Dune Weapons (Split from Meele Weapons Thread)

tharkûn · Post by **tharkûn** » 2004-06-07 01:53am

Really I think the "rationality" of the Dune universe is overrated. It is NOT that hard to slow down bullets. I'll just lower the muzzel velocity, increase the density, and if necessary use explosive bullets. If I'm really stretched I make expensive bullets with 3 explosions: in the barrel, when the front of the bullet hits the shield (to fragment the bullet and drasticly slow the back half of the bullet), and a third one inside the shield. Okay so you need a bullet that is going slow when it impacts the sheild, fine this is a simple technical problem that compotent egineers could solve.

Further, even after the Leto banned sheilds, didn't they still train to fight with melee weapons?

beyond hope · Post by **beyond hope** » 2004-06-07 03:03am

Knife Stab Characteristics

Your hypothetical shield-piercing projectile weapon has an upper muzzle velocity of 9.2 m/s according to this, before accounting for the need to thrust slowly in order to penetrate the shield.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2004-06-07 11:01am

beyond hope wrote:Knife Stab Characteristics

Your hypothetical shield-piercing projectile weapon has an upper muzzle velocity of 9.2 m/s according to this, before accounting for the need to thrust slowly in order to penetrate the shield.

And actually probably less because a knife thrust has to be slowed significantly in order to penetrate a sheild.

tharkûn · Post by **tharkûn** » 2004-06-09 12:38am

beyond hope wrote:Knife Stab Characteristics

Your hypothetical shield-piercing projectile weapon has an upper muzzle velocity of 9.2 m/s according to this, before accounting for the need to thrust slowly in order to penetrate the shield.

No they have an upper terminal velocity of 9.2 m/s. You can explosively decelerate the bullet in flight and deliver lethal bullet with a reasonable ToF. Using exploding bullets would be an option.

The fact that shields stop anything move at high relative velocities does not invalidate the gun in favor of swords - it simply requires expensive bullets that decelerate substanially just prior to impact and possibly explosive bullets if the enemy wises up and uses shields and traditional body armor.

But three charges in the bullet: one at the rear to propel the bullet out of the gun, one at the front egineered to decelerate the bullet for shield penetration, and a third in the center slug to kill the enemy.

All Dune shields should do is make bullets expensive and a few egineers moderately wealthy, not create a galaxywide return to sword tactics.

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » 2004-06-09 12:49am

Currald wrote:Well, you know, there's honor and then there's honor. We Americans have just invaded a defenseless nation and tortured people to death. But we still didn't use nukes.

As someone has already mentioned, using nukes would be monumental. Besides, I don't see the dishonour of using a nuke when there's a need for it (though if we're talking about Iraq, then there wasn't a need for it). Nuclear weapons in and of themselves aren't dishonourable.

Does this sound like a 'healthy empire' to you?
.
(shrugs) How are their borders? Shrinking? Growing?

You don't have borders in space.

Their empire is devastated. So much so that Section 31 considered them to have a back-bench status in the post-Dominion war galaxy, and would spend most of that time simply rebuilding. There's also the societal concerns I brought up before. Sloan thought that the Federation and Romulans had risen to the extent that they were the sole remaining superpowers.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2004-06-09 01:13am

No, they're based on the other guys being technologically inferior or using the exact same doctrine as you.

Which is understandable when you're one of the most advanced species out there. It's like taking issue with US wartime tactics for Iraq because they rely on the technological advantages.

Possibly. If so, it's a bit more understandable. Still, Zealots *can* be taken down by Marines, so even a less advanced ranged weapon would be very useful. Unless of course that's just gameplay mechanics and in fact Zealots are invincible to Terran personel weapons. I don't know if there's anything that could prove or disprove that, but Starcraft: Ghost will probably shed some light on the subject.

Anyway, if Zealot shields are much better than they are ingame, and the Protoss are incapable of creating a personel ranged weapon that would be useful against their own shields, then their tactics are understandable.

Actually, Zealots are pretty tough. Enough so to warrant their tactics and certainly so when you consider their tactics were meant to go against themselves. And given the relative firepower of the Dragoon, I'd imagine that they do consider a heavy punch necessary to make a ranged weapon worthwhile.

