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[Ava Starfire]

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?

[Vic Van Meter]

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.

[Elmund Egivand]

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.

[Lyn Farel]

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.

[Kopenhagen]

Of course shells have casings.

How else will we be able to sit on them and use them as tables in Lock, Stock & Barrel?

[Elmund Egivand]

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?

[Morwen Lagann]

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.

[Kopenhagen]

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.

[Desiderya]

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.

[Vic Van Meter]

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...

[Esna Pitoojee]

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?

[Vic Van Meter]

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?

[Desiderya]

Weight does play a role in a zero-G enviroment, Newton's second law of motion likes to have a word with you.

[Vic Van Meter]

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.

[Desiderya]

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.