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Gryphonadmin
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Jan-26-14, 03:54 PM (EDT)
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"Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
 
   LAST EDITED ON Jan-26-14 AT 09:29 PM (EST)
 
(from the FD "Mojave" thread)

I thought about doing this as an FD, but it seemed a bit too precious somehow, so I'm just going to tell you about it.

>>(Blaster conversions for revolvers are
>>actually a pretty cool tech trick in the UF universe.)
>
>One imagines that that's the domain of some pretty hardcore hobbyists.

Oh, absolutely. Just to give you the flavor, the revolver blaster conversion technology Azula uses was originally developed by Kei Morgan. As a weapons designer, Kei was sort of on the borderline between Super-Hardcore Hobbyist and Actual Professional for most of her Golden Age career. Designing and building weapons was never her actual job, inasmuch as she never received a paycheck or punched a time clock for an arms manufacturer, but she did design a fair number of weapons that ended up being mass-produced by some pretty big names in the field. (It's mentioned in Shepard's 11, for instance, that Gin Shepard's favorite rifle, the M-96 Mattock marksman rifle, was a MorganArms design that was produced by the Wedge Defense Force Armory.)

So it's kind of a grey area as to whether she was really a hobbyist, as such, but she did do most of her work in a home workshop, and apart from the occasional one-off custom build on commission, if she got paid for what she did, it was generally after the fact. Also, quite a few of the things she invented were items for which there was no immediately evident demand, but rather ideas she had and then developed just to see if she could get them to work. The CCRE system was one of those.

>Given the utterly different engineering requirements, if you just want
>a blaster that looks like an old-fashioned slugthrower, it is probably
>easier and cheaper to have it scratch-built by a professional
>blastersmith1 than it is to convert an
>already existing slugthrower into a blaster.

OK, so, quick fake history lesson. In the 21st century, BlasTech (the Corellian company, makers of such giants in the field as the DL-44, the E-series, and the DC-series) came out with the BlasCap, which was marketed as "blaster ammunition for conventional firearms". The idea, basically, was that you would load a regular gun with BlasCaps, and then when you pulled the trigger, what would come out was a blaster bolt instead of a bullet. They touted it as adding a new dimension of versatility to conventionally armed forces etc. etc.

The trouble with the BlasCap was - well, there were actually three main troubles with the BlasCap. The first was that, in practice, it wasn't actually interchangeable with normal ammunition. Turns out firing a blaster bolt through a conventional gun barrel is a) woefully inaccurate and b) pretty bad for the barrel. After farting around with it for a while, BlasTech's engineers sort of solved this by developing an extremely cunning diamond-filament nanoweave barrel liner. This made BlasCaps work great, but also made it impossible, or at least highly inadvisable, to go back to using bullets.

They kept working on it for a while, but none of the later ideas - using nanites to deploy and rescind the lining based on some kind of RF indicator tag in the ammunition, for instance - could actually be made to work in a timely enough fashion without theoretically costing about the same as a battlecruiser, so they eventually just gave up. So it turned out you couldn't switch back and forth on the fly unless you felt like dismantling and remantling your weapon whenever you did it. Replacing the barrel in e.g. a Browning Hi-Power pistol is a fairly trivial task, but not trivial enough that you'd want to be doing it during a firefight.

The second was that the cunning system of microducts built into each round, which were meant to do clever things with waste gases so as to simulate the conventional-ammo outcomes necessary to operate most firearms, were not as universally reliable as they would have liked, such that there were some types of guns that would simply not work when loaded with BlasCaps. Having wasted so much time and money trying to solve the barrel problem, BlasTech's response to this problem was to publish a list of the models affected and call it a day - the "Doc, it hurts when I do this"/"Don't do that, then" solution. Some people in the galactic gun hobbyist community are still sore at them about that.

The third, which likewise no one ever seemed to be able to do anything about, was that they were and are redonkulously expensive. Which isn't really a surprise, when you think about it: Each one is, in effect, a very miniaturized single-shot holdout blaster in the shape of one round of conventional ammunition. There's microcircuitry in there, and a big capacitor, and a tiny tibanna gas reservoir (both of which had to be charged during the manufacturing process), and whatnot. They're insanely intricate little devices. Real marvels of technology, particularly for something designed to be expendable.

The result is that a typical BlasCap small-arms round - a .308 SNS (Salusian Navy Standard) round, say, of the kind fired by an MA5-series assault rifle - costs about a hundred times what a normal cartridge of the same type would cost. Given that the book calls for a Royal Salusian Marine in battle dress to carry 350 rounds of ammunition for his or her rifle, that... adds up a bit. The result of that is that BlasCap ammunition never became standard issue for any member of any organized armed force, anywhere, ever. No government, corporation, or other sponsoring body in the galaxy was ever that fiscally imprudent. Not even the WDF. We just bought everybody DC-15s. :)

BlasTech never took the BlasCap series out of production, because it's a slightly silly point of pride for BlasTech that they never take anything entirely out of production, but they've never sold well, and using them regularly is generally seen by the wider weapons-user community as an affectation or eccentricity. It's like using silver bullets when you're not even fighting werewolves - you're just showing off how rich you are. They're a very nichey niche product, is what I'm saying.

One day around 2100, Kei was playing around in her workshop with some BlasCap rounds and got to thinking about ways she could make them more useful. The first thing that occurred to her was that she could get rid of the second problem entirely simply by putting them in a gun that didn't need to be actuated by its own ammunition, such as the humble revolver, the mechanical working of which are powered by the operator.

That led automatically to a second problem, of course, which is that revolvers don't hold very many rounds. Most hold six, which was a bit of a liability even in a 20th-century gun battle and is just hopeless in a 22nd-century lightfight. She put the project aside and mulled it over for a while, until one day she happened across one of ReRob's engineering teams using a handheld pulse welder. This was an ingenious device, nowadays rarely seen, that used a rotating drum of tiny regenerating power cells (technical name "nanofusion breeders") to provide high-frequency pulses of energy which were then applied to the surface being welded. The rotating drum was necessary because, after discharging its payload in a microsecond burst, each NFB required about 500 milliseconds to recharge. The drum was sized and its turn rate calibrated such that by the time each one came around to firing position again, it would be ready to go.

Well, shit, thought Kei, and she scored a broken PW off Rob's tool crib attendant, took it back to her shop, and stripped it for parts. There were still a number of challenges to overcome - supply of blaster gas, for instance, which she ended up cracking with a very clever high-efficiency cyclonic microturbine and a small pellet of an exotic solid that vaporizes into an excitable gas at certain temperatures - but within a couple of years she'd perfected what she jokingly called "Colonel Colt's Re-Equalization System" (after the 19th-century joke that God made men, but Colonel Colt made them equal).

The upside of the CCRE System is pretty simple. If you take, for instance, an old Colt Official Police double-action revolver (the testbed Kei used for the original development project), fit it with a BlasCap barrel liner, and then load it with six .38 Special CCRE rounds - fifteen minutes' work if you know what you're doing, a couple of hours if you have to figure out how to install the barrel liner for the first time - you have... well, a blaster! Just like that!

A pretty heavy blaster, in fact, gauged strictly by its firepower, and insanely reliable thanks to the simplicity of its mechanical workings. Each CCRE round is good for a hundred firings before its gas supply is used up, and the NFBs work pretty much forever, so they can be reloaded if you have the right tools and access to the required material, too. In tactical terms, with a minuscule amount of forethought, you simply never have to concern yourself with reloading again.

The downside is that the system never actually went into production anywhere, so if you want six .38 Special CCRE rounds for your Official Police, you'll have to dig up the specs online and then make them yourself. But hey, if you've got the time and you're willing to haunt some swap meets and flea markets, you can probably score an old pulse welder for a few hundred credits. They usually had a couple dozen NFBs in them and you only need six that work. How hard can it be?

(NOTE: Quite hard, actually. Apart from the trickiness inherent in this kind of micro-making in the first place, nanofusion breeders can be temperamental little fuckers when they're not in some kind of containment system. People occasionally blow themselves up real good trying to extract them from dead PWs and build them into "blaster bullets". But hey, you can't make an omelet... )

There are other, somewhat less (or at least differently) baroque conversion systems - CCRE II, for instance, involves a tibanna gas reservoir built into the grip, so that the "rounds" only have to contain NFBs and miniaturized blaster guts, and you don't have to hunt down the weird material Kei used for gas vaporization in CCRE I. There's some pretty tricky microplumbing involved in that system, though - and even more so for CCRE III, which puts a single set of miniaturized blaster guts at the root of the barrel and only uses the rotating cylinder as an NFB transport.