It's not the best possible tactics they could embrace, particularly against opponents like the Zerg or Terrans but they aren't too bad. Personally I'd go with more Dragoons in the force but those do have the obvious drawbacks.

SWPIGWANG · Post by **SWPIGWANG** » 2004-06-09 01:37am

tharkûn wrote: All Dune shields should do is make bullets expensive and a few egineers moderately wealthy, not create a galaxywide return to sword tactics.

Or they can use suicidal lasgun dudes/machines whatever.

Warfare in Dune is probably dictated by politics as much as tactical requirements. In a total war sceneario we'd be seeing stone burner kill planets not guys stabbing each other.

Zor · Post by **Zor** » 2004-06-10 12:54am

Zor Reporting for Duty!

Best Meelee Weapon-Pratical, Starship Troopers (Book) Fist, Simple and can do so mucth damage

Worst-While Cliche, Bat'leth. The rest of Klingon Meelee weapons are desently disigned meelee weapons.

beyond hope · Post by **beyond hope** » 2004-06-10 08:13pm

tharkûn wrote:
beyond hope wrote:Knife Stab Characteristics

Your hypothetical shield-piercing projectile weapon has an upper muzzle velocity of 9.2 m/s according to this, before accounting for the need to thrust slowly in order to penetrate the shield.
No they have an upper terminal velocity of 9.2 m/s. You can explosively decelerate the bullet in flight and deliver lethal bullet with a reasonable ToF. Using exploding bullets would be an option.

The fact that shields stop anything move at high relative velocities does not invalidate the gun in favor of swords - it simply requires expensive bullets that decelerate substanially just prior to impact and possibly explosive bullets if the enemy wises up and uses shields and traditional body armor.

But three charges in the bullet: one at the rear to propel the bullet out of the gun, one at the front egineered to decelerate the bullet for shield penetration, and a third in the center slug to kill the enemy.

All Dune shields should do is make bullets expensive and a few egineers moderately wealthy, not create a galaxywide return to sword tactics.

You're right, that should have been terminal velocity.

I was looking at various pistol and rifle cartridges to see how the braking charge in the nose of the bullet would affect them. Here's what I came up with (numbers are based on grain weights here and assuming that a speed of 9.2 m/s is slow enough to penetrate the shield.)

9mm: ~340 millijoules
.357: ~344 millijoules
.40 S&W: ~495 millijoules
.45 ACP: ~632 millijoules
.50 AE: ~824 millijoules
.223 Remington: ~165 millijoules
30-06: ~495 millijoules
.50 BMG: ~1.81 joules

For comparison's sake, .177 lead BB fired from a Red Ryder BB gun at 85.34 m/s: 1.09 joules

That would be high end, using the full mass of the bullet and the 9.2 m/s figure representing a full-strength stab. I also came up with a rough low end, assuming that the bullet brakes to 9.2 m/s from its muzzle velocity and using smokeless powder as the braking charge:

9mm: ~327 millijoules
.357: ~294 millijoules
.40 S&W: ~477 millijoules
.45 ACP: ~619 millijoules
.50 AE: ~745 millijoules
.223 Remington: ~102 millijoules
30-06: 371 millijoules
.50 BMG: 1.14 joules

In addition, the strength of the braking charge is set: a braking charge calculated for 100 meters of flight is unlikely to slow the bullet sufficiently at 10 meters to achieve shield penetration. That leaves you carrying several times the usual amount of ammunition, and hoping that you don't confuse the 25 meter ammo with the 200 meter ammo at a critical moment.

As far as the tandem-charged version goes, the smallest US military explosive bullets I could find reference to were in the range of .50 to .60 caliber. At a minimum, we'd be talking about something like this instead of something like this. If the .50 cal. round is too small for the tandem charges, you'd be talking about something more along the lines of a grenade launcher or recoilless rifle in size. That seems a tad excessive to me for the sake of killing one man. Scaling up the gun and adding a second explosive charge still doesn't solve the problem of the braking charge having a fixed strength, and adds a whole new layer of complexity.

tharkûn · Post by **tharkûn** » 2004-06-10 11:16pm

bh:
I was thinking of using high density bullets (basically DU), cutting muzzle velocity down (to the point where you can reasonably hit a moving target at typical engagement ranges), and using quite powerful explosives (say RDX or something more powerful) for deceleration. The higher density means you pack more momentum for less energy, have less KE to shed to get through the sheild, and have a more penetrating shot underneath. I was think that you might place a needle on the tip of the bullet and when that contacts the shield it gets driven back to set off the braking charge.

