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DireRadiant
Not everything has to be binary.

Grenade will not explode without physical safety removed.
Grenade is made "live" via physical or wireless trigger.
Grenade will explode in X seconds unless it receives coded wireless signal.
It goes off either on the wireless signal, or when time expires.
Resetting physical safety may or may not stop explosion depending on type fo grenade and if someone has messed with it.
Ed_209a
I would like a grenade with a button that physically closes the circuit for the wireless capability. You push the button, it joins your PAN. Release it, it is back to being an especially violent rock. At no point has the grenade been armed. I also like the idea of having a physical block in the arming chain. Pins & spoons forever, baby!

It's only wireless capacity is to be told what to do after the safety lever flies off, and display that setting.

Of course, as long as it goes boom predictably and reliably, a grenade doesn't have to be smart. That is the difference between a grenade, and a compact demo charge. (see Selectable Lightweight Attack Munition (SLAM) for today's version.)
Cweord
it's the unpredictability that is my issue with wireless, most soldiers don't want to risk the unexpected, the are they, arnt they jamming would add an unnecessary equation in to the process, the SLAM is a different matter (as would a satchel charge)
GrepZen
QUOTE (Ed_209a)
Even with an "electric" gun, where the trigger is cybernetic and the round is fired by an electric squib, most of the cycle time will still be taken up by loading a new round in the chamber.

So long as you are using a recoiling bolt type action, I don't even think caseless ammo would make a big difference in ROF, because the bolt has to move back far enough to take the new round anyway. Unless we totally toss out the existing art, most firearms in SR4 still use a recoiling bolt.

That all depends on what sort of caseless ammo you are talking about. Standard caseless with bolt -- your rules apply. Caseless ala METALSTORM...they fire microseconds after the command is given. A METALSTORM based pistol tested by the Army IRL had a delayed recoil effect with a 3 round burst being fired before any recoil took place and it was equivilent to having just fired one round.
If you want a really neat demo of ROF to a search on YouTube for METALSTORM and watch the video of the Million-round/min ROF sentry gun.
If you do a little digging you can also find the video of the METALSTORM auto-40mm grenade launcher.
I think their web site lists plans for a 155mm version as well.
Hartbaine
QUOTE (DireRadiant)
I wonder what else in a game with dragons, wizards, elves, artificial intelligences, and other assorted Horrors doesn't model well from the real world.

I think this pretty much sums it up nicely. Let's move on.
Gamble
I just noticed this thread and after having spent a trip to the local range, I can say that it is possible to fire a good number of rounds from a normal semi auto pistol. Granted, it was slightly modified in the sense of polishing areas and lightening the trigger springs but the person was able to fire 6 rounds from a Glock 17 in under one second, timed by one of those professional range timers that cost more money than I would care to think of.

In 2070? I would think that firearms are more efficient than they are now so being able to gunbunny somebody isn't something that is OMFG!!!!!!

And to add to this point: it's not real so go with it.
fumble
QUOTE (Hartbaine @ Oct 11 2007, 07:49 PM)
QUOTE (DireRadiant @ Oct 10 2007, 12:05 PM)
I wonder what else in a game with dragons, wizards, elves, artificial intelligences, and other assorted Horrors doesn't model well from the real world.

I think this pretty much sums it up nicely. Let's move on.

See, I disagree with that statement.

The fact that we accept elements like dragons and mages as part of the setting of a game is different to us wondering if firearms rules are unrealistic.

We know guns exist. some of us (not me, but others) know how they work and what you can do with them. So, some of us can say : "I don't think that works in that way, and the mechanics look unbalanced".

Whereas nobody is able to say "See, I know for a fact that dragons do not actually know summoning magic, because their nature prevents them to connect effectively with sentient beings of magic. The only thing they can do is shape the raw magical energy in spells. As a consequence, they shouldn't have any skill like summoning, binding and banishing".