Those are "refinements", so-called, made by later developers, anyway. In the original project, Kei was trying to come up with a system that involved as few modifications to the original weapon as possible, such that on a casual inspection, you wouldn't be able to spot it. That is definitely not the case for either of the alternative methods I've just described, particularly the second one.

Azula used CCRE I for That Gun, so technically, to convert it back to firing regular ammunition, she'd just have to rebarrel it (or strip the barrel liner back out, which certain nanites can be programmed to do).

>But that wouldn't be as much fun. :)

No, no it wouldn't. Besides which, going for convenience in such a situation rather misses the point. I mean, if all you want is a blaster that looks like an old-timey gun, buy a Colt M2311A1. Just be prepared for the people on the Sidearm Customization Forum to mock you mercilessly about it. :)

As an aside, the MorganArms production product Kei was proudest of, or at least most amused by, in the old days was the Bryar GP-41. In - coincidentally enough! - 2014, she'd customized a couple of old Bryar Model G blaster rifles for Gryphon by essentially chopping them into pistols, having reasoned that the Model G was a fairly anemic rifle by 21st-century standards, but would make a dandy pistol if the form factor was a little more convenient. These weapons would go on to become so iconic, figuring in so many of his Golden Age exploits, that in around 2200 Bryar introduced the GP-41: a new-production blaster pistol that looked like, but never had been, a modified mid-20th-century Model G.

They didn't sell very well - they were big and heavy by sidearm standards, the mass-produced version wasn't impressively reliable, and a lot of people either didn't trust or never got the hang of the overcharge function - and were out of production again by 2210, but for one brief shining moment, a company was building a mass-market version of a customization of one of the same company's own obsolete products. Kei always considered that a pretty good achievement unlock.

>1If this isn't a word, it should be.

Sure it is. It's the only logical thing to call them!

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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  Subject     Author     Message Date     ID  
  RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Polychrome Jan-27-14 1
     RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist SpottedKitty Jan-27-14 2
         RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Gryphonadmin Jan-27-14 4
     RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Gryphonadmin Jan-27-14 3
         RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist CdrMike Jan-27-14 14
             RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Mercutio Jan-27-14 15
                 RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Gryphonadmin Jan-27-14 16
                     RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Mercutio Jan-27-14 17
                     RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist BobSchroeck Jan-28-14 22
                         RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Gryphonadmin Jan-28-14 26
                 RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist CdrMike Jan-27-14 19
  RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist ebony14 Jan-27-14 5
     RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist McFortner Jan-27-14 18
         RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist ebony14 Jan-28-14 23
             RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist MuninsFire Jan-28-14 24
                 RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Gryphonadmin Jan-28-14 25
                     RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist MuninsFire Jan-28-14 27
                         RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Gryphonadmin Jan-28-14 28
                             RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist MuninsFire Jan-28-14 29
                                 RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist ebony14 Jan-29-14 30
  RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Nova Floresca Jan-27-14 6
     RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Gryphonadmin Jan-27-14 7
         RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist SpottedKitty Jan-28-14 20
             RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist pjmoyermoderator Jan-28-14 21
             RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Berrik Feb-12-14 48
             RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Zemyla Mar-10-14 49
                 RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Gryphonadmin Mar-10-14 50
                     RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist mdg1 Mar-10-14 51
                         RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Gryphonadmin Mar-10-14 52
     RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Vehrec Feb-02-14 33
         RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Gryphonadmin Feb-02-14 34
             RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Nova Floresca Feb-03-14 35
  RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Mercutio Jan-27-14 8
  RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist MuninsFire Jan-27-14 9
     RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Gryphonadmin Jan-27-14 10
         RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Gryphonadmin Jan-27-14 11
         RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist MuninsFire Jan-27-14 12
             RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Gryphonadmin Jan-27-14 13
             RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Prince Charon Feb-01-14 31
         RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist MoonEyes Feb-02-14 32
  RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Nathan Feb-03-14 36
     RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Gryphonadmin Feb-03-14 37
         RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Pasha Feb-03-14 38
             RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Gryphonadmin Feb-03-14 39
                 RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Mercutio Feb-03-14 40
                     RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Gryphonadmin Feb-03-14 41
                         RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist pjmoyermoderator Feb-03-14 42
                             RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist mdg1 Feb-03-14 43
                 RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Pasha Feb-03-14 44
                     RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Peter Eng Feb-04-14 45
                 RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Bushido Feb-05-14 46
                     RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist Gryphonadmin Feb-05-14 47

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Polychrome
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Jan-27-14, 01:01 AM (EDT)
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1. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #0
 
   Copying a different bit from the Mojave thread that seems more appropriate here:

>* An "automated" revolver is not the same as an automatic one. It simply means that the cylinder advance and the crane which actuates the cylinder for reloading are servo-assisted, not that the weapon has an automatic fire mode.

Why would such a thing be needed? As you noted, a revolver is turned by the trigger pull, and if a shooter isn't strong enough to do so they probably can't handle the recoil anyway.

Polychrome

If the answer is "Because it's cool" then well, rock on.


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SpottedKitty
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Jan-27-14, 01:40 AM (EDT)
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2. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #1
 
   Not all revolvers are equal. There was the Webley-Fosbury "automatic" revolver, which some WW1 officers preferred as their personal weapon. (Not many; the mechanism was horribly easy to jam with dust or mud.) This sounds like it could have been similar to a powered Webley-Fosbury.

So, this was the conversion technique for the gun used in that CSI-NA episode where one of them was shot? Interesting.

--
Unable to save the day: File is read-only.


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Gryphonadmin
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Jan-27-14, 09:44 AM (EDT)
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4. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #2
 
   LAST EDITED ON Jan-27-14 AT 09:47 AM (EST)
 
>Not all revolvers are equal. There was the Webley-Fosbury "automatic"
>revolver, which some WW1 officers preferred as their personal weapon.
>(Not many; the mechanism was horribly easy to jam with dust or mud.)

Ah, the mighty Webley-Fosbery: a solution in search of a problem, in the grand British tradition. Probably most famous as the murder weapon in The Maltese Falcon; also Inaho's sidearm in Master of Mosquiton. Mimi Shinguuji carries one in UF, because, let's face it, she is from a long line of people who didn't need to concern themselves with the practicalities. :)

Anyway, that's why I drew a distinction between automatic and "automated" revolvers. The former is an attempt at devising a revolver that prepares itself for the next firing; the latter is more akin to a car with power steering. The servos in That Gun are just there to make operating it easier and quicker. (Note that, as far as I am aware, automated revolvers are entirely fictional.)

>So, this was the conversion technique for the gun used in that CSI-NA
>episode where one of them was shot? Interesting.

Indeed, that's another niche use for BlasCaps: muddying the waters forensically. Didn't work in this case, because that's not Yelena Belova's dharma, but assassins do make the gesture now and again.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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Gryphonadmin
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Jan-27-14, 09:40 AM (EDT)
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3. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #1
 
   >Why would such a thing be needed?

Beats me, but it is; the reloading animations for That Gun in Fallout: New Vegas clearly show that the cylinder crane is motorized. It's quite heavy for a handgun - 5 pounds - and it shoots 5.56mm NATO, which is a rifle cartridge (the M-16/AR-15 family uses it), so perhaps it's just to speed up the process. That doesn't necessarily imply that the chamber advance is powered as well, but if you're building a servo into the works at that point anyway, why not?

It's worth noting that some DA revolvers have woefully stiff lockwork, too. I have a Soviet-made Nagant 1895 revolver which is ostensibly double action, but you'd have to be Dean from The Tick ("he has the strongest hands in the criminal world!") to fire with any alacrity in that mode, and the deflection from such a heavy trigger pull would mean you'd be all over the shop accuracy-wise.

>If the answer is "Because it's cool" then well, rock on.