It may well be that the gun has to be redesigned to be recoiless, be less man portable, or deployed as a crew served weapon. But even an unwieldy, expensive machine gun should useful against sword weilding enemies.

SylasGaunt · Post by **SylasGaunt** » 2004-06-10 11:24pm

Stormbringer wrote:
You know, given that the smallest unit we see feilding truly ranged weapon are Dragoon, I wonder if the Protoss due can feild smaller ranged weapons. It's possible that they aren't particularly able to feild smaller ranged weapons of the sort of the firepower they deem necessary.

There are Protoss with personal sized guns in Ghost.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2004-06-10 11:33pm

tharkûn wrote:bh:
I was thinking of using high density bullets (basically DU), cutting muzzle velocity down (to the point where you can reasonably hit a moving target at typical engagement ranges), and using quite powerful explosives (say RDX or something more powerful) for deceleration. The higher density means you pack more momentum for less energy, have less KE to shed to get through the sheild, and have a more penetrating shot underneath. I was think that you might place a needle on the tip of the bullet and when that contacts the shield it gets driven back to set off the braking charge.

It may well be that the gun has to be redesigned to be recoiless, be less man portable, or deployed as a crew served weapon. But even an unwieldy, expensive machine gun should useful against sword weilding enemies.

Except your ridiculous machine gun is going to be a bitch in the feild, you ammo needdlessly complicated and expensive, and I still wouldn't count on it working. It takes a very slow moving object to get under a sheild and it's going to be hard to get a bullet to do that reliably.

It's a lot easier just to recruit a sword and melee weapon army.

tharkûn · Post by **tharkûn** » 2004-06-11 12:41am

Except your ridiculous machine gun is going to be a bitch in the feild, you ammo needdlessly complicated and expensive, and I still wouldn't count on it working. It takes a very slow moving object to get under a sheild and it's going to be hard to get a bullet to do that reliably.

And how is that different than gatling guns and other early "machine guns"?

Face it when the British deployed the machine gun it was nothing for 5,000 of the enemy to be fought off by 4 guns (as happened 5 years after the British adopted the maxim gun). Unless men are literally cheaper than bullets, and by a hefty margin, melee troops against a machine gun are toasted.

It's a lot easier just to recruit a sword and melee weapon army.

And watch them die. Charging into a machine gun is not going to work, even if you are willing to throw away lives it just doesn't work.

Being a bitch to field means you make it vehicle mounted, crew served, or fixed defensive. Do you really beleive that any serious military is going to turn down a massive advantage just because it happens to be hard to field?

Ammo is not "needlessly complicated" it allows the bullets to bypass the shield and kill the person inside and do so with a high rate of fire.

Expensive? Yes. Worth it? How many Sardaukur do you think the Emporer can afford to throw against the guns? It is well within reason to expect thousands of enemy troops to die while charging machine guns in defensive positions.

Hard to get a bullet to uniformly decelerate? Why? You are going to have the same charge going off with the same braking distance with the same slug to be braked. Once you have a method that works it is just mass production. Even if only 50% reliable bullets, who cares? Like the early machine guns all you do is plan to hit multiple times and have a sufficient volume of fire to garuntee hits in spite of unreliable shots.

SWPIGWANG · Post by **SWPIGWANG** » 2004-06-11 01:03am

Instead of silly breaking bullets, what about some nice WP/Naplam grenades with a low velocity automatic Grenade launcher?

Even with the restricted velocity from shields, it should easily have 50meter range. Alternatively, A PT-fuzed grenade full of nice WP ribbons would be nice and automatically braking or rounds with thermobaric ammo......hmmmm

Dune-verse killa[/url]

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2004-06-11 01:12am

And how is that different than gatling guns and other early "machine guns"?

