http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kFYXTH7Gdhk#! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kFYXTH7Gdhk#!)
http://www.indianashooter.com/centerfire-rifles/8891-700-wtf-handmade-rifle.html (http://www.indianashooter.com/centerfire-rifles/8891-700-wtf-handmade-rifle.html)
The perfect 'light infantry rifle' for our new fictional 'Deathworld.' ;)
This is a .50 BMG cart cut down to a 3" length and necked slightly to handle a .70 caliber, almost 1200 grain AP bullet! The 'mild' initial loads are able to pierce 1/4" of steel... and the gent plans to begin tweaking the weapon to find the upper limits soon. That is, nearest I can tell, a Freedom Arms 5 shot revolver in aprox. .45 caliber in the comparison pic, and the cart is NOT the victim of any photoshoping or creative telephoto work... it's an honest size comparison. 8)
It does not appear to be much different from a .700 NE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.700_Nitro_Express) though, does it? Apart from the fact that it is rimless and probably has a much higher working pressure.
Anyway, interesting find.
Quote from: Nobody on December 03, 2011, 03:06:35 PM
It does not appear to be much different from a .700 NE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.700_Nitro_Express) though, does it? Apart from the fact that it is rimless and probably has a much higher working pressure.
Anyway, interesting find.
Well, the difference is that the average case thickness is 0.02" thicker on the .70 WTF, and the upper limit on the pressure the case can handle handle without separation hasn't been found. The numbers that he's publishing now aren't the final ones; this cart will probably beat the pants off a .700 NE when it's finally pushed to the limit. I doubt very seriously the cart will really take off as there is not a really big demand for mega-carts in this world, but it'll probably be the most powerful for a week or two- when some poor dumbass decides to pull a similar stunt with a 20mm. case!
The bullet itself is three times heavier than an entire 7.62mm cartridge. You are also not going to be able to control a .700 on fully automatic. I think that something like the M-14 or another battle rifle would probably be standard issue, with heavy rifles like the .700 being used against very large creatures.
Quote from: Delta Force on December 03, 2011, 03:33:14 PM
The bullet itself is three times heavier than an entire 7.62mm cartridge. You are also not going to be able to control a .700 on fully automatic. I think that something like the M-14 or another battle rifle would probably be standard issue, with heavy rifles like the .700 being used against very large creatures.
Delta,
Uhm... I'm VERY well aware of that- having been a SAW gunner, .50 BMG gunner, and 8 time expert on the M-16 and M9. I am also very much aware of the practical limitations of a weapon with a shell-holder bolt.
What you must not be aware of is the fact that ALMOST NO BATTLE RIFLE is 'rock and roll' anymore... I miss my old GM Hydromatic A1 with the 5 digit serial number, but those days are long gone. Modern battle rifles are generally 'burst' models; full auto is- with most troops, excepting those who REALLY know what they are doing- a spectacular wast of ammunition and
very little else. Also, a .308 on full auto is nigh on uncontrollable by all but the most powerful man.
A .223 is pretty stout, but anyone with a bit of size on him can manage that one.
I was actually thinking that something more along the lines of flamethrowers would be the most-used weapon. Flamethrowers and something to put the flames out so the infantry can move in and the engineers drive their bulldozers in and clear out the charred remains and all the topsoil so they can build on sanitized ground.
Quote from: Darman on December 03, 2011, 05:40:54 PM
I was actually thinking that something more along the lines of flamethrowers would be the most-used weapon. Flamethrowers and something to put the flames out so the infantry can move in and the engineers drive their bulldozers in and clear out the charred remains and all the topsoil so they can build on sanitized ground.
Flamethrowers aren't ideal for attacks... they might look cool, but they actually take a good long time to be extremely useful under most conditions. You have to be able to hold them on target and keep pouting the fuel to them to get results. A rifle would be much better for most jobs.
Now, for sanitizing a 'cleared' area, the flamethrower is, was, and will always be the king!
I guess I was more referring to the battle against the land rather than against people.
Quote from: Darman on December 03, 2011, 05:59:59 PM
I guess I was more referring to the battle against the land rather than against people.
Me too, in a way- the actual critters need to be killed with guns... but the land needs to be killed with fire.
Quote from: Carthaginian on December 03, 2011, 06:05:17 PMbut the land needs to be killed with fire.
True. I forgot about the creatures.
I hadn't considered the likely presence of 'large carnosaurs' in my own planning, but now that it's been brought up, you're right.
Some kind of 'large game' gun will be needed, though I'm not really qualified to guess what it would be.
I would suspect, though, that 'Bush Troops' would also tend to bring along shorter-range weapons like heavy shotguns - I'd figured an 8 gauge and a flamer per fire-team, with the other two troopers involved carrying long guns. I just need to revise my ideas of what a 'long gun' is upwards.
Valles- as you and I got to talking about the various 'terror birds vs. aircraft,' I started thinking about an entire planet that was based around avian apex predators.
This guy right here, he'd be the top land predator:
(http://naturalscienceart.com/page0/files/page0-1003-full.jpg)
Phorusrhacidae Titanis
10 feet tall, 500 pounds, and able to run 25+ MPH over fairly long distances.