Equally, nobody can say : "the rules for drain are a joke. One of my friend is a fox shaman. He's a real pushover and extremely shy, but very gifted at magic. He can pile the manabolts without a sweat, whereas I, a hermetic magician with 3 doctorates who's had to work to pay my way through Thaumaturgy School, can only manage more than stunning beavers with difficulty! I excel at theory, but even though I am a fully fledged magician, my energy of raw power is limited..."

That's why we accept the one, and not the other.

Cheers,
Fumble.
hobgoblin
the more unreal the unreal, the more real the real must be?
Ed_209a
I think is this just another perfectly valid way to play the game.

I personally like detail in equipment, you may not. It's OK. It's your game. Do what is the most fun for your group.

In fact, the game doesn't lose anything mechanically if you just assume that _every_ pistol is a Predator, and every SMG is a Ingram SG.

I personally, like knowing that my Predator fires 12mm Ares ammo, and I have a mag of 240 grain JHPs ready to go. That doesn't make you wrong. though.
fumble
QUOTE (hobgoblin)
the more unreal the unreal, the more real the real must be?

Not because your unreal is unreal means your real needn't be real biggrin.gif
hyzmarca
QUOTE (fumble @ Oct 12 2007, 06:38 AM)
Equally, nobody can say : "the rules for drain are a joke. One of my friend is a fox shaman. He's a real pushover and extremely shy, but very gifted at magic. He can pile the manabolts without a sweat, whereas I, a hermetic magician with 3 doctorates who's had to work to pay my way through Thaumaturgy School, can only manage more than stunning beavers with difficulty! I excel at theory, but even though I am a fully fledged magician, my energy of raw power is limited..."

Actually, you can.

Of course, it probably wouldn't be a 'Fox Shaman' You can also get real life input on the actual workings of a Houngans/Mambos, Bokors, Witches, Hedgewitchs, Thelemites Druids, and many others.
psychophipps
QUOTE (Ed_209a)
Even with an "electric" gun, where the trigger is cybernetic and the round is fired by an electric squib, most of the cycle time will still be taken up by loading a new round in the chamber.

So long as you are using a recoiling bolt type action, I don't even think caseless ammo would make a big difference in ROF, because the bolt has to move back far enough to take the new round anyway. Unless we totally toss out the existing art, most firearms in SR4 still use a recoiling bolt.

Actually, you can vastly increase the RoF of recoiling bolt type weapons by removing the extraction cycle of a casing. This cycle is the second most common failure point in the firing of modern autoloading weapons, following only the magazine itself because most people are lazy and don't maintain their weapon's magazines. By taking the extraction cycle out you reduce weight, increase reliability by making the whole action more mechanically simple and can feed the weapon faster as the action no longer needs a gap in its motion to be certain that the casing has enough time to clear before it restarts its firing cycle.

Mark(psycho)Phipps( HAHAHA! )
psychophipps
QUOTE (DireRadiant)
Not everything has to be binary.

Grenade will not explode without physical safety removed.
Grenade is made "live" via physical or wireless trigger.
Grenade will explode in X seconds unless it receives coded wireless signal.
It goes off either on the wireless signal, or when time expires.
Resetting physical safety may or may not stop explosion depending on type of grenade and if someone has messed with it.

Curious why the concept of impact triggering is so foreign to this game. Just don't drop it once you arm it, eh? nyahnyah.gif

I would say that just about every grenade out there by SR4 would have an impact setting to be sure that some wired-for-sound opponent doesn't scoop it up and toss it back at you by the time your timer runs out. I would think that this might get a bit frustrating after a bit, no?
Also, grenade launcher rounds naturally explode on impact, that doesn't make them "smart". What makes a launched grenade a "smart grenade" is having it blow up in mid-air right behind the cover you're using. Oww?!?

Mark(psycho)Phipps( HAHAHA! )
Ed_209a
QUOTE (psychophipps)
QUOTE (Ed_209a @ Oct 11 2007, 06:51 AM)
So long as you are using a recoiling bolt type action, I don't even think caseless ammo would make a big difference in ROF...

