[quote=“gtaguy, post:21, topic:2095”]Sorry to bash, but for balance they need to kick arse otherwise crossbows/bows would be the better choice.
.50 caliber or .75 caliber shotshell gun would be rather effective at massive shoving force, knock off entire limbs with no accuracy. Otherwise a rifled barrel with a sabot behind the shot would suffice for high point energy.
If we added mining then you could use these indiffinately. Also you could fire non-standard ammo unlike a regular firearm; like a glass vial of acid with a sabot to protect it, rocks, wooden spears, and anything that you could fit inside.[/quote]
I did point out that the three components for black powder are actually very common. You need sulphur which can be acquired by simply boiling sulphuric acid, which is already in the game from a variety of sources (spitter zombies, acid rain, batteries). You need charcoal which, well, how common is that where you live? Here they sell it at every petrol station by the sackful, and anyone with a barbeque might have a bag around the house. Finally you need saltpeter, which is potassium nitrate and commonly used as a fertilizer nowadays. It functions as an oxidising agent, which could probably be substituted for a number of other oxidisers you would probably find in abundance in laboratories.
Basically, if you live on a farm and can find a funnel, a bowl, and a rock, you can make gunpowder. It’s really not hard, that’s why people were making it a thousand years ago in china before heavy industry was invented.
Further, even early muskets could fire a hundred yards or so, not with any accuracy no, but they could fire that far, so the idea that the bullets don’t even go out of the barrel is just plain wrong. Late-period rifled muskets firing minie ball ammunition would probably be effective up to about 300-500 yards with massed fire, and accurate certainly up to about 100 I would think.
Also, historically, muskets ARE more powerful than crossbows. That’s why they were used. Also they require no strength to use at all, while a crossbow still needs strength to draw. A musket would be a good choice for a weak, science based character who is good at chemistry and engineering but hasn’t got the strength to pull a crossbow back with any speed. They would do more damage and have a flat reload speed, which would be faster than a crossbow at lower strengths. A practiced musketeer could fire probably between 3 and 5 shots a minute, without getting tired because it’s not physically exerting, again unlike a crossbow.
Ammunition would be crafted the same way current ammo is. To speed up loading, what a musketeer would do is generally pre-measure his cartridges out, and then wrap them in paper. So you have a little paper bag of black powder with a piece of shot in it, when you want to reload you take one of your bags out of your pocket, tear off the top, pour the powder into the gun, shove the paper into the gun, shove the ball in after it, then ram the whole thing down with the rod. Shoulder the gun, aim, and fire.
So it doesn’t need specialist ammo usage rules, the ammo is just very easy to make. rags or paper, a measure of powder, and a pebble or some lead.
Further, historically muskets were designed to be melee weapons as well as guns. They were made long not only to improve accuracy, but because soldiers were expected to fight hand to hand with them, using bayonets. A musket should be at least as good as a spear or heavy club in melee, in addition to being really REALLY painful if you get hit with it. It wouldn’t have armor penetration comparable to modern guns, but it does fire a bloody huge and heavy ball faster than a crossbow bolt. That’s going to pretty much wreck anything it hits that isn’t wearing armor. They stopped putting people in armor because anything short of heavy plate didn’t make a lot of difference to a musket ball.
I think there’s plenty of ways that long firearms would be distinct from existing ranged weapons. It can’t go full auto and tear through a robot, but it can probably kill a deer in one hit, or make a brute stop and think. Given the size and power of the round it should probably have a stun effect on it, even against armored enemies just because it hits so hard. Even if it doesn’t pierce your armor, it’ll still be like getting hit with a baseball bat. A smoothbore musket would be a short range but bloody dangerous weapon, if a bit erratic. A rifled musket with bullet-shaped shot would be a pretty decent rifle, though only one shot. It’d still do a lot of damage and you could keep shooting it until the cows come home. And you can always stab someone in the face with it if they get too close. Not to mention the possibilities of modification.
Old gunsmiths made some insane and pretty damn awesome variants of the simple gun design. Such as the Pistol Sword (a gun that is also a sword, yes that’s a real thing) Pepperboxes (reloading takes a while so make a pistol with six barrels on it so you don’t have to!) Duck’s Foot Pistol (compensate for poor aim with volume) and Hand Mortars (fire anything you can fit in the barrel.)
I mean yeah sure most of them are dumb as hell but the game’s about that, isn’t it? If you just go for the most effective strategy every time then it’d be a bit of a dull game. A lot of these would be worth putting in just so you can find them in the wild, either in a museum or just turning up in the inventories of mad survivors. Just so you can find one and you know you would just have to try using it.
