Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => EVE OOC Summit => Topic started by: Elmund Egivand on 26 Oct 2013, 03:48
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For as long as I could remember, I had always assumed that the autocannon/artillery shells are conventional, as in the propellants and everything were in a metal case. So I roleplayed Elmund Egivand having bad experiences with jammed autocannons and clearing misfires. However, someone, I can't remember who, in the The Summit told me that the shells were caseless.
So I did a little reading about caseless ammunition and I found the idea of Minmatars using caseless ammunition with ship-board weaponry as odd.
Reasons for such thoughts were detailed in the below link:
https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.forgottenweapons.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2013%2F07%2FCaseless-Ammunition-Small-Arms.pdf
tl;dr
Cased ammunition:
- Components for successful firing of ammunition unaffected by outside factors (main reason why cased ammunition was developed in the first place)
- Any problems with the ammunition is contained inside the case and does not spread into the other ammo.
Caseless ammunition:
- Lighter
- Less bulky
- Saves load
- Increased rate of fire
- May seal chamber
- Fragile body
- Problems with ammo can spread to other ammo in the same weapon
Looking at this, I have a hard time wrapping the idea of caseless ammunitions for ship weaponry around my head. There is no reason to worry about loads or bulk or anything: Ships are huge. There's unlikely a shortage of space to store all that ammo. Moreover, clearing sealed-chambers due to cooked-off autocannon/artillery shells is alot more difficult than clearing a jam, a maintenance nightmare for any self-respecting Minmatar engineer. And this is going to happen, an inevitability, because caseless ammunitions are more heat sensitive compared to cased ammunition and sustained firing of autocannons will generate alot of heat.
Considering how much more headaches this is going to give to your typically Minmatar engineer on board of a ship, I firmly believe that the Minmatar projectile weaponry do not use caseless ammunition. If anyone has counterpoints to argue that the Minmatar do, in fact use caseless ammunition aboard their ships, feel free to debate in favor of caseless projectile ammo.
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I'm not sure myself since I kindof suck at firearms, but considering that spaceship projectile ordnance varies from 150mm to 3500mm, can this still be cased ? I mean, those are shells like we could find on RL warships, armour, or field artillery... Are those cased too ? Doesn't seem like it to me.
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I'd be kinda ehh, claiming any weapons jammed, when that clearly doesn't happen ever in game. I understand mechanical limitations, but this is the future.
As far as I understood it, the round itself was caseless, but that doesn't mean it lacks it case. If you notice the fact that the calibre of guns change without changing a weapon size class, it might be a little clearer.
What I figure is that the uncased shell is loaded into the magazine, and as that happens, its mated with the casing specifically for that gun size in nano-assemblers.
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I'd be kinda ehh, claiming any weapons jammed, when that clearly doesn't happen ever in game. I understand mechanical limitations, but this is the future.
As far as I understood it, the round itself was caseless, but that doesn't mean it lacks it case. If you notice the fact that the calibre of guns change without changing a weapon size class, it might be a little clearer.
What I figure is that the uncased shell is loaded into the magazine, and as that happens, its mated with the casing specifically for that gun size in nano-assemblers.
This makes alot more sense. It's also likely, however, that the game just groups all the ammo under a broad size category because having to buy specific calibre for your projectile weapons would complicate the game even more than is needed.
I'm not sure myself since I kindof suck at firearms, but considering that spaceship projectile ordnance varies from 150mm to 3500mm, can this still be cased ? I mean, those are shells like we could find on RL warships, armour, or field artillery... Are those cased too ? Doesn't seem like it to me.
I don't see why you can't case those ammo for autocannon use. Besides, having to load the shell, then the propellant, will really do a number on the fire rate of the autocannon. And you have to consider the fact that you do not load the shells one at a time with autocannons, you load them as a magazine.
However, caseless for artillery is likely.
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Probably for autocannons yeah. Though autocannons with caseless ammo also exist from what you seemed to implied ?
Anyway, you don't even need nano assemblers when the caliber adjustment could be done with simpler means : inflatable casing with morphological intelligent metals or something adjusting to the barrel sounds even more Minmatar to me.
For hybrids though, could be another tech.
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Probably for autocannons yeah. Though autocannons with caseless ammo also exist from what you seemed to implied ?
Anyway, you don't even need nano assemblers when the caliber adjustment could be done with simpler means : inflatable casing with morphological intelligent metals or something adjusting to the barrel sounds even more Minmatar to me.
For hybrids though, could be another tech.
For artillery, I think cased is still very much a possibility. Remember the ships that use those humongous artillery shells? They are massive! Beneath those hulls there is no doubt that there exists a series of levels, elevators and conveyor belts to load the humongous artillery shells. Added mass from casing and propellant shouldn't be too much of an issue in this case.
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https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2628925#post2628925
was how I consider things worked. Ship carries cartridges, attaches a warhead, then fires the assembled shell.
Same for missiles, attach a warhead onto the missile body, launch assembled missile.
historically, large naval guns had the shell and the powder separate from each other. For a breech-loading gun, load the shell in, then load the powder, close the breech, then fire. Until the First World War, the RN continued to use powder in silk bags, while the German Navy used brass cartridges, which were slower to load. The silk bags were very vulnerable to fires in the turrets/magazine, which was demonstrated at Jutland.
Two-part rounds continued to be normal for large guns, with the projectile and the propellant separate. Some tanks used two-part rounds, on the largest guns, while others were one-part rounds.
Large guns aren't common in modern times.
For EVE ships, I don't know that anything other than the smallest autocannons would have one-part rounds. Instead, having cartridges of propellant loaded separately from the warheads.
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It really would be pointless, and mechanically complex, to have two part rounds for rapid fire machine cannons, with larger guns gaining no real benefit from it either. It's slower to unload, which is an important consideration when swapping different rounds on the fly, as ships clearly do, slower to reload, and has more moving parts that can fail, whereas a simple one part round need only be loaded and fired, or extracted as one object. I would imagine that artillery weapons use fully assembled, cased ammunition for this simple reason. At this caliber, the difference between cased and caseless is something of a moot point. Either way, the shell will be, very, very heavy. Most 120mm rounds weigh approximately 55 pounds today, case, propellant and projectile.
As for cased vs. caseless... Comparatively, in a vacuum, neither would perform much differently in most regards, with one exception, to be noted later. As a baseline comparison, modern artillery and naval guns use semi-combustible cased munitions, with the largest common gun system being 5 inch (127mm), and generally considered to be an automatic weapon in it's own right, firing around 16 to 20 rounds per minute. There's your basic Minmatar gun, right there, albeit in dinosaur form. As for 'small' versus 'large' tank guns... They've gotten progressively larger, not smaller, over the years, from the 75mm to 88mm guns of WWII, to today's 120mm, 125mm and the 140mm concepts that may be in testing. None of the modern guns use two part rounds, and large scale artillery in modern armies use cased, single element rounds as well.