Actually, you can vastly increase the RoF of recoiling bolt type weapons by removing the extraction cycle of a casing....

Mark(psycho)Phipps( HAHAHA! )

In all the weapons I have peeked inside, extraction and loading largely overlap, and both require the bolt.

For example, in the M16/AR15 action, the weapon firing forces the bolt back. At a certain point, the empty case clears the chamber allowing a spring to flip the case out of the weapon. The bolt continues about an inch further back which allows the next round to move up to where the bolt can push it into the chamber.

Even if there is no empty case to flip out, the bolt still has to go back far enough to load the next round.

So, you can make a little bit of time by using short, fat caseless rounds, but you could do the same with cased rounds. To make any significant advance in ROF for caseless rounds, you need an rotating action like the G11, or a new action working on similar ideas.

Anyway, recoiling action firearms can still get you up over 1000 RPM. Most infantry assault rifles shoot at a rate of between 700-900 RPM as a feature, not a technical limitation.

Unless you are shooting at an aircraft, or from an aircraft, that should be plenty.

But, to keep this topic from shifting into firearm trivia (Cause you know I would _hate _that wink.gif ) , I believe even today's firearms fire fast enough to let a 4IP Street sam fire 6-round bursts at 4 different targets in 3 seconds.
kzt
The other minor issue is that rounds that fail to go bang need to be able to be ejected. Unless you plan to handle this by requiring field stripping and rodding the bore to eject the round? That turns a half second problem into a 3 minute problem, which seems kind of bad to me.
Spike
The g11, firing caseless rounds apparently uses a rotary bolt, rather than a cyclic one. Not sure what that means but earlier, when people first started talking about caseless round cycling I thought of something rather like a screw or drill like mechanism that fed rounds....

Of course, that makes me think of gatling guns and other multibarreled weapons, only now you can do the same thing with a single barrel...

hobgoblin
im envisioning something like a fan that spins as the gases from the detonating round blows over it.

a chamber/breach like system will still be there for clearing a faulty round. but it would not be part of the normal workings of the weapon when fired.
Slump
More than I'm sure you probably wanted to know on the G11's feed mechanism:

http://www.hkpro.com/g11.htm The relavent portion is about 3/4 of the way down. There are pretty pictures, so it's easy to find.

When the cylinder is in the vertical position, it's also in line for the ejection port for clearing faulty rounds (or live one's you need to get out of the breech, I guess)
Ed_209a
I'm not saying there will never be caseless small arms in service, but cased rounds have several good things going for them.

Gas Seal-
On firing, the case will seal the seam between bolt and barrel. It isn't impossible to work around, just another thing to have to put in your design.

Heat sink-
Metallic cases act like a heatsink, taking some of the heat out of the weapon. Additionally, opening the action to the air between shots helps cool the barrel.

Weather proof-
well made ammo will have something like varnish on the joint where the bullet is seated in the case, and where the primer is. This makes the round very resistant to moisture. Again, this is not an impossible hurdle, but it makes your caseless system more complex.

Now, I am not _against_ caseless weapons, I just think it will be a long time before a caseless weapon can compete with a cased one. Not only will the weapon be more expensive than it's competitors, but so will the ammunition.

Like Slump's link said, the rifle worked, it just wouldn't sell. Much as I like the design, I wouldn't have bought them either. I would much rather have 2x the G36 rifles, 3x the M16s, or 5x the AK-series, and 10x the ammo for the same cost.
hobgoblin
ah, the effect of bulk production.

reason ammo is so cheap is that you got a insane stockpile of them, and with standardized calibers you can pump out and then hope to sell them rather then produce on order.

end result, technical inertia where you cant develop one without the other.

its the same reason why it takes so long to deploy differently fueled cars and similar...

and silly me, i had looked at the G11 before. i just had forgotten about the design specifics.

btw, anyone up on their blue planet? the caseless design in there is interesting wink.gif
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