This is also entirely possible. That Gun is based on Deckard's gun from Blade Runner, and that in turn is a wholly illogical combination of two guns and a bunch of other stuff that doesn't go together in any way that makes sense beyond "the prop guy thought this would look badass, and he was totally right."

Also, when you've finished reloading and close the cylinder again, it makes the photo-strobe whine, which is never a bad call art-design-wise. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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CdrMike
Member since Feb-20-05
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Jan-27-14, 08:02 PM (EDT)
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14. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #3
 
   >Beats me, but it is; the reloading animations for That Gun in
>Fallout: New Vegas clearly show that the cylinder crane is
>motorized. It's quite heavy for a handgun - 5 pounds - and it shoots
>5.56mm NATO, which is a rifle cartridge (the M-16/AR-15 family uses
>it), so perhaps it's just to speed up the process. That doesn't
>necessarily imply that the chamber advance is powered as well, but if
>you're building a servo into the works at that point anyway, why not?

My inner Vault Dweller niggled me to point out that That Gun has a storied history in the Fallout-verse. In FO1, it's simply ".223 pistol," a quest item won by clearing out a house full of raiders for a farmer. In game lore, it's explained as a chopped and modded .223 rifle, sort of like Tali's Bryar scatter gun. Because it was the most powerful slugthrower in the game but ate bog-standard .223 rounds, it became an iconic gun in the franchise. It's why when they added it to FNV as something you could find at Cliff's shop, game-testers kept referring to it as "That gun from the old Fallout games," hence the name That Gun.

--------------------------
CdrMike, Overwatch Reject

"You know, the world could always use more heroes." - Tracer, Overwatch


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Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
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Jan-27-14, 08:22 PM (EDT)
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15. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #14
 
   Man, I've never understood you guys who play Fallout games using pistols and light armor one second longer than necessary.

Step One: Find Arcade. Pester the fuck out of him until he and his formerly fascist buddies teach you how to use Power Armor. (Because honestly, dealing with the Brotherhood is just fatiguing.)

There is no step two. You load up the heaviest, awesomest, death-dealingest hardware available and murder everything. I'm talking the Gobi. The riot shotgun, for close quarters work (a favorite for clearing ghouls out of vaults or super mutants indoors.) The SMMG. The Smitty Special. The Sprtl-Wood 9700. The Q-35 maybe, if I'm going to be out in the field away from my repair benches for awhile. Really, anything using plasma. Red Glare if I'm feeling nasty.

Pistols are for that awkward period when you're still basing out of the hotel in Novac and the hunting revolver still seems like the best weapon ever.

-Merc
Keep Rat


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Gryphonadmin
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Jan-27-14, 08:33 PM (EDT)
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16. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #15
 
   >Man, I've never understood you guys who play Fallout games using
>pistols and light armor one second longer than necessary.

Heavy weapons are for people who are compensating for something.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
942 posts
Jan-27-14, 08:38 PM (EDT)
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17. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #16
 
   >>Man, I've never understood you guys who play Fallout games using
>>pistols and light armor one second longer than necessary.
>
>Heavy weapons are for people who are compensating for something.

No question, you're right about this.

In my case, it's my complete inability to dodge incoming damage (I always seem to back off a cliff or sidestep right into a wall or step on my own goddamn mine when I try and do that) and my sub-par accuracy when I'm not half a mile away peering through a scope.

Heavy weapons and armor definitely compensate for that. Oh yes they do. :)

-Merc
Keep Rat


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BobSchroeck
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Jan-28-14, 08:36 AM (EDT)
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22. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #16
 
   >Heavy weapons are for people who are compensating for something.

I don't play Fallout, but a couple we know do, and their shared philosophy is neither of these, but rather "be the best goddamn sniper in the world". Their characters are always good with short-range weapons, but only because sometimes the target charges faster than you can bring it down. But I've seen them clear out whole cave complexes and that one abandoned tent camp in an arroyo somewhere in FNV without ever getting within smelling distance of any of the beasties lurking therein. Then they just stroll in and loot the corpses.

-- Bob
-------------------
My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite.


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Gryphonadmin
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Jan-28-14, 02:09 PM (EDT)
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26. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #22
 
   >>Heavy weapons are for people who are compensating for something.
>
>I don't play Fallout, but a couple we know do, and their shared
>philosophy is neither of these, but rather "be the best goddamn sniper
>in the world".

That can be fun too, though it's not a universally applicable strategy. I had a playthrough where I handled more or less the entire Fiends gang that way, shooting into the ruins west of McCarran Field at extreme range with the .50-caliber anti-materiel rifle until I ran out of red blips, then moving on to other matters. None of them ever had any idea what was going on or who was responsible. By the time I got around to descending into Vault 3, Motor-Runner must've been sitting there wondering where everybody went, because there had been no Fiends left alive above ground for at least a week by then. To complete the bounty mission from that one guy at McCarran, all I had to do was go in and find the corpses I needed; I'd already killed their owners days ago. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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CdrMike
Member since Feb-20-05
889 posts
Jan-27-14, 11:45 PM (EDT)
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19. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #15
 
   >Man, I've never understood you guys who play Fallout games using
>pistols and light armor one second longer than necessary.
>
>Step One: Find Arcade. Pester the fuck out of him until he and his
>formerly fascist buddies teach you how to use Power Armor. (Because
>honestly, dealing with the Brotherhood is just fatiguing.)

It's better than the first time around. In FO1, just to enter the BoS bunker, you had two choices: Invest in a set of electronic lockpicks to pop open the front door, or take a quest to delve into The Glow, a former weapons lab that was ground zero for a nuke strike and so pumps out enough radiation to melt your bones without a couple doses of RadX. By comparison, Vault 22 is a bit of a breeze.

>There is no step two. You load up the heaviest, awesomest,
>death-dealingest hardware available and murder everything. I'm talking
>the Gobi. The riot shotgun, for close quarters work (a favorite for
>clearing ghouls out of vaults or super mutants indoors.) The SMMG. The
>Smitty Special. The Sprtl-Wood 9700. The Q-35 maybe, if I'm going to
>be out in the field away from my repair benches for awhile. Really,
>anything using plasma. Red Glare if I'm feeling nasty.

Out of all those, the Q-35 is the only one I carry regularly. I hold to the 1st Recon motto: "The last thing you never see." Sniper rifles and silenced pistols for anything outside of shotgun range.

>Pistols are for that awkward period when you're still basing out of
>the hotel in Novac and the hunting revolver still seems like the best
>weapon ever.

Hunting revolver's got nothing on the Weathered 10mm Pistol, particularly because 10mm is pretty plentiful even early in the game.

--------------------------
CdrMike, Overwatch Reject

"You know, the world could always use more heroes." - Tracer, Overwatch


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ebony14
Member since Jul-11-11
437 posts
Jan-27-14, 10:26 AM (EDT)
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5. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #0
 
   LAST EDITED ON Jan-27-14 AT 10:28 AM (EST)
 
It's like using silver bullets when you're not even fighting werewolves - you're just showing off how rich you are.

Ranger John Reid might take exception to that, but Tonto would probably point out that they do, in fact, have a silver mine, so Kemosabe should just shut up and nod.

The downside is that the system never actually went into production anywhere, so if you want six .38 Special CCRE rounds for your Official Police, you'll have to dig up the specs online and then make them yourself. But hey, if you've got the time and you're willing to haunt some swap meets and flea markets, you can probably score an old pulse welder for a few hundred credits. They usually had a couple dozen NFBs in them and you only need six that work. How hard can it be?

There's at least one episode of "CSI: New Avalon" in that statement, I'm sure.


Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."


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McFortner
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Jan-27-14, 10:53 PM (EDT)
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18. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #5
 
   >Ranger John Reid might take exception to that, but Tonto would
>probably point out that they do, in fact, have a silver mine, so
>Kemosabe should just shut up and nod.

The in-universe explanation originally was that it was a reminder to him of how expensive a human life was. That fell by the wayside when it became a good way to authenticate his identity without a Lens.

Michael C. Fortner
"Maxim 37: There is no such thing as "overkill".
There is only "open fire" and "I need to reload".


