houston
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Re: [AtE]Best bang for your Warlord buck?
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Additionally, for a semiautomatic, the detachable magazine is the weakest part of the design. A cheap or poorly-made magazine will cause frequent failures to feed. Quote:
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Lastly, I'm assuming that in the after-math of an apocalypse that destroys state authority and throws industrial capability so far back that people are building their own guns out of scrap, that standing armies of thousands or tens of thousands are not really a concern. I'm instead assuming that most "battles" will be more like skirmishes, and less like set piece conflicts between great powers. And in that scenario, the increased short term firepower of a repeater is going to be the difference between staying mostly alive and being raped, dismembered and eaten, and not necessarily in that order. Now, this is all dependent on cultural factors of the area the campaign takes place in.[/QUOTE]
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05-01-2020, 03:45 PM | #38 | |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: near Houston
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Re: [AtE] Best bang for your Warlord buck?
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05-01-2020, 09:21 PM | #39 | |
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: The Kingdom of Insignificance
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Re: [AtE]Best bang for your Warlord buck?
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05-01-2020, 09:24 PM | #40 |
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: The Kingdom of Insignificance
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Re: [AtE] Best bang for your Warlord buck?
That's my setting's major constraint.
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