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Graf of Sudenberg, a Warhammer CKII quest

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Kelenas said:
Not really sure how the discussion was off-topic, to be honest. Bayonets and how they compare to more traditional weapons is going to play a pretty big factor in the composition of our army.

That said, I think it's pretty clear the debate was more or less just moving in circles. I'm still of the opinion that the bayonet makes spears, pikes, and the like obsolete, while others think that the nature of enemies in WHF means that they aren't going to be obsolete for a while, and with the GM pretty clearly supporting the latter stance I don't really think that there's any more to discuss.
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It's more that I want to discourage extremely fast attempts to boost forward the technological level of the Enclave without having to resort to the canon reason for it. That is to say, I'd rather you guys not immediately attempt to jump gun technology forward several dozen years because the costs, as they stand, don't meet the benefits, as they stand, rather than resorting to Tzeentchian mischief.

Make no mistake, I, too, think that guns, for the most part, obsoleted pikes and cavalry, for the most part. The issue is that, when guns first came out and for a goodly while afterwards, they didn't. I, personally, am not aware of why that is, but I do know there was a reason for it. As I'd rather be writing than doing that research right now, I'm putting on that arbitrary limit.

The Karvoka Man said:
An Omake, you say?

Hmm. I'll see if I can cook something up on my phone!
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Please do, I look forward to it. I'll probably see about giving a few mechanical bonuses for omakes, too. Though, I'd rather that not be the main reason people write them.
 
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Claytonimor said:
Make no mistake, I, too, think that guns, for the most part, obsoleted pikes and cavalry, for the most part. The issue is that, when guns first came out and for a goodly while afterwards, they didn't. I, personally, am not aware of why that is, but I do know there was a reason for it. As I'd rather be writing than doing that research right now, I'm putting on that arbitrary limit.
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Mostly, rate of fire was shit, accuracy was shit. It had stopping power, but it was unreliable as hell, so it's average stopping power and thus shock effect was...poor. Arrow volleys were better than guns for a good long time, until the ease of training someone to use a gun allowed many, many more ranged soldiers to be fielded than before.

Otherwise, ranged units were generally auxillaries, they just take too much time to train for the given amount of kill. Early guns, even the relatively ineffective ones made it cost about the same time and effort to raise a unit of muskets as it is a unit of conscript spearmen(not even disciplined pikes, just dudes with long stabbys), when previously they were in similar effort ranges to developing good cavalry.
 
Claytonimor said:
Make no mistake, I, too, think that guns, for the most part, obsoleted pikes and cavalry, for the most part. The issue is that, when guns first came out and for a goodly while afterwards, they didn't. I, personally, am not aware of why that is, but I do know there was a reason for it. As I'd rather be writing than doing that research right now, I'm putting on that arbitrary limit.
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Various reasons:

- Reliability
Early guns used matchlock ignition, which was rather unreliable and expensive; the match had to be kept burning for the duration of the battle, or however long the soldier was meant to be battle-ready, and could easily go out in rain.
Wheel locks were better, but took a lot of time to make ready for firing, since they had to be wound up before each shot. Flintlocks struck a good balance, but required some good metallurgy and metalworking skills to make sufficiently strong.

- Weight
Early guns were quite heavy, and often had to be fired from a fork rest, which obviously made them less maneuverable than, for example, archers, spearmen, etc. Improvement in gun construction and metallurgy reduced weight until we got to the musket. Obviously, such heavy weapons also wouldn't be suited for bayonets and the like.

- Rate of Fire
Early guns could only be fired very slowly, because gunpowder and bullets were kept separately, which slowed reloading procedure. Introducing paper cartridges made this significantly easier, but required the infrastructure to produce paper in sufficiently large amounts.
Various other improvements also helped to make loading a firearm easier and quicker, such as the reduction in weight mentioned above.

- Logistics
Early guns all had individual calibers, meaning no two soldiers used the same size of bullet. The fact that they were smoothbores, and some space had to be given to account for powder fowling, but it still meant that many soldiers had to cast their own bullets. Introducing standardized calibers made things easier and cheaper, since ammunition could then be mass-produced in shot towers and the like.

- Penetration
Early guns actually had fairly low penetration; it was actually pretty common for armor smiths to demonstrate the quality of their plate armor by shooting at it with a pistol or the like from a short distance, then encircling the dent produced by the bullet as proof of its durability (hence the term bullet proof). It took a while until various gun technologies advanced to the point where armor could be reliably penetrated at long distances and thus became useless. Things like corned gunpowder (for better ignition and thus more force and pressure), better metallurgy and metalworking (to have a firing chamber and barrel capable of withstanding the force and pressure), and so on.

