Black gunpowder rightfully corrodes gun barrels and other parts, but on guns made for black powder like flintlocks and Colt M1860/1861’s they degrade way too fast in the current builds to be even remotely realistic.
I was moderately using a Colt M1860 on a training run and about 10 minutes of real time after using 24 bullets resulted in corrosion after leaving it alone for a few in game minutes. In-game it shouldn’t have been more than a couple minutes before it started to “rust” despite the gun being cleaned and lubricated beforehand.
Is there a way to postpone rusting or maybe add smokeless powder to the recipe of paper cartridges in order to fix this problem?
I agree that degrading is too fast.
And it is sad that flintlock pistol is degrading while I performing “clean and lubricate” action, right in the process.
If guns in real life degraded like they did in the game, it would be pretty impractical for extended use. In-game they start degrading (i.e taking damage like you broke it) after 5 minutes of regular use. In order for me to keep the condition I’d have to clean the gun (which takes 50 minutes of in-game time) per shot. Clearly this breaks the rule of fun plus the realism, as it takes away from the immersion of the game and is so impractical and unrealistic it removes the option to even consider using black powder weapons in the first place.
We do need to revisit that cleaning time. Cleaning after firing for 5 minutes is advisable, but we’re talking a minute or so to clear out the worst of the fouling, not a deep clean.
I’m not familiar with how black powder percussion revolvers work in regards to reliability after extended use, but I suppose being able to quickly swab out the barrel to get most of the gunk out in order to use the firearm more in a combat scenario might work better than what we have, but I feel that the fouling or rusting is still a bit too quick in-game.
On a side note, in the case of the percussion revolvers they’re treated with bluing to prevent rust in the first place, so I imagine that the guns won’t flash-rust or have some resistance to becoming degraded by the powder.
I’d personally prefer maybe an hour before it really starts to degrade, rather than a few minutes.
if you look up historical weapons you’ll find that this was the case. The only reason black powder really caught on was because of the damage they could cause if they hit something and the fact they didn’t require muscle strength to wield. But otherwise they were laughably inaccurate and choked up easily
I was just talking to someone about how cool it is that you have so many different kinds of butchering you can do, when with so many games it’s either you do the thing or you don’t, CDDA allows you to choose to what degree with certain actions
Cleaning a gun could totally work the same
So I think it’d be super cool to have just a shorter action that takes about a short time, that you can do after you’ve gotten some distance, and a more thorough cleaning that takes much longer.
I frankly have no experience with black powder weapons irl, but surely someone’s invented some kinda oil or coating with which you could treat the barrel and firing mechanism so the fouling wouldn’t be so quick?
Unfortunately I think oil would just accelerate the process, if it didn’t just catch fire. Think of putting a glaze of cooking oil on a plate then blowing a handful of flour across the top. A lot more will stick than to a dry plate.
There are black powder alternatives that could maybe be made, like pyrodex or triple seven. I think they all produce roughly around the same percentage residue when fired but use less volume to produce the same charge. Same % residue but less volume of powder per shot = less residue build up per shot. Maybe there should be some new alternative “gunpowder” recipes. I think the trade off would be you should need a pretty hefty chemistry background to make them.
I’m pretty sure in the case of cannons they sponge the barrel to swab out whatever crap that’s in there with water prior to every fire. Maybe after 4 full clips you can quickly swab the gun barrel with water and a cloth on a stick to do the same?
Seems too me like fouling could cause two problems:
High levels of fouling could cloughup the barrel and thus decrease accuracy or cause a misfire. This could potentionally damage the gun if you keep shoting it without cleaning it a bit. This should be relatively easy too clean out by just wiping the barrel with a tissue or bit of cloth a few times. The exeption would be things like (semi)-automatic guns with a lot of delicate moving parts as these mechanisems would clough up and you can’t just wipe them down.
Rust should set in after a longer time than just a few hours or minutes maybe after a day or so. But it should still happen even at lower levels of fouling meaning that you would want to completely clean your gun after every day you have been using it with blackpowder too prevent it from sitting in your storage and slowly rusting away.