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Glorious Arstotzka

17 (16%)

Glorious Moskurg

13 (12.3%)

Ingloriously Didn't Play

76 (71.7%)

Total Members Voted: 106

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

A railgun sounds like it would very easily slot into the 'Impossible' design difficulty, and therefore would be a waste of time to attempt to create any time soon.  Especially since there are designs closer to the 'present' time period which would be easier to create and have similar levels of effectiveness.  Further, we have holes in our army and are currently under threat of losing the whole game due to them being so close to the capital, so using up time to even attempt to create one would be extremely foolish.


Anyway, here's the recoilless autocannon:

UF-RAC-42 "Martial Eagle"
A hybridization of the technology of the Hippo Recoilless Rifle and the UF-AC-41 Velociraptor.  The firing mechanism is a larger scaled implimentation of the UF-AC-41 Velociraptor's Advanced Primer Ignition system, that is slightly modified to incorporate the technology of the Hippo Recoilless Rifle to reduce recoil, and fires at a rate of 250 rounds per minute.  The weapon has a two meter barrel and is belt-fed with 55mm rounds.  The recoilless autocannon is designed to be mounted in UF-39-APC "Salamander" Pattern Bs, T2 Breakers, AS-T33s, and similar armored vehicles as an alternative to their regular cannons as an alternate turret configuration.

Link to historic recoilless autocannon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MK_115_cannon
We have belt-fed autocannons, mixed-belt advanced primer ignition, and 55mm recoilless rifle tech.  Just a matter of putting it all together into one package.  Granted, the idea could likely be improved upon, but if we pull it off we can give the Cannalans hell.  Bonus, could use it as the main CAS gun in a Turbo-HAAST.  The 115 was planned to be used in aircraft, after all.  Though the fact that we'll be firing 55mm HEAT at several hundred rounds per minute is enough.

[Kot]

I will vote for the railgun only if it's on a floatplane.

[NAV]

how about we put a large projectile on a train and have the train go fast up a hill then suddenly brake? Railgun.

[Kot]

Only if it carries a tonne of bombs.

[RAM]

how about we put a large projectile on a train and have the train go fast up a hill then suddenly brake? Railgun.

Then we would be copying "Railway" which would be embarrassing. Like turning up to a party in the same outfit as your nemesis...

[Sensei]

Railguns aren't nearly as hard to build as you think they are. In fact, you can demonstrate the principle with a battery, a magnet, and some paper clips. From there you just need to make it BIG and handle the forces involved, not too hard for people whose job normally includes manufacturing cannons. The problem is 1940's power storage; batteries and capacitors are a world away from modern ones, and it would take an enormous amount of power to compete with gunpowder which is just easier and cheaper. You could make a railgun, sure, but could you make it better than a regular gun?

Hard: 3
UF-ERA-42 'Blood Eagle': The Blood Eagle is a system of Explosive-Reactive Armor plates. These provide significant protection against shaped-charge HEAT warheads, the armor explodes on contact and the warhead becomes deformed, making it much less effective. The Blood Eagle armor tends to detonate all at once, so that all of the ERA on one side of the tank or the entire tank will be expended after one hit, causing minor damage to the tank. Blood Eagle plates cannot be quickly replaced as they destroy their mounts, requiring a mechanic to weld new ones. It's not very effective against traditional AP rounds. It can be retrofitted to existing armored vehicles, though retrofits will have noticeable gaps in their coverage. [Complex] [+1 Oil]

Cannalan APDS has not been tested.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Well, looks like if we can remove the [complex] tag, all our stuff can get the ERA.  It having +1 Oil doesn't do anything to any of the vehicles we use it on due to getting 4 per turn and our most expensive of that category are at 3.

[Devastator]

(About Railguns)

There's also the very serious problem with the magnetic forces causing pitting and destruction of the rails.  If you get five shots out of a railgun before it destroys itself, it's horribly wasteful for the expense.  Power storage, as serious a problem as it is, would be no more important than the second huge issue.

[Kot]

Mount in on Deathball.

[RAM]

My main problem with mountign it on a deathball is that the obvious upgrade to deathballs in my mind is replacing the rockets with jets, which would presumably reduce its acceleration but greatly increase its range and likely its top-speed and thus potential momentum. Blood Eagle would likely be short-lived, and thus... Well, y'know... I guess we could mount it in grooves... I mean, it would create bands of vulnerability, but those bands could likely be curved and wavy without compromising the structure too much...

For now though... I am inclined to mount Blood Eagle on Vodka and Haast.

[10ebbor10]

Tsunami-Torpedo

Our current aerial torpedo is good, but too small to be effective at longer rsnges or against larger ships. Tsunami is an enlarged variant weighting in at 3 tonnes, more than powerfull enough to destroy even the largest Cannallan ship.

Edit : Our ERA is useless. No point in decomplexifying it.

[Kot]

My main problem with mountign it on a deathball is that the obvious upgrade to deathballs in my mind is replacing the rockets with jets, which would presumably reduce its acceleration but greatly increase its range and likely its top-speed and thus potential momentum. Blood Eagle would likely be short-lived, and thus... Well, y'know... I guess we could mount it in grooves... I mean, it would create bands of vulnerability, but those bands could likely be curved and wavy without compromising the structure too much...

It's more a matter of making it explode, rather to incerase it's survivability.

[Olith McHuman]

Tsunami-Torpedo

Our current aerial torpedo is good, but too small to be effective at longer rsnges or against larger ships. Tsunami is an enlarged variant weighting in at 3 tonnes, more than powerfull enough to destroy even the largest Cannallan ship.

Edit : Our ERA is useless. No point in decomplexifying it.

For that matter, we've been overdue for naval mines too. The dolphin is in the mid/low range for a shallow-water bottom mine according to wiki, should be a trivial retrofit (probably trivial enough to do both actually). Floating under surface mines might be slightly more work though.

[RAM]

But you want the E.R.A. on deathballs to detonate on bumps rather than just on the ground, and that means it needs something to roll on that won't explode.

I am not particularly worried about railgun barrels. Our ships are not spending much time hunting merchants, most of their shots go into battles where navies are taking pretty even losses. A ship often won't get more than a few salvoes and it would not be armed exclusively with the longer-ranged, more powerful, extra accurate railgun, which would probably only be a single turret amongst two or three... And systems could be prepared to replace barrels. Just because it is extremely difficult in conventional operation doesn't mean that systems cannot be implemented if there is a need for them. And barrel replacement would be quite easy at much smaller calibres. And then there is the option of multiple-barrel configurations, such as gattling-weapons.

[10ebbor10]

I am not particularly worried about railgun barrels. Our ships are not spending much time hunting merchants, most of their shots go into battles where navies are taking pretty even losses. A ship often won't get more than a few salvoes

There's no way you could be more wrong. At our current tech level, gun battles are extremely lengthy affairs that can last days.

But anyway, I fear this discussion is fruitless. You appear perfectly wilking to ignore any and all flaws in your design.