Matchlock firearms

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

I know this is a bit odd, but I think the game could potentially have a place for old fashioned guns in it.

The reason for this is that modern firearms require ammunition that can’t be produced ingame, and would be a bit overpowered if it could be produced in any sort of volume. This makes specializing in them a bit… unwise? As it’s not a sustainable strategy.

To counter this I propose that the game include simpler firearms. You could make them out of scavenged parts, so you wouldn’t necessarily have to make the mechanisms and fine components yourself, but the idea is the ammunition should be simpler. Rather than needing primers and hulls, you just need to melt down the lead (possibly also producible from scrap metal) and create some low grade black powder to load it with. Oh and maybe some paper/rags to make up some pre-packaged cartridges. Soldiers did make their own ammunition in the time of musket weaponry, so this definitely fits the survival situation, i think. Black powder could be either made by cutting regular gunpowder with something else to bulk it out, or possibly created using a good bit of cooking skill from other chemicals found around the game world. Either way, black powder should be much more abundant than regular gunpowder.

You could potentially make both muskets and rifles, muskets being very powerful, wide bore weapons that are inaccurate as hell, and use ball rounds. Rifles conversely are much more accurate but you could require them to use a salvaged barrel from an existing rifle, which would be a good bit smaller than a musket barrel and thus the rounds would be less damaging, but the gun would be useable at longer ranges. Rifles should also use bullet shaped ammo which would have better armor piercing.

Naturally being muzzle loading, these would all be slow to reload, single shot weapons, as a tradeoff for their sustainability, and you could make a variety of variants of them too, such as Old Fashioned types, which are big and heavy, but make good clubs and can be made partially from wood (these could also be found in mansions and rarely mounted in bars). Salvaged variants, made of modern parts and thus much lighter, but less good as a melee weapon, and requiring more metal, tools, and mechanical skill to make, a Pump Action version might be possible? Not sure if you could make something that could load paper cartridges using a pump action, but it would work a bit like a shotgun, though being a homemade gun the recoil would make it hard to fire it rapidly and it would not be compatible with some of the possible mods.

You could also have some variations which can be done as mods, such as Breech-loading/break action variants, which are faster to reload but lose a bit of power due to an imperfect seal around the action, or perhaps they can only fire the lowest power cartridges. Double Barreled variants, which can load and fire two barrels at once, or sequentially, but which are heavier and less accurate than their single barrel counterparts. Reinforced variants, which gain extra melee damage and can fire overcharged rounds, but which are heavier and can’t also be combined with break-action. Naturally all of these guns should be compatible with a bayonet. Also you should be able to make pistol versions of most of these weapons too.

You could have different loads of cartridges too, with the option to use different amounts of poweder, and perhaps loading it purely with modern gunpowder, though that would increase the recoil a lot and only be possible with a reinforced breech.

Oh and firing a black powder charge should produce smoke and make a lot of noise, so firing them indoors a lot would quickly smoke up the room and potentially cause coughing, and it would also attract zombies. You could also perhaps allow the player to make black powder grenades which would have the same effects and be rather limited in their explosive power, but quite easy to make if you have a powder surplus. Stick some in a plastic bottle, bung a string in the top, lob it at a zombie.

But I rather like the idea of making half a dozen flint/matchlock pistols and pulling them all out one after the other to shoot a bunch of zombies, or playing a colonial era big game hunter or something. Muskets are cool and would potentially be quite valuable in a post apocalyptic scenario where machined ammo isn’t possible to make any more.

2

I don’t know about that. The really difficult component is arguably the gunpowder, so as long as you’re gathering your casings, it shouldn’t be much trouble to reload your ammo. After all, it is the future. If I had the gunpowder to work with, I can’t imagine wasting it on substandard weaponry.

3

Honestly? I like this in theory.

Crafted guns are a little too easy right now. It doesn’t take long before you can make your own SMGs or whatever.

Really, I’d rather see modern weapons only fashionable using the best tools and parts (probably salvaged from other weapons that have been taken apart, or from damaged weapons that are found).

Instead, an easier option would be fashioning these simpler firearms with their simpler ammunition and firing mechanism.

Really good idea. My only worry is that it may not have a niche to fit into, as it doesn’t take too long to get your hands on a proper gun. Ammunition is hit or miss but guns themselves aren’t exactly endgame. Especially if you kinda already need the ammunition as a source to create musketball type projectiles, that is going to be every bit as hard to do as getting your hands on a proper gun.

