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Posted by: Wounded Ronin Apr 17 2007, 05:41 AM

I'm continuing to work on a Fallout 2 vintage weapon mods. I've been carefully debugging a lot of the weapons with the help of Lisac2k.

One thing which I probably need to review more is ammo weights. I want to make sure that I've got ammo put down for the right weight in-game, since encumberance is important.

Can anyone give me information about the weights (say, per 10 or 100 rounds) of the following cartridges?

.45 ACP FMJ and JHP
.44 magnum FMJ and JHP
.30 US (M1 carbine)
.30-.06
7.62 NATO
12 ga. 00 shotgun shells
9x19 parabellum ball and FMJ
7.62x25 Tokarev
7.92x57 Mauser

Thanks very much for you help!

Posted by: Austere Emancipator Apr 17 2007, 06:50 AM

These are without magazines, clips, belts, or other attaching devices. Reloadersnest.Com is down so I'm doing some guesstimating for the civilian cartridge weights -- shouldn't matter much, the margin of error there is easily outweighed by variance in bullet and case weigh. Ball = FMJ, by the way.

The most common bullet weights for .45 ACP JHPs are 185gr, 200gr and 230gr -- in that order, AFAIK -- while the US military standard FMJ round has a 230gr (234gr?) bullet.
.45 ACP M1911 Ball: 4.7lbs/100
.45 ACP 185gr: 4.1lbs/100

.44 Remington Magnum 240gr (the most common bullet weight): 5.9lbs/100

.30 Carbine M1 Ball: 2.8lbs/100

.30-06 M2 Ball: 5.9lbs/100

7.62x51mm M80 Ball: 5.6lbs/100

9x19mm M882 Ball: 2.6lbs/100
9x19mm 147gr: 3.0lbs/100

7.62x25mm Tokarev 85gr: 2.3lbs/100

7.92x57mm Mauser IS 197gr: 6.5lbs/100 -- this could be off, since I'm not completely sure about the weight of the case (I'm thinking it's a few grains lighter than that of the .30-06) and I have no idea how much propellant the Germans used when they originally made the 197gr loads. Still, I expect the error is well within +/- 5%.

12 gauge 2-3/4" Remington 00 buck: 11.3lbs/100 -- I only have the weights for the few loads the US military uses. No idea how much shot this has got, so I don't know if that's average or not.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Apr 17 2007, 10:20 PM

Thanks. I'll go and fix the ammo weights right away.

I guess I have one terminology question, also. What do you call a cartridge that just has a soft lead bullet rather than an actual jacket surrounding the bullet itself?

Posted by: Austere Emancipator Apr 18 2007, 12:11 AM

Umm, "lead bullet"?

This is not something I've ever really read up on, but as far as I can tell they're just called lead bullets of whatever shape or type they are. For example, http://img.nextag.com/image/Lapua_Competition_Bullets_38/1/000/000/634/417/63441705.jpg, http://www.svartkrutt.net/hodg.jpg, lead flatnoses and roundnoses, lead softpoints and hollowpoints, etc.

Posted by: Shrike30 Apr 18 2007, 02:20 AM

Outside of the wadcutters/semiwadcutters, I don't think I've ever *seen* an unjacketed lead bullet for a centerfire pistol or rifle outside of cheapo .22 Long Rifle ammo. They're really not that common, in my experience.

Posted by: Austere Emancipator Apr 18 2007, 09:36 AM

If you include http://www.castperformance.com/Categories.bok?category=Cast+Performance with the WC/SWCs, I agree. For anything bigger than the .22 rimfires, the lower cost of manufacture of the bullet itself is not worth the reduced performanced.

Things might be different in a post-apocalyptic setting. Casting or swaging simple lead roundnoses or even hollowpoints would be a lot easier than jacketed designs. That wouldn't help rifles any -- when the bullet's grinding against the rifling at 2400+fps you want that jacket -- but it might make LRNs and LFNs more common than FMJs and JHPs for the most common handgun calibers once pre-war stocks start running out.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Apr 19 2007, 04:28 AM