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[RAM]

What more is there to learn about the rifle? It is rifled, powerful, and probably has some sort of improved sight. The strange thing is that there seem to be a lot of them... I would be inclined to get some sort of superior long-ranged rifle to force the opposition into enduring the depredations of occasional fire that they have little means of retaliating against or advance against fortified positions and engage within our effective range. I mean, they would be plenty expensive, but I could see something with a proper optical scope and over-engineered firing chamber and barrel could easily outrange anything that is likely to come out in the near future and give us some useful technological expertise...

[Stirk]

I want to learn about their rifle before designing a counter.

How about a steam powered ship to dominate the seas? Next turn we will go for a small arm

I see where you are coming from, but disagree. We are getting SLAUGHTERED on land, while we are actually doing pretty good on the ocean front. They obviously have some kind of sniper rifle, and with our superior powder we should be able to put out a better sniper rifle with no issue. This better rifle would be the best counter we can come up with, right? Putting them on the defense would be nice, but we have to defend ourselves first. Sacrificing our first round for better powder can't be wasted.

So my idea:

Fire Eagle:
An accurate rifle based on the M1903 Springfield. Bolt action, with a 5 round integral magazine that can be loaded from a stripper clip. .30-06 caliber bullets using the smokeless powder. Uses a scope, based off of whatever imports we can get ~5X zoom. Accuracy and range is top priority with this weapon.

I'm hoping the "copy cat" thing will help us out on that front . We can come up with another design if we think this is out of our technological reach.

[RAM]

Get a calibre in millimetres and I could support that... If we go all the way up to 8 centimetres then, well, it would probably take a little bit of doing, but it should be worth it...

[Stirk]

Get a calibre in millimetres and I could support that... If we go all the way up to 8 centimetres then, well, it would probably take a little bit of doing, but it should be worth it...

Eh? For an anti-personal sniper rifle? That is literally an artillery round, it would be a cannon. The .30-06 bullets are 7.62×63mm in metric notation, but I don't see any reason to make it in millimetres  .

[RAM]

Oh, whoops, 8 millimetres not centimetres... But we already use metric for the fire dragon so I figure that we ought to be consistent. Besides, inches are way too big to measure calibres in with any relevant sort of figures. I mean, 0.306? 4 digits?

[Stirk]

Oh, whoops, 8 millimetres not centimetres... But we already use metric for the fire dragon so I figure that we ought to be consistent. Besides, inches are way too big to measure calibres in with any relevant sort of figures. I mean, 0.306? 4 digits?

Ok, that makes a lot more sense . Well this is a gun based off a foreign design, even if we had decided to use metric for all our weapons this would still have this as a caliber. Next off, .30-06 isn't because it is .306 inches, it is a .30 caliber bullet that was made in 1906 (.30(caliber) -06(year)). Inches usually have less digits than weapon caliber, as I just said its metric designation is 7.62×63mm, five digits. That is pretty constant, a .45 is 11.48×33mmR, a .223 is 5.56×45mm, a .308 is 7.62×51mm. You can never take two things away from an American, their guns and their inches!

Anyways, I based it off of the American standard issue weapon of this time, which was later used as a sniper rifle in both world wars. It should be simple enough that we can build it, accurate enough to take down the enemy snipers picking us off, and it has a built in cool name. Eagle (keeping in our bird-naming theme) has a double meaning when it is applies to an American Sniper rifle . We really don't need to go bigger than this for an anti-personnel weapon. The fact our opponents are still using black powder (probably ) should be enough to give us an advantage with whatever caliber we decide on.

[RAM]

Ehh, I get the impression that .45 is sort of silly, and if you are going to be silly then you may as well go for 11cm or 12cm...
.223in can easily be replaced with 5.6mm and .308 can be replaced with a 7.6mm round. The odd figures are just because imperial is being converted into metric, rounds made in metric can be simpler... Going up to 8mm is a bit on the extravagant side, but less wind influence and a greater ability to penetrate cover is not a bad thing.

