Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

[Mike_G]

Again I have nothing to support this apart from supposition.

In the time of Nelson shot furnaces in fortifications took ~30 minutes to heat an iron ball to temperature. Given the time frame it’s reasonable to assume furnaces from 250 years earlier were both smaller and less efficient. A copper ball would be much much faster to bring to heat and thus be better suited to sustained fire than iron ball.

I have a related question.

When firing "red hot shot" how did they keep the hot projectile from igniting the powder when loading? Was there just enough wadding between them or was a hot cannonball toll cool to ignite powder or what?

[Gnoman]

The wadding was damp, IIRC. The shot was very much hot enough to ignite powder.

[Pauly]

I have a related question.

When firing "red hot shot" how did they keep the hot projectile from igniting the powder when loading? Was there just enough wadding between them or was a hot cannonball toll cool to ignite powder or what?

The ball was heated to cherry red ~800-900 degrees C.

Thorough swabbing was the first step.
Then load the powder charge in bags and regular wadding, being very careful not to leave any powder in the barrel
The ball was carried from the furnace tomthe gun in a cracle.
Ball is loaded with wet wadding front and back in addition to the regular wadding.
Then the gunner fired as quickly as possible.

The idea was to have as little time as possible between the ball leaving the furnace and the shot being fired.

If the shot required the barrel being angled downwards some additional steps were done to fight gravity.

[Martin Greywolf]

The Tudor copper shot mentioned in article I linked wasn't meant for heated shot use, it was filled with "fireworks". If I had to guess, it was done because copper is easier to cast and work into a hollow sphere, but I don't exactly have any translations of period gunnery manuals on hand, so...

The Mexican copper balls are allegedly made because of copper surplus. I really don't know enough about that late of a history to tell whether that's true or one of the historian's theories.

Bratislava's copper balls... who knows. As you may have notice, the inspection didn't really thoroughly list every variation - no mention of ball weight or diameter for one - so there could well be several variations of copper shot in that category.

[Martin Greywolf]

Can anyone reccommend a source for the armaments and tactics preferred in Eastern Europe in the late 1400s? Specifically interested in Hungary, Romania (Wallachia and Transylvania primarily) and the Ottoman Empire.

Okay, so, this arrived into my mailbox just now. I haven't read it, and it will be some time before I can get to it, so I can't say how good or accurate it is. Use with caution.

[Telok]

This sort of isn't a real world stuff question, but it sort of could be and I can't really figure a better place to ask.

I converted a 10 meter long monster from a fantasy game to a space opera game after coming up with the absurd idea of using them as a "boarding party" in space navy combat. I even managed to write a little program for how many people shooting for how long it would take to kill a big monster, so I could find out what sort of "space navy boarding combat party" the monster is equal to. That all works out OK, in the game system math at least.

Thing is, I can't really account for the environment. The ship crews are basically normal soldiers with normal RL like battle rifles and normal RL like morale & intellect & stuff. The ships are functionally WWII to late 1980s battleships & aircraft carriers (I found deckplans online and use them for maps). The monster... is capable of tearing a hole big enough to fit through, in any bulkhead, in about 45 seconds. It is, however, basically a giant rabid animal. Although it is immune to a bunch of stuff, so vaccuum or poison gas won't kill it and it'll wreck it's way out if a meltdown nuke reactor before the heat and rads kill it.

All in all and without accounting for the "in a ship" environment, over 15 minutes it will kill about 150 people (and it can move fast enough to make that happen). If 50 soldiers at a time can full-auto pretty much the whole time it they have about a 2% chance of killing it every 15 minutes. If 250 soldiers can full-auto it they have about a 10% chance to kill it every 15 min. Crews range from 150 to 1500 (yes its a death sentence for a small ship, that's fine).

My queston then is; how would the fight being in the confines of a ship change things? Would such ships commonly have personal carry anti-vehicle weapons around? Would the crew of, say the USS Iowa, do domething like luring it to a powder magazine under a turret and blowing it? Would the crew of a carrier be willing to fire a helicopter rocket pod indoors in the... hangers?

[Martin Greywolf]

Would such ships commonly have personal carry anti-vehicle weapons around?

