Revolvers vs. Autopistols

[Uncle Bob]

I think Kimber made a semi-automatic in 30 Carbine in the 1960s. FNs "Five-Seven" is similar.

About TL8-9 I would expect the normal side-arm to have the ballistics of a M16 (super-fast powders, high strength barrels, sophisticated muzzle brakes). Recoil of a 9mm, four times the muzzle energy, range with shoulder stock 400m.

Penetrating armor (steel, ceramic, or fabric) is largely dependent on energy/cm2

Penetrating soft, wet materials is largely dependent on momentum/cm2. For large game you want heavy, stable bullets at moderate velocity.
Stable bullets transfer the least energy
Unstable, tumbling bullets transfer more by cutting a bigger wound.
Expanding bullets tranfer more.
Bullets that break up (5.56x45) deliver the most energy.

Penetrating anything in between hard and soft/wet is a compromise. A few years ago the American Rifleman created a thicket of wood dowels and fired a number of cartridges at it (replacing the dowels every time.) The result, surprisingly, was light high velocity bullets deflected less than heavy slow ones. Go figure.

 

[PapaGolfWhiskey]

AMT who now owns the rights to the 'automag' name

produced an 'Automag' pistol chambered for M1 carbine. (as well as the original .44 automag and a few other Honkin' huge rounds)

American Rifleman test... COOl. shows to go you.

I still think the simplest way to simulate this is to allow the existance of guns which fire other gun's ammo.

Basicallly you let the gun use the range and damage stats for the ammo of the gun you are switching to.

unless switching between arms with a great difference in barell length. Carbines firing pistol rounds should use carbine range increments but pistol damage.

Likewise pistols firing Carbine rounds should use pistol increments.

That's the simple system. And I think it allows for most firearm varients. If you assume, for example, that revolver and autopistol ammo covers everything from 9mm short to .45 Acp maybe .44 special, then only extreme changes (like firing carbine rounds would actually show up in the dice).

It would hurt though, to give some thought to what is 'standard' in your sector of space.

 

[Uncle Bob]

Originally posted by Garf:
[QB]Basicallly you let the gun use the range and damage stats for the ammo of the gun you are switching to.

I concur.

Oh, I forgot about the .30 Carbine Automag from the 1970s. Someone else did it in the late 50s-early 60s. I thought that was Kimber, but I may be misremembering.

 

[PapaGolfWhiskey]

Didn't Kimber do Dae Woo's version of the Atchison assualt 12?

 

[vegascat]

But that's just it. Combat suits aren't fully rigid. They've got rigid plates and panels, but they've still got to have joints for movement, and adjustment areas to allow expansion within areas (a person's thigh gets thicker when they squat down than when they are just standing, etc.) If you've got to rationalize the damage, just consider the bullet as having hit one of these areas, or perhaps a hinge between two plates. The plates stopped the majority of the bullet, but fragments still got through.

Good point here. I have made and worn plate armor for the SCA, and worn modern military kevlar, way too many hours in both. Plate has to be made either oversize to fit muscles expanding when moving, or hinged. Gaps are a fact of life to live with. I have only seen one suit that fully covered everything, Henry VIII in the Tower of London, fully armored ass checks with an impresive armor codpiece. Hate to wear that suit.

Plate armor has gaps everywhere, especially from the rear. From the front, plate will give maybe 95% protection, from the rear, it goes down to maybe 60%. When laying prone, which side is up?
Effects on the wearer;
Armor is heavy - slows a person down
Armor is hot - Most SCA injuries in armor have to do with heat stress, not impact
Armor is thick - Takes retraining, the gun butt is not solid against the shoulder where trained, but at least an inch forward.
Armor give a sense of invunerability - Guys in armor will go through woods at a full trot getting cut up that they wouldn't even think of trying out of armor. And they feel the armor will save them against a hit so have a tendency not to flinch as much.
Armor is uncomfortable - Watch how fast the armor hits the ground after an SCA battle

A trooper wearing armor is slower, less likely to duck as quick, exhausted faster, and not as protected as he feels. All these factors added togather makes for filled coffins.

 

[Simon Jester]

My comments are interspersed.