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ebony14
Member since Jul-11-11
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Jan-28-14, 10:13 AM (EDT)
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23. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #18
 
   >>Ranger John Reid might take exception to that, but Tonto would
>>probably point out that they do, in fact, have a silver mine, so
>>Kemosabe should just shut up and nod.
>
>The in-universe explanation originally was that it was a reminder to
>him of how expensive a human life was. That fell by the wayside when
>it became a good way to authenticate his identity without a Lens.

I'm aware of the Ranger's rationale, and it still stands. However, in the most recent comic reimagining, the source of the silver is a silver mine under the Widow Reid's (the Ranger's sister-in-law) ranch, accessible through a cave on her property that is some distance from the Reid Family Home. (Yes, Dynamite Comics gave the Lone Ranger a BatRanger Cave.)

Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."


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MuninsFire
Member since Mar-27-07
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Jan-28-14, 12:52 PM (EDT)
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24. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #23
 
   Does he have a silver smelting rig in his cave as well? Kinda hard to hide the smoke from that kind of operation...

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea


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Gryphonadmin
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Jan-28-14, 01:57 PM (EDT)
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25. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #24
 
   LAST EDITED ON Jan-28-14 AT 03:16 PM (EST)
 
>Does he have a silver smelting rig in his cave as well? Kinda hard to
>hide the smoke from that kind of operation...

Heh, it's worse than that, even. There's a passage in Mark Twain's Roughing It where he describes his time working in a quartz mill (i.e., a silver refinery) in Nevada Territory in the early 1860s. He goes into considerable detail about the ridiculously complicated, high-overhead process of extracting useful silver from ore that was used in the 19th century:

CHAPTER XXXVI

I had already learned how hard and long and dismal a task it is to burrow down into the bowels of the earth and get out the coveted ore; and now I learned that the burrowing was only half the work; and that to get the silver out of the ore was the dreary and laborious other half of it. We had to turn out at six in the morning and keep at it till dark. This mill was a six-stamp affair, driven by steam. Six tall, upright rods of iron, as large as a man's ankle, and heavily shod with a mass of iron and steel at their lower ends, were framed together like a gate, and these rose and fell, one after the other, in a ponderous dance, in an iron box called a "battery." Each of these rods or stamps weighed six hundred pounds. One of us stood by the battery all day long, breaking up masses of silver-bearing rock with a sledge and shoveling it into the battery. The ceaseless dance of the stamps pulverized the rock to powder, and a stream of water that trickled into the battery turned it to a creamy paste. The minutest particles were driven through a fine wire screen which fitted close around the battery, and were washed into great tubs warmed by super-heated steam - amalgamating pans, they are called. The mass of pulp in the pans was kept constantly stirred up by revolving "mullers." A quantity of quicksilver was kept always in the battery, and this seized some of the liberated gold and silver particles and held on to them; quicksilver was shaken in a fine shower into the pans, also, about every half hour, through a buckskin sack. Quantities of coarse salt and sulphate of copper were added, from time to time to assist the amalgamation by destroying base metals which coated the gold and silver and would not let it unite with the quicksilver. All these tiresome things we had to attend to constantly. Streams of dirty water flowed always from the pans and were carried off i broad wooden troughs to the ravine. One would not suppose that atoms of gold and silver would float on top of six inches of water, but they did; and in order to catch them, coarse blankets were laid in the troughs, and little obstructing "riffles" charged with quicksilver were placed here and there across the troughs also. These riffles had to be cleaned and the blankets washed out every evening, to get their precious accumulations - and after all this eternity of trouble one third of the silver and gold in a ton of rock would find its way to the end of the troughs in the ravine at last and have to be worked over again some day. There is nothing so aggravating as silver milling. There never was any idle time in that mill. There was always something to do. it is a pity that Adam could not have gone straight out of Eden into a quartz mill, in order to understand the full force of his doom to "earn his bread by the sweat of his brow." Every now and then, during the day, we had to scoop some pulp out of the pans, and tediously "wash" it in a horn spoon - wash it little by little over the edge till at last nothing was left but some little dull globules of quicksilver in the bottom. If they were soft and yielding, the pan needed some salt or some sulphate of copper or some other chemical rubbish to assist digestion; if they were crisp to the touch and would retain a dint, they were freighted with all the silver and gold they could seize and hold, and consequently the pans needed a fresh charge of quicksilver. When there was nothing else to do, one could always "screen tailings." That is to say, he could shovel up the dried sand that had washed down to the ravine through the troughs and prepare it for working over. The process of amalgamation differed in the various mills, and this included changes in style of pans and other machinery, and a great diversity of opinion existed as to the best in use, but none of the methods employed, involved the principle of milling ore without "screening the tailings." Of all recreations in the world, screening tailings on a hot day, with a long-handled shovel, is the most undesirable.

At the end of the week the machinery was stopped and we "cleaned up." That is to say, we got the pulp out of the pans and batteries, and washed the mud patiently away till nothing was left by the long accumulating mass of quicksilver, with its imprisoned treasures. This we made into heavy, compact snow-balls, and piled them up in a bright, luxurious heap for inspection. Making these snow-balls cost me a fine gold ring - that and ignorance together; for the quicksilver invaded the ring with the same facility with which water saturates a sponge - separated its particles and the ring crumbled to pieces.

We put our pile of quicksilver balls into an iron retort that had a pipe leading from it to a pail of water, and then applied a roasting heat. The quicksilver turned to vapor, escaped through the pipe into the pail, and the water turned into good wholesome quicksilver again. Quicksilver is very costly, and they never waste it. On opening the retort, there was our week's work - a lump of pure, white, frosty looking silver, twice as large as a man's head. Perhaps a fifth of the mass was gold, but the color of it did not show - would not have shown if two thirds of it had been gold. We melted it up and made a solid brick of it by pouring it into an iron brick-mould.

By such a tedious and laborious process were silver bricks obtained. This mill was but one of many others in operation at the time. The first one in Nevada was built at Egan Canyon and was a small insignificant affair and compared most unfavorably with some of the immense establishments afterward located at Virginia City and elsewhere.

Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad / Roughing It (New York: The Library of America, 1984), 713-715.

This account has disturbing implications, because it appears that not only was the Lone Ranger somehow managing to conceal an elaborate industrial operation, he must have been employing a significant labor force... one which was completely out of contact with the outside world, evidently, since no one had ever heard of it. That's more than a little foreboding.

(Yes, I know, I'm sure it really just means that the writer of that particular explanation didn't know silver doesn't just occur in splendid chemical isolation like some other metals, but you have to admit, the implied use of slave labor puts an ominous cast on all of the Lone Ranger's already-kind-of-dubious activities. :)

As an aside, let me just take the opportunity to throw out another plug - because I'm sure I've recommended it before - for the Library of America Innocents Abroad/Roughing It combo edition. My two favorite Twain books - two of my favorite books, period - in one compact, durable volume. It's my desert-island book. Weirdly, Amazon is claiming that it's out of print - I say "weirdly" because the whole point of the LoA is that they never go out of print - but it's still listed at the LoA's own website. I know $31.50 is a lot for a book, but considering that it's actually two books, and how beautifully it's made, I think it's reasonable. The Library of America's production quality is one of those rare things that lives up to its hype.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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MuninsFire
Member since Mar-27-07
457 posts
Jan-28-14, 02:57 PM (EDT)
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27. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #25
 
   LAST EDITED ON Jan-28-14 AT 03:14 PM (EST) by Gryphon (admin)
 
I'll add my endorsement to yours, because Roughing It is a wonderful book, and I love it right to death.

The Lone Ranger wouldn't necessarily need a steam-driven six-stamp mill, mind; you -can- smelt silver in small quantities "by hand" with a great deal of hammer work; there's a work by a fellow named Georgius Agricola called "De Re Metallica"--translated by, of all people, Herbert Hoover, who you may recognize as a former US President--that describes medieval german methods of performing ore extractions and the like.

Bullets don't weigh all -that- much, so it's theoretically plausible that he and Tonto could spend a couple weeks on a particularly rich seam and get enough materials for a few dozen bullets, but that's still going to have some pretty obvious signs, what with having to take care of the tailings and all the smoke from the smelting operation.

See, the ancient method of silver smelting didn't necessarily involve mercury, but involved heating it with lead ore, to give a lead/silver admixture, which could then be refined to get the silver out. Needless to say, that's a health hazard right there--but it's a relatively low-temperature "artisinal" method of silver extraction that one or two people could manage relatively easily.