Not really, their anti-vehicle weapons are the primary or secondary guns. The most you'd see is a handful of mortars. You didn't have a lot of personal firearms on these sorts of ship in the first place, and most of them were in armories and not carried around by sailors, at most you'd see some people guarding classified stuff with pistols.

That said, this is the case because weapons like these weren't needed. If there was a reason for them...

Would the crew of, say the USS Iowa, do domething like luring it to a powder magazine under a turret and blowing it?

GAH! No!

Seriously, words can't describe how bad an idea it is. A magazine explosion will sink the ship in minutes - if it is a secondary magazine, a primary magazine going off is pretty much a guarantee of loss of ship with damn near all hands. Magazines on these ships had a system where they could be flooded by seawater if a fire was going in their direction, but a direct hit would still blow the entire ship up. Just ask HMS Hood.

Would the crew of a carrier be willing to fire a helicopter rocket pod indoors in the... hangers?

You'll get a fire at the very least that way, and if it hits a fuel line (a necessary thing on an aircraft carrier)... No. No one would be willing to do it.

What a critter like this would do?

On a water ship, a breach like this is likely to get seawater to boilers. Once that happens, you loose a hefty chunk of the ship's interior (hot boilers + cold water = explosion) and a lot of power to a ship. It's about as bad as being hit by a torpedo, if not worse. With space and vacuum, you have massive atmospheric breach that spreads further and further, loss of power... It's much more of a problem than you think it is, and it pretty much doesn't matter how many people this monster kills.

What's worse is that the ship isn't designed to resist explosives from the inside, so any weapon that is capable of hurting it is not usable.

The best option? Look at real life WW2 era torpedo protection. Have an outer hull that the monster tears through and then a hollow space, followed by actual armor. Once your monster is in there, you can maybe use some sort of bait or something, to keep it there for long enough to employ those high power weapons - hopefully, your inner-main armor can shrug off a rocket that kills the critter.

If it actually gets inside, you either need to kill it really quickly, or abandon ship. Also, if this sort of an attack is a thing, forget about assault rifles, you'll need machineguns and anti-materiel rifles. Something like early WW2 era Lahti AT rifle with a non-explosive projectile could work fairly well.

[Telok]

GAH! No!

Seriously, words can't describe how bad an idea it is.

Thats why I asked. Thank you.

Hmm. Its space opera so air loss to boarding parties is handwaved. It only matters on a few ship critical hits. I guess there's already a self-sealing double hull set up then. So from the crew's pov its: "crunch" -> prep for boarding party -> surprise 30 foot hell-world monster in your face.

Now, nobody in their right mind would go to the hell-world and try to farm the bloody thing, this will be a complete surprise. But thinking, there is personal armor in the APC/light tank range and would be commonly used in military boarding actions (piracy probably not but I'm assuming civvie ships don't matter here). That means some anti-armor weapons will be on hand.

I'll try running the numbers again with the assumption that the regulars shave off the hit point buffer & regeneration, then the heavy weapons at... 1/10? 1/20? will do the breaking through the "won't die" special abilities. Probably the lower end heavy weapons without big explosion radii.

[tyckspoon]

If the space-navy in question is aware these creatures are a threat, they're going to need to change doctrine and equipment to deal with them, and may go to the extreme of changing their ship design entirely if they expect to fight them in multiple conflicts. Normal personal weaponry isn't going to cut it with those estimated times to kill, not least because there won't be anywhere in the ship big enough for 50-plus crew to even focus fire on a single target (aside from possibly the main deck, and if they see the creature coming there they should be trying to bring it down with ship's weaponry.) If they don't have bigger guns to apply to the problem, either the ship is a loss because the monster unstoppably rampages until (too much crew is dead/it rips enough holes in the hull/it hits a critical ship system) or it's a loss because somebody decides to suicide the ship rather than let the creature eat them and possibly launch into another ship to do the same.

So your crew needs something with a lot more punch available to them, and you have to be willing to suffer further damage to the ship's structure in employing it unless you are able to come up with some kind of weapon system that deals massively disproportionate damage to the creature compared to the ship structure. If the creature is resistant mostly by bulk and doesn't have ship-plating grade natural armor, for example, you might be able to use something like high-caliber lower-velocity expanding bullet rounds that will do a lot of flesh damage but not very much risk of punching through structural elements of the ship.