Previous posts regarding large naval guns are entirely correct. Nothing to add there, and large guns are unheard of on modern warships. That's a missile game.
Morphic metals to adjust caliber? Inflatable rounds? The ubiquitous 'nanites' to assemble rounds at obscene rates to feed a fully automatic cannon at hundreds of rounds per minute?... We've already got a solution for the 'problem' these overcomplicated solutions would resolve. Common calibers. Multiple types, same caliber. It's MUCH more sensible to just assume that your quartermaster knows, when you buy rounds for your 1400mm cannons, you will need 1400mm rounds, and he makes the distinction. It's a game simplification that really doesn't need to be over-thought.
As for caseless weapons, there have been a few made, including the H&K G-11, a few small caliber hunting weapons that are little more than novelties, and at least one 20mm rotary cannon that was a test case. There were no significant savings in weight, or vast increases in most areas of performance. The most notable, the G-11, used caseless rounds for one reason; to fire a burst fast enough that the recoil wasn't felt by the shooter until AFTER the rounds had left the barrel. A cased weapon could not achieve the same 2000 rpm burst rate with a smooth action, so H&K went with a caseless 4.7mm round. Effectively, it chambered and fired all three rounds nearly simultaneously when firing three round bursts (sounding like one exceptionally loud shot, at such a high cyclic rate), but performed as a conventional assault rifle in fully automatic fire, at approximately 600 rpm, with similar handing characteristics. Taking this into account, there is a possibility that autocannons are caseless, firing an entire burst at a high cyclic rate using short, caseless rounds to facilitate the chambering and firing of multiple rounds in fewer motions by the guns mechanism. Heat is less of an issue, since a ship will have various means to expel and sink it, reducing the possibility of cookoff, which was one of the key issues of the G-11. However, it is equally likely that autocannons simply use conventional rounds via standard feed mechanisms. I could see a large caliber machine cannon working using the same mechanism as the Aden 30mm cannon, a rotating breech not unlike a revolver to cycle the rounds into the chamber, then tossing the expended case out the side of the weapon in one smooth motion, while simultaneously cycling more up from the feed to be fired. Simple system, happens to work beautifully.
Now, that said, there IS a case to be made for binary propellant systems. By keeping stores of violently incompatible chemical propellant aboard, you'd be able to just load a warhead, then spray the propellant in right behind it. And boom, presto, a caseless, one piece projectile. And no, I haven't missed the 'violently incompatible' part, but it's no more dangerous than packing your hull full of high explosive, armor defeating rounds. If anything gets into the magazine, you're done anyways.
In the final analasys, the question is one of necessity over... I'd almost say style, but we'll go with 'advancement'. Cased munitions are easier to produce and store, less tempramental, and can be loaded and fired efficiently enough using well understood means. Caseless rounds may gain an edge in rapid burst firing, but they're nothing special (despite what sci-fi would have you believe) in all other regards. Considering the Matari 'if it works, it's good' design paradigm, I'd have to call 'conventional' on this one.
Hybrids... That's like comparing a walnut and a duck. They're COMPLETELY different technology. Hybrids are railgun/coilgun systems that use self contained projectiles, no propellant, and a LOT of electricity to launch it.
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Keep in mind that starships have the luxury of decididing whether or not to even have gravity. It may be that a projectile gunnery loading room has no artificial gravity to assist with automated loading. You wouldn't need nearly as powerful mechanical arms to pick up and load the massive rounds of ammunition as you would in a full gravity environment.
I assume robotic arms because a human is only so tall. Without gravity a human would have little leverage for lifting and manipulating objects as heavy as themselves, none at all if they are floating around.
Imagine a room where human intervention is largely removed. Let's say a standard 425 autocannon room. It's a quad-barrel breach, with four pressure doors that slide open and closed. All four open like the back of a revolver, and a powerful hydraulic arm attached to the ceiling bulkhead picks up four 425mm cased rounds at the same time from an ammo lift, and slides them deftly into the breach.
Breach doors close. The gun cycles off, firing all four round. BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM.
Breach doors open, and from below and behind the gun a hydraulic or gear powered arm attached to the floor swings up and grabs the four empty cases, yanks them out, and deposits them on a conveyor belt for disposal, meanwhile the first arm is already loading four new rounds into the barrel.
All of this is happening in real time in a matter of seconds, with muti-ton mechanical arms swinging high explosives around in a zero-g environment. This is not a place for humans to be wandering around except in the case of a jam or other mechanical failure.
TL;DR
Zero-G loading room using automated robotic arms.
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the British 120mm rifle on current British tanks uses a separate round and propellant charge, but the Rheinmetall 120mm smoothbore on German and American tanks has a one-piece round. vOv
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Morphic metals to adjust caliber? Inflatable rounds? The ubiquitous 'nanites' to assemble rounds at obscene rates to feed a fully automatic cannon at hundreds of rounds per minute?... We've already got a solution for the 'problem' these overcomplicated solutions would resolve. Common calibers. Multiple types, same caliber. It's MUCH more sensible to just assume that your quartermaster knows, when you buy rounds for your 1400mm cannons, you will need 1400mm rounds, and he makes the distinction. It's a game simplification that really doesn't need to be over-thought.
I understand that its a game simplification, but when I can blow up a ship using 650mm guns, scoop the ammo, load them into my 800mm guns, and fire them no problem, there's a huge wrench thrown into my suspension of disbelief. I think there really must be a way that the rounds are shaped for the type of gun they are going in. The methods for this might vary between railguns, artillery, and autocannons, but in my opinion, there is definitely something at work that's properly sizing the rounds for their cannons.
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Keep in mind that starships have the luxury of decididing whether or not to even have gravity. It may be that a projectile gunnery loading room has no artificial gravity to assist with automated loading. You wouldn't need nearly as powerful mechanical arms to pick up and load the massive rounds of ammunition as you would in a full gravity environment.
I assume robotic arms because a human is only so tall. Without gravity a human would have little leverage for lifting and manipulating objects as heavy as themselves, none at all if they are floating around.
Imagine a room where human intervention is largely removed. Let's say a standard 425 autocannon room. It's a quad-barrel breach, with four pressure doors that slide open and closed. All four open like the back of a revolver, and a powerful hydraulic arm attached to the ceiling bulkhead picks up four 425mm cased rounds at the same time from an ammo lift, and slides them deftly into the breach.
Breach doors close. The gun cycles off, firing all four round. BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM.
