[quote=“Jotun, post:41, topic:2095”][quote=“Kevin Granade, post:32, topic:2095”]In practice I’d expect a musket to be quite innacurate compared to guns or even decent bows or crossbows. I don’t see a niche where it would be the best at anything either, but I also fail to see why that’s a problem. What it’s good at is being a freaking musket, it just is, make of it what you will.
One thing I’m not sure of is ignition source, with the whole history of black powder weapons to chose from, the question is which has a good balance of manufacturability and reliability. I really don’t see sufficient benefit to having musket variants with different ignition systems, so I’d prefer to pick one and just stick with that for all of them.[/quote]
A smoothbore basic flintlock pistol or musket should hit like a truck and require no skill to use. Thus it would be just as good at low level as it is at high level, except possibly reload speed scaling with dexterity.[/quote]
I’m not so sure of that, just like with a modern gun, the more accurately you can aim, and the more steadily you can fire, the better the results, because no matter how inaccurate the gun is, you can always add to it. The difference is that the degree of inaccuracy from the gun is larger, so the cost/benefit falls off faster, basically accuracy gives you a cap on effective range, and it might be the case that adding skill only marginally impacts effective range… which is probably what you meant. Hmm, it’s probably the case that skill will have a minimal impact on gun performance, so you’re right. Additionally the training from using one would be minimal because you can’t tell how much of the inaccuracy is from what you’re doing and from what the gun is contributing. Hmm, actually that might be a good way to limit firearm/archery practice in general, you can only get good feedback on your performance when the gun itself doesn’t make you miss, so more accurate guns would be helpful because you can get higher-quality feedback from them.
Totally agree, especially with crits being rather rare, the stats of the gun would dominate performance.
Oh man, I forgot about the upper tiers of smoothbore technology, at the highest levels you could have 2+ barrel monstrosities (look up “volley gun”) that should be able to stop a hulk.
Yea, it’s kind of ideal for the mechanically-oriented survivalist type.
[quote=“Jotun, post:41, topic:2095”] a bunch of stuff that’s totally reasonable, but I have no comment on.
Ignition sources, well, you’ve four choices really. Match, wheel, flint, and percussion.
Percussion is modern percussion caps. Stick a little sensitive material in the cartridge, whack it with a hammer, goes bang, gun shoots. Not much point using that one really as we already have it.
Match is easy, you have a simple lever with a tweezer on the end, stick a burning bit of string in there, pull the lever, it hits the pan and lights the gunpowder. Very simple but you need to keep replacing the string and it’s fiddly. Also doesn’t work in wet weather at all. Might be a bit too unreliable for anyone to want to use.
Flint is just a flint and steel, pull the lever and it strikes it. Much more reliable as it works better in wet weather, and wears down less. Flints should be… a little tricky to find without survival, though sporting good stores, cabins, LMOE shelters, maybe mansions, those should all have them around somewhere.
Wheellocks are odd, they’re most comparable to modern cigarette lighter with the spinny bit, they are kinda like flintlocks really but they use a wheel. I don’t really know why they invented them before regular flint and steel but apparently they did. Could get them off lighters quite easily. Old fashioned ones were… horrifyingly complicated. I really don’t get why they were used before flintlocks but they are an older design.
How about this, all guns are described as flintlocks, but you get the option to either break down a lighter, use a flint and steel kit (a modern survival tool that should be in sporting stores/LMOE shelters) or some natural flints + bits of steel to make the ignition mechanism. The gun doesn’t track exactly what you used, it just assumes you somehow managed to find something to strike sparks into the barrel.[/quote]
Hmm, yea, that’s a good approach, just drop the precussion and match locks, and have the ignition be some kind of flint-or-friction system, and you can assemble them from several different components. Possibly a generic “flintlock” item that would just be an ingredient in every black-powder weapon.
I believe the wheel locks would literally spin up to speed and grind against something to create hot sparks, which was an improvement over manually lighting it with an ember or something, but not by much. I think flint was actually an improvement in that it was more predictable, with a wheellock, there was a several-second period during which the gun could discharge, and you had to just hold it steady until it went off. With a flint lock, it might take a few tries to fire in some situations, but when it worked it would discharge a fairly predictable time after you pulled the trigger, which helps a LOT with aiming. Also a flintlock would require a single pull to cock, and a wheellock required winding, which could take a significant amount of time. Also wheellocks were large, heavy, and expensive.
Technically a modern lighter is a flintlock, it has a tiny bit of flint, and a steel I think wheel that rubs against it to make the sparks… you could have a hilarious gadget where butane (a lighter) is used as an accelerant to make flintlock ignition more reliable… Wow, if I were trying to make a black-powder gun for survival, I think that’s what I’d do…