If the crew doesn't have that kind of weapon option, feasible reactions I can think of basically come down to A: Dramatically self-destructing the ship (exploding ship's ordinance, power core meltdown, etc) or B: Abandon ship, evacuate all reasonable crew, and have another ship hit the thing with its own main or secondary armaments.

[halfeye]

I converted a 10 meter long monster from a fantasy game to a space opera game after coming up with the absurd idea of using them as a "boarding party" in space navy combat. I even managed to write a little program for how many people shooting for how long it would take to kill a big monster, so I could find out what sort of "space navy boarding combat party" the monster is equal to. That all works out OK, in the game system math at least.

...

The monster... is capable of tearing a hole big enough to fit through, in any bulkhead, in about 45 seconds.

...

My queston then is; how would the fight being in the confines of a ship change things? Would such ships commonly have personal carry anti-vehicle weapons around? Would the crew of, say the USS Iowa, do domething like luring it to a powder magazine under a turret and blowing it? Would the crew of a carrier be willing to fire a helicopter rocket pod indoors in the... hangers?

How did this monster become this strong? A 33.3 ft long monster is not huge, it's about the size of a T. Rex, twice the size of an elephant, and people hunted those.

Steel bulkheads on military ships are sometimes armoured, you wouldn't get through that without oxy-acetylene gear or something equivalent.

[Lemmy]

How long could leaf-shaped blade be and still perform reasonably well (compared to other blades of similar length, but of more conventional shapes)?

I was thinking of making a certain race of my setting use leaf-shaped blades, but all I could find like that were short swords. Could there be a change to their design that kept the general shape but made it more optimal for longer blades (70+ cm), assuming manufacturing them isn't an issue?

Thanks in advance for any and all replies.

[Rynjin]

How long could leaf-shaped blade be and still perform reasonably well (compared to other blades of similar length, but of more conventional shapes)?

I was thinking of making a certain race of my setting use leaf-shaped blades, but all I could find like that were short swords. Could there be a change to their design that kept the general shape but made it more optimal for longer blades (70+ cm), assuming manufacturing them isn't an issue?

Thanks in advance for any and all replies.

The point of a leaf shape is to add more mass to the right areas (near the tip) to maximize cutting power on a shorter blade. It's the same reason why a machete has a more bulbous tip as compared to the relatively slim bladed portion near the handle.

Longer blades already have more mass, so don't need their balance thrown off by making the blade more top-heavy. Instead, tapering results in better balance and the ability to thrust, which is important.

I'd say your best bet for a longer leaf-shaped blade would be a polearm, not a sword. You could get away with a wide "leafed" guandao type weapon I think.

Edit: I found a video of someone testing a bastard sword with a leaf shape, from a fantasy blade manufacturer.

It kinda works, but as you can see from the video it has some issues. All of the cutting power is concentrated on the "leafed" portion, with the taper being largely vestigial and the back end of the blade lacking enough mass to properly cut.

Which...basically just makes the sword a weird shaped axe but without the advantages of an axe.

That said, in a fantasy setting the relative impracticality doesn't matter so much as "is this conceivably plausible", and the answer appears to be yes. Though I still think a polearm works better.

[Telok]

How did this monster become this strong? A 33.3 ft long monster is not huge, it's about the size of a T. Rex, twice the size of an elephant, and people hunted those.

Steel bulkheads on military ships are sometimes armoured, you wouldn't get through that without oxy-acetylene gear or something equivalent.

My mistake. Went back & checked numbers. Monster takes 2-3 minutes to hole an interior bulkhead. About 6 minutes to gnaw through the exterior armor of the smaller ships, up to 12-15 getting into battleships.

Did I mention its a bit silly high end space opera?

[Mr Beer]

If 50 soldiers at a time can full-auto pretty much the whole time it they have about a 2% chance of killing it every 15 minutes. If 250 soldiers can full-auto it they have about a 10% chance to kill it every 15 min.

