Ammunition

[Darkwing]

I generally assume TL9 ammo can be made aerated to work in vacuum for a higher price, and TL 10+ ammo comes standard that way. Caseless and binary would be the same way but lag a TL or 2 on those developments. Either that level of tech solves it, or it doesn't. Since my standard is the lower tech fixed case rounds, the PCs don't need to sweat the details. If they choose to buy caseless or binary, I check the TL of the world they're buying it at, and tell them what they can get.

 

[Jame]

I generally assume TL9 ammo can be made aerated to work in vacuum for a higher price, and TL 10+ ammo comes standard that way. Caseless and binary would be the same way but lag a TL or 2 on those developments. Either that level of tech solves it, or it doesn't.

This is my standard too for if anyone asks; if noone asks I assume that they found some ammo of the same TL as the weapon they're buying for.

 

[aramis]

Cased ammo needs no special treatment for vacuum. The weapon needs specal lubricants, but the powder s self-oxidizing.

Also note: vacuum will reduce muzzle flash, since the unburnt particles won't be hitting oxygen.

 

[Greylond]

Caseless Ammo is also self-oxidizing. Aramis, you need to forget about the G11 ammo and consider the fact that there have been advances in the ammo to fix problems found in earlier prototypes.

 

[aramis]

Caseless Ammo is also self-oxidizing. Aramis, you need to forget about the G11 ammo and consider the fact that there have been advances in the ammo to fix problems found in earlier prototypes.

The cook-off issue hasn't gone away with any of the caseless weapon systems. During testing, one of the Metalstorm tubes cooked off prematurely - dumping all 6 rounds at once.

Even cased ammo cooks off if sustained long enough without coolant - it's just not as much a risk, and NOTHING (but a change in physics) can alter that the case reduces the heat gain and increases the transfer time of the chamber heat to the projectile, likewise nothing (but a change in physics) can change that the heat of ignition will be lower than the combustion product temperature for effective detonation/deflagration/explosion as needed for firearms use. And again, nothing but a change in physics can alter that an object in vacuum cools to equilibrium FAR less rapidly per degree than an object in atmosphere cools to ambient per degree.

There are some things I can't see happening. Caseless being safe in vacuum is not quite that far out, but cased will always be inherently safer in almost all environments due to the removal of heat and insulation via mass of casings.

A soldier's weapon needs to be reliable, field maintainable, safe and deadly. Caseless loses one of those, and reduces two more. It's axiomatically less suited for use if the other factors are equal (which they are not). The unequal factors include ammo weight per round (Caseless is nearly half), production capability (caseless requires more chemistry and smaller tolerances for safe rounds; caseless has almost no dedicated production), field reload manufacture capability (negligible for caseless, surprisingly high for cased), vacuum effects on the weapon (irrelevant for earth, and tipped highly against caseless by Physics).

Perhaps a table will help

Condition	Cased	Caseless	Gauss
Ammo mass	baseline	half baseline	0.1 to 0.25 baseline
Ammo volume	baseline	baseline	0.1 to 0.2 baseline
Action mass	baseline	about baseline	baseline to double
Field round manufacture	vehicle portable*	impractical*	Limited materials*
Vacuum effect on rounds	Sealed against inherently	uncertain and/or variable	immune
Vacuum effects on weapon	special lubricant needed, increased chamber heating	special lubricant needed, increased chamber heating	Special lubricant, increased weapon heating
Cook-off resistance	moderate	low	extreme**
Action Heat Tolerance	high	high	moderate
Adaptability to varied ammo load	High	low	moderate
*
**

[tc=3] Cased can be modified for black powder which is forward manufacturable from fairly available materials, including human excrement.
Caseless has issues of field manufactured ammo being extremely subject to either supply limits or much increased cookoff
Gauss weapons require ferrous metals to work.[/tc] [tc=3]it's nearly impossible except with explosive rounds.[/tc]

 

[Greylond]

Metalstorm doesn't use the most current Caseless Ammo being researched either. Like I said up thread, look up data on LSAT Caseless Ammo. And I agreed with you up thread about cases getting rid of excess heat but LSAT and other ammo being developed uses a more heat stable material than the G11 or MetalStorm. One type is based on RDX which is a lot more stable at high temps.

LSAT Caseless showed promise but just like Fusion the engineering isn't quite there yet.

