I think the Gm/Co-Gm need to start talking, setting out what is and isn't invented, what can be quickly and what will take time, etc. etc., since there's this big debate.

Also, would a weapon LIKE the M1 Garand/originalname be in the near, or distant, future of the roleplay?

WilsonTurner said
I think the Gm/Co-Gm need to start talking, setting out what is and isn't invented, what can be quickly and what will take time, etc. etc., since there's this big debate.Also, would a weapon LIKE the M1 Garand/originalname be in the near, or distant, future of the roleplay?

Even by the very late 1870's proposals some people are making, the M1 grand isn't in, I don't believe

And yeah, we should wait for Gowia, considering he wrote the traits and one says "Musket misfires" while we also have metal airships and stuff. He needs to set the tech level

darkwolf687 said
Even by the very late 1870's proposals some people are making, the M1 grand isn't in, I don't believeAnd yeah, we should wait for Gowia, considering he wrote the traits and one says "Musket misfires" while we also have metal airships and stuff. He needs to set the tech level

Ok, good, so we're not that far. We've got muskets as the norm, and rifles as the increasingly-norm, with giant metal airships but not metal boats, we've got heavy guns [since a flying dreadnaught, I assume, will have heavy artillery pieces], but not any kind of rapid-fire weapon.

WilsonTurner said
Ok, good, so we're not that far. We've got muskets as the norm, and rifles as the increasingly-norm, with giant metal airships but not metal boats, we've got heavy guns [since a flying dreadnaught, I assume, will have heavy artillery pieces], but not any kind of rapid-fire weapon.

Yeah, lets just wait for Gowia to clean this mess up, I have a feeling we'll all have been wrong with our tech assumptions.

Since there seems to be some firearm confusion, let me lay out the general timeline of firearms development post-1300s. This is from memory, so there won't be exact years or anything, and I'll be skipping over some of the more minor developments. This is meant to express what standard-issue arms were. Here we go!

-1200s-1300s: development of cannons, including hand cannons. Matchlock only (meaning you light a match or a cord and often manually light the gunpowder to fire). All weapons of significant number, influence, and practicality from here until I mention this again are single-shot muzzle-loading weapons, usually unrifled.
-1400s-1500s: development of more mobile handheld firearms such as the arquebus, and at the tail end of this period, the musket. Here matchlock developed further into something with a crossbow-like trigger. You had to light a fuse and pull the trigger to bring the fuse down into the gunpowder to set the gun off. Wheel-lock was also developed, where a steel wheel would start spinning, making sparks that would light the powder. The start of flint-ignited powder was also here in the form of snaplock.
-1600s-1800: Flintlock is developed around the year 1600, where a piece of flint strikes steel to ignite the powder. Flintlock was the second to last truly significant development of muzzle-loaders.
-1820: Percussion caps are invented. These seal the ignition powder in a little contained cap, or primer, which is hit by a small hammer when the trigger is pulled. This allows muzzle-loading weapons to fire reliably in just about any weather, unless a lot of water somehow got into the barrel. At this time, the first popular breech-loaders became available, which started to make rifles practical as a standard-issue weapon.
-c.1850: Breech-loading rifles become standard issue among certain advanced nations. Artillery at this point has mostly evolved into weapons capable of accurate indirect fire (meaning they didn't have to see their targets to hit them) based on mathematics, meaning they were rifled and also breech-loading.
-c.1870: Using the advancement in breech-loaders and the new idea of cartridged rounds (where the bullet and the powder are part of the same metal piece that can be quick-loaded rather than loading in powder and then the bullet), weapons with magazines are invented, meaning you can fire multiple times without reloading. The Gatling gun was invented around 1860 and was virtually functionally identical to a machine gun. Artillery becomes one of the main deterministic factors of warfare, as does mobility in a strategic (as in large-scale) sense. This means that cavalry is fast becoming obsolete, because it relies mostly on mobility in a tactical (small-scale) sense, when compared to the mobility that locomotives give troops.
-c.1880: The first 'true' machine guns, much more compact and easy to fire, not to mention faster. This is also when the Mannlicher Model 85 was developed, the first semi-automatic weapon. Semi-automatics would not be widely adapted until the French Fusil Automatique 1917, designed in (you guessed it) 1917.
-c. 1900-1920: The first widely-adopted handheld automatic and semi-automatic weapons (not counting pistols, which were being widely adopted from the 1880s on--in fact, the famous Mauser C96 was, as you might have guessed, made in 1896, and was following in a path set out by earlier sidearms). These were usually submachine guns, although the Americans in WWI developed the Browning Automatic Rifle which was the standard SAW (squad automatic weapon) in the next two wars the the USA fought.

