There's a lot of debate on exactly how the real items were made, but in general I would sum things up like this:
Curved blades are better at slicing and cutting than straight blades are. The reason for this is that the blade tends to "rock" through as well as slide by the target on a stroke. This dual action makes these weapons nasty on unarmored targets, and also makes them rather effective at wrecking flexible armors such as chain and boiled leather.
Straight blades are better at penetration and easier to thrust with. A properly constructed straight blade will have a center of percussion about a third of the way back from the tip (similar to a baseball bat's "sweet spot"). When the blade strikes an object, all vibration modes are nullified in the COP... transferring the blade's energy (percussive and vibratory) into that zone. They are most definately NOT sharpened clubs.
Now, this is a bit of an oversimplification, but blades would play havoc with vac suits, cloth armor, and yes, even combat armor. There are also other ways to hybrizide weapons... falchions and cutlasses tended to be tip heavy to aid in penetration, leaf blades provide some blade curvature to aid in cutting... and so on.
There is also a good bit of historical and anecdotal evidence for swords carving though even heavy plate armor. Advances in metalurgy and design could help to compensate for better armor (which would likely be designed mainly to offset firearms).
Even so, any nutter who charges battledress (or even nice shiny alien warbots
) with a cutlass needs to have his head examined (or a VERY good reason for doing so )
In a vacuum environment (boarding actions) where any breach in your suit is deadly... a weapon like this would be nasty at close quarters. Especially if the defenders are using long bulky firearms.
The T20 game mechanics don't exactly show bare this out... as swords don't have enough dice to penetrate armor effectively. What I've been doing IMTU is to allow the sword to damage the armor on non-critical strikes. (Reduced by AR, of course) This doesn't make them drastically deadly per se, but after one or two good hits even combat armor is becoming rather useless.
I'm also allowing AOA's against firearms one size class larger than the wielder when in melee (e.g., rifles) to represent the fact that they need some maneuvering room.
YMMV.
Curved blades are better at slicing and cutting than straight blades are. The reason for this is that the blade tends to "rock" through as well as slide by the target on a stroke. This dual action makes these weapons nasty on unarmored targets, and also makes them rather effective at wrecking flexible armors such as chain and boiled leather.
Straight blades are better at penetration and easier to thrust with. A properly constructed straight blade will have a center of percussion about a third of the way back from the tip (similar to a baseball bat's "sweet spot"). When the blade strikes an object, all vibration modes are nullified in the COP... transferring the blade's energy (percussive and vibratory) into that zone. They are most definately NOT sharpened clubs.
Now, this is a bit of an oversimplification, but blades would play havoc with vac suits, cloth armor, and yes, even combat armor. There are also other ways to hybrizide weapons... falchions and cutlasses tended to be tip heavy to aid in penetration, leaf blades provide some blade curvature to aid in cutting... and so on.
There is also a good bit of historical and anecdotal evidence for swords carving though even heavy plate armor. Advances in metalurgy and design could help to compensate for better armor (which would likely be designed mainly to offset firearms).
Even so, any nutter who charges battledress (or even nice shiny alien warbots
) with a cutlass needs to have his head examined (or a VERY good reason for doing so )In a vacuum environment (boarding actions) where any breach in your suit is deadly... a weapon like this would be nasty at close quarters. Especially if the defenders are using long bulky firearms.
The T20 game mechanics don't exactly show bare this out... as swords don't have enough dice to penetrate armor effectively. What I've been doing IMTU is to allow the sword to damage the armor on non-critical strikes. (Reduced by AR, of course) This doesn't make them drastically deadly per se, but after one or two good hits even combat armor is becoming rather useless.
I'm also allowing AOA's against firearms one size class larger than the wielder when in melee (e.g., rifles) to represent the fact that they need some maneuvering room.
YMMV.