From "De Re Metallica"

The smelter extracts the slags from the forehearth with a hooked bar; if the ore to be smelted is rich in gold or silver he puts into the forehearth a centumpondium of lead, or half as much if the ore is poor, because the former requires much lead, the latter little; he immediately throws burning firebrands on to the lead so that it melts. Afterward he performs everything according to the usual manner and order, whereby he first throws into the furnace as many cakes melted from pyrites, as he requires to smelt the ore; then he puts in two wicker baskets full of ore with litharge and hearth-lead, and stones which fuse easily by fire of the second order, all mixed together; then one wicker basket full of charcoal, and lastly the slags. The furnace now being filled with all the things I have mentioned, the ore is slowly smelted; he does not put too much of it against the back wall of the furnace, lest sows should form around the nozzles of the bellows and the blast be impeded and the fire burn less fiercely.

Fancy words aside, that's the bit after you light the furnace and get a good solid blast going--stick a big pool of lead on the hearth for the metals to melt into, and then charge the heated furnace with your ore load. "Sows" are, I think, bits of hardened slag--slag being kind of a mixed blessing, as it's required as a flux to extract the ore, but too much will quash your operation entirely.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea


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Gryphonadmin
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Jan-28-14, 03:18 PM (EDT)
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28. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #27
 
   >The Lone Ranger wouldn't necessarily need a steam-driven six-stamp
>mill, mind

Well, no, but the method Twain describes was the current one in the 19th-century American Southwest, so it's most likely to be the one a Texas Ranger of the same period would've been familiar with. One isn't sure how many copies of De Re Metallica were in circulation in those parts at that time. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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MuninsFire
Member since Mar-27-07
457 posts
Jan-28-14, 03:38 PM (EDT)
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29. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #28
 
   You'd be surprised--up until very immediately prior to Twain's time, those methods described in De Re Metallica were state-of-the-art for some hundreds of years. The miners that were imported to the area from Europe to work the mines would have learned their trade from, if not that book, people who were using the methods described in the book.

Probably more from other people using those methods, though. Literacy was pretty shaky :-)

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea


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ebony14
Member since Jul-11-11
437 posts
Jan-29-14, 10:08 AM (EDT)
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30. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #29
 
   In all honesty, I'd have to dig out the early issues of the Dynamite! comics run and see. I do recall that it has a certain sort of "Bat Cave" feel to it, with a set of tools and various equipment for caring for the Ranger and Tonto's weapons, plus a collection of other plot-device specific materiel. As for De Re Metallica, John Reid was, I think, sent away to college by his father and brother, in an attempt to keep him out of the Texas Rangers (to Chicago, I think; they had a story arc a few months ago where the pair have to go there to deal with a villain, and the Ranger reminisces about his time in the Big City). It's possible that he would know of it and other esoteric academic knowledge through that. It's worked in other pulp stories, for other pulp characters.

Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."


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Nova Floresca
Member since Sep-13-13
556 posts
Jan-27-14, 11:44 AM (EDT)
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6. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #0
 
   In re: "blastsmith", the term "plasmonger" came to mind for some reason, although strictly speaking that might be a different field of weapons? The idea comes to mind though of somehow taking a tap off a starship's plasma conduits and plugging that into a PPG. I imagine that immediately afterward someone would be having a Very Bad Day, although it would be debatable if the person in front or behind the PPG is going to be worse off.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."


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Gryphonadmin
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Jan-27-14, 11:51 AM (EDT)
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7. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #6
 
   >The idea comes to mind though of somehow taking a tap off a
>starship's plasma conduits and plugging that into a PPG. I imagine
>that immediately afterward someone would be having a Very Bad Day

Indubitably, if by "immediately afterward" you mean "about five milliseconds later", and by "someone" you mean "the person who thought that would work". That's like trying to charge an iPod with one of those giant high-tension transmission lines you see up on antenna-like pylons by the sides of major highways in the Midwest. All you're going to do is blow it, and probably yourself, up. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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SpottedKitty
Member since Jun-15-04
605 posts
Jan-28-14, 02:28 AM (EDT)
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20. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #7
 
   The way this whole thread's gone since I last looked at it, I'm waiting to hear about the time Kei sobered up after a boring weekend and was surprised to discover she'd built a Gyrojet.

--
Unable to save the day: File is read-only.


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pjmoyermoderator
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Jan-28-14, 02:43 AM (EDT)
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21. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #20
 
   >The way this whole thread's gone since I last looked at it, I'm
>waiting to hear about the time Kei sobered up after a boring weekend
>and was surprised to discover she'd built a Gyrojet.

Obviously after reading (and not quite believing) something about the up-and-coming Mr. Flexington's company and their... unique line of weapons.

--- Philip
EXPLOSIONS??!!





Philip J. Moyer
Contributing Writer, Editor and Artist (and Moderator) -- Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
CEO of MTS, High Poobah Of Artwork, and High Priest Of the Church Of Aerianne -- Magnetic Terrapin Studios
"Insert Pithy Comment Here"


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Berrik
Member since Jul-10-07
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Feb-12-14, 01:02 AM (EDT)
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48. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #20
 
   >The way this whole thread's gone since I last looked at it, I'm
>waiting to hear about the time Kei sobered up after a boring weekend
>and was surprised to discover she'd built a Gyrojet.
>
>--
>Unable to save the day: File is read-only.

Actually, I'd imagine gyrojets (or similar weapons) come in quite handy in microgravity environments where you don't want to use blasters for whatever reason.


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Zemyla
Member since Mar-26-08
430 posts
Mar-10-14, 07:04 AM (EDT)
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49. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #20
 
   Honestly, with weapon tech and miniaturization that is available in the UF universe, I can imagine you could make bullets with integral thrust vectoring and sensors - basically, missiles without warheads that fit in a normal gun.

Obviously, they'd be expensive as hell compared to normal bullets, but considering that you could nail someone around a corner or holding a hostage with very little risk, or perhaps snipe someone several miles away, they'd probably see quite a bit of use.


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Gryphonadmin
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Mar-10-14, 07:42 AM (EDT)
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50. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #49
 
   >Honestly, with weapon tech and miniaturization that is available in
>the UF universe, I can imagine you could make bullets with integral
>thrust vectoring and sensors - basically, missiles without warheads
>that fit in a normal gun.
>
>Obviously, they'd be expensive as hell compared to normal bullets, but
>considering that you could nail someone around a corner or holding a
>hostage with very little risk, or perhaps snipe someone several miles
>away, they'd probably see quite a bit of use.

SEE ALSO: Runaway (1984; Tom Selleck, Gene Simmons)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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mdg1
Member since Aug-25-04
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Mar-10-14, 08:45 AM (EDT)
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51. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #50
 
   Or the "Hand Of God" from RISE OF THE TRAID, for those as old as I am. :)

Actually, isn't one of the Lawgiver rounds a heat-seeker?

Mario


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Gryphonadmin
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Mar-10-14, 01:52 PM (EDT)
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52. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #51
 
   LAST EDITED ON Mar-10-14 AT 01:54 PM (EDT)
 
>Actually, isn't one of the Lawgiver rounds a heat-seeker?

Probably. There's a Lawgiver ammo type for every occasion, after all.

"Each of [the Mandarin's rings] has its own specialized attack mode, such as - " (grunts in pain) " - ice. There's also fire, light, disintegration, mind control... I think one of them defeats DVD region coding... electricity... did I mention electricity... ?"

- Iron Man's internal monologue, The Invincible Iron Man Vol. 3 No. 69 (August 2003)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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Vehrec
Member since Feb-21-09
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Feb-02-14, 09:26 PM (EDT)
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33. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #6
 
   >In re: "blastsmith", the term "plasmonger" came to mind for some
>reason, although strictly speaking that might be a different field of
>weapons? The idea comes to mind though of somehow taking a tap off a
>starship's plasma conduits and plugging that into a PPG. I imagine
>that immediately afterward someone would be having a Very Bad Day,
>although it would be debatable if the person in front or behind the
>PPG is going to be worse off.
>
>"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."