So on the one hand I really like the concept, bows and arrows kinda fit this niche for simple craftable ranged weapons with craftable ammunition. And also are somewhat more reliable than muskets and pistols of that type. Flintlocks and the like are really a weapon meant to be wielded by armies, to cancel out their otherwise serious flaws through disciplined firing orders. A bow or a crossbow was still more effective for an individual skilled user.

So I dunno. Just some pros/cons. It’s a reasonable thing to add in, especially if black powder can be found outside of gunstores (taken out of firecrackers, perhaps?). I’m just skeptical that they will see much use.

4

It’s true that crafting pipe smg’s is crazy, without proper equipment. You have to drill the bullet leading groove in that barrel pipe somehow, and that can’t be done without drill. That’s the reason why firearms today are much preciser than old time muskets. But I like the idea, shooting Z with some home made cannon, be it a musket or just a big pipe that shoots things.

5

Archery would need a heavy nerf (it probably deserves one after all the huge buffs) to balance this. Why would anyone bother with a musket when bows are stronger than guns now? Archery probably needs nerfs to a) fatigue (why bother with a gun if shooting a bow never tires you out), b) skill gain rate (the advantage muskets have over bows is that you can become proficient with a musket in weeks, not years; this is why armies started using them, to arm all those ill-trained conscripted peasants), and possibly c) hit penalty against fast moving/aware targets (hitting a moving target with a firearm is probably pretty hard, even with a weapon that essentially has instantaneous travel time, considering the distances and speeds involved in close to medium range combat; compare the velocity of arrows to bullets, many of which are supersonic).

Umm, rifling isn’t the implausible part about pipe smgs. Rifling isn’t strictly necessary, after all. But how the hell do you make a fully-automatic, auto-loading firearm with a 10 round magazine out of a pipe, 2x4, and nails? Obviously there’s no way to balance that with crafted muskets unless you can craft muskets out a twig and your own poop.

6

The idea is that you can get gunpowder from anything, you can at best only convert ammo that uses the same primers as your chosen firearms for modern guns, and only then if you can get the right tools.

Gunpowder is comparatively common, especially if you could thin it out by mixing it with, oh, let’s say distilled gasolene/alcohol, or maybe sulphur distilled out of acid rain water/battery acid, and ash/charcoal to produce an impure, but still explosive mixture suitable for use in a crude firearm. And musket balls are pretty easy to cast with a pot and a cooking fire.

Also muskets are frankly, much more powerful than most modern firearms. They stopped making things that could blow giant holes in people because they thought it was excessive, instead modern guns focus on accuracy and piercing, enough to put someone on the ground, but not immediately fatal. Modern guns kill you with blood loss from a neat little hole, old fashioned guns killed you by blowing a bloody great chunk out of you. A musket is basically an elephant gun, designed and capable of killing with sheer force of the bullet, which could potentially be a better use of your resources given the things you have to fight in cataclysm. A close up musket shot should seriously injure a zombie brute even on a normal hit.

Even if not to everyone’s taste, I think there’s a definite niche for that, sort of like a more chance-based shotgun in a way, and the rifled variants of course could be quite accurate, as they were in real life.

7

Crafting one of those muskets shouldn’t be in the capabilities of regular Joe. I have never used or seen how a musket is constructed in real life , so i have no idea how to make the things. Since the only book in cataclysm dda about firearms is Guns and ammo , i guess it doesn’t contain any significant detail about muskets or how to craft musket rounds. I would go for the muskets to only be in Mansions with few musket rounds laying around , since there is no wikipedia in cataclysm and you can’t just google “how to craft musket”.

8

It’s a long thin metal bucket with a little hole in the back to let you light the gunpowder, essentially a musket is exactly the same as a cannon, only smaller.

Anyone with a basic understanding of what a firearm does, and enough metalworking ability should be able to create one, they’re incredibly simple things. That’s kind of the other reason I’d want them in, they’re not really much harder to make than a good crossbow. The difficulty lies in working the metal into the shape you want. But a musket is more or less exactly what you get if you realise that gunpowder can be used to propel things if set off in a confined space, and you set out to make something that does that which you can carry.

Which is how they got invented in the first place.

9

It’s a long thin metal bucket with a little hole in the back to let you light the gunpowder, essentially a musket is exactly the same as a cannon, only smaller.

Anyone with a basic understanding of what a firearm does, and enough metalworking ability should be able to create one, they’re incredibly simple things. That’s kind of the other reason I’d want them in, they’re not really much harder to make than a good crossbow. The difficulty lies in working the metal into the shape you want. But a musket is more or less exactly what you get if you realise that gunpowder can be used to propel things if set off in a confined space, and you set out to make something that does that which you can carry.

