[Ultra Tech] Increased Firearm Power with TL

[Varyon]

This is something that occurred to me when David Pulver asked about things people would have liked in UT (over in the digital camera thread).

The idea is that, as materials improve, so can the chamber pressure of firearms. HT has the +P option that is initially a bit risky (reduced Malf), but at higher TL's doesn't have any issues (IIRC, at TL 7 the +P option only reduces Malf for finicky fully-automatic weapons, while at TL 8 it doesn't reduce Malf for anything). With that in mind, might it be appropriate for higher TL's to have access to even-more-powerful variants of +P?

The RAW version is +10% damage and +10% to MinST (due to increased felt recoil), and can be considered (assuming I got the above relationships right, going off memory here) to be mature at TL 8. Would it be a stretch to have +20% damage and +20% to MinST, without a drop in Malf, at TL 9, +30% at TL 10, +40% at TL 11, and +50% at TL 12? Could you potentially eke out another +10% with a variant that reduces the Malf of fully-automatic weapons... or maybe even +20% with a variant that reduces Malf for all weapons?

Of course, if the above is the case, your firearms are arguably over-engineered - so you could have lighter ones that can't handle those increased pressures. How much weight reduction would make sense, here? In Classic Vehicles, both damage and weight scale linearly with power. A weapon that is designed to handle 110% damage without issue (so, ~TL 8) would thus be 110% of the weight that would be needed for only being able to handle 100% damage. If we assume nobody is going to design weapons that cannot handle TL 8 +P, this means we could have a weight multiplier of 0.92 at TL 9, 0.85 at TL 10, 0.79 at TL 11, and 0.73 at TL 12; my inclination would be to just round these to 0.9, 0.85, 0.8, and 0.75, respectively.

The fly in the ointment above is felt recoil, which influences MinST (hence the boost to MinST when using +P) and increases as weapon weight decreases. How much would MinST increase for the above weight multipliers? I'm thinking +10%, +20%, +30%, and +40% (mimicking the effect of using +P of one TL lower), does that make sense? That is, at TL 12, a firearm that can only manage (at least without worsening Malf) +10% to damage from increasing the propellant would have 75% of the weight but 1.4x the MinST? That feels a little excessive, but I've never really been clear on how that should work...

[DemiBenson]

Originally Posted by Varyon

The fly in the ointment above is felt recoil, which influences MinST (hence the boost to MinST when using +P) and increases as weapon weight decreases. How much would MinST increase for the above weight multipliers? I'm thinking +10%, +20%, +30%, and +40% (mimicking the effect of using +P of one TL lower), does that make sense? That is, at TL 12, a firearm that can only manage (at least without worsening Malf) +10% to damage from increasing the propellant would have 75% of the weight but 1.4x the MinST? That feels a little excessive, but I've never really been clear on how that should work...

Maybe this is why at higher TL, people switch to systems that by design have lower felt recoil due to smoother propellant burning?

Or they compensate for the lower weight with bigger recoil buffers.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by DemiBenson

Maybe this is why at higher TL, people switch to systems that by design have lower felt recoil due to smoother propellant burning?

Or they compensate for the lower weight with bigger recoil buffers.

I believe most people who use recoil-reducing designs do so because felt recoil sucks, so the less of it, the better (all else being equal, of course - dealing with the increased recoil of 9mm Parabellum compared to that of .22LR is often considered worth it for the increase in performance), even before getting into "I literally cannot use this weapon because the recoil is too much for me." But, yes, I was indeed thinking that reduced-weight weapons may be further modified with recoil-compensating technology, but wanted a baseline to start with before getting into those.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by DemiBenson

Maybe this is why at higher TL, people switch to systems that by design have lower felt recoil due to smoother propellant burning?

Or they compensate for the lower weight with bigger recoil buffers.

Or they use smaller calibers. How many people use .45 today?

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Or they use smaller calibers. How many people use .45 today?

Seeing as it's apparently ranked just behind 9mm Parabellum in sales of handgun rounds (I think .22LR beats both, but it's used for both handguns and rifles, and is rather more plinking-friendly than either of the others), my guess would be a lot, regardless of how much of the gun community is convinced it's just a small group of "Fudds" talking about "MUH STOPPING POWER!" and "TWO WORLD WARS!"

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Seeing as it's apparently ranked just behind 9mm Parabellum in sales of handgun rounds (I think .22LR beats both, but it's used for both handguns and rifles, and is rather more plinking-friendly than either of the others), my guess would be a lot, regardless of how much of the gun community is convinced it's just a small group of "Fudds" talking about "MUH STOPPING POWER!" and "TWO WORLD WARS!"

A better formulation of the question might have been 'how many people use a modern-strength .45-size cartridge', since the not-going-away legacy cartridge is significantly a product of an earlier TL. There are certainly some users of .45 ACP high-pressure loadings though.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

A better formulation of the question might have been 'how many people use a modern-strength .45-size cartridge',.

You would need to add together the sales for the .454 Casull and the Grizzly LAR. This isn't counting all the wildcats and rarities between the .45 ACP and the .50 rounds like the Desert eagle .50 AE and the S&W .500 magnum.

It's totally ignoring al the kinds of .44 Magnum rounds too.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Or they use smaller calibers. How many people use .45 today?

Among civilians in the US market? A lot.

Of course this can't be easily separated into ammo (.45 ACP) and platform (M1911-style pistols). M1911-style pistols in 9 mm have become a thing.

Anyway, .45 ACP is not going away any time soon. Few ammo types do. There are still people shooting .45-70.

[DemiBenson]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Or they use smaller calibers. How many people use .45 today?

Despite everyone below pointing out that .45 is still popular in the US today, I think Anthony is correct over large time scales - since the introduction of gunpowder, both personal weapons and battlefield weapons have generally shown a reduction in caliber and an increase in chamber pressure.

What percentage of hunters today hunt with musket-ball-sized ammunition? How many battlefield long-arms use musket-ball-sized ammunition?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by DemiBenson

What percentage of hunters today hunt with musket-ball-sized ammunition?

That would be the percentage of deer hunters using shotgun slugs.

This would be an example of how weapon and ammunition choices suffer artificial constraints.