Breach doors open, and from below and behind the gun a hydraulic or gear powered arm attached to the floor swings up and grabs the four empty cases, yanks them out, and deposits them on a conveyor belt for disposal, meanwhile the first arm is already loading four new rounds into the barrel.
All of this is happening in real time in a matter of seconds, with muti-ton mechanical arms swinging high explosives around in a zero-g environment. This is not a place for humans to be wandering around except in the case of a jam or other mechanical failure.
TL;DR
Zero-G loading room using automated robotic arms.
This is how I imagined gunnery aboard a Minmatar vessel. So this is it then. Caseless is rubbish! We use conventional shells that also happen to be nukes!
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I strongly believe that minmatar weapons use cased ammunition.
Main argument: otherwise they would be able to use hybrid charges of the same caliber, which, to my understanding, are the caseless ammunition.
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I don't even see why they would want to use hybrid charges of the same caliber though. The damage output would be completely ridiculous...
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I'm holding to the opinion that it's an overthought answer to a game simplification, Saede. The utter lack of any description as to how it might work in prime lore bespeaks such... It works because of reasons. The problem with "expando" rounds is that, regardless of how much you expand a smaller shell, its still going to have the warhead of a smaller shell. I could buy them being reprocessed into the appropriate load, but not resized on the fly. You'd have to resize everything. More or less propellant, the warhead, triggers for said warhead... Otherwise, you're just firing underpowered rounds, our having to neck down larger ones. Sabots would allow you to fire a smaller round from a larger tube, but it would still be the smaller round.
As for hybrid charges, they're not the same. The plasma round that Matari guns fire use a similar warhead, but use a propellant charge to fire it. Hybrid rounds have no propellant whatsoever, no case either. They're launched by magnetic acceleration. A conventional cannon could not fire them at all, even if the round was sized for the bore.
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I knew I had seen a bit of fiction that discussed this, and now I present an excerpt from "Recursion", a short (chronicle-length) piece done by CCP Headfirst for Kirith Kodachi's Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah:
The cylinder had barely cleared of its previous occupant and was still clouded with scalding hot residual smoke when the breech shot back open. A belt of reinforced, flexible carbon fibers pulled from left to right, yanking the hollow shell out of the way so that the next round could slam into place, where it was immediately secured by a locking collar at the front and back of the chamber.
A fraction of a heartbeat after it had settled in, though, the back of the cylinder segmented near its center, sending a solid piston of polished steel slamming into the back of the round. The force of the impact, along with the crackling spark it caused upon touching the bullet, ignited the explosive gel contained inside. As each molecule of the heavy composite paste overheated, the atoms within shed their higher level electrons, which in turn heated up their neighboring particles, and so on in a chain reaction.
As the available space in the shell rapidly filled with a blistering inferno of hot gas, ripples of tension reverberated down the outer casing of the bullet, causing it to expand the last few millimeters between it and the cylinder’s wall. When there was no more room, the expansion could only press forward, where the only thing standing between it and the welcoming vacuum of space was a titanium sabot projectile.
Note that the ship in question is a Rupture using autocannon.
Important facts:
- Medium-caliber autocannon, at least, use a shell-projectile combo that is already in a fixed state when it enters the barrel.
- Shells are in a belt linked by carbon fiber. This is extremely unusual; to my knowledge, no mass-produced weapon in real-life has used a belt which actually entered the chamber with the shell, instead usually extracting each shell from the belt and then separately ejecting the spent shell and belt or belt remains. Carbon fiber is a reasonably good material to work with should you want to use such a mechanism, though - even in the environment of an autocannon of that size, it is unlikely to melt, chemically react, expand from heat, permanently deform or shatter under shock.
- The propellant in a cruiser-size autocannon is a gel- or paste-like substance, ignited by both mechanical shock and electric ignition. There is no mention of a primer material.
- The casing expands "a few millimeters" during firing before it is pressed against the breech walls. Given that the casing is secured in place by a pair of collars during firing, it seems likely that this refers to the rear of casing expanding towards the back of the breech.
A thanks to Synthetic Cultist for locating this bit of fiction for me.
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This more or less confirms that autocannon shells, at least medium-sized, are cased. However, there's a few things that strikes me as odd. First, using carbon-fibers to yank out the shell? This seems oddly inefficient. You would think that they would just stick an ejection port on the side or something to reduce delay time and increase firing rate. Also, this piece of fiction sort of struck me as outdated and written before the turrets were remodeled. I would think that the current autocannons are magazine or belt fed, to improve rate of fire as well as explaining why it would take 10 seconds to reload the autocannon (10 seconds for robotic arms and other machinery to load and lock mags/belt in place).
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This more or less confirms that autocannon shells, at least medium-sized, are cased. However, there's a few things that strikes me as odd. First, using carbon-fibers to yank out the shell? This seems oddly inefficient. You would think that they would just stick an ejection port on the side or something to reduce delay time and increase firing rate. Also, this piece of fiction sort of struck me as outdated and written before the turrets were remodeled. I would think that the current autocannons are magazine or belt fed, to improve rate of fire as well as explaining why it would take 10 seconds to reload the autocannon (10 seconds for robotic arms and other machinery to load and lock mags/belt in place).
I'd have to agree. Remembering how modern naval guns work, and looking at game mechanics, I would say that it's pretty clear that every ship mounted weapon (lasers being the exception, for obvious reasons) uses a ready magazine setup, holding an on-mount payload of munitions that is automatically replenished from the ships main magazines. For an artillery cannon, this likely means single rounds feed into a rotating carousel that can be quickly emptied and refilled. I'm with Elmund on the interchangeable linkless belts being a better option... Maybe they changed it with the remodel, lore wise? Given that autocannons fire very rapid bursts of very heavy shells, the described mechanism would be under incredible strain. Still, lore is lore. :)
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I'm holding to the opinion that it's an overthought answer to a game simplification, Saede. The utter lack of any description as to how it might work in prime lore bespeaks such... It works because of reasons. The problem with "expando" rounds is that, regardless of how much you expand a smaller shell, its still going to have the warhead of a smaller shell. I could buy them being reprocessed into the appropriate load, but not resized on the fly. You'd have to resize everything. More or less propellant, the warhead, triggers for said warhead... Otherwise, you're just firing underpowered rounds, our having to neck down larger ones. Sabots would allow you to fire a smaller round from a larger tube, but it would still be the smaller round.
As for hybrid charges, they're not the same. The plasma round that Matari guns fire use a similar warhead, but use a propellant charge to fire it. Hybrid rounds have no propellant whatsoever, no case either. They're launched by magnetic acceleration. A conventional cannon could not fire them at all, even if the round was sized for the bore.
