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[evilcherry]

Main Thread:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=158852.0



The Empire of Chang Shing, which has been there for thousands of years, and will be for thousands of thousands of years. The Wicked Manonerans has drained our fields to deny our access to rice, which is the best food for us. We have to stop them before our men are starved!

Chang Shing uses these weapons:

Spoiler: Chang Shing 1910 (click to show/hide)

Weapons:
Fire Dragon Guns: A traditional weapon, which design dates to at least 400 years. Essentially a matchlock musket. Comes in a variety of sizes, the largest ones has a bore of 30mm. 1 Metal.
Fire Phoenix Guns: A not-so-traditional weapon, which is imported from barbarous wheat-eaters. Essentially a percussion-cap flintlock rifled musket. Comes in standardized sizes. 1 metal, complex.
Crescent Sword: Another traditional weapon, even older than the fire dragon guns. A cutlass in the shape of the crescent moon. 1 Metal.
Lances: Favored by horsemen who need a longer reach weapon for charges. 1 Metal.
Fire Crow: The Chang Shing way to project firepower, which consists of a primitive rocket, wings, and half a kilogram of gunpowder tied together in the shape of a crow. Accuracy is woeful, but the psychological prowess of a crow exploding should never be underestimated. 1 Metal (for the ludicrous amount of gunpowder used), Doubly complex.

Ships:
Rowboats: When everything fails.
Junks: Despite its awkward sail shape, if the direction of the wind is good, its more efficient than other sail vessels. [2 Transport capacity]
Armed Junks: Junks, armed by brave men each holding a crescent sword and a fire dragon gun. 1 Metal.

Land Vehicles:
Horses: A traditional way to move around.
Horse Carts: A traditional way to move more things around [2 Transport capacity].

Technology:
Semaphores and telegraph wires - Perfectly good ways to relay things around.
Black Powder
Rudimentary Rocketry
Steel
Oil
Matchlocks
Rifling
Bombs

[Ukrainian Ranger]

Lets not start with a firearm as every other arms race.

Rockets can be our natural focus... How about handheld rocket launcher? No tanks to snipe but HE warhead can be deadly. Also, imagine sailors firing those before raiding.

Also, we can start with a balloon rocket launcher platform going for aviation early

Or we can go immediately for the rocket v 2.0

Or go for a rocket propelled torpedo, not something they expect.

[KiwiOui]

Lets not start with a firearm as every other arms race.

Rockets can be our natural focus... How about handheld rocket launcher? No tanks to snipe but HE warhead can be deadly. Also, imagine sailors firing those before raiding.

+1 for Rocket Launcher.

[Stirk]

Lets not start with a firearm as every other arms race.

Rockets can be our natural focus... How about handheld rocket launcher? No tanks to snipe but HE warhead can be deadly. Also, imagine sailors firing those before raiding.

Also, we can start with a balloon rocket launcher platform going for aviation early

Or we can go immediately for the rocket v 2.0

Or go for a rocket propelled torpedo, not something they expect.

Hm, rocket launchers aren't great for anti-infantry design, especially if we are still using 400 year old muskets. They are marginally more useful against ships, but then we would have to miniaturize our current technology while significantly improving accuracy, which would be difficult to achieve quickly. Accuracy is also a massive problem for any torpedo we would make, ships are fairly difficult targets and our current rockets are mostly for psychological effect.

I think the biggest priority-which would help with later weapon design firearm or rocket-would be to get a new propellant/explosive out the door. Black powder is good, but it is a little outdated for the time. A better explosive would allow for much more powerful rockets, while a better propellant would improve the current firearms while opening the door to more complex designs.

[griffinpup]

Hey I'm on this team! Post sometime later

[RAM]

I share the concern over the "start with a rifle" phenomena, and we do already have one and a half(filthy bread-eaters!) of the things, but a carbine for the cavalry and navy would be really very very convenient...

Ehh, stuff it, throw in an incendiary warhead and I am all over those rockets!

Half-tempted to take things way-too-far and suggest a recoiless rifle...

Maybe some rifling on the rockets themselves? Does anyone here have any rocketry knowledge that suggest that inducing spinning on an unguided rocket is a bad thing?

Code: [Select]

Fire Sparrow
A 30mm* rocket with external rifling and and an updated propellant mixture permitting it to fly without wings. It uses a simple payload of a lard and rice-alcohol mixture*** in a clay bottle
which is heated to combustion by a conductive rod running the length of the rocket**. It is launched from a reusable steel tube trailing a Y-shaped prong behind it and holding a crank-adjustable
bipod underneath for precise controls when braced against the ground, but can also be launched from an under-arm grip in emergencies.* I intend something small, I assume that the crow is larger than 30mm and like the idea that we already produce 30mm tubes for our muskets, but ehh...
*** So, we could probably look into quicklime or phosphorus or something that would be more effective, but this should be sticky and flammable and patriotic. Also I want to try to be somewhat restrained somewhere in the design so it isn't completely insane)0-0(.
** Probably impossible to actually get this to work, the rocket propellant really isn't designed to work as a heating device. So I am mostly counting on enthusiasm to override sense...
)0-0( I am, of course, completely insane, so if this is to be taken seriously, someone else should formalise up an alternative!

