DarkShade
Oct 8 2004, 05:01 PM
in shadowrun?
cnn article metal stormAnd the guy wants to try it with grenades to make prtable mine fields..
DS
Backgammon
Oct 8 2004, 05:22 PM
You'll notice that article is dated 2003...
Considering how screwed up full auto is in Shadowrun, what's the point? Wouldn't be something shadowrunner-grade anyway. You could say, though, that the Ares HV line is based off technology first seen in Metal Storm.
Jason Farlander
Oct 8 2004, 06:02 PM
http://metalstorm.com/For more (up-to-date) info and some (fun!) live demonstration videos.
..as well as some new (and somewhat ridiculous, but also kinda cool) CG concept videos...
Austere Emancipator
Oct 8 2004, 09:00 PM
Crazy Weaponry of TodayMetalStorm has been discussed several times on this forum, just search for "MetalStorm" by Member Name "Raygun" for the most relevant. The above has the most important bits.
[Edit]I apologize for my own stupidity in that thread, particularly regarding the operating principle of the MetalStorm system and the "energy transfer" BS.[/Edit]
Edward
Oct 9 2004, 12:29 AM
Is it just me or is battlefield reloading of these weapons going to be a pain in the ass.
Edward
Young Freud
Oct 9 2004, 06:37 AM
| QUOTE (Edward) |
Is it just me or is battlefield reloading of these weapons going to be a pain in the ass.
Edward |
It depends. The grenade launcher the DSTO (Aussie equivalent of American DARPA) has been designing for their OCIW project uses the MetalStorm technology, but is reloaded with single 40mm shells, modified for the MS firing system.
The automated mortars and grenade launchers are pretty much described as arrays of barrels, with prepackaged ammo already in the barrel, which can be easily replaced in the field. An automortar system could be more feasible and portable than the Dragonfire system DARPA's currently working with.
The point defense system could work on the small scale (I believe there's a design for a 9mm CIWS, covering angles directly parallel to the hull, which would be handy for dealing with limpet mining commandos or small suicide boats that got past the Phalanx gun), but because of the size of ammo (10,000 rounds arranged in an array fashion is a heck of a lot of deckspace, which current CIWS keep their ammo externally under the gun in drums or under deck) and the task of reloading it without specialized equipment (100 rounds 25mm DPU or Tungsten shells in a 6 meter long tube might take more than a couple of sailors by hand), I see the Phalanx and systems like it will still be around, at least until shipborne lasers come around.
Edward
Oct 9 2004, 07:33 AM
It seems like your replacing your barrel every time you used to replace your clip, it might work for grenades and lager but for an infantry rifle you want your barrel to be strong and your spare clips to be light. If there the same thing it just isn’t going to work. of cause if you where to make short MS units that would be loaded into a gun in a simpler way to a cartridge you could have very fast bursts with a cartage change between bursts. You could even load the MS cartages into something not dissimilar to a modern magazine.
Actually I suspect that this problem is why all man portable weapons except the pistol on the website had 2 barrels, one firing standard rounds one doing something fancy with MS.
Point defence on a ship would go threw bundle of barrels shooting down each missile and bringing up new ones would be a lot more time consuming than the feed of ammunition from an underdeck mgazene.
Personally I was under the impression that a well-made firearm had a lower rate of fire than technology would allow because you don’t want to empty your magazine in the time it takes for your brain to tell your finger to let go of the trigger. And all these electrics are just begging somebody to develop a EMP that doesn’t create nuclear fallout (dot we already have those) lob a few at the enemy lines and walk in with an old AK 47 with the sights out of alignment. Your enemy don’t have any working guns.
Battlefield tech should really follow the KISS principle. At least enough of it to operate when the fancy stuff fails. EG in SR I never remove manual firing options from a weapon just in case my smart link decides to play up.
Edward
Austere Emancipator
Oct 9 2004, 10:49 AM
| QUOTE (Edward) |
| I was under the impression that a well-made firearm had a lower rate of fire than technology would allow because you don’t want to empty your magazine in the time it takes for your brain to tell your finger to let go of the trigger. |
To an extent, that's true. It's certainly possible to get cyclic rates of fire up to 1200+ rpm with most methods of operation used by modern automatic small arms, and most small arms are probably designed with this in mind, to get the RoF to the desired level, usually between 600 (e.g. most AKs) and 1000 (many LMGs) rpm. However, whether the RoF is 600 or 800 might just be fluke.
The MetalStorm small arms likely have several barrels because of the muzzle velocity and accuracy problems. With a rather short, to keep the muzzle velocity the same through all the shots fired from that barrel, it's better to use only a small part in the rear of the barrel for holding the ammunition, so that your zero doesn't wander too badly. This also limits the deformation of the last bullets caused by the pressures of the earlier rounds fired from the same barrel.
If you're only using a small part of the barrel for holding ammunition, you might be limited to something like 4 rounds on most pistols, perhaps 8 on an AR. So you need several barrels to have a decent amount of ready ammunition.
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