I'm of the school of thought that if ingame mechanisms do not fit to PF, or just do not fit to coherent explanations and credibility, thus breaking the suspension of disbelief, then the lore trumps ingame, period. PF is the universe, ingame is just a simplification of it to offer a certain code and standard of fun and gameplay. That way, it is impossible for me as well to grab ammo in a wreck that was fired by 650mm canons and fit them into my 720mm canons, unless there is PF handwavium involved, which mean, some tech allowing them to be universal. Otherwise it's putting the cart before the horse.
Also, firing underpowered rounds does not mean unefficient. Most of the power of a projectile gun comes from the gun. Though I would agree that it would be more efficient to actually use the whole caliber of the biggest calibers...
Also, the plasma warhead has nothing similar to the hybrid charges, since the latter are made of a single metal component (iron, lead, uranium, etc) fired at high speeds with electric/magnetic acceleration in the case of railguns, and transformed into balls of pure plasma by blasters (not the gimped version of the minmatar plasma shell). What I am still struggling with is why is there also antimatter in the case of hybrids. That's not a metallic component, and should require a whole different tech to fire, and also, has probably to be contained into a shell, unlike other hybrid charges...
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I'm holding to the opinion that it's an overthought answer to a game simplification, Saede. The utter lack of any description as to how it might work in prime lore bespeaks such... It works because of reasons. The problem with "expando" rounds is that, regardless of how much you expand a smaller shell, its still going to have the warhead of a smaller shell. I could buy them being reprocessed into the appropriate load, but not resized on the fly. You'd have to resize everything. More or less propellant, the warhead, triggers for said warhead... Otherwise, you're just firing underpowered rounds, our having to neck down larger ones. Sabots would allow you to fire a smaller round from a larger tube, but it would still be the smaller round.
As for hybrid charges, they're not the same. The plasma round that Matari guns fire use a similar warhead, but use a propellant charge to fire it. Hybrid rounds have no propellant whatsoever, no case either. They're launched by magnetic acceleration. A conventional cannon could not fire them at all, even if the round was sized for the bore.
I'm of the school of thought that if ingame mechanisms do not fit to PF, or just do not fit to coherent explanations and credibility, thus breaking the suspension of disbelief, then the lore trumps ingame, period. PF is the universe, ingame is just a simplification of it to offer a certain code and standard of fun and gameplay. That way, it is impossible for me as well to grab ammo in a wreck that was fired by 650mm canons and fit them into my 720mm canons, unless there is PF handwavium involved, which mean, some tech allowing them to be universal. Otherwise it's putting the cart before the horse.
Also, firing underpowered rounds does not mean unefficient. Most of the power of a projectile gun comes from the gun. Though I would agree that it would be more efficient to actually use the whole caliber of the biggest calibers...
Also, the plasma warhead has nothing similar to the hybrid charges, since the latter are made of a single metal component (iron, lead, uranium, etc) fired at high speeds with electric/magnetic acceleration in the case of railguns, and transformed into balls of pure plasma by blasters (not the gimped version of the minmatar plasma shell). What I am still struggling with is why is there also antimatter in the case of hybrids. That's not a metallic component, and should require a whole different tech to fire, and also, has probably to be contained into a shell, unlike other hybrid charges...
The power of the autocannon more accurately comes from the shell caliber. Force is mass times acceleration after all. The mass comes from the shell. The acceleration comes from the propellant. If there isn't enough propellant, or the shell isn't large and heavy enough, you fire an underpowered shell that can't do as much damage as it should. It IS inefficient. So yes, you can resize the shell, but you must also adjust the mass of propellant and the mass of the shell itself to compensate. All the gun does is aim at the thing you want dead, ignite the propellant and send the shell into his face.
And I assume that the anti-matter was contained in the canister by a magnetic field, and was then launched into people's face.
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A good chunk of the speed always comes from the length of the nozzle. And another part of what you say. But eventually in the case of projectiles it mostly depends if the main application is meant to penetrate (like AP) or to cause damage (like HE).
If the former, then the chemical compound is useless and you end up with a pure dense metal shell made to pierce through armour. Weirdly enough in eve, explosive is the most effective way to pierce through armour of spaceships, where in real life it is mostly useless unless used as HEAT (which is totally obsolete these days, completely beaten by reactive armour and new compounds). Kinetic should be the most effective, but whatever.
And if the latter, the chemical compound is the main factor, the one that creates the explosion/effect causing widespread damage (as opposed to localized piercing). In that case the length of the nozzle is insignificant and will just add kinetic power that we don't need (to cause the maximum damage against soft targets, you want to avoid too much speed, see how poor is a tank destroyer IRL against soft targets when using HE).
That said I would tend to see HE style effects needed to overcome a shield and saturate it, and AP effects to pierce through armour. Which means that you need an all purposes canon capable of dealing both. I would expect to see EMP and plasma munitions mostly made for the former and titanium sabot for the latter. That's also maybe why we don't have too much high damage short range explosive ammo for projectile ammo (the only T1 one is nuclear iirc...), except T2 specialized ones like barrage and hail. Maybe those ones make a special use of explosive property to pierce through/obliterate armour..
As for railguns and blasters, that's my issue, those use pure metal rounds since a railgun bases everything on kinetic speed, and the blaster just transforms it into a ball of plasma. I can understand that antimatter to work for blasters, but how does that fit with the properties of a railgun ?
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Fusion is the close-range explosive projectile ammo. Nuclear is actually one of the long-range ammo types along with Proton and Carbonized Lead.
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Ah shit, I forgot fusion... I was pretty sure something was missing.
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To be fair, I wasn't sure if you meant lore-wise or actual damage types, but figured I should point it out just in case.
Been using projectiles way too much lately for my own good...
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Yes, nozzle speed is also important. Thanks for reminding. But you cannot deny that under powered projectiles are far from irrelevant.
And join us, Autocannoneers! Join us in Dakka-ing the stars!
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Yes, nozzle speed is also important.
You mean muzzle speed?
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Yes, nozzle speed is also important.
You mean muzzle speed?
Put me in a dress and call me Patsy. You are right.
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Yes, nozzle speed is also important.
You mean muzzle speed?
Put me in a dress and call me Patsy. You are right.
(http://api.ning.com/files/kX*LFPvx4SFMMQMYsrSDIAYo8LYm-kfSSQfMh2w2kYQPOgupyqH2z19KNwPclicam8JamHJLNl4ixdp*ZIaKr5Dz*c7OD-k-/wharrgarbl.jpg)
Nozzle Speed.
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Yes, nozzle speed is also important.
You mean muzzle speed?