Except you fail to realise the very important difference between your machine gun and theirs. With them it was the simple matter of getting the actions to work properly and the rest was simply manufacturing good quality, unordinary ammo.

You on the other hand have that problem as well as making bullets with retro-rockets in them as well as being explosive ammunition because at 9.2 m/s it's going have preciously little penetrating power (especially with the needs of designing it to have a retro-rocket to begin with). Oh, and there's the little problem of how do you decellerate it before it hits the sheild?

Hard to get a bullet to uniformly decelerate? Why? You are going to have the same charge going off with the same braking distance with the same slug to be braked.

Yes, and no barrel to control the direction of flight. So the problem is of course, how do you control it's flight path during decelleration sufficiently to ensure that it actually hits your target instead of going off where ever?

Simply packing an equal amount of whatever propellant isn't likely to be very effective. You're going to have to make sure your charge ignites precisely and evenly enough to keep the projectile stable during the decelleration. And bear in mind that's no easy thing for some thing as small as a bullet.

beyond hope · Post by **beyond hope** » 2004-06-11 02:15am

tharkûn wrote:bh:
I was thinking of using high density bullets (basically DU), cutting muzzle velocity down (to the point where you can reasonably hit a moving target at typical engagement ranges), and using quite powerful explosives (say RDX or something more powerful) for deceleration. The higher density means you pack more momentum for less energy, have less KE to shed to get through the sheild, and have a more penetrating shot underneath. I was think that you might place a needle on the tip of the bullet and when that contacts the shield it gets driven back to set off the braking charge.

It may well be that the gun has to be redesigned to be recoiless, be less man portable, or deployed as a crew served weapon. But even an unwieldy, expensive machine gun should useful against sword weilding enemies.

I multiplied the weight of a .45 ACP (~15 grams) ten times to simulate a higher density: at 9.2 m/s it has 6.348 joules of energy. Note that a clip of 30 would weigh 4.5 kilograms for the bullets alone, and thus the number of rounds each soldier can carry will be reduced accordingly. The standard round would have ~496 joules. Cutting down the muzzle velocity will reduce your effective range accordingly, making rifles relatively worthless.

With the tandem-charged version, the problem is that you have something the size of a heavy machinegun round or grenade launcher shell, but you have to have a direct hit for it to work (the shield should stop shrapnel. Imagine trying to take ground, rather than hold it, when your troops are armed with weapons mounted on bipods or tripods.

SWPIGWANG · Post by **SWPIGWANG** » 2004-06-11 04:19am

I think good old drag is still the safest way to go.......

tharkûn · Post by **tharkûn** » 2004-06-11 07:30pm

Stormbringer:
None of the problems you have mentioned are something which cannot be solved. Are all of them going to be answerable off the cuff in a debate? No. But do you honestly beleive that real egineers (which I am not) couldn't work out SOME type of solution?

Look I am not saying that I have every answer to every problem, just that such answers can be found and once found it ends up with expensive bullets and lots of dead Freemen if they charge it.

SWPIGWANG's comments about willie pete made me ask this simple question ... what about a good old fashioned flamethrower? How does your melee force combat say, a flamethrowing tank?

The point is Dune tactics are still rather lousy given what the technology could accomplish. Some type of slow terminal velocity gun, incideriary grenades, flamethrowers, gas warfare, and all the other ways humans have found to kill each other besides high velocity bullets are not ruled out by the sheild. Hell I don't recall anyone even wearing good old fashioned body armor underneath their shields. The use of melee weapons in Dune is not good tactics.

The most logical melee weapons and tactics in Sci-Fi are not from Dune (which are either based off stupidity or political/religious imposed stupidity) but good old Star Wars. Coupling the defensive abilities of the lightsaber with the force abilities of Jedi makes them excellent weaponry. The sabre can actually accomplish something a projectile can't. I don't know why people look at Dune and think the tactics are astute, but a few good brains from today's militaries would revolutionize ground forces in Dune.

BH:
I know that this is going to be an unwieldy gun, possibly even as hard to field as some of the old cannon artillerly. However I think some type of solution can be found to kill people with velocity discriminating sheilds. The value of even a craptacular machine gun against melee troops is just ludicriously high.

