Memorable Quotes.

[L.J.Steele]

Originally Posted by johndallman

"Fortunately, I brought the remote control for the shuttle."

If only...we've got enough issues with piloting normal drones. Sadly, there's no room inside the fence to land the shuttle. The naughty AI has threatened to loose its golems immediately (as opposed to waiting) if we shoot its cultists. so we're currently hunkered down.

[L.J.Steele]

And because you folks might know...

We're hunkered next to what used to be a tower turret containing a machine gun. No windows, so exposed to the elements for 400ish years. The MG is a hunk of rust, but it does have a belt of ammo. Anyone have thoughts on plausibly what condition that ammo might be in if one wrapped it in cloth, lit the cloth, and threw it towards the cultists to scare them off with (one hopes) some really old ammo cooking off.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by L.J.Steele

Anyone have thoughts on plausibly what condition that ammo might be in if one wrapped it in cloth, lit the cloth, and threw it towards the cultists to scare them off with (one hopes) some really old ammo cooking off.

If the ammo has steel cartridge cases, it will be gone. If they are brass, some of it might still be live.

Burning cloth is unlikely to be hot enough to cook off ammo. Have you got an accelerant? How realistic is the GM feeling?

[ericthered]

"Do we have anywhere we can stick the old radio?"
"The ammo drums, where you've shoved everything else"
"The 'everything-but-ammo' drums"

"So how many panes of glass do we need to buy the quantum computer?"
-- asked in all seriousness and followed by five minutes of intense group research.

"We're going to need a bigger hovercraft"
--after getting the answer to the glass question

[L.J.Steele]

Originally Posted by johndallman

If the ammo has steel cartridge cases, it will be gone. If they are brass, some of it might still be live.

Burning cloth is unlikely to be hot enough to cook off ammo. Have you got an accelerant? How realistic is the GM feeling?

There's a certain amount of rule of cool in this game.

The MGs are in a tower, there seems to be a wooden floor that hasn't given out yet. Lighting the tower on fire is an option if we're despirate -- I'd expect floor to collapse tho before the ammo cooked off.

Not much for accellerants -- my engineer has a duffle of "useful tools", might be able to argue for some lubricating oil in there.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Burning cloth is unlikely to be hot enough to cook off ammo. Have you got an accelerant? How realistic is the GM feeling?

A quick look online shows an autoignition temperature of between 320F and 360F for smokeless propellant, while cotton (the coolest-burning cloth material I found with a quick search) burns at around 410F. So as along as the cloth burns long enough for the heat to penetrate the brass casings and heat up the gunpowder, it should work. If the old ammo were actually using black powder, that has an autoignition temperature of around 464F, so burning cloth wouldn't work there unless the flame could come into direct contact with the powder.

[Luke Bunyip]

Originally Posted by ericthered

"We're going to need a bigger hovercraft"...

Something something Sharknado something?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Varyon

A quick look online shows an autoignition temperature of between 32If the old ammo were actually using black powder, that has an autoignition temperature of around 464F, so burning cloth wouldn't work there unless the flame could come into direct contact with the powder.

Historically, I know of no machineguns using belt-fed ammo that was loaded with black powder. Conventional wisdom would ahve the black powder fouling the mechanism very quickly and causing jams.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Historically, I know of no machineguns using belt-fed ammo that was loaded with black powder. Conventional wisdom would ahve the black powder fouling the mechanism very quickly and causing jams.

Sure, but there were also no belt-fed machineguns 400 years ago (the stated age of the ammo), so obviously we aren't dealing with a campaign set on Earth today. It might be something set on Earth in a few centuries, or it might be something set on a completely different world - or an alternate-history Earth. I was simply mentioning the issue of black powder to cover all my bases. There may be ways around black powder fouling for something like this (including the possibility the weapon was only meant to be fired for relatively-short periods at a time, or maybe the casings kept most of the fouling from reaching the internal mechanisms and they just swapped the barrel every so many shots, cleaning the fouled barrel(s) while the fresh one was firing).

[adm]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Historically, I know of no machineguns using belt-fed ammo that was loaded with black powder. Conventional wisdom would ahve the black powder fouling the mechanism very quickly and causing jams.

Did someone as for a belt fed, black powder machine gun.

https://www.forgottenweapons.com/the...m-machine-gun/

This a written article, so no massive clouds of smoke here.