MJ seems to think that the only projectile weapon that the people in my world would consider modern is a rail gun. I think we can prove him wrong. If nothing else, it will give the game some new weapons ideas.
One that I have in mind is powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. It's explosive driven, from hydrogen combustion. The projectiles are completely caseless. It has a drum full of projectiles, held loose. Much the same way a paintball gun feeds ammo. Because of these designs, it can be powered by ordinary water for extended periods of time, although it does need to have the starting mechanism charged periodically. (I have the schematic for it in my head) Also, it is capable of firing any projectile small enough to go down the barrel, with certain sit-mods for ammo type. In other words, if you land on a beach, you can fill it with seawater, fill the hopper with sand, and have an annoying weapon. Or, you can fill it with refined hydrogen fuel and fill the hopper with depleted uranium slugs, and have an annihilating weapon.
The barrel size adjusts automatically (or uses some kind of force field) to give the projectile maximum distance and velocity. If you fill it with sand, and there's a rock in the sand, it will fire the rock smoothly, and go back to firing sand, with an optional warning for such instances. It would be a flexible fuel and flexible projectile weapon, ideal for versers.
You could set it for single shot, fully automatic, and shotgun mode. As with the sand example, you could fire 1 grain of sand, for annoyance, or you could fire a barrel full of sand, for shotgun purposes.
Well, each world is individual. So you could have a dozen SF worlds, and most of them using different weapons.
There would be some duplication among different worlds, of course.
As a game designer, one doesn't really want to make up a dozen rifles for a world--despite your Music Wars experience--in that case, the gun types are essential for differentiating the factions. But usually, you wouldn't make that many.
Now if MJ is saying railguns are the only futuristic projectile weapons that you could have in a SF world, thats clearly mistaken. So I doubt he's saying that. But he could say--the only ones in This Particular World.
Your variable size attack gun is quite interesting, btw.
Yes, I am particularly intrigued by the idea of a large barrel housing a force field that adjusts to the bore of the caliber of the projectile--but I think that's actually not within the technology of the present world (although I suppose it might have been, I just don't do much with force fields in this particular world).
The hydrogen explosion is interesting, but I think you overestimate the system. To get the hydrogen from water, you'd need an internal electrolysis system, and that means a power supply. It also would require oxygen to combine with the hydrogen in the explosion--which makes the weapon considerably more complicated in your design, because for spacer use (where you cannot count on having sufficient ambient oxygen for combustion) you'll need to supply oxygen from within the system. When you're running the electrolysis system, you're creating the oxygen and routing it separately to the chamber, but when you're not you're going to need separate oxygen and hydrogen cartidges.
I am one of those who by writing profits and by profiting writes, as C. S. Lewis cited Augustine as saying. I can see the possibility of distinct cartidges being attachable to the same port. The larger has a power supply, a canister for water, and an electrolysis system that ports the hydrogen and oxygen separately to the feeds on the gun. The mid-sized one contains separate cannisters of compressed hydrogen and oxygen, similarly arranged. The smallest contains hydrogen only, and a filtered vent for drawing atmosphere into the system. The mid-sized one is fastest and most efficient, because pure gasses are delivered quickly. The larger is much slower, because you need to wait for sufficient gas to be produced before you can fire (although it will store a defined quantity). The smallest is less efficient because the oxidizer is diluted, and so although it is as fast as the midsized gun it does not produce as rapid a combustion reaction, and gets shorter ranges.
Of course, combining this with multi-sized projectiles makes questions of range and damage incredibly complex, but it could be done.
I would be interested in whether you've got ideas for projectile weapons that do not involve either combustion or compressed gasses. It might be possible to do something with a steam or pressure system approach--heated matter expanding without the use of combustion--but generally this is not that effective, and the pressure must be contained until the precise moment before it damages the containment to get the maximum power from it. Most steam engines derive force from the cooling side of the equation, that the steam returning to water leaves a vacuum creating powerful suction, and this is not really practical for a projectile system unless you use some sort of elaborate cantilevered piston--rather a large mechanism for the purpose, but it might work in a steampunk world.
--M. J. Young
You described the kinetic weapons as firing bolts of inverse gravity; since we have grav manipulation, why not an anti-grav railgun? No combustion, no gasses, no need to limit your slugs by material composition, works great in a vacuum; the only hitch I can foresee would be the power supply.
1. Micro-missile launchers. There is a wide variety here as the missile and the payload and rate of fire can vary. Starsong had the capability to be far at one end of all these bell curves with a gun that would shoot several thousand missiles per minute with payloads of sub-nuclear explosions that could track their target and penetrate low armor surfaces like walls....which is why they fight with swords. There's nothing like nuclear weapons for urban renewal.
2. Super-modern crossbow. A wide barrel with a very advanced form of 'rubber band' to send the dart down the barrel. The rubber band is affected by electricity. It snaps rigid and extended with a pulse of electricity, and once that is removed it retracts to its minimum size and rigid again and propels the dart in the micro-second transition between the two states.
This requires very advanced materials science.