Put me in a dress and call me Patsy. You are right.
(http://api.ning.com/files/kX*LFPvx4SFMMQMYsrSDIAYo8LYm-kfSSQfMh2w2kYQPOgupyqH2z19KNwPclicam8JamHJLNl4ixdp*ZIaKr5Dz*c7OD-k-/wharrgarbl.jpg)
Nozzle Speed.
The future of Minmatar combat.
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Explosive against armor makes perfect sense to me. Works like an AT rocket scaled down into some high speed super-projectile. Like that new matt damon movie #winmatar.
As for the shells, it would be completely lame to have to buy 30 kinds of ammo. This is a simplification obviously and people should consider getting over it. Expanding rounds or larger and larger sabots are silly and make no sense.
As for how they work, causeless ammunition in the large kind of guns that EvE uses (smallest is still the size of a howitzer) doesn't make sense, they were made to save weight and be less volatile. Modern or super-modern technology has various gels and forms of propellent that are nonvolatile. Hell, use c4.
I always imagined it as an automated process involving cased ammunition. There isn't a real reason why the story above does not work, it works like most machine guns it is just picture it without the casing. It would work just as well though. And disintegrating belts are a more modern invention and doesn't really have a place on a starship. Hell, the linked powder casing could even be machined out of a space material that is flexible. Breech closes around it and it fires then it extracts and flattens so it can be spooled into a drum to not take up as much space.
I mean in the end, it is a giant machine gun. Machine guns are not difficult.
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No, I won't get over it since it breaks my suspension of disbelief... It's as silly as expanding ammo. I don't see the point to come that confrontational. It's hard to solve and i'm not happy with both solutions.
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More sensible solution:
For blasters, you're basically buying a one-size-fits-all package because you're shunting the plasma out of the container and firing that. Lasers are probably standardized as far as crystal use and only differ on the internal workings and power sources to differentiate between sub-sizes (not gonna lie though, it would make more sense for dual/quad lasers to require two or four crystals at once~). Missiles are definitely one-size-fits-a-launcher, since the only missiles you can use in multiple types of launchers basically have overpowered launchers designed around that specific missile type.
That leaves railguns and projectile weapons, with their explicit 'sizes'. When purchasing ammunition, most people know what weapons and ships they are making the purchases for. Perhaps there -are- differently-sized shells or charges within the S/M/L classification for the different guns, but it's simplified for inventory purposes, and you're just assumed to be handwaving the purchase of X 800mm Fusion shells and Y 1400mm Fusion shells, instead bundling it into a single lump purchase of X+Y Fusion L shells?
I mean, if I'm buying a stockpile of ammo for, say, my Tempest and Tornado, I'm going to buy a couple different types, but it'll all be "L". The Tempest needs 800mm rounds, and the Tornado needs 1400mm ones. I know roughly how many rounds I'm going to buy, but I also (in theory) know how much I use those two ships and which one is going to need more or less ammo than the other, so I can handwave the division of ammunition between 800mm and 1400mm to the background and just buy the whole lot.
Then later, when I'm using the ships, I'm obviously putting the correct shells into the right ships.
I think people may be overthinking things a little too much. :)
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Maybe it's a full package. Such a waste though... And why when using my L ammo with my 1400mm then I don't have dual 425mm, 800mm and 1200mm left for another use ? They magically disappear with the whole package ?
Tbh I would really like for each weapon caliber to have its own ammo.
Not EMP S, M, L, but 125mm EMP, 150mm EMP, 200mm EMP, 220mm Vulcan EMP, 425mm EMP, 600mm EMP, 800mm EMP for ACs, and in the same fashion for artillery. How is that so obnoxious ? There is a lot, lot worse in Eve...
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That's why I came up with my previous post. Alternatively, one could be buying 'vouchers' for a given class of ammunition to be redeemed at a specific size at a later date. vOv
There are ways to work around it without making it unnecessarily complicated.
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Whoop, whoop. And what would be gained by this increased complexity?
Maybe just handwave it and move on to bigger problems.
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We could also make universal ammo that goes inside every gun you know. I don't understand your point... :/
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I'm not sure if someone's touched on this already, but it's not likely that Minmatar projectile ammunition resembles Earthbound projectile ammunition. First of all, combustion requires oxygen and, since there isn't any in space, you'd have to pack the oxygen with it. Odds are the expanding propulsion fuel of the round isn't an explosive as we'd know it. Second, a very, very fast round usually scrapes 4,000 feet/sec (1,249 m/s) and that's a slim rifle round. Step up to an M5 Browning heavy machine gun, and you have an exit velocity of about 2500 f/s (849 m/s). As the caliber goes up, the speed of the round falls, as the propellant has to push more mass out of the way. Once you're into heavy autocannon territory, and you're calculating your range in kilometers and speeds at 300 m/s, that means that even in space the rounds simply are going to go too slow to accurately predict. Third, though caseless ammunition would be impossible with a conventional round (since you'd need to carry the gas with you), even cased ammunition doesn't make much sense because a bullet requires expansion to drive it out of the barrel. Without a readily available gas, it's hard to get that kind of expansion. The icon definitely shows the rounds as being cased (which would make sense), but it's hard to imagine that pumping out shells around your spindly ship inside the shield that stops enemy rounds from hitting you wouldn't interfere with your other systems.
We're sort of overthinking this, though. Amarrian lasers obviously have some similarities to lasers we have on Earth, but we haven't developed frigate-sized lasers that can punch holes through metal from that far away. They are likely somewhat similar in design, but are using very different technology than what we've developed.
I'd imagine that Minmatar projectile rounds are probably using a very different propellant to what we're used to and we can't really say whether it is caseless or not, but I would imagine that it wouldn't be ejecting anything. I'd say it'd be easier to just keep to the basics, that Minmatar projectile weapons are probably using a very different propellant than what we use (plasma?) that consumes it and any casing it might have. More than that, we'd have to assume that it carries all the elements that it needs to work in a vacuum with each individual round or that there's some kind of inexhaustible tank of propellant additive that sets a round off somewhere in the gun or ship. We can also assume that the calibers are fixed in a few very sizes or that the round, if not a railgun, is at least using a magnetic coil to keep it centered in the barrel (which might make sense if the round is moving quickly enough to work in a range of kilometers, as this might eliminate wear on the barrel). Still, it would make sense if the rounds were only a few fixed calibers meant to work in most guns. After all, when you're in space in a ship, there's no problem with air resistance and relatively less issues with ammunition weight and storage. Changing the size and shape of the round by a millimeter or so isn't going to make an awful lot of difference, so the idea of simply standardizing a set of bores tailored for how big a ship needs to be to fire a round without the recoil doing as much damage to the firing ship as the target would make sense. The gun would probably make a lot more difference in space than the round, so unless you're making your own ammunition, I'd imagine even civilians with projectile weapons are probably using standard military calibers, U.N.O.
