GUNS, GLORIOUS GUNS

[Ryujin]

[Soren]

[CmdrRook]

I spoke with Joshua over lunch on Friday, and his response to the topic falls in line with the above reasoning, saying that caseless ammo's advantages in increasing mechanical reliability and lowering weight of ammo and weaponry are over-burdened by CONTEMPORARY limitations and draw-backs, resulting in the weapons being perpetually stuck in the Prototype phase. No telling what the future would hold, though. In his words it seemed "More of a TTM thing," who would have the money and influence to gate their ammo around with them, before adding; "but how many AK-47s were used against the USSR?"

I hadn't thought about it that way. If these weapons fell into Free Colonist hands, and were found to have enough of an advantage to justify converting their tools and manufacturing processes to accommodate them, why wouldn't they? While AKs and their ammo were technically conventional designs based off of the STG-44 concept from Germany, it had a global impact on weapon design, philosophy of use, and availability, with a variety of adaptations and clones from under-equipped countries hoping to close the gap on this- literally- revolutionary weapon. When the USSR introduced the rifle, the rest of armed society scrambled to keep up. Joshua insinuated that something similar could reasonably happen with caseless weapons in the Solar Calender.

[Atavism]

[CmdrRook]

[Soren]

If your answer to making your weapon less complex and more reliable is to make your ammunition more complex and less reliable, you haven't made your weapon less complex or more reliable.

[CmdrRook]

[Atavism]

[Mantisking]

[CmdrRook]

[MoronicCinamun]

Apologies for not responding much to my own thread, but I have been appreciating and soaking in the vast quantity of info and insight here.

I guess at the end of the day, the answer is "it's made of bloody lego who cares"; I see stuff like "laser railguns" and such that are pretty much sci-fi techno-babble jargon. but I am seeing cased rounds in a better light now. I guess I just wanted to be unique and special, and relive my Aliens fantasies *shrugs*

this does lead me to a sort of similar question though: What caliber are these weapons, on average? I guess I could math it out by measuring the legos by plates and comparing that to size of the average man (I believe that is what "7p" is in reference to). I understand a lot of creative license is to be used, since lego parts don't really come in large variety of diameters; I main one that comes to mind is the thickness of a . I do not know too much about such measuerments, but I would assume by necessity the "stud end" hole of a would be ever so slightly larger. I guess the size of your standard "technic hole" is probably worth knowing too.
I ask because I certainly want some realism of scale, even if what's coming out of the hole is nonsense
I see measurements around the forum from 45mm for a cylinder hole to 105mm for about 'rod' thickness (though to be fair, they may have been using different scales, but I assume if no scale is given it's probably 7p).

[Soren]

There's no reason you can't; it'd be unusual, but we have crazier stuff. I have opinions about the plausibility of lots of things, but those aren't binding if you have a cool-looking idea and you want to run with it.

I generally assume it's anywhere from 12.7mm machine guns up to the 75mm pack-howitzer / 81mm mortar range; you can measure and come up with (insane) figures, but I go for whatever shape looks best and justify it later, and I assume other people will do the same. At 7p/4p scale most options that look good are out of scale (although is handy if you want a really tiny barrel on something).

(I bit back a nastygram re; Mr. 'limited mindset' up there - don't mistake my unwillingness to gnaw on your bones in public for a win, kid.)

[CmdrRook]

[Sovietshadow]

You can really use whatever size you want, but i follow a (mostly) set path:
Technic "+" rod (as a gatling): .50 cal-20mm
Rod: 30mm-39mm
technic connector (also the same size as the top of round bricks): 40mm-50mm
Technic "+" rod (as artillery): 60mm-70mm
technic "+" rod-to-rod connector: 80mm-90mm
bottom of round brick: 100mm+

[MoronicCinamun]

[Red_Robot]

[MoronicCinamun]

[CmdrRook]

[MoronicCinamun]

[Hackjob]

I keep meaning to post on this thread, so I hope I'm not throwing gas on a fire that was going out. I'm suprised how many people don't think caseless ammunition would be readily available hundreds of years in the future. Especially since it already exists now, sure it's not pofitable to make yet, but way ahead of current weaponized lasers. The advances of firearm technology in the last 200 years have been staggering. Untill the 1820's flintlocks were the norm for military issue, when the pecussion cap made guns more reliable. Cartidges as we know them didn't even exist untill the mid 1800's. Ironically some of the first self-contained cartridges were paper and burned up upon firing making them "semi-caseless" ammunition! In fact I feel a more modern approach to semi-caseless with a destroyed/disposable polymer case could possibly be the most common. If you factor in Moore's "law" to computing power (used in chemistry and design developmnet) I don't see how caseless ammunition would not be feasable. Now I will admit the look and sound of brass pouring out of a machinegun is pretty neat. There is a scene in the movie Blackhawk Down where a minigun fires from a helicopter and rains spent shells down on the friendlies under it. So if this floats your boat, go for it!
(Frame by Soren)

But don't tell me caseless ammo wouldn't be around, 'cause it totally would.

And on the subject of "what would bullets look like" DPU ammo is extra-killy.