Which is how they got invented in the first place.[/quote]

Yeah i read the wiki and now i know that surviving zombie apocalypse is piece of cake , just make a musket and run around propelling lead balls at everything that moves. You know making a musket is as simple as it gets , just get a pipe , a wood , gunpowder … oh wait if you won’t carve any decorations in the pipe , it will still be a regular pipe gun (Pipe rifle).

Other than being a thing to look at and say “woow that sure is bad weapon for zombie apocalypse” there is no reason to prefer musket over any other modern weapon.

10

It’s a long thin metal bucket with a little hole in the back to let you light the gunpowder, essentially a musket is exactly the same as a cannon, only smaller.

Anyone with a basic understanding of what a firearm does, and enough metalworking ability should be able to create one, they’re incredibly simple things. That’s kind of the other reason I’d want them in, they’re not really much harder to make than a good crossbow. The difficulty lies in working the metal into the shape you want. But a musket is more or less exactly what you get if you realise that gunpowder can be used to propel things if set off in a confined space, and you set out to make something that does that which you can carry.

Which is how they got invented in the first place.[/quote]

Yeah i read the wiki and now i know that surviving zombie apocalypse is piece of cake , just make a musket and run around propelling lead balls at everything that moves. You know making a musket is as simple as it gets , just get a pipe , a wood , gunpowder … oh wait if you won’t carve any decorations in the pipe , it will still be a regular pipe gun (Pipe rifle).

Other than being a thing to look at and say “woow that sure is bad weapon for zombie apocalypse” there is no reason to prefer musket over any other modern weapon.[/quote]

Well, no, the point is that it uses simple ammunition, pipe rifles don’t, they use ammunition you can’t make very easily and are somewhat wasteful given that they’re inaccurate and using quite rare ammo.

The point of a crude gun is that it uses crude ammunition you could make in bulk, plus it would be quite well suited to fighting things that can’t bleed to death, which a lot of the enemies in cataclysm can’t.

Regular firearms aren’t built for fighting zombies, but a large calibre gun designed for use in close quarters would be quite effective. If you made pipe rifles smoothbore and fire makeshift ammo, well, that’s basically the salvaged musket I described earlier. I still think the game could use some more options for simple gun crafting.

11

Not sure if this was pitched but…a blunderbuss. Load it with anything that isn’t larger than a loaf of bread, broken glass, knife blades, rags, anything.

12

[quote=“Jotun, post:10, topic:2095”]Well, no, the point is that it uses simple ammunition, pipe rifles don’t, they use ammunition you can’t make very easily and are somewhat wasteful given that they’re inaccurate and using quite rare ammo.

The point of a crude gun is that it uses crude ammunition you could make in bulk, plus it would be quite well suited to fighting things that can’t bleed to death, which a lot of the enemies in cataclysm can’t.[/quote]
If you have the materials to make musket ammunition (primer, powder and bullet) then you have everything you need to reload cartridges. Other than the romanticized aspect, muskets are no different from the “pipe gun”. And a musket you can reload with a cartridge is much better than one you reload the individual parts in, not to mention that cartridges are weather proof.

13

That would be cool also, improvised grapeshot ftw!

[quote=“Bladerock, post:12, topic:2095”][quote=“Jotun, post:10, topic:2095”]Well, no, the point is that it uses simple ammunition, pipe rifles don’t, they use ammunition you can’t make very easily and are somewhat wasteful given that they’re inaccurate and using quite rare ammo.

The point of a crude gun is that it uses crude ammunition you could make in bulk, plus it would be quite well suited to fighting things that can’t bleed to death, which a lot of the enemies in cataclysm can’t.[/quote]
If you have the materials to make musket ammunition (primer, powder and bullet) then you have everything you need to reload cartridges. Other than the romanticized aspect, muskets are no different from the “pipe gun”. And a musket you can reload with a cartridge is much better than one you reload the individual parts in, not to mention that cartridges are weather proof.[/quote]

No no no a match or flintlock musket uses neither cartridges nor primers, that’s the point. A musket works like a cannon, it has a little flash pan or hole in the back in to which a lit fuse is pressed (or flint sparks are released) which sets off a simple charge of powder behind a ball and some wadding. The only thing you need is some powder (which you can get from any ammo you find), a little scrap of paper or cloth for wadding, and something to fire, which can be anything from a lead ball to even a small stone. There’s no real precision required or even any specialist tools (beyond something to cast the lead balls with).