This would be the proverbial 'grizzly bear' of NewWorld.
His smaller relatives would comprise the top land predators (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorusrhacidae (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorusrhacidae)) while Argentavis and his friends would be the largest flying predators. Avians of all sizes and shapes would soar through the skies and roam the lands. I also envisioned more reptiles on land than mammals... if only to make the world seem more alien to our eyes.
Personally, I wouldn't think of 8 gauge shotguns- a 10 gauge is bad enough!
I'd say that the average light infantrymen carry a medium bore combat rifle- .30 caliber or so- and gunners have a belt fed weapon of similar caliber. One or two men in the squad might carry a 12 gauge 3 & 1/2" magnum shotgun (the largest easily handled by a man firing at anything approaching 'rapid fire'), but anything bigger than that and you may as well start carrying a semi-auto .50 caliber rifle- the recoil is comparable to 3 & 1/2" magnum.
EDIT: The shotgun, working at much lower chamber pressures, is FAR lighter and more manageable!
If a 12 gauge 3 & 1/2" slug can't kill it, you don't need a gun, you need a priest.
...I wouldn't intend to so closely parallel Terrestrial evolution. Perhaps some form of walking carnivorous landsquid, or something stranger.
I'll noodle some possible 'families' over and see.
The 'land squid' idea is really interesting... though it calls to mind to many perverted scenes from too many of my wife's animes. ;) FEMALE SOLDIERS BEWARE! :P
Invertebrates becoming apex predators on land would be a bit far-fetched... anything approaching Earth gravity would make it extremely difficult for them to hunt successfully. Their own weight would hinder them to such a degree that they would become almost totally ineffective.
Insects would suffer similar problems. If they were large enough to pose a direct threat to humans, then they would wind up with exoskeletons that were too heavy for their muscles to lift! We could see some fairly large flying insects- like Meganeura- but nothing that could be an apex predator.
Avian species were just the 'unexplored possibility' of the animal kingdom- we all are too familiar with dinosaurs, and mammals dominate now.
I'm thinking of other options, actually. For instance, consider the 'armored vertebrate' design plan-form - tortoises and so forth. They're effectively exoskeletal, right? Armadillos, at least, are pretty quick, too. So, picture a 'bug analog' - an entire group of pseudoarthropods that've 'learned' to back chitin shells with a bone honeycomb for strength. The 'weight limit' would probably still be lower than a classic vertebrate, but it wouldn't be exactly small anymore either, I don't think.
As for the squid, the real-world kind have bones - a bone - already. A central 'spindle' that the rest of their body is anchored to. Reinforce the sucker structures into horn or bone plates, and you end up with a (very) many jointed limb - so, ultimately, the critter in question has a kind of vertical cone shaped body with a large number of spider-like legs distributed around the bottom. Turning the planform into something alarmingly large would require modifications, but no more, really, than those separating a mouse from an elephant.
Your mega-squid has been tried by the BBC... and later admitted to be a failure.
Now, you might be able to have animals that pull themselves along with tentacles... but they would be so agonizingly slow on land that any kind of large animal with a bone structure would be vastly superior. Cephalopods simply don't have the internal structure to make it on land.
Evolving an 'exoskeleton' would make them heavier, and thus even more awkward on land! We'd go from a mass of goo pulling itself along slowly to a rock filled with goo pulling itself along even more slowly!
Now, I think the idea of seas/coasts ruled by invertebrates is an impressive road to take- imagine semi-sapient Cephalopods who can use tool even better than their RL cousins! Giant squid unhindered by sperm whales becoming the apex predators of the seas! Jellyfish colonies the size of aircraft carriers! That would be fun.
The development of tortoises kind of fits into my reptile/avian evolution image. They would be one of the major herbivores, and perhaps have a few carnivorous species. It would be very scary to know that somewhere in the woods lived a tortoise the size of a Volkswagon who would happily snap your arms off!
I'll admit that I kind of got the idea from that program, but my memory is that those critters relied on muscle tissue and hydrostatics only, which isn't my intention here; instead, I'm suggesting a line where the sucker-plates have ended up evolving into a structure much like a spinal cord - functionally, the skeleton would end up looking kind of like a christmas tree with a beak on the bottom, supported by about a dozen tails.
I'm reviewing those very shows- plus any other I can come across that have any ideas about alien creatures. I'm also drawing pretty heavily on Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri... an oldie but a goodie.
If you can think of anything more, let me know.
We can start hammering out the ecology of the planet. :)
OK, so. Here are my thoughts:
Most land animals on Hellworld, by species count, are arthropoidalikes - insects to everyone but a really dedicated nitpicker. Flying, crawling, always stinging, often implanting eggs or living larva... mosquito netting has always been an absolute necessity of life for the human settlers, and primitive decontamination chambers - and sealed suits, like a beekeeper's - have always been in use for anyone who has to work outside.
