Re: More firearms stuff

> From: [email removed] (Craig Waylan)
> Subject: (2829) More firearms stuff
>
> Something that a lot of ordinary people have found out(that the police and
> military won't notice 'till the end of the century at least! :) is that
> ammo technology has changed *a lot* in the past decade or two.

  The various agreements on inhuman weapons (the first of which outlawed
exploding bullets of less than a certain calibre, btw) doubtlessly has something
to do with it. I assume that these are in effect in the Imperium too.

> Recently, however, most companies have gotten a *lot* better with their
> production techniques, as well as having much more creative R&D people.

  My knowledge on this comes from articles in the military press (like
International Defence Review or Military Technology), and I must admit that
when I first heard of for example the Glaser round, it sounded like a good
idea.
  However: The various incidents where certain of these 'new-style' rounds
have behaved in a different way that advertised indicates that the technology
isn't mature enough yet. Wound-ballistics are more a combination of art and
opinion than science, which is highlited in the fact that there are as many
opinions on which fluid or gel to use as there are experts.

  Weapons are dangerous to the user either when the user is stupid or when the
weapon behave in an unpredictabe way. Since user stupidity can be prevented
through training, unpredictability is the greatest remaining hazard.

  These are the main reasons I've put DS at TL 9 and higher, HP at TL 6+ and
small-calibre (less than 10mm) HE at 10+

  (A tip to the Refs who's PC's like to use funny ammo: what do the criminal
and civil law say? :)

> I'll leave
> it to you Physics types to do the calculations, but I'm pretty sure that
> gauss weapons, with their 4mm needle bullets, are horribly overrated. They
> may have a small enough cross-section to penetrate heavy armor, but they
> won't do much damage once they get there.

  That depends in their contruction. Sintered tungsten penetrators like those
that were used in early (ie 50's to 70's) discarding sabot tank rounds have
a tendency to disintegrate into a cloud of tungsten shrapnel just after
penetrating the armour. And if the rounds are done as old 'Mercenary'
described them, with a 1mm tungsten core coated with a HP lead jacket, they
might work on lightly armored targets too (the word for this should be TSS -
Target Shredding Sabot, as gun data in the 2300 'Backdoor' adventure)

>* [email removed]                *  It's just my job, five days a week..."    *

- -bertil-

P  Efate							      240-1121
   PC's use non-pc ammo! Public outranged! "Reopen Gash prison!" demonstrators
   demand.
- --
"Det a"r en Svensk grej. Du skulle inte fo"rsta^..."