Here’s a picture: File:PS8004046.jpg - Wikipedia

What happens is you pull the lever at the bottom and that moves the wick down into the little pan at the site, which burns powder into the barrel and fires the gun. It’s much much simpler than a modern firearm, and the things it needs are much more available in cataclysm than proper bullets for any given gun.

Guns didn’t use percussion cartridges until quite a bit later, and a .22 pipe rifle is still much much less powerful than a .75 calibre musket.

14

[quote=“Jotun, post:13, topic:2095”][quote=“Bladerock, post:12, topic:2095”][quote=“Jotun, post:10, topic:2095”]Well, no, the point is that it uses simple ammunition, pipe rifles don’t, they use ammunition you can’t make very easily and are somewhat wasteful given that they’re inaccurate and using quite rare ammo.

The point of a crude gun is that it uses crude ammunition you could make in bulk, plus it would be quite well suited to fighting things that can’t bleed to death, which a lot of the enemies in cataclysm can’t.[/quote]
If you have the materials to make musket ammunition (primer, powder and bullet) then you have everything you need to reload cartridges. Other than the romanticized aspect, muskets are no different from the “pipe gun”. And a musket you can reload with a cartridge is much better than one you reload the individual parts in, not to mention that cartridges are weather proof.[/quote]

No no no a musket uses neither cartridges nor primers, that’s the point. A musket works like a cannon, it has a little flash pan or hole in the back in to which a lit fuse is pressed (or flint sparks are released) which sets off a simple charge of powder behind a ball and some wadding. The only thing you need is some powder (which you can get from any ammo you find), a little scrap of paper or cloth for wadding, and something to fire, which can be anything from a lead ball to even a small stone. There’s no real precision required or even any specialist tools (beyond something to cast the lead balls with).

It’s much much simpler than a modern firearm.[/quote]

What do you think a primer is? Of course muskets used a primer, they just used a more primitive sort of primer than is currently used. Whether your primer is an actual burning fire (matchlock) or a chunk of flint (flintlock) or a percussion cap (caplock, and cartridge ammunition by extension), the principle is the same. The only question is, which of these can you put together with the tools available to you? Given that this is the future, the tools available are pretty damn impressive; accordingly, I don’t really see the use of muskets; by the time you’ve managed to scrape together enough infrastructure to start making your own gunpowder, you’ve already got the gunsmithing tools needed to use that gunpowder to reload your own cartridges.

15

[quote=“Endovior, post:14, topic:2095”][quote=“Jotun, post:13, topic:2095”][quote=“Bladerock, post:12, topic:2095”][quote=“Jotun, post:10, topic:2095”]Well, no, the point is that it uses simple ammunition, pipe rifles don’t, they use ammunition you can’t make very easily and are somewhat wasteful given that they’re inaccurate and using quite rare ammo.

The point of a crude gun is that it uses crude ammunition you could make in bulk, plus it would be quite well suited to fighting things that can’t bleed to death, which a lot of the enemies in cataclysm can’t.[/quote]
If you have the materials to make musket ammunition (primer, powder and bullet) then you have everything you need to reload cartridges. Other than the romanticized aspect, muskets are no different from the “pipe gun”. And a musket you can reload with a cartridge is much better than one you reload the individual parts in, not to mention that cartridges are weather proof.[/quote]

No no no a musket uses neither cartridges nor primers, that’s the point. A musket works like a cannon, it has a little flash pan or hole in the back in to which a lit fuse is pressed (or flint sparks are released) which sets off a simple charge of powder behind a ball and some wadding. The only thing you need is some powder (which you can get from any ammo you find), a little scrap of paper or cloth for wadding, and something to fire, which can be anything from a lead ball to even a small stone. There’s no real precision required or even any specialist tools (beyond something to cast the lead balls with).

It’s much much simpler than a modern firearm.[/quote]

What do you think a primer is? Of course muskets used a primer, they just used a more primitive sort of primer than is currently used. Whether your primer is an actual burning fire (matchlock) or a chunk of flint (flintlock) or a percussion cap (caplock, and cartridge ammunition by extension), the principle is the same. The only question is, which of these can you put together with the tools available to you? Given that this is the future, the tools available are pretty damn impressive; accordingly, I don’t really see the use of muskets; by the time you’ve managed to scrape together enough infrastructure to start making your own gunpowder, you’ve already got the gunsmithing tools needed to use that gunpowder to reload your own cartridges.[/quote]

I mean they don’t use the primers you find in cataclysm, just a bit of string. The principle might be the same but string is much more common than primers for any particular ammo type. Percussion caps are actually pretty hard to make, especially with the precision you need for a modern firearm. It’s not really something you can do by hand so far as I know.