Now THIS reminds me of the fanfic Hull 721, where the Imperial Star Destroyer Black Princes' Port 4 turret commander gets dissatisfied with the level of BOOM in his standard issue sidearm and pesters the Chief Engineer into making something...custom.

It winds up being a distruptor pistol built to the same design standards and energy tolerances as a capital ship turbolaser, just scaled down to something that can fit in the palm of your hand-and blow out the side of a restaurant when you squeeze off one of the extremely limited number of shots it has. Rather like the dismounted X-wing cannon that the Wraiths used to board their Corvette in the amount of firepower it offers. But you only get one to three shots, and it's insanely illegal. After all, a handgun with one shot that can vaporize an entire government if they bunch up is kinda an ideal assassin's weapon.

“Navigare Necesse Est”-'Get me out of here!'

Group Captain Konstantin Vehrec


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Gryphonadmin
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22375 posts
Feb-02-14, 09:39 PM (EDT)
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34. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #33
 
   >It winds up being a distruptor pistol built to the same design
>standards and energy tolerances as a capital ship turbolaser, just
>scaled down to something that can fit in the palm of your hand-and
>blow out the side of a restaurant when you squeeze off one of the
>extremely limited number of shots it has.

DANNY VERMIN
I got somethin' that'll stop him.

(He hauls out an ENORMOUS GUN.)

DUTCH
They made it for him special. It's an .88 Magnum.

DANNY VERMIN
It shoots through schools.

--G.
"This goes through armor. And the victim. And the wall behind him. And a tree outside... "
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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Nova Floresca
Member since Sep-13-13
556 posts
Feb-03-14, 12:05 PM (EDT)
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35. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #34
 
   And of course, to prove yet again that truth is stranger than fiction (and some people hate their wrists with a burning passion), I present to you the most ridiculous handgun ever produced for sale:

The Taurus Raging Bull 2" snub revolver, in .500 Magnum

For when you absolutely have to have a gun that will fit in your pocket, chambering a round designed to take down bears.

(The link is to a 3rd-party handgun enthusiast. For some strange reason, Taurus stopped making this cartridge/barrel combination . . .)

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."


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Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
942 posts
Jan-27-14, 12:23 PM (EDT)
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8. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #0
 
   >(from the FD "Mojave" thread)
>
>I thought about doing this as an FD, but it seemed a bit too precious
>somehow, so I'm just going to tell you about it.

Well, for what it's worth, this would make a heck of an FD, in my opinion. Probably as a Galactipedia entry, because it has that "this article was written by someone who is a colossal nerd about the esoteric subject at hand" tone, but also possibly as a set of IPO inter-office memos attached to Upward Mobility as ancillary materiel.

Of course, you're talking to a man who reads old West End Games sourcebooks purely for the tech porn.

> Designing and building weapons was never her
>actual job, inasmuch as she never received a paycheck or
>punched a time clock for an arms manufacturer, but she did design a
>fair number of weapons that ended up being mass-produced by some
>pretty big names in the field.

Well, if she got royalty checks, I'd say it was her actual job, but Kei's job is basically "Galactic Badass", which means that a whole host of other professions that would in most people be entire careers end up being ancillary to her main line of work.

>So it's kind of a grey area as to whether she was really a hobbyist,
>as such, but she did do most of her work in a home workshop

Yeah, but a home workshop on the Wayward Son by a senior WDF officer is probably the equivalent of a well-equipped R&D lab with its own fabrication shop anywhere else in the galaxy. :)

>OK, so, quick fake history lesson. In the 21st century, BlasTech (the
>Corellian company, makers of such giants in the field as the DL-44,
>the E-series, and the DC-series) came out with the BlasCap, which was
>marketed as "blaster ammunition for conventional firearms". The idea,
>basically, was that you would load a regular gun with BlasCaps, and
>then when you pulled the trigger, what would come out was a blaster
>bolt instead of a bullet. They touted it as adding a new dimension of
>versatility to conventionally armed forces etc. etc.

One imagines that this was in response to the Earth markets opening up to them; there would have been an awful lot of people who wanted to get on the new energy-weapons train but wondered what to do with all their old slugthrowers. The BlasCap would probably have served that market incredibly well if they'd been able to get costs down. Probably also easier to smuggle.

>The third, which likewise no one ever seemed to be able to do anything
>about, was that they were and are redonkulously expensive.
>Which isn't really a surprise, when you think about it: Each one is,
>in effect, a very miniaturized single-shot holdout blaster in the
>shape of one round of conventional ammunition. There's microcircuitry
>in there, and a big capacitor, and a tiny tibanna gas reservoir (both
>of which had to be charged during the manufacturing process), and
>whatnot.

They probably also have a pretty limited shelf life, then. I mean, regular cartridges don't keep forever either, but...

>The result is that a typical BlasCap small-arms round - a .308 SNS
>(Salusian Navy Standard) round, say, of the kind fired by an
>MA5-series assault rifle - costs about a hundred times what a normal
>cartridge of the same type would cost. Given that the book calls for
>a Royal Salusian Marine in battle dress to carry 350 rounds of
>ammunition for his or her rifle, that... adds up a bit.

I would expect that, while they no doubt use slugthrowers in a variety of roles, the Royal Salusian Marines would have a blaster as their standard rifle, really. Assuming that their primary zones of responsibility are "shipboard security/boarding actions" and "be the tip of the spear when it comes to establishing a spacehead on a hostile planet" (I could be wrong about that)... in the former case you'd want weapons with the lowest chance of puncturing the hull and still being effective, and in the latter case you'd want to keep your logistics chain as simple as possible, which means tibanna gas cartidges, charge packs, and a few field generators to recharge said charge packs. Still a lot of gear, but much simpler to handle than tons and tons and tons and TONS of slugthrower ammo.

As my own aside, as noted above in the thread by others, this actually clears up one of this niggling questions I'd had about CSI:NA for awhile. I'd always assumed somehow that a BlasCap was some kind of uberstealthy one-shot holdout blaster that produced wounds that were largely indistinguishable from regular blasters, which meant people would waste time looking for a weapon that doesn't actually exist.

It turns out that I wasn't actually wrong about that, I guess, but I wasn't right in the way I thought I was either. It wasn't precisely keeping me up nights, but it was one of those little things.

>Sure it is. It's the only logical thing to call them!

For all I knew, they'd stuck with "gunsmith". :)

-Merc
Keep Rat


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MuninsFire
Member since Mar-27-07
457 posts
Jan-27-14, 01:13 PM (EDT)
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9. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #0
 
   This discussion rather reminds me on the reams of discussions out there about how to convert a cap-and-ball revolver--say, the Colt Navy 1851--into a cartridge firing revolver, as well as the hundreds of people who will shout at you not to do that.

(The 1851 Navy is a very pretty revolver. I have a repro.)

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea


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Gryphonadmin
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Jan-27-14, 02:19 PM (EDT)
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10. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #9
 
   >This discussion rather reminds me on the reams of discussions out
>there about how to convert a cap-and-ball revolver--say, the Colt Navy
>1851--into a cartridge firing revolver, as well as the hundreds of
>people who will shout at you not to do that.

The funny part is that cartridge conversions are totally period - they were sold as kits, and a great many people who couldn't afford a whole new gun bought and applied them to their Civil War-vintage cap-and-ball revolvers. Virtually all the sidearms you see in old Westerns that aren't Single Action Army Colts are either Colt 1851/1861 Navy or Remington 1858 New Model Army revolvers with cartridge conversions.

I have a vague memory of watching an old Western once in which the hero's adherence to percussion ignition was a plot point. The film was set in the 1880s, long after metallic cartridges had become the norm, and the main character carried an 1858 New Model Army that hadn't been converted. There's a scene where he knows he's going to have to fight basically everybody in town the next morning, and he sits at a table in his rented room and painstakingly loads three or four whole cylinders for his gun, and during the giant climactic gunfight, he reloads by swapping them out wholesale when empty, which only takes him a couple of seconds - way faster than the bad guys can reload their SAAs pumping out one empty at a time.

(Of course, you can also do that with an SAA, but that wasn't the point, the point was the this guy had trained himself to do that because of the limitations of his old cap-and-ball sidearm, and the other guys hadn't because they didn't think they'd need to.)