Again, you keep focusing on current TL Caseless instead of thinking about ammo that is more heat resistant than what is currently being used. Just like RDX is more stable at high temps than 19th century dynamite, IMO it is very plausible for heat resistant caseless ammo to be developed by TL10. Also I consider it to be very possible for a higher TL to develop a better, smaller cooling system for a gun's chamber.

And "Field Impractical"? What military is going to be producing ammo "In the Field"?

 

[aramis]

And "Field Impractical"? What military is going to be producing ammo "In the Field"?

Any that gets caught behind the lines. Which is much more plausible in Traveller than on current earth.

 

[Greylond]

Then I'd doubt that any military of a higher TL would be able to maintain their weapons, unless they had the equivalent of a Ship's Locker/Machine Shop. And if they had that, then they probably would be able to make the tools and molds to setup a small caseless ammo production line.

 

[rancke]

Then I'd doubt that any military of a higher TL would be able to maintain their weapons, unless they had the equivalent of a Ship's Locker/Machine Shop. And if they had that, then they probably would be able to make the tools and molds to setup a small caseless ammo production line.

An ultra-tech 3D printer might be able to print ammunition.


Hans

 

[atpollard]

An ultra-tech 3D printer might be able to print ammunition.


Hans

"Do you mean to tell me that nobody on this forsaken rock has the right cable to connect a battlecomp to the 3D printer?" [facepalm; sigh] "We deserve to loose this war."
-anonymous Master Sergeant, Quartermaster Corps

 

[Greylond]

An ultra-tech 3D printer might be able to print ammunition.

True, it would really depend on the propellant used. Currently 3D printers can't work with explosives, but that may change with advances in material science...

 

[Timerover51]

Rather than starting a new thread, I thought that this data might best fit in here. It is taken from John Taylor's African Rifles and Cartridges, which oddly enough was never copyrighted and has been reprinted by a wide range of publishers. After analyzing the data a bit with information from other sources, it does appear correct. The rifles would have been double-barreled rifles using metallic cartridges. The term "bore" refers to the number of spherical lead balls that would have been required to equal a pound in weight. The 12 bore is equivalent to a rifled 12 gauge shotgun.

4 Bore = 12 drams powder = 1,882 grain bullet = 1330 feet per second muzzle velocity = 7400 foot pounds muzzle energy = 20 to 24 pounds for a double-barreled rifle

8 Bore = 10 drams powder = 1,250 grain bullet = 1500 feet per second muzzle velocity = 6290 foot pounds muzzle energy = 16 to 18 pounds for a double-barreled rifle

10 Bore = 8 drams powder = 875 grain bullet = 1550 feet per second muzzle velocity = 4660 foot pounds muzzle energy = 13 to 15 pounds for a double-barreled rifle

12 Bore = 7 drams powder = 750 grain bullet = 1550 feet per second muzzle velocity = 4000 foot pounds muzzle energy = 11 to 12 pounds for a double-barreled rifle

The 4 bore and 8 bore are in the same energy category as the .600 Nitro Express, while the 12 bore represents about the limits of recoil energy that the average many can handle. That load for the 12 bore is actually a bit mre potent than your typical 12 gauge load.

Mention should also be made of the "Paradox" 12 gauge shotgun introduced by Holland and Holland, primarily for handling lions as close range. It is an open choke shotgun, with the last few inches of the barrel rifled, so as to accurately thrown a heavy slug of 750 grains in weight. The weapon could be built in 8 and 10 gauge as well. All of them would deliver massive stopping power at close range. Taylor preferred have one barrel loaded with buckshot and one with a slug when tackling leopards, as the buckshot was adequate for handling a leopard.

 

[atpollard]

20 to 24 pounds for a double-barreled rifle

Everything else seemed self-explanatory, but I wanted to confirm that the 'pounds' is the weight of the rifle [since pounds is also used as a measure of force - stupid English units].

[PS. I always had a fascination with Double-barrels and Drillings and 4-barrels (Winchester Liberator or Famars Rombo).]

 

[Timerover51]

Everything else seemed self-explanatory, but I wanted to confirm that the 'pounds' is the weight of the rifle [since pounds is also used as a measure of force - stupid English units].

[PS. I always had a fascination with Double-barrels and Drillings and 4-barrels (Winchester Liberator or Famars Rombo).]