Anyway the tandem charge was just my first hunch and is just one of many possibilities. As noted above what do you think about using flamethrowers?

VF5SS · Post by **VF5SS** » 2004-06-11 08:14pm

Sharp-kun wrote:Best:

Shin Getter Robo's Tomohawk

The reeeally big one? =D

SWPIGWANG · Post by **SWPIGWANG** » 2004-06-11 10:11pm

Blah to the Jedi Sabre. Every sensible Jedi should bring a blaster. While the Sabre is fine defensively, a blaster is far superior offensively with no reach limitations a sabre. Weapon like grenades and such can also be handy (together with a force push) and far better than merely using the Sabre.

tharkûn wrote:The point is Dune tactics are still rather lousy given what the technology could accomplish.

We are talking about a civilization that trashed all the computers in their universe.....nuff said

SWPIGWANG · Post by **SWPIGWANG** » 2004-06-11 10:13pm

I mean merely using only the sabre.

dworkin · Post by **dworkin** » 2004-06-11 10:24pm

In Dune the main problem is that their culture is decadent and stagnating. Aside from the Ixians no-one builds anything new or really understands how their stuff works. And the Ixians are not really good inventors either.

So, you have a decadent culture where ranged weapons are ineffective due to the mass production of a techno-wonder in some previous age
(the shield). About the only thing they can come up with is the knife/sword. No doubt a group of engineers from another universe could come up with a solution but this is presupposing that the nutjobs of the Great Houses and their little playmates don't execute them for being technology/computer worshippers.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2004-06-11 10:51pm

tharkûn wrote:Stormbringer:
None of the problems you have mentioned are something which cannot be solved. Are all of them going to be answerable off the cuff in a debate? No. But do you honestly beleive that real egineers (which I am not) couldn't work out SOME type of solution?

Look I am not saying that I have every answer to every problem, just that such answers can be found and once found it ends up with expensive bullets and lots of dead Freemen if they charge it.

I never said that the challenges were impossible to overcome with a sufficient technological basis. However I doubt that any some thing close to it could be created and work as reliably as it needs to with todays technology. And given that Dune has in ways under gone a technological regression, I think that you vastly underestimate the simple engineering problems that such a weapon would face.

I am pointing out that such a bullet is certainly no where close to being a practical weapon, or even an extravagent one, in the Dune universe.

tharkûn · Post by **tharkûn** » 2004-06-11 11:03pm

Stormbringer:
As I said its an egineering problem, given they have the technological basis to maintain and produce (at least I think it has been long enough since the Jihad to mean they have to) nuclear weaponry they aught to be able to come up with something.

But seriously I see nothing which would make flamethrowers a bad choice.

It really shouldn't require a helluvalot of new technology to field something better than melee weapons and shields.

dworkin:
I just saw several comments on Dune weaponry being the most logical melee weapons, and that is drasticly overrating Dune's tactics. There are plenty of options that any respectable egineer aught to be able to make work that will mow down Saudakur. Despite much talk of technological regression they still manage to pull off a helluvalot of high tech production/maintenance.

dworkin · Post by **dworkin** » 2004-06-11 11:04pm

Best melee weapon in SF: The knife, it can have a high-tech supersharp edge that also makes good fries if you like.

You don't need to be an atomic superman, disgusting alien lifeform or mystic warrior to use one. It won't short out if I get it wet (unlike the light sabre), if it 'malfunctions' it won't tear my arm off (like a power fist may do). It won't run out of power leaving me with only my body odour to repel the enemy (unlike most power weapons). It's concealable and the fact that it's a side-arm with no-frills means I won't get confused and use it instaed of my blaster (unlike a certain klingon weapon). It does not require any technobabble to enable it to kill people. It also won't put holes in the side of passenger compartments if I miss my swing and in close quarters when grappling with someone it's still usable. It's cheap and affordable and if truly pressed you can make your own without having to be a mystic zen type. Oh, and it's a handy tool.

Recomended by SG-1 contact teams, Terragen marines, The Princes of Amber, Lazurus Long and scum of the universe who have to make do with being on low income side of things.

Worst: Giant mecha melee weapons. They kill by either being in a universe where massed fire fails to hit the target or because the enemy is helpless with laughter.