So this is like 1000s of rounds per soldier hitting it? If this thing can soak 10s of Ks of rifle rounds, it's functionally immune to such an attack, like it's a main battle tank or something. What is the mechanism of the kill exactly? If we know what takes it down when hosed with rifle fire, that informs the type of weapon one should use to reliably kill.

I agree with others that say if this thing is a known threat, they will have specific counter measures on board, like special weapons or armoured kill rooms that it can be lured into and then electrocuted, fried or crushed to death remotely.

[GeoffWatson]

Thats why I asked. Thank you.

Hmm. Its space opera so air loss to boarding parties is handwaved. It only matters on a few ship critical hits. I guess there's already a self-sealing double hull set up then. So from the crew's pov its: "crunch" -> prep for boarding party -> surprise 30 foot hell-world monster in your face.

Now, nobody in their right mind would go to the hell-world and try to farm the bloody thing, this will be a complete surprise.

If it's a surprise, they're doomed.
It's not going to sit still for the hours needed for full-autofire to kill it, and anything stronger risks destroying important ship components.
The misses from full-auto will probably do serious damage to the ship interior anyway (armouring everything would take nearly-useless weight which you don't want on a spaceship).

Abandon ship - call in the Super Space Marines, and hope they kill it before their missed shots destroy anything important.

[Martin Greywolf]

How long could leaf-shaped blade be and still perform reasonably well (compared to other blades of similar length, but of more conventional shapes)?

I was thinking of making a certain race of my setting use leaf-shaped blades, but all I could find like that were short swords. Could there be a change to their design that kept the general shape but made it more optimal for longer blades (70+ cm), assuming manufacturing them isn't an issue?

Thanks in advance for any and all replies.

I agree with others who have said a longer sword with the xiphos-style leaf shape would be a very bad idea, but that's where we can... extrapolate.

Let's assume that the leaf shape is, for some reason, deeply cultural for these folks, and they want a functional blade about the length of a bastard sword that calls back to it. That? Now that is very possible.

What you need to do is take the same steel ingot you make a sword out of and reshape it differently, same total mass and mass distribution, different shape. Make the first part of the blade thicker in cross-section and narrower, make the leafy bit flatter and wider. And you're very much in luck, because something like this has been done historically.

Spoiler: Behold the bastard sabre, National Museum, Budapest, 15th century

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The handle on that on is 20cm long, and they were used from ~1300, based on pictorial evidence. It was most likely a case of "hey, we're using sabers because we consider ourselves Attila's descendants but longswords are becoming a thing, let's make a longsword sabre".

For your leaf shaped blade, you'll want to do something similar, make the curves gentler and the overall look of the blade more slender. You'll end up with a perfectly functional sword that will be a tad better in cutting while being a bit worse at precision thrusts.

Also make sure that you can still grab the wide leaf part to half-sword it and that the point itself is slender and thick enough to go through mail, that is pretty important for a sword that wants to compete with standard longsword in the age of plate armor.

If the space-navy in question is aware these creatures are a threat, they're going to need to change doctrine and equipment to deal with them[...]

If we're changing doctrine, then there will be no boarding, just have the equivalent of fighter patrols take the critter out.

I mean, if this wasn't a space opera thing, then we'd have to ask ourselves how was this space navy so incompetent in sensor tech that something the size of a bus managed to sneak up on them. I mean, late WW2 radar could detect single-seat fighters and post-war can see missiles, never mind something this big, and that's in atmosphere with all sorts of interference.

My mistake. Went back & checked numbers. Monster takes 2-3 minutes to hole an interior bulkhead. About 6 minutes to gnaw through the exterior armor of the smaller ships, up to 12-15 getting into battleships.

Did I mention its a bit silly high end space opera?

If you want it to be a boarding fight, and players are content not to ask pesky questions like "where is our fighter screen", "why don't we electrify the outer hull" or "why don't we use our secondaries to blast it apart before it gets close"...

Actually, if they are asking the pesky questions, I'd advise you to give this thing some sort of phasing, stealth or teleport ability that can get it at least over several hundred kilometers without being detected or hit. Possibly put it on a long cooldown while the sacks of phlebotinum goop replenish, making it essentially a space ambush predator.

