Re: Some Firearms
Posted: 2014-12-18 01:53am
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This weapon is the most widely produced of it's time, with more than fifty six million units being made over a forty one year period. The reason for this is the internal politics of the nation which produced it. This weapon is the product of a federation of city states in which had, for the first 170 years of it's existence a political system which divided it's population into Citizens and Denizens. Denizens had some legal rights and enjoyed protection under the law, but were barred from holding political office and voting as well as a few other restrictions and some general discrimination. To be a Citizen one had to be male and either...Citizens were also required to keep arms and be trained with them and serve in defensive militias if able bodied, a relic of an earlier era. Despite this a large political movement among the Denizen class eventually managed to gain citizenship for all men, followed a couple decades latter by citizenship for all adults thanks to feminists.
- Pay an annual citizenship tax equivalent to about half the average annual income of the average denizen
- Be awarded citizenship for some exceptional deed
- Serve for ten years in the army or navy
However, the requirements for citizenship were not dropped. Beforehand every citizen was able to afford his own weapon or kept his old service rifle. This switchover meant the citizen section of the population grew to five times it's former size and latter doubling. Most of whom could not afford weapons. To deal with this the Federal Militia Armaments Bureau (FMEB) was created. The army could not produce enough service rifles to meet the needs. At first they supplied surplus rolling block rifles, cap and ball revolvers and rifled muskets (some of which having been converted) and even a few flintlocks, but these were insufficient for the needs and were mostly obsolete. To arm the populace the Militia Carbine was born.
The Militia Carbine is a simple trapdoor gun firing a 8mm cartridge designed for the (then new) bolt action repeating service rifle. The one word which describes this weapon is "cheap". It cost about 30% as the service rifle to make, but did so by cutting numerous corners. On top of it's far simpler mechanism, it's stock is made of two pieces of wood held together with screws, it's barrel is short, not as finely made or machined and initially it lacked a safety catch (though after 26 years of production this was amended). It's maximum effective range is about 300 meters and it has a rate of fire of up to twelve rounds a minute in the hands of a skilled user. Each of these guns came with a cheap old fashioned socket bayonet. Public schools had a month class on basic marksmanship and gun maintenance and each citizen had to spend two afternoons a year drilling until age 60. Most of these weapons were government property so guns could be re issued if their owner died, though a few were exported as low cost hunting rifles.
The general strategic idea for this weapon was that with the entirety of the adult population armed and trained in weapons use (even if the guns were inferior to service rifles), the standing army could be kept small. When the Federation was invaded forty years latter, these weapons were put to the test. The results of the militia carbine were mixed. While they did mean that partisan activity was higher than the invaders expected (which did tie down a decent number of their forces in anti partisan work), many civilians did surrender to the invading forces regardless due to the fact that they had not only military grade semi automatic rifles, but also SMGs, machine guns, mortars, grenades, AFVs, air power and artillery support. In areas where resistance was high, this was countered by brutal tactics being employed and a very high civilian death count. In one particularly disastrous instance a force of forty six thousand militia was almost completely wiped out by an enemy division along with a number of surrounding towns which were bombarded or bombed, killing an additional thirty five thousand civilians over the next week, inflicting only 328 casualties. Though the enemy was repulsed, production of the militia rifle ended shortly after the war began in favor of low cost SMGs. The Invasion cost the federation about 9 million people, devastated much of it's infrastructure and a fair number of military historians and generals have remarked that the resources spent on the Militia carbine project would have been better spent on new tanks, artillery and more planes. Even so, a fair number of militia carbines remain in circulation, mostly as hunting and sporting weapons.
Three cannons made by House Valcas on contract for the Valnothron Navy in 36 IA.
The first is a fairly typical pre-infrastructural smoothbore Twenty Vaul cannon, weighing in at about 2.65 tonnes. Such weapons are the primary armament of Ships of the Line, are fairly common aboard frigates and a few sloops and frigates for about a century, with a few refinements made as time went on. In addition to their sales to the various Drow houses a few of these cannons have been sold abroad. In the last decade many of these guns have been rifled, extending their maximum range to two to two and a half kilometers.
The second is a new pattern muzzle loading 20 Vaul rifled cannon, the heavier counterpart to the previously described 10 Vaul Rifled Cannon. These guns have a range of up to four kilometers thanks to improved ballistics and the fact that they can take a greater charge of powder. Using steel tipped projectiles these weapons have demonstrated significantly improved penetration against slabs of wrought iron when compared to it's precessesors, especially at ranges of 500 meters or less. The gun carriage design remains unchanged from the older model.
The third cannon is an experimental gun that as of the Battle of Daagsgrad has just finished it's first batch of tests. It is an cast steel rifled cannon based partially off Infrastructural designs, but it differs due to complications in replicating the interrupted screw breech block which is the norm in Infrastructural Artillery. In it's place, a sliding block mechanism is used, a semi-cylindrical block of metal on rails which can be slid aside to allow shot and ammunition in and then slid back and fasten in place. It weighs 422 kilograms and has a maximum range of 3.5 kilometers. In general this increased the rate of fire, even if it does rely on an external caplock mechanism to fire and unlike the Type-6FG (its closet counterpoint) projectile and shell are not cartridged.
It was planned that a few of these guns would be provided to the Valnothron naval elements of the invasion forces. However development was delayed (which might have have been the result of sabotage by one of House Valcas's rivals) by a couple of months so that the first completed batch of eight units was completed the day after the Invasion fleet left Hansoliath. New crews are being trained rapidly.
There's a toggle on the hammer which allows it to switch between setting off the top mounted shotgun or the revolver component.Sea Skimmer wrote:I don't get how that multi barrel revolver is supposed to work? It looks more like a shotgun on top of a revolver. With I assume a second internal hammer to fire the revolvor part.