I just think if I was using guns, I’d like to be able to make ammo without needing to collect cartridges and primers for my gun. For a gun with the destructive power of a .75 caliber musket you’re going to have a very hard time finding both cartridges and primers for that, not to mention the gun itself, and you can take the gunpowder out of any old trash rounds you come across.

It’s sacrificing overall firepower for renewability, Not to mention you can make black powder with a mortar and pestle, sulphur (boil some acid rain or battery acid), charcoal (set some wood on fire and put it in an airtight box, or just go to the local gas station) and saltpeter, saltpeter being potassium nitrate which is a fertilizer nowadays, so you should be able to find it on farms. You don’t need any infrastructure, just the knowledge of how to make it (which you should be able to get from a chemistry textbook or firearms book) and a few materials which you should definitely be able to find somewhere in the cataclysm world.

I just think it’s really dumb that the only firearms in the game are ones that use strict standardisation which really limits their effectiveness in the long term. The first thing you’d do surely is figure out a way to use all the surplus ammo you find but don’t carry around the guns for.

16

The theoretical power of a musket isn’t really worth all that much given its appalling problems with accuracy and reload times; this is why, historically, they were only useful when massed and fired in volleys. You don’t have the luxury to spend a minute or more fiddling around with the laborious process of breech-loading an inaccurate single-shot weapon like a musket when zombies are barreling down on you; you are seriously competing at a disadvantage with the crossbow. And the crossbow is not the real competition. If you have supplies for manufacturing ammunition around, the actual competition is the shotgun. Shotgun > Musket, in every possible way, and shotgun shells are among the easier types of ammo to fiddle with. No amount of fapping to antiquated weaponry is going to change the fact that modern… no, futuristic projectile weaponry trumps antiquated projectile weaponry in every possible way.

Really, it all boils down to the fact that the niche muskets might occupy is held firmly by archery on the one end and shotguns on the other, and both do their jobs a lot better than muskets possibly could. In terms of an easily improvised weapon not requiring much in the way of infrastructure, a bow is immensely cheaper, easier to craft and use, and more combat-effective than a musket would ever be; and in terms of a powerful monster-slaying cannon, the shotgun is immensely more powerful, more combat-effective, and more easily found and supplied than a musket would be. Accordingly, there’s just no room in the game for it.

Kinetic Bullet Puller + Hand Press & Die Set. Take apart the weird nonstandard ammo for guns you don’t use, recycling the components to make ammo for the guns you do. It’s not hard. The primers aren’t universal, but that’s not a big deal; they standardize within a weapon category. Eventually, you’ll run out of ammo, sure… but crafting is still being revised, and it wouldn’t at all be hard to envision some combination of…

1: Crude improvised ammunition, made from substandard components, that’s less powerful and more prone to failure, but easier to make.
2: Tools to make better ammo… I’m thinking 3D printers wouldn’t be out of the question (read: it’s the future), though power and blueprint requirements would make this an endgame infrastructure project.
3: NPC vendors who’ll trade you ammo for other useful things.

All of which combine to make long-term ammo scarcity… not quite a nonissue, but an issue that can be addressed and conquered decisively, using a variety of methods.

17
  1. “I want to use all the ammos in one gun!”

Which wouldn’t work any better than it already does with reloading. Anyways: If you could chemistry lab your way to making powder and casting bullets, you are literally right at the door of just picking up your spent casings and reloading them. Which will save you time when firing your pipe rifle or single barrel shotgun.

  1. “Muskets are totally superior to modern firearms!”

The mythical “cannon” you are describing that “blows chunks out of people with massive bullets” didn’t exist. Muskets and early rifles were notoriously bad at penetration beyond the first few yards, to the point where they could be stopped by most contemporary armor and, in many cases, even a single layer of soft leather.

This is because low speed + large area = crap.

Specially if you are loading it with substandard blackpowder, which is so lacking that it would even fail to propel the bullet out of the barrel and instead would just foul it. Just let that sink in. Muskets were so terrible, they could not even perform their basic function of shooting.

  1. "It looks cool!"
    I agree, but that’s not worth creating a new way to load multiple different ammunition items into one weapon. And if the powder and junk are combined through recipes into a “musket ammo” item, then it’s no different from combining the materials into a “shotgun slug” or “.45 cartridge”
18

When I read non sustainable I cringed.

