Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Nirur Torir]

I am changing my vote away from the Patriot Rifle Mk. III, to the Breech field cannon.

By my count, that's 3 for the cannon and 1 for the rifle.

Spoiler: My current medium term plan/wishes (click to show/hide)

Cannons > machine guns > semi-auto rifles (sniper scopes on revision) > railways > ironclads with machine guns and cannons.

[stabbymcstabstab]

I think Ironclads should come before Semi Autos. We need to achieve Naval dominance and besides they'll be great training for tanks.

[evilcherry]

Your current cannons are smoothbores.

[VoidSlayer]

Ok. I support the patriot rife mk III but, is the bayonet necessary?

I suppose not, but it should be pretty easy to add on if the rifle is designed with it in mind, and will it will help against cavalry and in urban environments.

Why not some sort of shotgun for urban areas? (I'm here no, btw Also, I've no experience with this)

We could try to make a cheap multishot sidearm pistol also.

I really dislike the idea of spending another round on the rifle right away, but that artillery seems too much too fast.

[tntey]

We should make weapons that focus on demoralizing the enemy. We are already doing this with our 'sniper' rifles.

[evilcherry]

Cannons, that is.

Spoiler: "Breech" Field Cannon (click to show/hide)

The Breech Field Cannon is a rifled 90mm Breechloader Cannon. Your designers have designed a curious breech system which is more or less like a gigantic door bolt. Leaks are common, but your arty men had devised a practice of firing from a very long fuse to avoid the resulting blowback.
Your Ammunition Officers complained that it would be impractical to make enough propellant and shells using our current supply of imported smokeless powder. As a result, only metal penetrator shells are produced and used. 2 Metal, Doubly Complex (because of smokeless powder shortage)

You also gained Breechloading Large Firearms and Early AP shell tech.

Revise phase.

[Nirur Torir]

Failures all around, I guess. I was really hoping to at least get smokeless powder invented.

Just stick some of the new cannons on ships for the revise action, I guess.

[3_14159]

I guess that's the compensation for our 6/6 last turn. What to do about it?

Hm. Right now, we can issue this cannon to satisfy 1/100th of our needs. That's - obviously - not enough.
There are two complexities with it: The smokeless powder and the breech system. The latter also reduces performance.
How about the following: We revise it to only use blackpowder, and to improve our breech system to hopefully both be cheaper and more reliable. Using only blackpowder should be extremely simple, and reduce complexity by one. For the breech system, we obviously need a bit of luck, but with this turn's experience it should hopefully be possible.
Then, next turn, we'd design a ship to mount the cannons.
Thoughts on that?

[Nirur Torir]

How about the following: We revise it to only use blackpowder, and to improve our breech system to hopefully both be cheaper and more reliable. Using only blackpowder should be extremely simple, and reduce complexity by one. For the breech system, we obviously need a bit of luck, but with this turn's experience it should hopefully be possible.

I'll support that action.

Then, next turn, we'd design a ship to mount the cannons.

Not that one, though (unless you meant just dropping them onto one as a revise action). What sort of ship are you even planning, that would be worth more than getting more than correcting the horrifying inadequacies of only having armor-piercing cannon rounds for anti-infantry use?

[stabbymcstabstab]

Should we design tools to make modern gunpowder? That would reduce the complexity on a lot of our equipment and solve future problems.

[3_14159]

Not that one, though (unless you meant just dropping them onto one as a revise action). What sort of ship are you even planning, that would be worth more than getting more than correcting the horrifying inadequacies of only having armor-piercing cannon rounds for anti-infantry use?

Damn, I misread the result. Us only having armour-piercing rounds available changes that.
How about we do this this turn:

"Breech B" - the B stands for Blackpowder
A simplified variant of the Breech cannon, it uses blackpowder instead of smokeless one to propel an array of newly-designed shells towards the target: Armour-piercing, high-explosive, shrapnel and smoke.

This means we have to spend another revision on the breech itself, but it would probably be the most expedient solution - especially since the less powerful blackpowder will probably also help our blowback problem.

Aside from that, as a ship, I was thinking about a small-ish steam frigate mounting a broadside of our new cannons. Depending on our willingness to innovate (and risk penalties), it may be screw-driven and/or mount turrets.

[stabbymcstabstab]

We do need a ship and need it bad since pretty much everything is off the mainland, and we might want to go for mounted turrets so that we can get them out of the way quickly.

[Nirur Torir]

Are we using them for anti-infantry?

We only have these double-complex rifled cannons that only have armor-piercing shells, or smoothbores that only have solid shot.

Should we design tools to make modern gunpowder? That would reduce the complexity on a lot of our equipment and solve future problems.

I think we'll get that with a decent roll on anything that uses smokeless powder. A simpler design attempt may work better than what we have been trying, or we might need a full turn for it. I'd like to try smokeless, metal rifle rounds first.

Aside from that, as a ship, I was thinking about a small-ish steam frigate mounting a broadside of our new cannons. Depending on our willingness to innovate (and risk penalties), it may be screw-driven and/or mount turrets.

We do not yet have steam power, and ...

I realized that we actually have 4 TC, not 2. We have 2 metal and 2 oil available to us. So I have a !!better!! idea for our revise phase!

Use hollow shells filled with oil and a slower internal fuse to make anti-personnel rounds for the Breech cannon.

I'm unvoting the Breech cannon downgrade to vote for this thing that I can't be bothered to check whether or not is a warcrime.

[tntey]

I thought that was also super or at least moderately useless? I mean, isn't that why it's a war crime? Because it causes unnecessary pain?
Oh right. We're going for demoralization. In that case, why don't we just use plain old hollow points?

Would you rather see someone be burned alive while screaming in pain or someone whose just screaming in pain?

I support incinerate rounds.

[stabbymcstabstab]

Sure wait a hundred turns so we can progress to the point of developing the concept, Chemical weapons on the other hand would be fully in use and within our grasp in the form of quicklime shells.