[KiwiOui]

Different idea:

Water Serpent Carbine

This 13mm carbine is designed for use, where a full gun would be bulky or inconvenient. As such, the butt of the gun contains a 4 round magazine, fired using a percussion cap, out of a rifled barrel.

((I'm basing this off of the Civil War-era's Spencer Repeating Rifle.))

[Stirk]

I share the concern over the "start with a rifle" phenomena, and we do already have one and a half(filthy bread-eaters!) of the things, but a carbine for the cavalry and navy would be really very very convenient...

Ehh, stuff it, throw in an incendiary warhead and I am all over those rockets!

Half-tempted to take things way-too-far and suggest a recoiless rifle...

Maybe some rifling on the rockets themselves? Does anyone here have any rocketry knowledge that suggest that inducing spinning on an unguided rocket is a bad thing?

Code: [Select]

Fire Sparrow
A 30mm* rocket with external rifling and and an updated propellant mixture permitting it to fly without wings. It uses a simple payload of a lard and rice-alcohol mixture*** in a clay bottle
which is heated to combustion by a conductive rod running the length of the rocket**. It is launched from a reusable steel tube trailing a Y-shaped prong behind it and holding a crank-adjustable
bipod underneath for precise controls when braced against the ground, but can also be launched from an under-arm grip in emergencies.* I intend something small, I assume that the crow is larger than 30mm and like the idea that we already produce 30mm tubes for our muskets, but ehh...
*** So, we could probably look into quicklime or phosphorus or something that would be more effective, but this should be sticky and flammable and patriotic. Also I want to try to be somewhat restrained somewhere in the design so it isn't completely insane)0-0(.
** Probably impossible to actually get this to work, the rocket propellant really isn't designed to work as a heating device. So I am mostly counting on enthusiasm to override sense...
)0-0( I am, of course, completely insane, so if this is to be taken seriously, someone else should formalise up an alternative!

Spinning does stabilize rockets (we could probably do something like the Hale Rocket design), but adding a guid stick would probably be easier. 30mm is silly small for a rocket, most early ones where in the centimeters (like 50 of them), and even modern ones are often a lot bigger (an RPG-7 is 40mm for example.)

[KiwiOui]

Yeah, now that I think about it, rockets would be great, but they don't seem like a first turn action. Perhaps, once armored vehicles are developed, we can build some explosives to counter it.

[RAM]

I figure that an incendiary rocket can somewhat get away with being stupid-small(with explosives you get more velocity and radius from the warhead's diameter, with incendiaries, much of the value is its tenacity and there is more value from quantity so you can have a longer warhead), and would be useful for cavalry that want to make a mess and get away and naval forces where conditions are cramped and there is lots of wood. But please do post a better rocket!

[Stirk]

I figure that an incendiary rocket can somewhat get away with being stupid-small(with explosives you get more velocity and radius from the warhead's diameter, with incendiaries, much of the value is its tenacity and there is more value from quantity so you can have a longer warhead), and would be useful for cavalry that want to make a mess and get away and naval forces where conditions are cramped and there is lots of wood. But please do post a better rocket!

Missiles should never fire in cramped conditions, the back blast would probably hurt our own ship if we tried to use the current version on naval vessels (or an updated handheld version), and that type of incendiary weapon wouldn't have much a purpose in the current conflict (mostly that kinda firebomb would work well against cities, fortifications, and other things that are hard to kill but weak to fire. Infantry/carvery in a field isn't in that category). It would certainly be useful if we could use it in our naval conflicts, at least until they make ironclads. Even cavalry can't really use it effectively, it is a heavier weapon that would prevent the troops from wielding their main weapon effectively, while not doing much to actually harm the enemy. Y


For the record, we have oil technology . This would be much more effective for use in incendiary weapons than your makeshift equipment.

As I said before, I think our best bet is making a better propellant or explosive, instead of relying on gunpowder for everything.

[evilcherry]

I would like to see a quick tallying of votes.

[griffinpup]

+1 to move past gunpowder.  That seems like a good prereq to anything we want to do anyways.

[Stirk]

I would like to see a quick tallying of votes.

Handheld rocket launcher: 1 (Ukrainian Ranger, KiwiOui)
Finding an improvement to gunpowder as an explosive/propellant: 2 (Stirk, Griffinpup)
Fire Sparrow: 1 (RAM)

At last I think that is how the voting breaks down due to the most recent posts. Correct me if I am wrong.

[KiwiOui]

I would like to see a quick tallying of votes.

Handheld rocket launcher: 1 (Ukrainian Ranger, KiwiOui)
Finding an improvement to gunpowder as an explosive/propellant: 2 (Stirk, Griffinpup)
Fire Sparrow: 1 (RAM)

At last I think that is how the voting breaks down due to the most recent posts. Correct me if I am wrong.

I proposed a carbine.