The guiding principle seems the same, though: getting a relatively small lump of metal moving quickly enough to punch through hardened armor and hopefully hit something vital. That's really what's important.
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So far, the versions in DUST don't seem to spew copper all over the landscape. This may just be a limitation of the engine, of course, but the rounds do seem to be caseless (and extremely compact-- magazine size for an SMG is frickin' enormous).
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I'm not sure if someone's touched on this already, but it's not likely that Minmatar projectile ammunition resembles Earthbound projectile ammunition. First of all, combustion requires oxygen and, since there isn't any in space, you'd have to pack the oxygen with it. Odds are the expanding propulsion fuel of the round isn't an explosive as we'd know it.
Just a small nitpick, but we already pack the oxygen into bullet shells. Otherwise, the gunpowder wouldn't ignite in the first place to push the bullet.
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Actually, oxidizer is typically contained inside the shell along with the propellant; this means that not only could a fixed shell be fired in the vacuum of space, but has been (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut_3#On-board_gun). The Soviets test-fired a 23mm automatic cannon aboard a manned spy satellite around 1974.
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This more or less confirms that autocannon shells, at least medium-sized, are cased. However, there's a few things that strikes me as odd. First, using carbon-fibers to yank out the shell? This seems oddly inefficient.
You guys always amaze me. The amount of thinking you put into such issues. Especially once you start referencing PF. Fact of the matter: most authors don't put this much thought into it, especially if they merely write a passage they are looking into making it sound cool.
In EVE, projectile weapons fire what you want them to fire, and discussing what you would think they would fire is an exercise in fun, not in fact-finding. :)
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This more or less confirms that autocannon shells, at least medium-sized, are cased. However, there's a few things that strikes me as odd. First, using carbon-fibers to yank out the shell? This seems oddly inefficient.
You guys always amaze me. The amount of thinking you put into such issues. Especially once you start referencing PF. Fact of the matter: most authors don't put this much thought into it, especially if they merely write a passage they are looking into making it sound cool.
In EVE, projectile weapons fire what you want them to fire, and discussing what you would think they would fire is an exercise in fun, not in fact-finding. :)
This is what happens when I get bored: I start thinking about fictional things.
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We could also make universal ammo that goes inside every gun you know. I don't understand your point... :/
From a gameplay POV it makes no sense to increase the (already quite sizeable) number of different ammunitions just for the sake of increasing it. While I can understand where you're coming from I think there are a lot of bigger "flaws" around the whole ship fitting theme that attack your immersion. Personally I consider the fact that six different guns per tier share the same ammunition a slight detail. I'm much more amazed how quick ships can be assembled, modules can be changed from your frigate to a battleship ( and vice versa ), not just at all, but also instantly, or how fast a station repairs/recharges a ship when even top-tier modules take considerable time.
As for the ammunition 'problem'. I recall reading something in ye olde Jagged Alliance 2 handbook about professionals always having some spare clips at hand. In the game you don't just have different calibres but also different clip/clipsizes and can create spare clips out of thin air by instantly converting the 30 round AK47 clips into (three) of the 10 round SKS ones, for example.
When we're talking EVE I think it can be assumed that what is sold and bought in the shape of these calibres are maybe the warheads to be fitted into the appropriate round/combined with the charge just prior to the action and on board of your ship. There are still differences between a 1400mm artillery shell and a barrage of dual 425mm's, but this can be cured by more handwavium and the assumption that the '1' in the amount of charges used might not be a single item, but a certain amount of firepower - your gun installations can fit this into the appropriate amount and size of charge per volley. Volley? Because yes, there are some guns that are firing salvos and others that are multi-barreled, yet they still only take 1 charge per gun per activation.
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I don't subscribe to that philosophy considering that since there is things more important somewhere, then it's pointless to discuss or adress the less important ones too.
I agree that it looks like increasing the number of ammo just for the sake of it, but my point was that Eve has always been like that for everything in its industry side. Just have a look at any production charter (especially PI, T2 or T3) and tell me again that the goal was to keep it simple. It's complicated for the sake of being complicated, and that's what gives it its flavour, and creates a lot of different items and production segments that can be filled so that there is a shitload of things to produce and the end result goes through a painful, long and complicated production chain.
Though this is T1 ofc, so overall very simple. Which means that the number of ammo is mostly an issue of combat gameplay (+ loot wise). I wouldnt mind to see that what I loot is not always automatically of the caliber I am using. I can understand the other school of thought wanting it to be more simple, but eventually, be it for production in eve in general or for gameplay, it's not always complicated for the sake of it.
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I don't subscribe to that philosophy either, which is why I've named a few examples that are pretty close to the topic and are, in my opinion, requiring more handwavium to be dealt with than the question of calibres, such as the extremely modular, well, modules. One size fits them all, within 5 seconds. If we have that kind of tech (handwaving the fitting time aspect) some kind of modular ammunition used by the turrets in different ways should not be too far off if you really take that much offense at being able to use that ammo you just took from a destroyed ship (that vaporized in an on/off fashion instantly - heyoooooo) on the fly.
But that aside: Are you sure what you are suggesting?
Because it is not just a minor addition to ease your personal headache, it is pure and unadorned ridiculousness. Let's look at Projectile weapons*, discounting X-Large.
You have 12 different types of ammo ( 8 basic + 4 tech 2 ) that will come in 5 different versions (3 AC, 2 Artillery) at 3 different tiers. This means 180 different blueprints and producable ammunition types. On top of that are 8*3 faction ammo types, bringing the head count to 180+360 = 540 different types of projectile ammo alone. Take that, hangar clutter.
No, I do not think even the user friendly industry processes of EVE come even close to that. ;)
*Hybrid is even worse: 216 'base' and 432 faction totalling in 648.
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I imagine them to be much like the carousel autoloader used in most Russian MBTs, with multiple barrels loaded at once; carousel loads 6 barrels, weapon goes to battery, 6 fire, autoloader cycles and readies 6 new charges and projectiles.
Who knows?
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No reason either why they can't have a drone-arm fed hopper to take the place of gravity, or a magnetic or ionic linkage for the rounds.
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I figured no gravity in Gunnery by default, turrets either magazine or belt-fed. Robotic arms and internal tractor beams or magnetised conveyor belts bring additional mags from cargohold, or the ammo stockpiles already in Gunnery. 10 seconds to reload could be explained by all these machinery removing expended mags and bringing in the fresh mags from hold/stockpiles to be attached to the turrets.