Originally posted by vegascat:
Good point here. I have made and worn plate armor for the SCA, and worn modern military kevlar, way too many hours in both. Plate has to be made either oversize to fit muscles expanding when moving, or hinged. Gaps are a fact of life to live with. I have only seen one suit that fully covered everything, Henry VIII in the Tower of London, fully armored ass checks with an impresive armor codpiece. Hate to wear that suit.
Plate armor has gaps everywhere, especially from the rear. From the front, plate will give maybe 95% protection, from the rear, it goes down to maybe 60%. When laying prone, which side is up?

If I remember right, that armor was for tournament use, and could be as heavy as Henry VIII could move; he only had to wear it for a limited period of time, usually against one opponent at a time.

Effects on the wearer;
Armor is heavy - slows a person down

New materials like LiquidMetal should help the weight issue.

Armor is hot - Most SCA injuries in armor have to do with heat stress, not impact

A coolant liner, something like they use for the astronauts, or increasingly for firefighters, might help with this. I think the various companies working on this have gotten the system down to essentially a thick pair of longjohns attached to a flattened 2L sodabottle-sized pump/refridgerant system.

Armor is thick - Takes retraining, the gun butt is not solid against the shoulder where trained, but at least an inch forward.

See my entry for "Armor is heavy" above. Besides, the troops using the armor would likely be trained in it from the get-go. No retraining involved.

Armor give a sense of invunerability - Guys in armor will go through woods at a full trot getting cut up that they wouldn't even think of trying out of armor. And they feel the armor will save them against a hit so have a tendency not to flinch as much.

Again, troops receiving the proper training will limit this feeling; they'd get over much of it in Basic so it shouldn't have much effect in actual combat.

Armor is uncomfortable - Watch how fast the armor hits the ground after an SCA battle

Yeah, that's not going to change any time soon. Bet the Etruscans, Mycenaeans and Egyptians were saying much the same thing as they were running around in bronze platemail.

A trooper wearing armor is slower, less likely to duck as quick, exhausted faster, and not as protected as he feels. All these factors added together makes for filled coffins.

Again, materiel science and proper training (and maybe some jump belts) will help mitigate most of these concerns, but there's still no choice in war than to put some mother's son (or father's daughter) with a rifle on whatever ground you want to hold. You just do what you can to help ensure that he survives as long as possible.

Given a choice between heavy, stiff armor and no armor, most veterans would most likely choose the armor. They won't like it, and they'll gripe and moan while they're wearing it, but the smart ones will wear it, because they realize it helps keep them from 'buying the farm' at a discount price.

Simon Jester

 

[vegascat]

Anyone with any sense will get the best armor he can buy beg steal or make before going into harms way. Making armor is something a SCA fighter does more than once due to experience. The troops now are still having heat related problems with protective gear. The weight is down to around 22 lbs, but when in MOPP4, that means full chem gears, mask hood, and gloves, you sweat like a pig on steroids. Your boots do fill up with sweat, and body temperature rises. Cool suits have been invented to handle this, but I have seen only pictures of them. They are nothing more than burlap overgarments to be soaked down for evaporative cooling. Granted, in the future, a cooling body stocking may be able to aleve this, as soon as the horn blows, the gear comes off. Being uncomfortable will not stop troops from wearing armor, or getting the heaviest armor they can, but it will reduce the time they are in it, or wearing it properly.
With luck, the next armor manufacturer for the military will take that into account.

 

[PapaGolfWhiskey]

What you wear I would assume is often a compromise between weight, mobility and expected level of hazard.

NBC 'bunny suits' are no fun to wear at all.

Soldiers will ditch gear they don't need to save on weight and be able to carry more ammo.

This is from a movie but...
Anyone recall 'Black Hawk Down'? The beginning of the initial sortie?

"You won't need that. we're only going to be out for 30 minutes.
You won't need that. We'll be back long before it's dark.
Hell yeah I'm taking one of the plates out, I don't intend to get shot in the back."

And of course they did spend long hours in the sun with out water canteens, Did need to see in the dark and got shot at from ALL directions.

but... This was an experienced ranger speaking, 9 times out of 10 he would have been 'right' and all that extra gear might have slowed buddy down... fatally.

