TL 5-8 firearms in Ultra-Tech calibers

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Also, after more research it seems like the weight of a modern cartridge is generally around 50% brass, at most? Given that I might go with cased versions of TL9 caseless weapons halving half as many shots and otherwise being identical.

That seems reasonable.

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Why half as many shots? A cased round will be heavier and might be longer, but it doesn't need to be much wider. Which is usually the limiting dimension for magazine capacity.

I assume the OP wants to keep the weapon stats as similar as possible to the caseless versions they're working from, so halving the ammo capacity of the magazines while retaining the same weight means not having to change all the weapon weights, etc.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Why half as many shots? A cased round will be heavier and might be longer, but it doesn't need to be much wider. Which is usually the limiting dimension for magazine capacity.

Originally Posted by Rupert

I assume the OP wants to keep the weapon stats as similar as possible to the caseless versions they're working from, so halving the ammo capacity of the magazines while retaining the same weight means not having to change all the weapon weights, etc.

Yeah. Plus, regardless of whether you agree, *Ultra-Tech* assumes caseless ammo will enable larger magazines. Seriously look at the "Shots" stats for those things.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Yeah. Plus, regardless of whether you agree, *Ultra-Tech* assumes caseless ammo will enable larger magazines. Seriously look at the "Shots" stats for those things.

I expect it's caseless as well as high-density magazine designs. Personally I think UT is optimistic, but it's arguable either way.

[Michael Thayne]

For black-powder flintlocks, Pyramid #3/88 has rules for reloading TL6-9 weapons with black powder. Flintlocks inspired by guns from Ultra-Tech would have similar performance except RoF becomes 1 and Shots becomes 1(20) for pistols, 1(40) for smoothbore long-arms, and 1(60) for rifles.

Edit: oh, and I'd probably limit this to guns with a caliber of 10mm or larger.

[copeab]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Edit: oh, and I'd probably limit this to guns with a caliber of 10mm or larger.

The Lee Metford Mk I used black powder .303 cartridges. There were a few other black powder bolt-action rifles of the 1880's under 10mm.

[weby]

Originally Posted by Rupert

I expect it's caseless as well as high-density magazine designs. Personally I think UT is optimistic, but it's arguable either way.

Well, many of the UT rounds seem kind of.. strange. Many seem to fire really lightweight projectiles for the given caliber. So I would not really use those numbers and thus extended I would likely not use the number of shots/magazine either.

[Rupert]

The pistol rounds do seem light (aside from the 15mm - it's really heavy), but the rifle cartridge weights seem okay.

[Kale]

Originally Posted by Rupert

The pistol rounds do seem light (aside from the 15mm - it's really heavy), but the rifle cartridge weights seem okay.

Quite a bit of this was written when THV* projectiles were all the rage. In essence, you pack more powder behind a lighter bullet and use a smaller caliber overall to keep recoil manageable. The P90 and HK MP7 are examples.

Conversely the battle rifle concept was making a resurgence, so 5.56 was increased to 6.5, 6.8, or even 7mm diameter.



*http://www.quarryhs.co.uk/THV.htm

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Kale

Quite a bit of this was written when THV* projectiles were all the rage.
*http://www.quarryhs.co.uk/THV.htm

Nope, never heard of them (and especially not in a Gurps book). No dates were given except for "late 80s" for the later "monad" bullets. Most of these firearms go back to Ultra-tech Two published in 1997. The original 10mm auto pistol was in Space 1e and the Assault Carbine was in UT1. Cyberpunk figures in there too.

I suspect that the listed weights got mangled in some manipulation of them to use the VE2 modifiers for caseless ammo. There's a few pages in the weapon pages of UT for 4e that where there was a (non) editing mix-up. Just random bad numbers rather than any exotic ammo type.

[night-hunter]

Please also keep in mind that the ability to actually read hundredths and thousandths of an inch or tenths and hundredths of a millimeter are mid to late 20th century achievements. And that the variances in tolerance of the early machine tools caused "fit" problems. As an aside, not directly related to guns, when I first started working in 1978 in the Semiconductor field, the purity of the gases and most chemicals we were using were only 99.99% to 99.995% or so pure. By the late 1990s, the purity was 99.9999+% pure for the HPLC & Semiconductor Grades of gases and chemicals. Over the last 50 years or so, our technical ability to make accurate measurements has increased dramatically.