Technology

fallsfromtrees wrote:

TN4994 wrote:snip
Now can the weather on safehold be worked with? Certain areas seem prone to bad weather more than others. But is it consistently foul worldwide?

We have textev that the weather in Charis is nice most of the year, and also in Corisande except during huricane season. I suspect that the weather patterns are going to be similar to those of Earth, some places you don't want to even think about it, other places it'll be fine.

I thought that might be the case.
Hurricane belts, sea of storms, etc.
So Airships may come and chart the airstreams. Wait, someone already wrote that.

MPCatchup wrote:With magazine fed weapons belt fed are not far behind so say hello to Ma Deuce or a close facsimile. That takes care of any boarding attempts. Black powder or even brown powder just means more maintenance.

You're thinking blue water.

Any ship eventually anchors. Even a KHVII is at risk from night boarding attacks and lighters full of gunpowder while in harbour. Modern practice seems to prefer at least 30mm for the "sink it, sink it now" anti-boat application.

However, the real application for a rotary cannon is on the brown-water ironclads; those get into outright confined areas and their primary armament has very restricted arcs of fire. A rifle-calibre gatling with a gun shield up on the conning tower would be a big help with the highly vulnerable corners. (Hide in pits, wait, commence boarding off the canal side into the blind corner. High-risk, but easy to imagine the Army of God trying something like that. Enough of those incendiary shells of their could get something bad down the ventilators...)

Larger, 1.5" or so, gatlings up on the casement corners would help even more. Or the Ma Deuce, but both belt feeds and self-loading are tricky; simple in principle, but cranky in practice. It took a lot of operational experience to get reliable machine guns. Gatlings are actually easier.

MPCatchup wrote:So I just think it would be a lot of effort to develop a new type of weapon system to do something that current or the next evolution of current weapons can already do.

A rotary cannon is superior to a belt fed machine gun like the MA2 BMG. Consider: Which type of gun arms virtually every fighter aircraft now flying and forms the basis of virtually every nation's version of the CIWS.

Those little SNARCs printing broadsides: Can any draw political cartoons? Historical textbooks abound with drawings of British leaders and US politicians in comical situations. Also Propaganda Posters are a valued item.

TN4994 wrote:Those little SNARCs printing broadsides: Can any draw political cartoons? Historical textbooks abound with drawings of British leaders and US politicians in comical situations. Also Propaganda Posters are a valued item.

I would guess that the SNARCs are more like copy machines or printers; if someone drew a cartoon, they could incorporate it into a poster, but they couldn't come up with one on their own.

OWL probably doesn't have the capability for true creativity; he could probably adapt historical examples from his archives, but Satire and Political Humor aren't going to be his strong points.

Nahrman could probably come up with the idea(s) for political cartoons and/or write propaganda essays with ease, but I don't know what artistic talent he has.

Something tells me that Irys or Zhanet would have some talent and be prone to doodling in margins when they're supposed to be doing something boring; Something a SNARC might observe and Nahrman might recognise as having potential for satirical cartoons for the SNARCs to reproduce and post all over the planet.

Weird Harold wrote:

TN4994 wrote:Those little SNARCs printing broadsides: Can any draw political cartoons? Historical textbooks abound with drawings of British leaders and US politicians in comical situations. Also Propaganda Posters are a valued item.

I would guess that the SNARCs are more like copy machines or printers; if someone drew a cartoon, they could incorporate it into a poster, but they couldn't come up with one on their own.

OWL probably doesn't have the capability for true creativity; he could probably adapt historical examples from his archives, but Satire and Political Humor aren't going to be his strong points.

Nahrman could probably come up with the idea(s) for political cartoons and/or write propaganda essays with ease, but I don't know what artistic talent he has.

Something tells me that Irys or Zhanet would have some talent and be prone to doodling in margins when they're supposed to be doing something boring; Something a SNARC might observe and Nahrman might recognise as having potential for satirical cartoons for the SNARCs to reproduce and post all over the planet.

How about Olyvya of Emerald or her daughter(s). Today we know the value of cartoon propagandists. A cartoon of the Group of Four feasting while want and despair await table scraps.
Then we can have a fun loving wyvern invite Clytahn out to play.
And the wyvern should be in appropriate battle dress leading a battalion. A kraken could have its head (with military hat) sticking out of the water, and one tentacle holding a sword, gesturing the navy attack forward.

Weird Harold wrote:A rotary cannon is superior to a belt fed machine gun like the MA2 BMG. Consider: Which type of gun arms virtually every fighter aircraft now flying and forms the basis of virtually every nation's version of the CIWS.

You'll have to be included revolver cannon as well as rotary to make the first part of that stand up. Consider that (IIRC) the only plane that the RAF and/or FAA every operated with a rotary cannon was the Phantom FGR.2 (and then only if they bothered to fit the gun pod). Everything else, except the Tornado and Eurofighter (which have/had the 27mm Mauser) had the 30mm Aden.

The French DEFA is another revolver cannon, and tends to be found on anything French.

The Soviets tended to arm everything with their twin-barrelled GSh-23, which is neither revolver nor rotary.

IIRC there's an argument for going revolver rather than rotary for air combat? Whilst max rate of fire is lower, the acceleration from 0rpm is faster so you get more rounds off initially. So if it's a fleeting target (e.g. dogfighting) then you'll throw more rounds at the target in the brief moment it's in the right place to receive them.

PalmerSperry wrote:You'll have to be included revolver cannon as well as rotary to make the first part of that stand up. Consider that (IIRC) the only plane that the RAF and/or FAA every operated with a rotary cannon was the Phantom FGR.2 (and then only if they bothered to fit the gun pod). Everything else, except the Tornado and Eurofighter (which have/had the 27mm Mauser) had the 30mm Aden.

You have a point as regards aircraft equipment during the Cold War -- through about 1990-2000. But the USAF, at least is abandoning revolvers for GAU-8, GAU-12, GAU-22, and the venerable M61 Vulcan for it's current and future fighters. Revolvers do take less space than rotaries.

I don't know if Charis has the capacity to make revolving cannon -- ignoring the minor detail that most of the ones listed on Wikipedia are electrical fired or drive, or both. It definitely has the ability to build Gatling type Rotary rifles/cannon with a belt-less ammunition hopper or magazine.

Only issue with Gatling could be alloy for barrels. Gatling need high melting point alloy.

Draken wrote:Only issue with Gatling could be alloy for barrels. Gatling need high melting point alloy.

Swamp oil cooling?
Memo in trash:
Sir; Update on current project with steel thistle to reinforce rifle barrels. Experiments indicate that coiled strands seem more advantageous over woven mesh."
dm