A quote from David Drake:

"Combat troops like to claim that their decisions were in some objective sense "right", but they knew in their hear of hearts that they'll die for no better reason than that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time." -- Author cited, Redliners page 24

 

[vegascat]

The only safe place to be in a fire fight is somewhere else, preferably, in another city.

The main idea I got in Blackhawk down was when the shit hits, the only one you can trust is yourself and the guy beside you. Armor helps, weapons help, training helps, but your buddy is the one to pull you through when it all goes wrong.

My man idea with armor is, it only works if it is worn correctly and is what gets hit.
PCs that walk around in full sealed up war gear are not realistic. Flak jackets open down the center. Mopp gear fully vented. Gloves in the pocket.

 

[gardclan]

Originally posted by vegascat:
My man idea with armor is, it only works if it is worn correctly and is what gets hit.
PCs that walk around in full sealed up war gear are not realistic. Flak jackets open down the center. Mopp gear fully vented. Gloves in the pocket.

Guilty as charged.

Our unit tended to cruise around in MOPP-1 (suit on but not sealed, gloves, boots, and mask at the ready) most of the time while in the field... Going to MOPP-2 (add the boots to the list of "worn" items) on the way into an exercise. Let me tell you... MOPP gear gets HOT in the summer. Most people with any sence get real good at closing up the gear QUICKLY when needed, and wear it open the rest of the time. People who don't are more ready... and more likely to get heat stroke.

Body armor is another story. Despite the fact that you wear it on your torso, it can be a real pain the the posterior. When its sealed, you get real "stiff" in the torso. While that is very good for saving your hide against the odd fragment, it sucks rocks if you're on detail and have to be picking things up. The result? People wear the armor the same way as the MOPP gear.

The real funny thing was just how much common sence the average soldier has. In Saudi/Iraq after the shooting stopped the chief enemy was land mines and cluster bombs. Anybody riding in a vehicle tended to take off the body armor and sit on it... as most of the fragments were now coming from below. Perhaps not the brightest of ideas (and it gave the officers fits)... but it made sence at the time.

 

[trader jim]

GUNS GUNS GUNS PISTOLS PISTOLS PISTOLS BIG BIG BIG BIG LITTLE LITTLE LITTLE NOW PICTURES OF PISTOLS - GUYS YOU HAVE OVER DONE IT - DROP FOR A WHILE -LET IT REST FOR A WHILE -THIS IS NOT A GUN FORUM!!!

PLEEEEEASE!!!!!!!!FOR MEEEEEE!!!!!!

 

[Bishop]

All this from a question about why Marines got revolver skill, when the autopistol was 'better' in game terms.

T.

 

[trader jim]

bishop - your right - this mess is all your fault - YOU STARTED IT - YOU CREATED A MONSTER!!!
NOW YOU GOTTA STOP IT!!!! PLEEEEASE!!!!

 

[Uncle Bob]

Come on, Trader Jim. What part of "Revolvers vs Autopistols" did you not understand?

Some of the issues with full body armor have been addressed, such as using "cool cans" on CES. This issue has been known since heat build up almost killed both Aleksei Leonov in Voskhod 2 and Ed White in Gemini 4. Oh I guess the Vietnam expeience was important, too, but all a decade before Book 4.

A point to remember, in Somalia only the Delta Force were likely to have seem combat before, and not all of them. A hard-boiled Ranger sergeant had likely spent ten years in North Carolina firing blanks. They were not near the experts they thought they were.

 

[Simon Jester]

Originally posted by trader jim:
GUNS GUNS GUNS PISTOLS PISTOLS PISTOLS BIG BIG BIG BIG LITTLE LITTLE LITTLE NOW PICTURES OF PISTOLS - GUYS YOU HAVE OVER DONE IT - DROP FOR A WHILE -LET IT REST FOR A WHILE -THIS IS NOT A GUN FORUM!!!

PLEEEEEASE!!!!!!!!FOR MEEEEEE!!!!!!

Ummm....No.

Simon Jester

 

[vegascat]

Did someone not read the title of the thread?
What better title to draw all the true gun fanatics out of the wood pile.

 

[PapaGolfWhiskey]

sure caught -my- attention but...
Maybe we should start a single new thread and let these multiple gun threads die?

 

[trader jim]

i say SHOOT THE BAST.....WITH MY......ooooopppppssss.