- Tactics
Early handgunners fired either all at once, or individually at will, which meant either a lot of bullets were wasted, or the impact on the target unit in regards to morale or movement (due to bodies of killed or injured soldiers) was minimal. It took the introduction of tactics such as volley fire by rank (ie, first rank fires, then moves to the back of the unit to reload, second rank fires then moves back to reload, etc) to alleviate the issue of the low rate of fire and accuracy.


Accuracy actually wasn't that much of a factor; they were all smoothbore guns until the minie ball was invented, so the difference in accuracy between, say, an 18th century musket, and a 15th century arquebus is pretty marginal.

There's probably more, but those are the big ones that I can think of/find on short notice. There's obviously also a lot of reasons in favor of the gun that ultimately led to them replacing bows and crossbows, but that's not quite what you asked. Hope this helps.
 
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"So, how long till you think they break and try to charge the walls?" Franz asked, rolling his shoulders to help relax him a bit, they'd be ass deep in arabyans soon enough, he might as well take what little relaxation he could get. His friend snorted, checking the flint on his gun, staring down the alley they'd struggled to fortify.

"Hah, walls. Is that what we are calling these? It's more some piles of rubble, rugs, and coffee tables." Hugo patted one of the huge rug stacks that would hopefully help defend from arrow fire. They truly were quite impressive and large.He did not like araybyans, but he would give them this much. They knew how to weave one hell of a rug.

To his right, two of the gunners were doing...something. Giggling like madmen, they seemed to be…..collecting pouches of small stones?

"What are you morons laughing about? This isn't Sudenberg. You can satisfy whatever religious compulsion compels you to collect broken building chunks later." Franz told them off for acting like fools, when soon they'd be killing fools. Hopefully in the first two volleys. They both twisted to face him, looking gravely offended by his insult.

"Morons? We aren't morons! We are the only smart people here!" Franz rolled his eyes, kneeling down a bit, and then aiming his musket down the narrow street. Hopefully they could bottleneck the enemy here, and it'd become a more of a duck hunt than anything else. If they tripped the enemy over their own corpses, as well, that'd be even better. Anything to sow them down, really!

"Oh? And how do you figure that?" He asked, as he got ready for the fight, resting his musket on a piece of rubble, taking a deep breath, as he heard the sounds of battle start to die down. That meant that they'd be facing their foe head on in but a few minutes.

"Easy! We load sharp rubble into the pouch, and then we load the pouch like we load regular shot, and then, when the enemy closes in, we fire and the shrapnel rips them to pieces!" Both of the men laugh madly, gathering up more rubble, tossing pouches to other gunners, including to franz, who just stared at it, before shrugging. When the enemy showed up, perhaps he would try this insane idea. Especially if they got extra close.

Done! Not super satisfied with this Omake, but I hope you guys like it.
 
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@The Karvoka Man
Frankly, I'd be more surprised if they hadn't made Blunderbusses yet, but I haven't mentioned them, so I'll give you that. It'll be either a Personal or a Learning action next turn. Beyond the mechanical stuff, that was humorous enough. I'm always a fan of mad scientists (in case Talia didn't clue you in).
 
I believe that the next MAJOR innovation for guns, would be the machine gun. (As such I agree with Kelenas, bayonets shouldn't take to much of a mental leap)
 
Azurath said:
I believe that the next MAJOR innovation for guns, would be the machine gun. (As such I agree with Kelenas, bayonets shouldn't take to much of a mental leap)
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You realize that your guys are using, essentially, matchlocks, right?

The next capital-M Major innovation is rifling and bullets to replace balls. Then comes cartridges. Then self-contained bullets. Then lever-actions and semi-automatic weapons. Then maschinengewehr. Which you will not reach by the End Times, except maybe in-so-far as a Gatling gun counts.
 
Claytonimor said:
The next capital-M Major innovation is rifling
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Actually, the benefits of rifling for accuracy were known pretty early in the history of gun-making. However, for rifling to be effective, the projectile needs to fit pretty tightly into the barrel so the grooves can actually impart spin into the projectile. And that's where the trouble came from. For one, pretty much all weapons were muzzle-loaders meaning the fairly tight-fitting bullet had to be run down the entirety of the barrel to be loaded, which took a fair bit of time and effort, thus making loading slow to begin with. And because the gunpowder didn't burn up completely, but instead left behind reside inside the barrel, meaning loading became even slower and even outright impossible after only a few shots, meaning the user of the rifle would have to switch to smaller bullets that would be able to get past the fouling, but would lose the benefit of the rifling.
 