And yes, the mags are huge and could be hurled at at someone to hurt him. Expended cases either picked up by electromagnets or ejected into space or the janitor cleaned them up after the firefight.
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I don't subscribe to that philosophy either, which is why I've named a few examples that are pretty close to the topic and are, in my opinion, requiring more handwavium to be dealt with than the question of calibres, such as the extremely modular, well, modules. One size fits them all, within 5 seconds. If we have that kind of tech (handwaving the fitting time aspect) some kind of modular ammunition used by the turrets in different ways should not be too far off if you really take that much offense at being able to use that ammo you just took from a destroyed ship (that vaporized in an on/off fashion instantly - heyoooooo) on the fly.
But that aside: Are you sure what you are suggesting?
Because it is not just a minor addition to ease your personal headache, it is pure and unadorned ridiculousness. Let's look at Projectile weapons*, discounting X-Large.
You have 12 different types of ammo ( 8 basic + 4 tech 2 ) that will come in 5 different versions (3 AC, 2 Artillery) at 3 different tiers. This means 180 different blueprints and producable ammunition types. On top of that are 8*3 faction ammo types, bringing the head count to 180+360 = 540 different types of projectile ammo alone. Take that, hangar clutter.
No, I do not think even the user friendly industry processes of EVE come even close to that. ;)
*Hybrid is even worse: 216 'base' and 432 faction totalling in 648.
Hangar clutter is more of an UI issue imo but yeah.
And you can perfectly keep the same generic blueprints and then choose the caliber at the production stage...
But yep, cumbersome.
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Of course shells have casings.
How else will we be able to sit on them and use them as tables in Lock, Stock & Barrel?
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Of course shells have casings.
How else will we be able to sit on them and use them as tables in Lock, Stock & Barrel?
Is that a new bar idea? Using casings from med-sized shells and large-sized shells as furniture?
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If we take everything in the client to be canon, then we already do have separate shells for each gun size. Take a real close look inside the Minmatar CQ sometime - you might find some 425mm-related paraphernalia.
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Of course shells have casings.
How else will we be able to sit on them and use them as tables in Lock, Stock & Barrel?
Is that a new bar idea? Using casings from med-sized shells and large-sized shells as furniture?
The bar has been running for about three years. But yeah, that is the idea. And fittingly it is a converted Rupture.
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Of course shells have casings.
How else will we be able to sit on them and use them as tables in Lock, Stock & Barrel?
Legit.
Small shells have been sold in the gift shop.
And you can perfectly keep the same generic blueprints and then choose the caliber at the production stage...
But yep, cumbersome.
The selectable output is cumbersome as well, but mostly due to the issue that this part of the UI can't remember settings. Useless clutter, however, is a reason not to do it. Or to put it bluntly: The energy needed to handwave that minor detail - 90% for immersion reasons - is incomparable small to the energy and annoyance related to 'fixing' that issue. Just think about how much fun it would be to stock a market with ammunition.
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Of course shells have casings.
How else will we be able to sit on them and use them as tables in Lock, Stock & Barrel?
Legit.
Small shells have been sold in the gift shop.
And you can perfectly keep the same generic blueprints and then choose the caliber at the production stage...
But yep, cumbersome.
The selectable output is cumbersome as well, but mostly due to the issue that this part of the UI can't remember settings. Useless clutter, however, is a reason not to do it. Or to put it bluntly: The energy needed to handwave that minor detail - 90% for immersion reasons - is incomparable small to the energy and annoyance related to 'fixing' that issue. Just think about how much fun it would be to stock a market with ammunition.
Also, the vast multitude of ammunition calibers and loads we have here on Earth are primarily for comfort, safety, and tactical concerns. In a spaceship, you don't have to worry about recoil flipping the gun up into your face or being able to provide sufficient resistance to it so that the gun can cycle. Mass may be a minor issue, but we aren't dying for a few millimeters of cargo capacity even on a frigate and weight is a nonexistent issue, unlike here. You also, on a spaceship, don't need to worry about prefragmenting or dumming rounds since you never really have to worry about overpenetration.
So yeah, it makes complete sense that they would settle on a few standard calibers since it's probably a lot more important that the gun can hit the target than whether you can squeeze an extra cubic meter of storage out by making the projectile slightly less massive. The reasons we have such a vast array of ammunition types on Earth don't usually translate to a hard-mounted, anti-vehicle machine gun mounted on a spaceship.
That, or the size and propellant of the round ARE variable, and there's just a different method of guidance. Imagine the wear on the barrel...
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I just had a thought.
Okay, so the story I linked above describes a projectile being loaded and fired; one of the things it mentions is that the propellant is a gel-like material.
What if the number figure on a gun doesn't refer to muzzle caliber, but to the amount of propellant gel filled into the casing? Lower-number weapons would use less propellant, making the shells lighter and faster to reload; larger caliber ones use a significantly more filled cartridge, resulting in a more powerful shot but also a longer recoil compensation time and slower loading process.
It'd also explain the whole one-shell-for-many-calibers thing: Different turret turrets have loading and recoil compensation equipment calibrated to work with shells of a very specific mass and balance. Load a shell with to little propellant, it might be flung out of alignment by a loading arm designed for a much heavier shell; load one with to much propellant, and the explosive force might damage your breech. In the time it takes for our weapons to reload ingame, the shells could be being drained or refilled of propellant gel to fit the correct weapon profile.
Thoughts? Retarded, genius, somewhere in between?
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It might also be injected into the shell to cause the reaction. A standard, FMJ cartridge actually consists of two explosions, the primer at the back that ignites the propellant. Maybe, in absence of other elements, such projectiles come loaded with a solid or liquid state propellant (or gel) and it's actually a chemical reaction that begins the expansion process that moves the round?
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Weight does play a role in a zero-G enviroment, Newton's second law of motion likes to have a word with you. ;)
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Weight does play a role in a zero-G enviroment, Newton's second law of motion likes to have a word with you. ;)
No, as I said, mass does. Mass is a measure of matter and is important in zero-G. Weight is gravity acting on that mass. A bullet deals with its mass by shoving it forward, since kinetic energy is a measure of mass and velocity. It deals with gravity by spinning, since gravity always draws it towards the planet.
Actually, when I talk about the weight of ammunition, though, I'm talking about its storage weight. Most people don't realize how heavy a couple clips of ammunition for an assault rifle are. It's the primary reason NATO switched from 7.62mm to 5.56mm. It has less penetrating power and that's sometimes miffed soldiers, but you can carry almost twice as much ammunition and fit more in per clip. So for personal weapons, weight of ammunition can end up being a big concern.