This is the general timeline, and I hope it clears up function and confusion. There are always exceptions, though; take for instance the Puckle Gun, which was essentially a flintlock revolver cannon designed in 1718 but never put into use. This is a fake world, after all. However, semi-automatic weapons LIKE the M1 Garand almost always use a particular kind of self-limiting gas-powered design that requires cartridged rounds in order to work. If we're doing anything pre-cartridged rounds, semi-automatic guns that do not have either revolving barrels or revolving chambers (like the Puckle Gun did) is absolutely out, and completely impractical for anything hand-held besides.

Cool, thanks.

Now I know when to hope for the BAR
Awesomeweaponthatone

It doesn't matter how our weapons developed.

It's a different world.

MrFoxNews said
It doesn't matter how our weapons developed. It's a different world.

It is a helpful reference however when we are discussing our own level of advancement.

MrFoxNews said
It doesn't matter how our weapons developed. It's a different world.

I believe it does matter. Technological development is a logical process, not a piecemeal collection of random advancements. Don't just slap some magical flintlock revolver rifles into your army because you think it's cool. There are people here who just don't seem to know how this kind of firearms technology worked, and that's not a statement against them--it just means someone should clarify so that things make sense and it's not some weird alternate universe of helicopters or whatever alongside muskets.

Armored airships means that one of the first things to be developed in warfare would be a way to reliably pierce that armor repeatedly from long distances, unless you want every battle with airships to just be an aerial Battle of Hampton Roads where we just ping useless munitions off each other, or throw heavy rocks instead of dropping bombs. This is why one of the first things they did in aerial combat was to stick machine guns and autocannons on planes. The same goes for ship-based combat, where most ships were armed with autocannons rather than any giant guns. They're an easy and effective countermeasure, and logically they'd be one of the first things developed for that purpose.

For reference, this is a pretty standard Naval autocannon designed for anti-ship warfare. It would likely be pretty much necessary for any fights against dreadnoughts. This is around one quarter of the size of the main guns of the first dreadnought, conveniently named HMS Dreadnought.

Well unless we pin down major wars then military technology has not advanced as much as our world.

Mantido said
I believe it does matter. Technological development is a logical process, not a piecemeal collection of random advancements. Don't just slap some magical flintlock revolver rifles into your army because you think it's cool. There are people here who just don't seem to know how this kind of firearms technology worked, and that's not a statement against them--it just means someone should clarify so that things make sense and it's not some weird alternate universe of helicopters or whatever alongside muskets. Armored airships means that one of the first things to be developed in warfare would be a way to reliably pierce that armor repeatedly from long distances, unless you want every battle with airships to just be an aerial Battle of Hampton Roads where we just ping useless munitions off each other, or throw heavy rocks instead of dropping bombs. This is why one of the first things they did in aerial combat was to stick machine guns and autocannons on planes. The same goes for ship-based combat, where most ships were armed with autocannons rather than any giant guns. They're an easy and effective countermeasure, and logically they'd be one of the first things developed for that purpose.

Also, more efficient use of hydrogen to keep airships aloft would be a prime research area. The first big airships would be very large, and easy to hit, not being able to really sport any armor. Then they'll get smaller and more efficient, keeping or even gaining firepower and armor, while losing size. If the world has had airships for quite some time, as the traits and the like suggest, then I would think that, in the current time period, there would be a variety of ships, with a variety of options for lift. I wouldn't go so far as to say they have helicopters and the like, but planes would've undoubtedly been, at the very least, thought of and maybe sketched, while at the most, experimental types had been made. This is a world that has significant focus on air power; planes to take down airships would be quite valuable, especially since some nations have powerful dreadnaughts in their fleets.

MrFoxNews said
Well unless we pin down major wars then military technology has not advanced as much as our world.

If airships are armored in this scenario (which they are, because they are dreadnoughts), you almost certainly need armor-piercing automatic weapons to combat them. This here is a standard naval autocannon, and it is around a quarter of the size of the main guns of the first dreadnought, which conveniently was called the HMS Dreadnought. This is a reasonable armament for fighting dreadnoughts--it is in fact somewhat underpowered in my opinion.

I am planning on starting to research Biplanes if they don't already exist.

--snip--

--snip--

I am going to research quadmaran tumblehome battlecarriers of the line of the air.

Are you mocking me?

Not particularly.

I didn't mean to triple post god damn.

I didn't mean to triple post god damn.