Monday, June 1, 2020

Ultra-Tech Guns: Gun Weight

Alright, so I've looked pretty closely at damage.  Today, I wanted to look at weights, as I'm pretty sure those are pretty easily determined also with Vehicles.  Let's see, shall we?  Once again, we'll take a look at several Ultra-Tech guns and see if the Vehicles gun design system gets them close to correct.  Once again, I'll note the formula, which is
B^2 * L * P * S * T * R
Where B is boresize, L is a value based on the length of the barrel, P is power (1, in our case), S has to do with bore size as well, T has to do with technology (we'll use 0.6 for this value) and R has to do with  reload time (1 for us).

If we use these values for pistols we get:

  • The Heavy Pistol: We expect a weight of 1.8, and if we assume an "extremely short" barrel, which is what we got for damage, we get 1.5. Not too far off.
  • The Holdout Pistol: we expect a weight of 0.8, and we get... almost exactly 0.8 (assuming an extremely short barrel)
  • The Magnum Pistol: we expect a weight of 2 lbs, and we get ~3.4
  • The Medium Pistol: we expect a weight of 1.5 and we get 1.7
These aren't too bad if we do some rounding off with ammunition, except for the Magnum pistol, which is much heavier than it should be.  Worse, there's no real indication as to what's wrong.  The Heavy Pistol is "too light," and the Medium Pistol is "too heavy," so there's no obvious trend, such as all the pistols being too light or too heavy.

If we jump straight to rifles, we get:
  • The Anti-Materiel Rifle: We expect about 28 lbs.  With a Very Long rifle, we get the right damage, but it's too heavy at ~34 lbs.  If we assume Long, then the weight is correct, but the damage is low.
  • The Assault Carbine: We expect 5.5 lbs, and we get 5.5 if we assume a Long barrel (odd for a Carbine); damage lines up too (it's a bit high, though).  If we assume the Assault Carbine is a "heavy automatic" then the barrel should be medium (that also gives us 5.5) and the damage drops to 5d+1, which is too low.
  • The Gatling Carbine: We expect it to be 8 lbs, and if we assume a medium barrel and a triple barreled gatling motor (what it's described as having), we get a weight of 5.8 (too light) and a damage of 4d+1, which is close.  If we go for Long barrels, we get a weight of 8.8 and a damage of 5d.
  • The Hunting Rifle has effectively the same stats as a Long Barrel 7mm, both for damage and weight.
  • The Payload Rifle: this has ~28 lbs, and if we assume low-powered ammo and a medium barrel, we get ~23 and ~9 damage.  It feels like it's been fudged/iterpolated up.
  • Storm Carbine: we expect this to be 6 lbs.  If we assume a medium barrel and "light" automatic, we get 7.5 lbs (too heavy) and 7d+1 damage or so, which is close.
  • Storm Rifle: We expect this to be 8.8 lbs and if we assume a long barrel, we get 11 lbs, but exactly correct damage.
So, I see a consistent pattern here: the damage and weight values seem pretty closely correlated: if a particular configuration is off, it's generally off for both. If the weight is high, the damage is high, and if the weight is low, the damage is low.  So this is another value that more or less looks right, as though it was developed using the same system with, perhaps, some fudge values.

So weight looks about right, and damage looks about right, if you assume designs were fudged.


1 comment:

  1. Something that might be worth considering: Vehicles also makes most hand-held weapons heavier. The base weight is for vehicle-mounted weapons (shocking, I know). Pistols weigh the same, but rifles with a shoulder stock multiply weight by 1.2, or 1.5 if shoulder stock + integral bipod (which the anti-material rifle and payload rifle both have). Some weapons that might be bolt-action would also be lighter - Vehicles calls them manual repeaters, with R = 0.75.

    The latter wouldn't apply in most cases, and the former would just make all the longarms too heavy. For the AM Rifle, manual repeater + shoulder stock would make it ~30 lbs (closer to expected), with bipod ~38 lbs (way off). But Payload Rifle as manual repeater + shoulder stock/bipod winds up at ~26 lbs, which is real close to its expected weight.

    David Pulver's Blaster and Laser Design article in Pyramid #3/37 doesn't make rifle beam weapons any heavier than pistols or mounted weapons. I don't know if Pulver's ever said anything about that article's relation to the unpublished weapon design system, but it might imply little or no weight gain for hand-held longarms. But some people have suggested that the shoulder stock of a beam rifle would likely contain some of the working components, potentially making the weight gain for a rifle-format beam weapon negligible, while the same couldn't be said for most conventional rifles. The article's also from 2011, so who knows what's changed since then.

    At the end of the day though your numbers seem to line up reasonably well without taking any of that into account, so it might be better to just ignore it.

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