Nowadays the punch line - as in the fictional anecdote of the Bryar GP-41 in the OP - is that there are companies that makes "cartridge converted" 1851 Navys and the like that were never percussions firearms to begin with, which is pleasingly ouroborian.

>(The 1851 Navy is a very pretty revolver. I have a repro.)

As have I! Sort of. Mine's a Connecticut Valley Arms copy, vintage ca. 1989; I say "sort of" because, although my revolver has the 1851 Navy roll engraving on the cylinder (the naval battle), it's a .44 (which was the "Army" caliber in Colt's product line), not .36 like the real one. Historical authenticity aside, it's a good gun, and has considerable sentimental value. My grandfather and I built it from a kit.

(Sadly, it doesn't appear that CVA does kits any more, or indeed historical reproduction firearms at all. Based on a quick snout around their website, it looks like nowadays they're all about the fancy high-tech modern muzzleloaders, which is a thing I frankly don't get the point of. It's like using modern materials and technologies to build an automobile, but deliberately making it as uncomfortable and hard to drive as a Ford Model T. Why?)

I've also got a reproduction "Pocket Navy", which is just what it says on the tin - a pocket-sized version of the 1851 Navy, caliber .31. (Seen here with the aforementioned 1851 Navy for scale! Isn't that adorable?)

The provenance of this one is unknown; I found it fully finished in a now-defunct Army-Navy store up in Presque Isle, and it bears no identifiable maker's markings. Whether it's a kit someone built and sold, or a fully produced item by one of the various Italian companies that do 19th-century repros, I don't know. It's a dandy little gun, though. I don't think I'd be eager to carry it in a pocket, but then I could say the same thing about my 1903 Pocket Hammerless. Men must have had bigger pockets in those days. :)

--G.
and greater trust in safety catches
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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Gryphonadmin
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22375 posts
Jan-27-14, 02:21 PM (EDT)
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11. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #10
 
   Oh, one thing I forgot to mention about my Pocket Navy repro. The full-size 1851 Navy revolver has an engraving of a naval battle on the cylinder, with a little caption giving the date of the engagement (sometime in 1843, if memory serves). The pocket version does not simply have that engraving scaled down; instead, its cylinder sports a cheerful little scene that appears to be a stagecoach robbery in progress. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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MuninsFire
Member since Mar-27-07
457 posts
Jan-27-14, 04:13 PM (EDT)
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12. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #10
 
   >The funny part is that cartridge conversions are totally period - they
>were sold as kits, and a great many people who couldn't afford a whole
>new gun bought and applied them to their Civil War-vintage
>cap-and-ball revolvers.

Oh, absolutely--but re-enactors aren't always the most rational bunch ;-P That, and I volunteer at a civil-war-era fort, so cartridge conversion wasn't really chronistic for the specific time period covered. They're all cap-and-ball there.


>(Of course, you can also do that with an SAA, but that wasn't
>the point, the point was the this guy had trained himself to do that
>because of the limitations of his old cap-and-ball sidearm, and
>the other guys hadn't because they didn't think they'd need to.)
>

I have some recollection that the SASS has specific rules for that methodology during competition, but I don't have the rulebook with me.

>Nowadays the punch line - as in the fictional anecdote of the Bryar
>GP-41 in the OP - is that there are companies that makes "cartridge
>converted" 1851 Navys and the like that were never percussions
>firearms to begin with
, which is pleasingly ouroborian.

Kind of like the ancient and honorable taxidermological creation of 'gaffes'--sure, it's not a -real- two-headed calf, but it's real convincing-like.

>>(The 1851 Navy is a very pretty revolver. I have a repro.)
>
>As have I! Sort of. Mine's a Connecticut Valley Arms copy, vintage
>ca. 1989; I say "sort of" because, although my revolver has the 1851
>Navy roll engraving on the cylinder (the naval battle), it's a .44
>(which was the "Army" caliber in Colt's product line), not .36 like
>the real one. Historical authenticity aside, it's a good gun, and has
>considerable sentimental value. My grandfather and I built it from a
>kit.

Mine's not nearly so nice; it's one of the Italian repros--but it is in .36, so hey, points there.

> It's like using modern materials and technologies
>to build an automobile, but deliberately making it as uncomfortable
>and hard to drive as a Ford Model T. Why?)

We're probably 10 years away from finding out that answer, when the non-hardcore steampunk people move on to dieselpunk. ;-P

>
>I've also got a reproduction "Pocket Navy", which is just what it says
>on the tin - a pocket-sized version of the 1851 Navy, caliber .31.


Purty! Though I dislike the short revolvers, myself. They don't feel properly 'proportional' to me. Personal foible.

>
>The provenance of this one is unknown; I found it fully finished in a
>now-defunct Army-Navy store up in Presque Isle, and it bears no
>identifiable maker's markings. Whether it's a kit someone built and
>sold, or a fully produced item by one of the various Italian companies
>that do 19th-century repros, I don't know. It's a dandy little gun,
>though. I don't think I'd be eager to carry it in a pocket, but then
>I could say the same thing about my 1903 Pocket Hammerless. Men must
>have had bigger pockets in those days. :)
>
>--G.
>and greater trust in safety catches

Not so much with the safety catches--SOP for single-action six-shooters, esp. with the cap-and-ball models, was to load five cylinders and carry it with the hammer down on the vacant sixth cylinder. Even if you drop it, it won't go off; being a single-action pistol, you have to cock the hammer in order to get it to a place where you can pull the trigger. It would take some considerable pocket gymnastics to elicit a fireable state on a single-action revolver accidentally.

That being said, I keep mine in a holster, empty. ;-P

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea


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Gryphonadmin
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22375 posts
Jan-27-14, 04:27 PM (EDT)
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13. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #12
 
   >Not so much with the safety catches

Well, obviously not for the revolvers, they don't even have such a thing. I was talking about the Hammerless. When I did carry mine, it was with a loaded magazine but an empty chamber (which I believe the hardcore guys, the ones who speak almost entirely in initialisms and tribal code phrases, call "condition three"). I eventually stopped carrying it altogether, having realized that doing so was seven different shades of preposterous. I keep my license current, because you never know, but I don't bother actually carrying a gun much any more. Besides, it's illegal on the University campus, which (apart from the inside of my car, where a gunfight is unlikely to break out) is where I spend maybe 80% of my time when I'm not at home.

We're well outside the perimeter fence of this topic now, but could always pursue it further in General or private-mail if circumstances warrant.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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Prince Charon
Member since Jan-11-09
309 posts
Feb-01-14, 05:00 PM (EDT)
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31. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #12
 
   >Not so much with the safety catches--SOP for single-action
>six-shooters, esp. with the cap-and-ball models, was to load five
>cylinders and carry it with the hammer down on the vacant sixth
>cylinder. Even if you drop it, it won't go off; being a single-action
>pistol, you have to cock the hammer in order to get it to a place
>where you can pull the trigger. It would take some considerable
>pocket gymnastics to elicit a fireable state on a single-action
>revolver accidentally.
>

IIRC, a lot of them would use the empty cylinder to store spare cash, as well.


"They planned their campaigns just as you might make a splendid piece of harness. It looks very well; and answers very well; until it gets broken; and then you are done for. Now I made my campaigns of ropes. If anything went wrong, I tied a knot; and went on."
-- Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington


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MoonEyes
Member since Jun-29-03
1125 posts
Feb-02-14, 02:33 PM (EDT)
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32. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #10
 
   >I have a vague memory of watching an old Western once in which the
>hero's adherence to percussion ignition was a plot point. The film
>was set in the 1880s, long after metallic cartridges had become the
>norm, and the main character carried an 1858 New Model Army that
>hadn't been converted. There's a scene where he knows he's going to
>have to fight basically everybody in town the next morning, and he
>sits at a table in his rented room and painstakingly loads three or
>four whole cylinders for his gun, and during the giant
>climactic gunfight, he reloads by swapping them out wholesale when
>empty, which only takes him a couple of seconds - way faster
>than the bad guys can reload their SAAs pumping out one empty at a
>time.

Without going to look, I seem to remember the made-for-tv movie 'Purgatory' not only featureing this, but the sheriff, who had it, also had dedicated little 'pouches' on his gun-belt holding those pre-loaded cylinders, rather than the cartridge loops.