Yes, the pounds used is in the sense of weight, not price. Although a .577 Black Powder Express double-barreled rifle, used and lost by Fridtjof Nansen in the course of his Fram expedition in the Arctic did cost him only 28 pounds sterling, although that was in 1893.

I should also have included the fact that the "dram" or sometimes "drachm" is a unit of weight equal to 1/16th of a ounce of 437.5 grains, or approximately 27.34 grains of black powder. On occasion you will see a statement of "drams equivalent" with respect to shotguns loads, which indicates that it is loaded with smokeless powder and giving the same muzzle velocity as that amount of black powder.

Smokeless powder delivers a muzzle energy per grain approximately 3 times that of black powder, but also generates a lot more internal pressure along with that increased energy.

Side Note: Is it possible to insert a table in PDF format into a post without have to store the image someone else? That would simply tables like that.

 

[atpollard]

Side Note: Is it possible to insert a table in PDF format into a post without have to store the image someone else? That would simply tables like that.

I don't think so - at least not with the present board settings - but I have stored an image of a table in the gallery just to link it back in a topic.

 

[DaveChase]

You can make some tables stay in line of the columns by using the bracket code bracket forum command like so

This is an example of using only the quote format

Number weight cost
4 6 10
5 4 15

I did use spaces for the numbers but as you can see it didn't work

Number     weight     cost
4            6         10
5            4         15

Dave Chase

 

[atpollard]

The table functionality is new, but works.

[table][tr][td]A1[/td][td]A2[/td][td]A3[/td][/tr][tr][td]B1[/td][td]B2[/td][td]B3[/td][/tr][/table]
generates

A1	A2	A3
B1	B2	B3

Which creates this:

Bore	powder	bullet	muzzle velocity	muzzle energy	double-barreled rifle
4	12 drams	1,882 grain	1330 fps	7400 ft lbs	20 to 24 pounds
8	10 drams	1,250 grain	1500 fps	6290 ft lbs	16 to 18 pounds
10	8 drams	875 grain	1550 fps	4660 ft lbs	13 to 15 pounds
12	7 drams	750 grain	1550 fps	4000 ft lbs	11 to 12 pounds

So surround the whole table with [table] & [/table].
Then surround each row with [tr] & [/tr].
Then within each row, surround each data cell with [td] & [/td].

[EDIT: always something new to learn. ]

 

[Timerover51]

Which creates this:

Bore	powder	bullet	muzzle velocity	muzzle energy	double-barreled rifle
4	12 drams	1,882 grain	1330 fps	7400 ft lbs	20 to 24 pounds
8	10 drams	1,250 grain	1500 fps	6290 ft lbs	16 to 18 pounds
10	8 drams	875 grain	1550 fps	4660 ft lbs	13 to 15 pounds
12	7 drams	750 grain	1550 fps	4000 ft lbs	11 to 12 pounds

So surround the whole table with [table] & [/table].
Then surround each row with [tr] & [/tr].
Then within each row, surround each data cell with [td] & [/td].

[EDIT: always something new to learn. ]

Thank you for posting that. I will have to play around with it a bit.

 

[aramis]

Which creates this:

Bore	powder	bullet	muzzle velocity	muzzle energy	double-barreled rifle
4	12 drams	1,882 grain	1330 fps	7400 ft lbs	20 to 24 pounds
8	10 drams	1,250 grain	1500 fps	6290 ft lbs	16 to 18 pounds
10	8 drams	875 grain	1550 fps	4660 ft lbs	13 to 15 pounds
12	7 drams	750 grain	1550 fps	4000 ft lbs	11 to 12 pounds

So surround the whole table with [table] & [/table].
Then surround each row with [tr] & [/tr].
Then within each row, surround each data cell with [td] & [/td].

[EDIT: always something new to learn. ]

It's something I asked hunter to implement back in about 2004. He didn't. I finally put it in a few weeks ago.

[table][tr][tc=3]wide[/tc][/tr][tr][td]A1[/td][td]A2[/td][td]A3[/td][/tr][tr][td]B1[/td][td]B2[/td][td]B3[/td][/tr][/table]
gives

A1	A2	A3
B1	B2	B3

[tc=3]wide[/tc]

 

[DaveChase]

Ah, well thank you aramis.

I didn't know that was active or I would have used that instead.

Thanks

Dave Chase