Kelenas said:
Actually, the benefits of rifling for accuracy were known pretty early in the history of gun-making. However, for rifling to be effective, the projectile needs to fit pretty tightly into the barrel so the grooves can actually impart spin into the projectile. And that's where the trouble came from. For one, pretty much all weapons were muzzle-loaders meaning the fairly tight-fitting bullet had to be run down the entirety of the barrel to be loaded, which took a fair bit of time and effort, thus making loading slow to begin with. And because the gunpowder didn't burn up completely, but instead left behind reside inside the barrel, meaning loading became even slower and even outright impossible after only a few shots, meaning the user of the rifle would have to switch to smaller bullets that would be able to get past the fouling, but would lose the benefit of the rifling.
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So breach loading, then bullets, then rifling.
 
Kelenas said:
More or less, yeah.
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Rifling comes before breachloaders. The average Civil War musket was rifled and front-loaded, and wasn't terribly unusual. The difference in range and accuracy from that was quite a lot compared to unrifled front-loading muskets.

Cartridges might even come before breachloaders depending on how repeaters enter the picture.
 
Night said:
Rifling comes before breachloaders. The average Civil War musket was rifled and front-loaded, and wasn't terribly unusual. The difference in range and accuracy from that was quite a lot compared to unrifled front-loading muskets.
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That was due to the development of the minie ball. Rifled muzzle-loaders were not really practical before that, due to the concerns I already noted.

Breech-loading was actually around a fairly long time as well; about the 16th century (and often rifled as well). The reason they didn't become widespread was due to the cost and time it took to manufacture, compared to the benefits provided. For example, the Ferguson could fire about twice as fast as a normal musket, but cost about four times as much to produce, as well as a longer amount of time. So it simply made more sense to just produce four normal muskets instead; the costs were about the same, but you could outfit additional men, which in turn could fire more shots at the enemy overall.

Given our extremely small population, it might make sense for us to invest into breechloaders, though, since manpower is overall a much bigger concern for us.
 
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Kelenas said:
That was due to the development of the minie ball.
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The two were not adopted together; rifling came first, encouraging the adoption of the minie ball to make the most of it, but it was still adopted beforehand. The concerns you noted have to do with manufacturing tolerances, not with any particular failure of pre-Minie ammunition beyond that. Poor standardization of weapons and poor manufacturing technique (from both ends) were the real cause. (And are more likely to frustrate us as well.) The need for massive numbers of weapons to arm Napoleonic-era mass armies ultimately solved both problems.
 
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Night said:
The two were not adopted together; rifling came first, encouraging the adoption of the minie ball to make the most of it, but it was still adopted beforehand. The concerns you noted have to do with manufacturing tolerances, not with any particular failure of pre-Minie ammunition beyond that. Poor standardization of weapons and poor manufacturing technique (from both ends) were the real cause. (And are more likely to frustrate us as well.)
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I'm sorry, but that's blatantly wrong. Barrel fouling from black powder was very a well-known and widespread issue, to the point where even troops using smoothbore weapons often carried different sizes of ammunition; starting out with the largest and most tightly-fitting balls, then changing to smaller ones as fouling built up in the barrel over the course of the battle and made ramming home larger shots more difficult or outright impossible.
Manufacturing tolerances play absolutely no role in that whatsoever, and I'm frankly not sure where the hell you even got that idea.

You are correct that rifling came first, yes, but it was generally used with breechloaders for precisely the reasons I named. The M1819 Hall rifle or the Ferguson rifle are both good examples of rifled breech loaders. This is because they circumvented a lot of the issues from powder fowling, since there was no need to ram the ammunition down the entire length of the barrel.

However, rifled muzzle-loader as they were used during the ACW were only practical due to the minie ball, because the projectile could be made small enough for it to easily get down the barrel past any fouling, and then deform to make a tight fit with the barrel, which both imparted spin and had the benefit of clearing out much of the fouling from the previous shot.
 
Hey, I actually forgot about something, so I'd like for you guys to roll four 1d100's. Paired, if you could.

Well, not so much forgot as didn't realize until I'd posted the latest Witch-Hunter bit.
 
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