Quote:
Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b
I have that one on my site, under blackpowder rifles, but I had the impression more were built?
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I went back and re-examined your page, and we came up with very different specs (which I think is a good thing, since it gives people different options depending on how they feel about it). I like being able to compare my stats with yours, since trying to understand why they're different and how that affects gameplay (hopefully) makes me better at doing conversions.
We're close on damage (I have it at 7, yours is at 8).
Pen isn't as close (2-Nil vs. 2-3-4), but the World Tamer's Handbook tends to have low penetration for black powder weapons, which is what I'm following. I think part of that is that FF&S assumes hard jacketed bullets at higher tech levels and soft lead in the black powder era, so the bullets tend to deform more on hitting hard targets and not penetrate as well.
Bulk is slightly different (8 vs. 10), but probably not very relevant to a tripod-mounted weapon.
We're very different on range (90 for mine, 157 for yours). I think this is another artifact of me using WTH, since it's pretty short-ranged for black powder smoothbores.
Mass is very different between our write-ups. Working off other writers' write-ups, I guesstimated the total mass of the system at 50 kilos, 40 for the gun and 10 for the tripod, where your total mass is 11.22 kilos. That probably also explains why your SS recoil is much higher than mine (not that either are likely to matter, since both are capable of 1 shot in a round at most). I went heavier because an 11.22 kilo weight is about the same as an M1922 BAR. At that mass, someone will try to shoulder-fire one in a game, which I don't want.
I'm not sure I agree with the ROF 1/2. With 5 second rounds, that only gives 6 shots per minute instead of the 9 the gun was alleged to be capable of. For that one stat I prefer the solution I came up with, giving it one shot per round, a 9 round magazine, and a reload of 3 so that it takes 12 rounds (one minute) for a gunner to shoot the magazine and reload with a new cassette. It's consistent with Puckle's designs, which had various cassettes ranging in size from 6 to 11 shots (and the rebuilt/replica one that Ian looked at a few years ago had 9 shot cassettes).
The cartridge shot is from a report about one of the tests where it fired a round containing 16 musket balls.
The cassette weight is the last thing to touch on. Loaded cassettes should be relatively heavy. At 0.85kg unloaded and 0.92kg loaded, each shot would have to be less than 6 grams (since powder weight also needs to be part of that). A 32mm lead ball is 195 grams (194.6), and 11 of them would mass 2.14 kilograms without powder. Even if they were very undersized and only 30mm, 11 of them would mass 1.76 kilos. A 6 gram lead ball would be roughly 10mm.