...!
Gott's Leetle Feesh in Trousers!


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Nathan
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1382 posts
Feb-03-14, 04:15 PM (EDT)
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36. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #0
 
   LAST EDITED ON Feb-03-14 AT 04:16 PM (EST)
 
>A pretty heavy blaster, in fact, gauged strictly by its firepower, and
>insanely reliable thanks to the simplicity of its mechanical workings.
> Each CCRE round is good for a hundred firings before its gas supply
>is used up, and the NFBs work pretty much forever, so they can be
>reloaded if you have the right tools and access to the required
>material, too. In tactical terms, with a minuscule amount of
>forethought, you simply never have to concern yourself with reloading
>again.

A perverse corner of my mind just reread this paragraph, and promptly wondered about the performance of a longarm fitted out that way.

-----

"V, did you do something foolish?"

"Yes, and it was glorious."


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Gryphonadmin
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22375 posts
Feb-03-14, 04:25 PM (EDT)
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37. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #36
 
   >>A pretty heavy blaster, in fact, gauged strictly by its firepower, and
>>insanely reliable thanks to the simplicity of its mechanical workings.
>> Each CCRE round is good for a hundred firings before its gas supply
>>is used up, and the NFBs work pretty much forever, so they can be
>>reloaded if you have the right tools and access to the required
>>material, too. In tactical terms, with a minuscule amount of
>>forethought, you simply never have to concern yourself with reloading
>>again.
>
>A perverse corner of my mind just reread this paragraph, and promptly
>wondered about the performance of a
>longarm fitted out that way.

Pretty good, I would expect. There is a small but hardcore fandom out there in the 24th century who are devoted to performing CCRE-1 conversions on such longarms - mostly Pandoran sniper rifles, of which there is a surprising variety of revolving-cylinder models. Kei once converted a Colt Model 1855 carbine, just to see if she could - amusingly, that required that she first convert it to metallic cartridge configuration! It's probably still kicking around someplace, either in her workshop or the giant gun rack we've never actually seen, but which is almost certainly someplace in the Morgan Lane house.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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Pasha
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1018 posts
Feb-03-14, 05:58 PM (EDT)
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38. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #37
 
   >It's probably still kicking around
> someplace, either in her workshop or the giant gun rack we've never
>actually seen, but which is almost certainly someplace in the Morgan
>Lane house.

Hmm...the basement (where one would expect such a thing) is given over to an entertainment center. Does Kei have her own office on the top floor where that could be kept?

On the note, did Priss get a safe of her own, or was she just given the combination to the main safe?

--
-Pasha
"Don't change the subject"
"Too slow, already did."


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Gryphonadmin
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22375 posts
Feb-03-14, 06:31 PM (EDT)
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39. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #38
 
   >>the giant gun rack we've never
>>actually seen, but which is almost certainly someplace in the Morgan
>>Lane house.
>
>Hmm...the basement (where one would expect such a thing) is given over
>to an entertainment center.

Well, that's one room. There may be others. It's a big house.

For that matter, there may be other basements. It's a big house. :)

>Does Kei have her own office on the top
>floor where that could be kept?

Kei has never held with the concept of the home office; she's always maintained that officing is for the office, and that's the reason why people have homes. Her workshop's above the garage, so if she blows herself up she won't take out the rest of the house. The Giant Gun Rack is presumably not out there.

>On the note, did Priss get a safe of her own, or was she just given
>the combination to the main safe?

For all that I've been periodically criticized for the essentially unfuturistic nature of my created future, I would hope that by the 25th century these things are a little more sophisticated than that; it's probably some kind of biometric system. Priss was probably granted access to that storage system, or at least part of it, when she was deemed old enough to have her own blaster, but she'd also have one of those little breadbox jobs in her room. You never know when you might need to respond to a crisis in a hurry, after all.

Mind you, after the Cybertron operation, her need for some kind of external weapon security devices goes way down. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
942 posts
Feb-03-14, 07:05 PM (EDT)
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40. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #39
 
  
>For all that I've been periodically criticized for the essentially
>unfuturistic nature of my created future,

As someone who is prone to such criticism, I often try and give you the benefit of the doubt by assuming both eccentricity on the part of the cast and "seamlessness" on the part of the future tech involved.

Like, I imagine New Avalon has an impossibly sophisticated air traffic control system, including things like municipally owned tractor beams and field generators mounted throughout downtown in case of catastrophic air car failures of various sorts. Probably overseen by multiple industrial AIs, most likely instantiated using some flavor of STACIS, who may be among the best-paid of New Avalon's civil service.

It's just that this is totally unlikely to ever be relevant, because most of the characters we see on-screen prefer groundcars to aircars (although Corwin and his old man probably hover-converted something just for fun at some point), the technology is likely completely hidden from the general populace unless you experience unforeseen repulsorlift failure, and our hosts have yet to have a reason to write a really bitchin' Lair of the Shadow Broker-style high-speed aircar chase scene.

-Merc
Keep Rat


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Gryphonadmin
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22375 posts
Feb-03-14, 07:24 PM (EDT)
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41. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #40
 
   >our hosts have yet to have a
>reason to write a really bitchin' Lair of the Shadow
>Broker
-style high-speed aircar chase scene.

I once wrote a car-v.-zeppelin chase scene, à la the car-v.-train chase in The French Connection, but the story it would have appeared in ended up being abandoned, alas.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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pjmoyermoderator
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Feb-03-14, 07:54 PM (EDT)
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42. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #41
 
   >>our hosts have yet to have a
>>reason to write a really bitchin' Lair of the Shadow
>>Broker
-style high-speed aircar chase scene.
>
>I once wrote a car-v.-zeppelin chase scene, à la the
>car-v.-train chase in The French Connection, but the story it
>would have appeared in ended up being abandoned, alas.

Well, that's what Recycling is for.

--- Philip





Philip J. Moyer
Contributing Writer, Editor and Artist (and Moderator) -- Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
CEO of MTS, High Poobah Of Artwork, and High Priest Of the Church Of Aerianne -- Magnetic Terrapin Studios
"Insert Pithy Comment Here"


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mdg1
Member since Aug-25-04
1327 posts
Feb-03-14, 08:44 PM (EDT)
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43. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #42
 
   Or Lupin. :)

(Does a zeppelin count as "an unworthy object"?)

Mario


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Pasha
Charter Member
1018 posts
Feb-03-14, 10:00 PM (EDT)
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44. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #39
 
   >For that matter, there may be other basements. It's a big
>house. :)

True. It's what, five bedrooms, and a palatial office?

>>On the note, did Priss get a safe of her own, or was she just given
>>the combination to the main safe?
>
>For all that I've been periodically criticized for the essentially
>unfuturistic nature of my created future, I would hope that by the
>25th century these things are a little more sophisticated than that;
>it's probably some kind of biometric system. Priss was probably

So my original thought was to say "or added to biometrics or something" but I decided that was needlessly complicated an issue. Also, a combination lock can be undone without needing power, should emergencies (that may require guns) happen. :)

>
>Mind you, after the Cybertron operation, her need for some kind of
>external weapon security devices goes way down. :)

Well, yes. I was referring to the christmas right after she was gifted a needleblaster. :)

--
-Pasha
"Don't change the subject"
"Too slow, already did."


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Peter Eng
Charter Member
2045 posts
Feb-04-14, 12:58 PM (EDT)
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45. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #44
 
   >
>Also, a combination lock can be undone without needing power, should
>emergencies (that may require guns) happen. :)
>

Proper design of a biometrics-secured safe should include an integral backup power supply, or switching to an alternate locking system which does not require power to disengage.

Peter Eng
--
A good designer would figure this out without somebody pointing out the problem.


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Bushido
Member since Apr-8-10
376 posts
Feb-05-14, 03:05 PM (EDT)
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46. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #39
 
   Isn't one of the basements Corwin's first lab?

--------
Wedge Defense Force General
Order 12: "Try to avoid
freaking the mundanes."


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Gryphonadmin
Charter Member
22375 posts
Feb-05-14, 04:36 PM (EDT)
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47. "RE: Weapons Tech and the Home Hobbyist"
In response to message #46
 
   >Isn't one of the basements Corwin's first lab?

Corwin's workshop is below the basements.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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