Okay, that aside for boarding itself. This weaker version is much more stoppable. The biggest issue, once it gets inside the ship proper, is to not use weapons that will wreck your ship as well, so no high-power cannons and rockets. If we ignore ricochets, machineguns and AM rifles will work fairly well, especially if you cut what is more or less and arrow slit in your bulkheads and fire through that while the critter munches.

Another weapon that would work pretty well is manually-triggered shaped charge petards. Use a grenade launcher or robot/drone or some such to attach those to the critter, and trigger those that stuck well remotely.

Spoiler: Truly a space age tech

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[Telok]

If it's a surprise, they're doomed.
It's not going to sit still for the hours needed for full-autofire to kill it, and anything stronger risks destroying important ship components.
The misses from full-auto will probably do serious damage to the ship interior anyway (armouring everything would take nearly-useless weight which you don't want on a spaceship).

Abandon ship - call in the Super Space Marines, and hope they kill it before their missed shots destroy anything important.

Well, checked with other heavier weapons, did sims of blasting through barriers, recalculated kill rates.

And dang it. Found an error in the crit check in the sim. Redoing some percentages.

Any ways, the actual space combat boarding system is fine. Works. Not worried about PCs, they'll drop out of the 10 to 15 min per turn space combat to hero the monster to death at 5-6 rounds per minute. This whole thing is because the previous campaign started some doom clocks. One of those involves a powerful & insane person trying to bring art & culture to the galaxy. To that end they piracy up to a small fleet, farm a hell-world for giant monsters, stuff the monsters (stunned/restrained) into modified boarding shuttles, then shoot the shuttles at other ships like they were torpedoes.

As its a doom clock the PCs may be half way across the galaxy when stuff happens and I'd like to figure npc ship survival & news stories. More "by the numbers" than just some ass pulling bs. I've had that bite DMs where the "epic city destroyer" monsters could be two round ganked by a party that knows their damage output is less than 30ish archers. Much sarcasm ensued. And, its possible, I guess, for the PCs to try to ignore this if one does hit their ship, meaning I do need the body count & collateral damage rates.

Speaking of collateral damage, checking the math, the lighter weapons and stray rounds aren't a danger to bulkheads (although stuff in the rooms is trashed by missed shots but big monster is easy to hit). The anti-armor stuff is 40%-80% likely to damage interior bulkheads (small holes, spalling), actual anti-vehicle man-portable rockets at 95%, but still takes about 20-50 hits to put a hole big enough for a person to duck through.

[Pauly]

In the Viet Nam war allied soldiers came across man eating tigers, rogue elephants and salt water crocodiles. The basic military approach was to ‘leave them the hell alone and bring in specialist hunters if they caused too much trouble”.

It isn’t just a matter of having the tech and the people. It’s
- having the right gun (a dangerous game rifle or equivalent)
- knowing the habits of the critter
- knowing the critter’s vulnerable spots.
- being able to stalk the critter
- having the nerve to take a well aimed close range shot, not randomly shooting rounds into the general vicinity of the critter.
Militaries have a long history of being incredibly unsuccessful in critter hunts. Examples include the Beast of Gevudan and the French army, the man eating tigress of Champawat and the Nepalese army, the great emu war and the Australian Army, Gustav and the Burundi army.

For a navy I’d echo the ‘abandon ship and call for reinforcements’ as the most viable way for a navy to deal with such a critter if it successfully gets on board a ship.

[Telok]

Ok. I've worked stuff out to the point where I'm happy with it. Thanks all.

It turns out that hunting/sniper rifles, and even more so laser sniper rifles, are pretty much the best bet for anything past the most basic troops. After that its the anti-armor weapons (ap grenades, ap rockets, short range plasma blasters). Even with enough good weapons the monsters will still kill 200 to 500 regular troops, half that in veterans with heavy armor, and half again elites in power armor. But I have my numbers and they work on both the narrative & mechanical levels now.