In a spaceship, it's not a big deal. I'm sure the local sun and planets exert some small gravitational effect, but it's not a big deal in terms of storage. The mass of a bullet isn't really going to be that big of a deal unless the gun comes unbolted from the ship due to recoil. I don't think anyone's talking about bolting a cannon to a ship too small to handle the weight. It's one of those nice things in weapon design when you're bolting a weapon to a ship. You can have an anti-aircraft gun that you literally need to strap the operator into just sitting on deck, and it's mostly a matter of keeping it bolted down and from beating the operator to death. It's only really important to add or shave off mass in small increments when you're talking about personal weaponry.
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Forgive me for not being anal with my choice of words. But you're missing my point. When you're looking at two objects with different mass, even in zero-G, the one with the higher mass will need stronger forces to be accelerated (speed/direction) in the same manner as the lighter one.
You are correct about the contemporary weight issues of ammunition, of course.
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Forgive me for not being anal with my choice of words. But you're missing my point. When you're looking at two objects with different mass, even in zero-G, the one with the higher mass will need stronger forces to be accelerated (speed/direction) in the same manner as the lighter one.
You are correct about the contemporary weight issues of ammunition, of course.
I would apologize, since I didn't mean to be nitpicky, but I can't think of a way to wittily approach the word "anal" without threatening the ToS somehow.
It's actually a common issue in firearms design, though, about force and mass. You don't necessarily need a ton of force to make a larger bullet hurt more, but it helps. The formula for kinetic energy is KE=1/2mv2. Essentially, it means that doubling the mass at the same velocity doubles the kinetic energy, but doubling velocity quadruples the kinetic energy. Ammunition is essentially a giant balancing act to see how mass and propellant produce different kinetic energy. Very often, a small round with a lot of propellant can pack more kinetic energy than replacing the propellant space with more bullet.
I need to stop and take a nerd-breath, or I'm going to go on forever. I like force mechanics, especially ballistics.
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Forgive me for not being anal with my choice of words. But you're missing my point. When you're looking at two objects with different mass, even in zero-G, the one with the higher mass will need stronger forces to be accelerated (speed/direction) in the same manner as the lighter one.
You are correct about the contemporary weight issues of ammunition, of course.
I would apologize, since I didn't mean to be nitpicky, but I can't think of a way to wittily approach the word "anal" without threatening the ToS somehow.
It's actually a common issue in firearms design, though, about force and mass. You don't necessarily need a ton of force to make a larger bullet hurt more, but it helps. The formula for kinetic energy is KE=1/2mv2. Essentially, it means that doubling the mass at the same velocity doubles the kinetic energy, but doubling velocity quadruples the kinetic energy. Ammunition is essentially a giant balancing act to see how mass and propellant produce different kinetic energy. Very often, a small round with a lot of propellant can pack more kinetic energy than replacing the propellant space with more bullet.
I need to stop and take a nerd-breath, or I'm going to go on forever. I like force mechanics, especially ballistics.
So the larger calibres pack more propellant and has greater muzzle velocity, as was suggested earlier by Esna?
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Forgive me for not being anal with my choice of words. But you're missing my point. When you're looking at two objects with different mass, even in zero-G, the one with the higher mass will need stronger forces to be accelerated (speed/direction) in the same manner as the lighter one.
You are correct about the contemporary weight issues of ammunition, of course.
I would apologize, since I didn't mean to be nitpicky, but I can't think of a way to wittily approach the word "anal" without threatening the ToS somehow.
It's actually a common issue in firearms design, though, about force and mass. You don't necessarily need a ton of force to make a larger bullet hurt more, but it helps. The formula for kinetic energy is KE=1/2mv2. Essentially, it means that doubling the mass at the same velocity doubles the kinetic energy, but doubling velocity quadruples the kinetic energy. Ammunition is essentially a giant balancing act to see how mass and propellant produce different kinetic energy. Very often, a small round with a lot of propellant can pack more kinetic energy than replacing the propellant space with more bullet.
I need to stop and take a nerd-breath, or I'm going to go on forever. I like force mechanics, especially ballistics.
So the larger calibres pack more propellant and has greater muzzle velocity, as was suggested earlier by Esna?
Not necessarily, and in fact I'd almost be tempted to say that's uncommonly the case. Rifle rounds, despite their larger cartridges, don't tend to have larger bullets. While some rifle rounds are larger, as I said, mass isn't as effective at increasing kinetic energy as velocity is. For example, a shotgun slug is a massive piece of ammunition, but it moves incredibly slow. However, there are rifle rounds that use as much or more propellant, only for smaller rounds. The effect increases the kinetic energy, but it tends to drastically overpenetrate at close ranges.
A more technical comparison might be between an extremely common rifle and pistol round. A common 5.56mm NATO rifle round uses a bullet weighing between 62 and 63 grains, but has a larger casing that contains enough propellant to accelerate that bullet to a general muzzle velocity of well over 900 m/s. Compare that to the 9mm Parabellum, the world's most common handgun round. That uses a round between 115 and 125 grains, which can be almost twice as heavy as that rifle round, but its muzzle velocity is between 360 and 435 m/s. Throw that through the formula, and a rifle round, though smaller, still has far more killing power because of the propellant behind the smaller bullet.
So rifle rounds tend to be smaller compared to the amount of propellant they have, at least as compared to handgun rounds. A smaller round with more force behind it drastically increases muzzle velocity. It's true you need more propellant to make a larger round move as quickly, but odds are that if you're using a larger round, you aren't necessarily using it for speed. Mass has the added effect, on soft targets, of spreading their kinetic energy more effectively when the bullet mushrooms. Remember that a bullet's purpose isn't to put a little hole in something, it's to twist, turn, and deform inside its target. Overpenetration is energy wasted.
So while there are certainly rounds out there that pack both a lot of propellant and a large caliber bullet (.460 Weatherby comes to mind), it's a lot more complicated than that. If anything, the actual bullet in a Minmatar projectile weapon would be almost insignificant compared to how much velocity they can squeeze out of it. Mass considered, they might be better off using a smaller round with more propellant, if these things are operating the same as they would on Earth. One of the major advantages of a spaceship is that it can handle more recoil than a human body, so everything would be scaled up. All things being equal, it is nicer to have a very large projectile moving at an insanely high speed. In reality, making a larger round tends to detract from the velocity, which is the more important factor in terms of kinetic energy.
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Not entire related to calibres, but this I think is relevant to the inner workings of the projectile turrets:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wT1xkRpCKk
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I went out and shot my M4.
Because that is how Minmatar should debate science.
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The market graphics for the ammunition appears to imply that they have cases. But really weird-looking ones where the specific payload is occasionally in the casing, not the projectile.