And how can we base our design on a U.S.A. design if we can't take their guns? We would need an example wouldn't we? Do we have to buy the gun's owner with the gun?

Maybe we should just drop both systems and base our measurements on rice grains... Who is up for a 4.5-grain calibre?

[Stirk]

Ehh, I get the impression that .45 is sort of silly, and if you are going to be silly then you may as well go for 11cm or 12cm...
.223in can easily be replaced with 5.6mm and .308 can be replaced with a 7.6mm round. The odd figures are just because imperial is being converted into metric, rounds made in metric can be simpler... Going up to 8mm is a bit on the extravagant side, but less wind influence and a greater ability to penetrate cover is not a bad thing.

And how can we base our design on a U.S.A. design if we can't take their guns? We would need an example wouldn't we? Do we have to buy the gun's owner with the gun?

Maybe we should just drop both systems and base our measurements on rice grains... Who is up for a 4.5-grain calibre?

... .45 silly? You kiddin'?

Anyway, by the same token we can just replace .223 with .22, .308 with .3, etc etc. Using metric isn't any simpler, even with fictional units. Even weapons made using mm have funny numbers (7.62×39mm and 5.45×39mm for Russian bullets.), the caliber is chosen for optimal performance, not rounded numbers :-/. Using rice grains as caliber would be highly amusing, but it would kinda be hard to be able to judge their performance .

Anyway, it doesn't matter what measuring units we use. What does matter is what caliber we use. We really don't have any reason to increase it from 7.62mm to 8mm, so I'll keep it what it is at .

For the buy/own the gun, no. The rules state that things that have already been invented are faster to make than brand-new objects. That is why it only took one turn for us to advance from black powder to smokeless powder. We have encyclopedias explaining the basic workings of the items, including weapons. Basing it on a specific weapon (probably) won't help much, but it does mean that all the technology necessary has already been made and should be easy to make.

[RAM]

Okay, so we have a sniper rifle, there is some debate about calibre and such, and I would like a bit more extravagance as I don't mind a bit more complexity, but sniper rifle seems like a contender. /is there any competition? Does anyone want to flesh out a carbine for cavalry and navy use? What about hand-launched rockets?

[Stirk]

Okay, so we have a sniper rifle, there is some debate about calibre and such, and I would like a bit more extravagance as I don't mind a bit more complexity, but sniper rifle seems like a contender. /is there any competition? Does anyone want to flesh out a carbine for cavalry and navy use? What about hand-launched rockets?

I thought it was already super advanced/extravagance, compared to what we have  . We still have a carbine design, and hand-held rocket launchers are on the table, but right now we are getting hit hard by the enemy snipers and we *really* need to do something about it if we don't want to lose a lot of ground.

[evilcherry]

I want to learn about their rifle before designing a counter.

How about a steam powered ship to dominate the seas? Next turn we will go for a small arm

You don't know what the enemy had made last turn, this the whole point of being blind.
You can ask your spies for specifics of the enemy weapons, but this only comes at spy/question phase which is after revise (and at the same time with battle).

[RAM]

The edible seed is a grain (caryopsis) 5–12 mm (0.20–0.47 in) long and 2–3 mm (0.079–0.118 in) thick
So if we call a grain 2mm or 2.5mm(or .1 inches if we want to make it too easy for enemy spies) then we can have a standard, measured in grains, that the enemy will have all the more difficulty in deciphering...

Can we use our spy action from the previous turn to document the insidious biological agents that they harbour in their infernal roasted wheat products such that someday we might illustrate to the people that our enemies are harbouring germ colonies in their foodstuffs?

[evilcherry]

Players and tiebreakers sorely needed!

[griffinpup]

+1 to snipey rifle.  Definitely

[Beneviento]

The only thing that worries me is that we don't have any experience making enclosed cartridges or internal magazines. As a bridge we might consider making a needle rifle like the Dreyse or Chassepot, or maybe a lever action like a Winchester. However the Fire Eagle is a good design and a Dreyse or Winchester clone might not solve our outranged problem, so I'm glad to go with it.