There's also the gravity railgun concept. it requires the ability to finely control artificial gravity to function and works like this: You generate strong artifical gravity along the barrel that moves slightly in front of the projectile and shut it off when the projectile reaches the end. Yes, pretty much the same in effect as the anti-gravity railgun, but technically different and maybe lower-power.
Also, if the criteria is only the ability to use in space and you can offset the recoil, you just need to use an explosive that has it's own oxygen supply in it, maybe trapped bubbles. If you have good containment fields, there's tiny amounts of antimatter as a propellant.
of course, for all of these you can fill the ammo with all sorts of things, like radioactives, explosives, solvents that work on space suits, stuff that reacts exothermically when the bullet shatters and allows it to mix, maybe even miniature EMP producers..
Let's have a blamestorming session, I blame Tadeusz :P
You running dog, lackey of the imperialist counter-revolutionary, it is clearly not my fault that the goals of our Most Beneficient and Glorious Leader, long may he guide us to the Perfect Socialist Future, have not been met. It is that minion of capitalists, that trader in foreign influences, that wanton debaucher of good Communist morality...John O7's fault.
Guys, none of us would be here were it not for our most exalted leader. We spend hours a day on this message board, spinning our wheels. I blame MJ.
(Am I doing this right?)
Well, I can see a gravity gun, but I think grav generation would have to be further advanced beyond TerraNova Habitat than TerraNova Habitat is beyond Mary Piper Beta. Those who have been on Mary Piper Beta know that the gravity pulses; it is generated by reversing electrical fields. On TerraNova Habitat this is resolved by creating much smaller gravity coils and firing them out of phase with each other, so that the net force evens out. The smaller the coil, though, the less gravity it can produce.
Now, if I remember correctly (and I've gotten this wrong before), the acceleration of a 1G force is sixteen feet per second per second. That means that at the end of one second an object drawn by a 1G force will move a total of eight feet and will be moving at sixteen feet per second; if the force continues for another second, it will have moved a total of twenty-four feet and have a velocity of thirty two feet per second. However, by any estimation, we can only exert our gravitic force while the projectile is in the barrel--and if the barrel is four feet in length (very long) we're going to achieve a velocity of maybe eight feet per second, and it's going to take half a second for it to clear the end of the barrel.
That means we're going to have to generate a very high burst of gravitic force to create enough acceleration be worth the trouble.
It also raises another question: if you can fire a ball of inverse gravitic force at a velocity that exceeds the pitching speed of a major league baseball pitcher, and the force itself is a hard object, why complicate the matter by including a solid object as well? It probably would take more energy to propel the object than the energy sphere. Unless the object uses some other technology (anything from wedged/pointed projectiles to chemical delivery to explosives) it's not likely to do more damage than the blunt force. And you also have to worry about having the object.
There is also a certain problem with "gravity containment": if you are generating that kind of force inside the gun, you must either neutralize it by generating counterforce in every direction you do not wish to affect or deal with the consequences of other objects being attracted toward the weapon barrel.
None of that is fatal to the concept; it just puts it beyond the technology of my present scenario.
The rubber band gun is not really terribly far-fetched. I'm aware of the development of a synthetic muscle fiber that would do the job rather nicely. The way natural muscle fiber works, the strand contracts when a certain chemical touches it; to relax the contraction, a second chemical is released that neutralizes the first. This synthetic fiber has the same contraction/relaxation cycle in response to low level electricity, but is one hundred times stronger than muscle fiber for the same volume.
Which causes me to wonder why no one has used it for a cam shaft motor.
I do recognize that missiles with oxygenated explosive charges would work in space. I believe that Star Frontiers had "Gyrojets", guns which fired projectiles with tiny rocket engines for propulsion. It was noted in the rules that the missiles were less effective as point blank ranges, as they were still accelerating after they left the barrel.
--M. J. Young
Ya know, that gravity gun that MJ describes kind of makes me think of the Bubble Lead from Mega Man 2. For anyone not familiar, his arm cannon blew a bubble at about that speed, and it impacted by slowly increasing the target's gravity. (At least that was my theory) The gravity gun fires a bubble (literally) of gravity. On impact, it increases the target's gravity by 1. So, that 200 pound, solid muscle guy that was about to beat you senseless? He now weighs 400 pounds, 200 of which is dead weight. I bet he would get tired pretty quick. Hit him with it a few more times, and he won't be able to stand up.
The effect is temporary, not more than a few hours. Also, if you wanted to weight train, but couldn't find the time, all you would have to do is shoot yourself with it, and go about your day to day routine. Your muscles would get stronger trying to carry all of the dead weight, as you went about your daily routine.
It's a projectile weapon, because it actually fires a physical bubble of some substance. The way I'm envisioning it, unless the target was below you, it wouldn't have a range of more than a few feet.
Or an inverse gravity bubble. (Fires upwards) Cuts their gravity in half. Aid you in lifting heavy objects.
The bubble liquid, on impact, pops and splashes all over the target. The bubble itself is filled with gravity. The two interact to increase the target's atomic weight by a factor of one, on an exponential scale for repeat hits. (200lbs-400lbs-800lbs-1,600lbs, etc)