One issue I hit was that the system in use is set up so once a critter runs out of hit points/plot points it gets into critical damage, which is what does the actual killing with bleeding, KO, stuns, dismemberment, eviceration, etc. There are abilities creatures can have to mitigate or be immune to some of this stuff (eg: robots don't bleed or suffer fatigue), or there's one tag that says "ignore critical hits that wouldn't outright kill the creature unless <spacial conditions>". Playing with the simulator that ultra no-crit tag makes it super hard to kill the monster if it has otherwise lore appropriate stats. Without that tag, but with all the other immunities turned on, ten regular soldiers with gyrojet pistols they aren't proficient in can kill the monster in about 5 rounds. It got better as I upped the monster's stats but to make it sufficently resistant in order to get even closr to the correct narrative results would take boosting its stats to insane levels.

Obviously I could hand wave & butt pull or just make up a new monster ability. But that affects playability. If every big monster has unique & totally different defense abilities then players have no rules consistency or planning ability aside from "do big damage" (boring). If the monster is under statted relative to the narrative effects players get nasty cognitive dissonance when they mow it down using less damage abilities than a couple squads of mook npcs. If its over statted the players basically can't engage with it, having to give up & abandon ship every time it shows up or it's super tough but has weenie nerf claws that can't do the required damage to be a real threat.

Again, thanks for the help. And now I know they won't try something like the powder magazine idea.

[KineticDiplomat]

To ask the obvious question, since its in the RW thread: WHY is it crit resistant per se?

It sounds like "crits" reflect mechanisms of injury.

Basically, while a bullet punching a hole in you is never a good thing, it is actually a host of other things that make a projectile wound a really bad day. Usually they have to do with some variety of kinetic energy transfer, expansion, fragmentation, yaw, or tumbling effects...the exact manner isn't terribly relevant here. The point is when for some reason the bullet just zips through without that mechanism acting you get the ice pick effect where all you've really made is a smallish hole. The US/NATO 5.56mm round had some controversy about this, leading to a new tranche of engineering the round...

So, why doesn't your creature let mechanisms of injury actually perform? It's not just a groggy bleh, it has game fun: once you can point out the science of why it takes so much killing, then you can have players figure out the answer. Ask the Australians about the Emu war and why full metal jacket rifle rounds were not a great answer for killing puffy birds with thick coats of feathers, tiny and few critical organs, etc., and where they went in response

[GeoffWatson]

Speaking of collateral damage, checking the math, the lighter weapons and stray rounds aren't a danger to bulkheads (although stuff in the rooms is trashed by missed shots but big monster is easy to hit). The anti-armor stuff is 40%-80% likely to damage interior bulkheads (small holes, spalling), actual anti-vehicle man-portable rockets at 95%, but still takes about 20-50 hits to put a hole big enough for a person to duck through.

There would be a lot more vulnerable stuff than bulkheads - pipes, electronics, wiring, supplies, fuel, crew, etc.

[Telok]

There would be a lot more vulnerable stuff than bulkheads - pipes, electronics, wiring, supplies, fuel, crew, etc.

Yes! And that's great. Fits my gaming mantra of "no empty rooms" perfectly. Never ever give the players a fight somewhere they can treat like an empty room. That's how you get dull boffer larp static hp-to-zero "fights". Blow up the scenery! Exploding barrels & computers! Illogical steam pipes! Bottomless pits! Giant trash compactors! No empty rooms!

[Pauly]

To ask the obvious question, since its in the RW thread: WHY is it crit resistant per se?

It sounds like "crits" reflect mechanisms of injury.

Basically, while a bullet punching a hole in you is never a good thing, it is actually a host of other things that make a projectile wound a really bad day. Usually they have to do with some variety of kinetic energy transfer, expansion, fragmentation, yaw, or tumbling effects...the exact manner isn't terribly relevant here. The point is when for some reason the bullet just zips through without that mechanism acting you get the ice pick effect where all you've really made is a smallish hole. The US/NATO 5.56mm round had some controversy about this, leading to a new tranche of engineering the round...

So, why doesn't your creature let mechanisms of injury actually perform? It's not just a groggy bleh, it has game fun: once you can point out the science of why it takes so much killing, then you can have players figure out the answer. Ask the Australians about the Emu war and why full metal jacket rifle rounds were not a great answer for killing puffy birds with thick coats of feathers, tiny and few critical organs, etc., and where they went in response

To build on this a little. Animals like tigers, who nature expects to fight for their meals, are much more resistant to injury and heal faster than humans. Animals like crocodiles and elephants are resistant to injury due to thick hides. In both cases successful hunting requires knowing where the few vulnerable spots are, and this knowledge is far more important than the weapon being used.