World generation is infinite so loot spawns are infinite, and plus ammo spawns are high enough that you don’t really have to worry about them. Melee weapons are only infinitely sustainable because weapon damage isn’t implemented.

Now a .50 caliber loaded with shotshell (goddamn, turned warped a turkey into a a bloody pulp new dimension) would be a rather effective way of point-blank hulk destroying power.

Manufacturing gunpowder basically requires 3 components: Sulfur, Salt Peter, and charcoal (lowers of explosive velocity). So if you happen to have 3 functioning mines of the right variety (not easy) you could make your own gunpowder. But then why not just reload modern guns?

19

A few things:

Even if there isn’t a game niche for these, why crap all over the idea? It’s not going to detract from the rest of the game. Running around with a musket fighting zombies sounds like great fun.

Scavenged ammo (and therefore modern gunpowder) is currently super-common, that’s not always going to be the case. The fact that it doesn’t feel at all scarce should tell you that.

Creating modern firearm powder and primers doesn’t remotely resemble creating black powder and associated components. It’s not at all resonable from what I understand for a lone survivor to make the former, and it’s extremely reasonable for a lone survivor to make the latter. The chemical composition of modern powder is difficult, and the manufacturing tolerances for making modern firearm primers is likewise prohibitive.

The core point here, that modern firearms and ammunition may be scarce in the medium-to-long term, and that black powder based weapons provide a survivor-craftable alternative, is a good one.

20

The problem is that to maintain any semblance of authenticity to the whole process, it requires reloading a musket based weapon to involve a little less than half a minute of reloading after every shot, a much higher degree of dispersion, and lower damage. A crossbow would be about equivalent in speed to reloading a musket (faster if very strong), but would do a greater degree of damage to an enemy and the ammo for it would be much easier to craft. The real big advantage of a musket-based weapon would be that the ammo and black powder needed to make it work would weigh a lot less than an equivalent number of crossbow bolts, and would not require strength to reload as a crossbow would. While that would make the difference to me as a person who endeavors to play low-str characters these days, at the moment both crossbows and firearms are overshadowed by bows.
Though bows are historically more effective than either option, since bowmen required years or even a lifetime of training, bowmen fell out of use in favor of crossbowmen and later, musketeers. Bows as they exist in the game currently do not reflect the level of training and practice required to be effective in their use (archery is too easy to train). This results in longbowmen survivors emerging from complete newbies in a matter of a few days, whom if they are capable of using the longbow, will do so over the other two options that favor newcomers to warfare. I would say it’s less that the musket fails to fill a niche, and more that bows simply overshadow the niche they would occupy at the moment. Were bows requiring of the months or years of practice (or a suitable investment in the archery skill at character creation) that they did, muskets would make for a good low-strength character firearm in the face of a modern ammo scarcity in the current or future game.
TL;DR: Muskets could have a place but would be overshadowed by bows like crossbows are atm.

After doing research on the process of creating and reloading primers, I would agree that creating primers might be beyond a survivor’s basic ability, but disagree on reloading being beyond a survivor’s ability. I base this on a youtube video and comments from hand loaders whom due to primer scarcity are being forced to reload primers. This is the video I looked at.


I would imagine the process displayed would be easy to implement, given that matchbooks already exist (I know that’s not the kind of matches required, but don’t really see much of a reason to make a whole new item just for one recipe). A 20 minute recipe requiring 4 firearms skill (to figure out the right amount needed to make the primer work), using a screwdriver and (stone)hammer/rock (Integrated Toolset could substitute for screwdriver and hammer) with the ingredients being 10 spent primers and 20 matches (so an entire matchbook) to create 10 primers of whatever type of primer the spent primers were wouldn’t be too difficult (only requiring that firing a weapon generate spent primers in addition to spent casings which would share the ground with the casing unless the player has a brass catcher). In my opinion, this would benefit gameplay threefold. It gives the player a means to deal with the issue of needing primers. It makes matches, an item inferior to a lighter, far more valuable. Finally, with matches being an uncommon item and the recipe requiring an entire matchbook a recipe, ammunition continues to be scarce and difficult to replace if wasted.
Looking at the process to create smokeless powder, it might be a bit beyond a survivor to create himself given the chemistry involved, and using black powder on a modern weapon is no good. Black powder seems feasible though. It would just be a matter of making modern ammunition rare enough to justify the creation of it and musket firearms.