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[loser]

quote] Wrong, junior.  You are a big boy now and you should get out of that armchair.

You call ME junior and you link to wikipedia in the same post? 

Yep.  You got a problem with that?

We are talking about rifles and crossbow here. Not antitank launchers. They might call it a recoiless rifle but what they mean is "caseless bullet in a tube" and they have almost nothing in common to infantry rifles other than you load them with bullets and point them at the bad guy.

Nope. They mean a rifle with no recoil.  See, it's a rifle if the barrel is rifled, which some of those are. 

There are recoilless smoothbore guns as well, which are often called recoilless rifles.  You can chase that rabbit alone, if you wish.

These weapons could involve separate charges and projectiles, but are not necessarilly caseless.

My point was that it is SCIENTIFICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to make a gun or crossbow without recoil (the force). You can do many things to negate, redirect or manage that recoil but you can never prevent it from being generated in the first place.

And that's the point where you're wrong.  If the vectors of the ejected particles nets to zero then there is no recoil.

Here, I'll simplify.

Imagine an ideal, frictionless tube with the bottom end capped.  There is a ideal projectile and an ideal, explosive charge at the bottom of the tube.  The charge is made to explode and the projectile flies out pushing the tube in exactly the opposite direction.

Now put two of those tubes back to back and set of their charges at exactly the same time.

Poof, no recoil.

Now just replace that other projectile with the gaseous venting of the second explosive charge, adjusted to compensate for the missing projectile as needed.

Now just use one tube, without a wall at the back, and put the charges together.

Now breathe.

Of course, in the real world guns without recoil compensation may not kick directly back, parallel with the barrel.  So some complicated adjustments may need to be made after some complicated math and engineering are done.  As a result, there's a bit of baffling or ductwork on the back of that tube so that it counters the force generated by sending that projectile in the specific direction of something you'd like to break.  Then there's the fact that it's a rifle, so some of that baffling has to counter the rotational momentum the projectile, made to spin, imparts back on the barrel.

It's complicated and it might not be intuitive to you, but that doesn't make it impossible. 

Engineering is like that.  Try looking into just how complicated a nuclear detonation is, some time.  Precision, man.  The modern world has it.

While proving the recoilless rifle concept they designed a model with the same center of mass while loaded that it had while unloaded.  So they hang this thing by two wires, one on each side of its center of mass (and a bit above for ease of handling).  They load it and fire it.

It doesn't move.  It doesn't move because there is no recoil because the various forces that acted on the rifle when it was fired all added up to zero.

You may have been fine if you hadn't said something about guns.

[slMagnvox]

Umm...no, not really. Yeah, they'll probably be minced at long range before they get in close, but that's not the point of this discussion. We're talking about what happens when a melee goblin fights a crossbowdwarf after he gets in close. Or if the dwarf is out of ammo. Once the melee fighter gets into close range, an archer is TOAST. Seriously. A crossbow is really pretty clumsy to use. Very good for the point and shoot aspect, but too cumbersome to use as a weapon effectively in close range. Even with a bayonet on the end. A shieldman against an archer at close range is pretty much guaranteed to win. Oh, and if the string on a crossbow breaks while you're wielding it as a weapon, the arms of the crossbow are likely to hit you HARD. Probably in the face. Not exactly a good choice for a melee weapon.

We weren't really imaging the same scenario, but sure I agree with you here.

My take on the issue? Give the crossbow dwarves a secondary. Short sword, light hammer or axe, even a dagger, and have them use that. Crossbow dwarves should only fight in melee if they're charges. Otherwise, they should fall back and try to stay at range as much as possible. And, when out of ammo, they should go get more if it's reasonably close.

Which is why our current dwarven crossbows transform into hammers.  Seriously, just a little latch mechanism could release or fold the arms away and our marksdwarf is left with a 2+ foot handle with the heavy bit at the far end.

[Shakes]

Which is why our current dwarven crossbows transform into hammers.  Seriously, just a little latch mechanism could release or fold the arms away and our marksdwarf is left with a 2+ foot handle with the heavy bit at the far end.

Eugh. Its just too uber and nonsensical.

 Why has something like this never come to prominence in history? Because its really not hard to carry a backup weapon which is more effective anyway. This 'simple mechanism' would just not be as simple as you might imagine. What do you do with the released part, just leave it in the dirt, and then when you need your crossbow all of a sudden again its half not there..? What happens if its loaded - you have to shoot it just to release the arms..? Its just a ludicrous combat tactic which has never come into play because there's just no good reason for it and a lot of bad ones.

If dwarves had more advanced technology it might fit in a little better (whilst still feeling stupid) but it just seems really out of line with everything else.

Plus it just diminishes the value of melee dwarves even more.

[Neoskel]

In real life they once made actual pistol swords. Sounds awesome right? Well they sucked, all you get is a ridiculously heavy revolver and a hideously unbalanced sword. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_revolver

Crossbows are fine as is anyways.

[Tamren]

A bit of research showed that the recoil in a crossbow is very different than the recoil of a gun. Crossbows exhibit a soft normal recoil on the firing, followed by a sharp reverse recoil.

I would think that too much anti-recoil would be a sign that your crossbow is not very efficient. Either the bow is poorly designed or the bolts you fire with it are too light.

Nope. They mean a rifle with no recoil.  See, it's a rifle if the barrel is rifled, which some of those are.

What part of "we are not talking about anti-tank launchers" did you not understand? Yes the inclusion of a rifled barrel means the object can be termed a rifle. If you were in the army, went to the armoury and asked for a rifle, is the guy behind the desk going to hand you something like an AT4? Uh, no. The guns we are talking about here are the ones that we mount bayonets on. These can be anything from assault rifles to muskets.  And non rifled "recoiless rifles" are called "recoiless launchers" instead.

Now lets stop arguing about pointless semantics.

[Draco18s]

I would think that too much anti-recoil would be a sign that your crossbow is not very efficient. Either the bow is poorly designed or the bolts you fire with it are too light.

Because in the 1300's we had the science to figure out how to make them better.

Right.

[Tamren]

I would think that too much anti-recoil would be a sign that your crossbow is not very efficient. Either the bow is poorly designed or the bolts you fire with it are too light.

Because in the 1300's we had the science to figure out how to make them better.

Right.

Are you joking? Of course they did. They made crossbows more and more powerful as time went on because they could take advantage of stronger materials and better design. At the same time they had to invent triggers and re-cocking mechanisms to deal with the increase in power, which they did.

I suspect most of the reverse recoil nowadays is from our use of carbon fiber and aluminiun bolts. They perform very well but they are all extremely light and don't absorb as much force from the string. Making the stock out of lighter materials instead of solid hardwood probably has an affect as well.

[Draco18s]

As you use stronger bow material and stronger string and start applying more tension to start inducing more recoil.  So you negated an amount from improved design, which maybe was enough for the old materials, but not the new.

When you're dealing with moving parts the way a crossbow does it's really hard to mitigate (reverse) recoil.

[Tamren]

Heavier bolts and weapons by weight would get rid of the problem. But no one wants to lug around heavy gear these days when the alternative is so easy.

[Techhead]

I just had a semi-brilliant idea on the concept of side-arms.
Make dagger (DAG or DRG) appear as an option for shields. Dwarves with ranged weapons will prefer to stab with daggers instead of xbow-bashing.
Dwarves with melee weapons can use them to block slashing and bludgeoning attacks, although with less effectiveness than a shield.
Dwarves that loose their weapons, or civilian dwarves ordered to carry them, can use them for self defense.