In gaming terms this would mean making a successful lore check to being able to get access to critical hits. You could also apply needing to be at close range or for the critter to be immobilized/asleep due to the small size if the critical hit area.

[Telok]

To ask the obvious question, since its in the RW thread: WHY is it crit resistant per se?

It sounds like "crits" reflect mechanisms of injury.

Basically, while a bullet punching a hole in you is never a good thing,

The critter is... yeah, pretty much a T.Rex crossed with a ankylosaur, up muscled, and with the typical ultra-soft sf regeneration. The simulations helped tweak the stats. Anti-armor weapons worked well, but the surprise was how well the sniper rifle type weapons worked. So it looks all right I think.

[Pauly]

The critter is... yeah, pretty much a T.Rex crossed with a ankylosaur, up muscled, and with the typical ultra-soft sf regeneration. The simulations helped tweak the stats. Anti-armor weapons worked well, but the surprise was how well the sniper rifle type weapons worked. So it looks all right I think.

The reason why IRL sniper type rifles weren’t the go to for killing dangerous game is that the travel time between trigger pull and bullet impact made a serious difference in whether you got the crit or just poked a hole in the critter. You had to get close, like 10 meters or closer kind of close, to get the guaranteed one hit one kill shots.

In close quarters there shouldn’t be any effective difference between a sub MOA target rifle and a mass produced service rifle. The benefit of the sniper rifle is ability to hit small things at long range, and in ship board engagements you won’t get the range to justify the benefit.

[halfeye]

The reason why IRL sniper type rifles weren’t the go to for killing dangerous game is that the travel time between trigger pull and bullet impact made a serious difference in whether you got the crit or just poked a hole in the critter. You had to get close, like 10 meters or closer kind of close, to get the guaranteed one hit one kill shots.

In close quarters there shouldn’t be any effective difference between a sub MOA target rifle and a mass produced service rifle. The benefit of the sniper rifle is ability to hit small things at long range, and in ship board engagements you won’t get the range to justify the benefit.

The modern 0.5 inch sniper's rifles are easily elephant killers, and would mess up a tiger no problems at full range even on a not particularly ideal hit. They are so powerful they are outside the Geneva convention.

[Gnoman]

The modern 0.5 inch sniper's rifles are easily elephant killers, and would mess up a tiger no problems at full range even on a not particularly ideal hit. They are so powerful they are outside the Geneva convention.

.50 BMG rifles aren't dedicated sniper weapons - they're intended for use against light vehicles, light fortifications, and other hard point targets. They work just fine as an anti-personnel weapon (all claims that international convention or policy prohibit this are myth), but are not an ideal weapon. They offer little advantage over a more conventional rifle in that role except range (rarely relevant), are much more effort to tote around, and have a much stronger visual signature.

[Pauly]

The modern 0.5 inch sniper's rifles are easily elephant killers, and would mess up a tiger no problems at full range even on a not particularly ideal hit. They are so powerful they are outside the Geneva convention.

Good luck carrying a Barrett or equivalent into the jungle and moving into a position where the tiger is. Tiger’s aren’t well known for standing about in open fields with long lines of sight.

Besides a 5.56 is just as potent an elephant killer, assuming you have an actual sniper handling the rifle, for all but the most extreme ranges.

[Gnoman]

Besides a 5.56 is just as potent an elephant killer, assuming you have an actual sniper handling the rifle, for all but the most extreme ranges.

No, it is not. Taking down a large animal requires a great deal of penetration that 5.56 simply does not have. More importantly, taking down a large animal quickly and humanely requires a great deal of energy transfer that 5.56 simply does not have. There's a reason that "elephant gun" or "big game stopping rifle" is an entire classification of weapon.

[Vinyadan]

No, it is not. Taking down a large animal requires a great deal of penetration that 5.56 simply does not have. More importantly, taking down a large animal quickly and humanely requires a great deal of energy transfer that 5.56 simply does not have. There's a reason that "elephant gun" or "big game stopping rifle" is an entire classification of weapon.

Would cavitation make up for that?