MoonMan
Inactive Member
We've been needing a STANDARD weapon for Nepleslian armors for a while. This is my attempt to help that along.
https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=nepleslia:hpar
https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=nepleslia:hpar
Has the metalloid been approved?
I'm not very familiar with the concept, admittedly ... but you've got the muzzle velocity and the range ...
So, er, just so I understand, when the coin is pushed against by this gas, it forms a big spike? That's a full 30 mm across?
Initial tests of the weapon have completely vaporized themselves through thick sheets of tungsten and most common heat-resistant meshes in a single shot, and with two or three consecutive hits in the same general area, quickly melt its way through military-grade Durandium
Rate of Fire: 7 rounds per second, 3 round-burst or fully automatic
This weapon works at a lower temperature than plasma yet seems to do equivalent/more damage, which is a bit confusing. Due to the very small size of the shots I would imagine that they will do very little damage; Remember one doesn't defeat tanks simply by shooting lots of pistol bullets at it, but rather a single massive heavy rocket or tank kinetic penetrator round; Size IS effectively damage in terms of armor penetration, and firing lots of little rounds against a big target won't do much more than scratch it.
The only way these weapons can compensate and reach that damage output is by either being much heavier, or by burning even more brightly than plasma...unless I've missed something in the writeup (I've just skimmed it quick; will read in detail later).
There is also the issue with molten metal coherence as mentioned in my note to Doshii. What makes it stick together instead of falling apart?
Is there any particular reason the gun needs to be so complex as to build it's ammunition on-site, so to speak?
* And if it's manufacturing its own ammunition upon firing shouldn't there realistically be a much lower rate-of-fire?
The caking function seems redundant, too. If the metal cools rapidly it would have cooled en route to the enemy, thus reducing its damage. If not, then by "caking" enemy armor all you do is help fill in any holes you may have burned; adding more layers of material for the next round to burn through. It's no more effective at incapacitating than bullets would be to people by simply bruising them. Typically if a bullet is in a position to bruise someone the target is probably already dead/dying anyways.
In short: You're attempting to use outdated technology to create a super handheld tank-eating machine gun. This may be plausable with more advanced tech like plasma weapons or if the weapon had a significantly higher caliber (like a vehicle-based weapons system), but otherwise I just don't think it will fly as being powerful as to destroy military-grade Durandium in half a second...
The first thing that makes me wonder about this weapon is the rather large explosive needed to make the round go. How did you compact that into the gun? You say you superheat the copper up via electrode ... but they had to blow the motherfucking thing up to get it to go, and its accuracy was questionable because it had no barrel.
The heat from the copper wire-turned-gas ... it seems like you'd wear out your coils/rails really fast when you have that stuff going up the barrel, even with the cooling canisters. I'm not sure, of course; it just seems that way to me.
There are some basics about this thing, however, that make me wonder -- weight, length, ergonomics, etc. Right now Yamatai's LASR is probably not a match for the HPAR in theory (DR 4 and change vs. DR 5 confirmed) -- that's no problem. But I wonder why Nepleslia wouldn't, well, steal concepts from the LASR, as it's lighter and of a more manageable size. Admittedly it lacks the awesome capacity ... but the magazines are also a lot smaller and lighter.
I know the OOC reasons why NAM wouldn't just jack it; you guys are being original here. I'm just curious as to whether they'd try and steal it anyway.
Yamatai is trying to do this with its own plasma weaponry, too -- give soldiers a basic, reliable rifle that will give the good damage without costing obscene amounts of resources (whatever they might be). Overall, I think the concept is really cool.
Ok, if we are talking about a weapon that uses what is essentially a shaped charge using electricity wouldn't the range be limited to about 7 feet-ish in an atmosphere for the same reasons that a shaped charge has a very small effective range?
Well, the weapon fires a jet of liquid out the front just like a shaped charge weapon or a super soaker. It isn't really about what is being used to generate the liquid jet, its just that a liquid jet is being used. When moving through the atmosphere it would deform and disperse much faster than a solid bullet.
That is the reason why spaced armor is so effective against HEAT rounds, and the reason why weapons like the RPG-7 don't trigger their molten metal death-jet until very close to the target.
Strangelove said:I hate to be a total spoilsport here but it really feels like you're putting originality over practical engineering. I'm not saying that's grounds for non-approval, given that SARP is a science fiction setting after all, but merely you should be aware that it may not make the best template for a cheap-yet-rugged standard issue rifle.
[*]You have a needlessly complex firing system. What I meant by on-site manufacturing is that the molten metal and shaped warhead is molded inside the gun. This complexity would make it higher maintenance and lower reliability in comparison to solid projectiles, grenades, or even lasers; I believe adding complexity is the opposite objective of making any standard issue mass production rifle.
[*]Recoil. The sheer force of not only accelerating a mass but also partially vaporizing it would create greater recoil than a traditional projectile weapon, further increasing impracticality.
[*]Semi-solid projectiles would be unlikely to work. Don't forget this round has to survive accelerating from 0-5000 m/s in 1/7th of a second. It would actually have to be quite hard to stick together, otherwise even if the acceleration process didn't deform it, the sheer air resistance would. And yes, it the air still would in spite of how thing it is; an object that long and thin would have a very high surface-area-to-mass/volume ratio, especially since it isn't rifled, so would be quite susceptible to the wind dispersing it.
[*]Accuracy. See above note on high surface-area-to-mass ratio. It suffers from the same problem as previously submitted flechette rifles, but doesn't even have fin-stabilization nor rifling to increase its precision. The high rate of fire coupled with the relatively high kickback only adds to the accuracy problem. I don't think maximum effective range should be anywhere near 5 km.
[*]Lack of penetration. Even assuming it is only semi-solid, then the tip hits it would cause a deformation not unlike a ball of dough turning into a pancake when thrown at a wall. It probably wouldn't remain coherent once the tip hit the enemy armor.
- Deflection and heating. In fact, I imagine the sheer velocity would make most of the fluid/solid simply bounce off the target rather than stick at all. At those speeds the heat from the molten material simply doesn't have enough time to transfer over and "soften" the enemy armor up before the projectile fully impacts especially given in SARP lasers/plasma is common and thus armor would be quite thermal-resistant. Nor does it possess any effect strong enough to make it "stick" at that sheer heat level and speed, to my knowledge.
Essentially you're trying to create a weapon that has both the properties of a projectile weapon and plasma one rolled into one, which in turn creates a myriad of scientific and engineering issues. It just doesn't seem practical no matter what angle you look from it. It could be done with some fancy talk and verbal slight-of-hand (for example, introducing a revolutionary new metal alloy that makes it all click together), but it still doesn't strike me as a good candidate for a standard issue mass produced weapon.