Even with five-cycle cleaning, breath masks, and so on, Outside Men tend to die young. 'And it's go, boys, go. They'll time your every breath, and every day you're in this place you're two days nearer death.' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSiRWHXz6Ps)
Those plant species that don't have poison thorns tend to scatter hyperallergenic pollen, acidic or neurotoxic sap, or infesting spores. Poisoning the native life only works when it's things like caustic industrial chemicals, that organic life can't create or handle with anything resembling safety - and those are ultimately counterproductive. Chemical warfare is more likely to involve the harnessing of biological agents than industrial production of chlorine, just because nature's bounty is so much nastier. Since people are also more used to coping with it, probably it will balance out.
The arrival of humans has been a huge boon to those species that use periodic fires as part of their life-cycles; by the modern generation, humans usually react to them like ragweed or poison ivy, rather than keeling over stone dead on contact or inhalation. Some of the insectoids have even started treating people like a commensal species rather than an intruder.
The upside is that the vast majority of plant and insect species cannot cross large amounts of open water, and have a hard time spreading long distances unassisted. Burning an entire island to black ash and baked earth will wipe out everything but the pyrophiles, which tend to be fast-growing but less aggressive in other ways. Turn the temperature up enough, and keep it there, and you can even get them. So it is possible to clear land more-or-less permanently.
Expensive, though.
'Large Game'-wise - critters large enough for humans to react to and interact with as themselves rather than 'tiny buzzing things' - venom is again common, even in herbivorous species (as a defensive measure).
I figure that, like on Earth, there are several 'classes' of large, complex life, paralleling the differences between fish, mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians, though not necessarily as given to environmental classifications. What I'd like to do, though, is say that their 'separation points' are deeper than those seen on Earth - every critter I just listed has a default of four limbs, a skull, jaw, ribs, and spinal cord. I'd like to have at least two 'planform groups'.
The one I've been 'developing' in my head place their head at the bottom of the body, whose skeleton is grown in a kind of cage-shape. Twelve legs, each with nine joints, are evenly spaced around the head. Deleting joints or entire legs, or repurposing some of the ones that are kept to perform specialized tasks, are common features of individual families. Large species typically have six or eight 'pillar' legs with limited flexibility, but some 'dual-purpose' the entire array. Clawlike roles tend to be served by extended, pointed, horn-sheathed final limb segments - icepicks or mantis claws. The joint structure is, by default, less fixed than in terrestrial animals - less durable, not as strong, but more flexible as fits something evolved from a tentacle - though of course individual adaptations can often give that up. Another variance point is whether the mouth stays centered in the limb cluster, or moves to one edge, sometimes allowing the entire critter to tip onto its 'side'.
Keep in mind that the number of limbs means that you can see things with a limb for every occaision; one nasty that comes to mind is a 'jumping squid', that specializes two limbs into titanic springs, then comes flying out of the night, leading with ten giant steak knives.
...Huh. You could sell Starcraft's Ultralisks as the result of this evolutionary path. Four legs, four 'battle arms', and four vestigial/feeding arms.
Leathery egg sacs put them somewhere between reptiles and amphibians in terms of dry adaptation, which feels about right.
breif because phone dying. Totaly new critters are hard to make up. A few would be cool, too many will delay game. I was thinking less of the air is hazardous than the critters are. Will elaborate at home.
For the most part - aside from the things interfering with aircraft - I don't think that the particular varieties of native life will be anything but fluff; all that's needed to know mechanically is that it's dangerous and what it costs to deal with it. We're just going on, here, to flesh things out and help 'realize' the world - like in a computer game, how it's the models that tend to matter, while we're filling in texture maps.
Ok... back to a proper keyboard and unlimited power!!! ;)
I know that the flora and fauna are less important than the ships and the $$$, but we at least need to know what things look like- lest one player writes about killing bears, while another has mini-cthulhu crawling around eating his farmers. At least establishing some of the more common or more threatening plants and animals is a necessity... as necessary as having economic rules.
After all- a game is worthless if it has a great engine, but just wireframe models... the textures make it believable.
I do like the idea of a cephalopod-based species, and a giant arthropod/crustacean creature inhabiting coasts and swamp areas would be very believable. It would have only one real weakness- the fact that to prevent it form being too heavy to walk, it would have to have a relatively thin shell... thick enough to stop any smaller 'swarming' creatures, but too thin to keep the largest predators from punching holes in it- but there would only be a few able to do it. Having them look somewhat 'Zerg-like' would enforce their sense of being threatening.
Some of the more 'interesting' creatures are the 'killer plants.' They can be compared to plants like the sundew and venus fly trap. They are able to absorb necessary nitrates from their victims, and allow the corpses to rot near their roots to act as additional fertilize. Some are small and eat primarily insects... but a few species are large enough that they can eat creatures up to a hundred pounds or more.
Most plants reproduce by spores- too heavy to spread by the wind, and largely depending on direct contact with animals to spread them. Thus, if an area is sterilized, the area tends to stay free of native life unless roaming creatures are allowed to return... especially if the area is a island, as they are hard for creatures to return to.
My biggest focus is a mega-fauna stage; it's easier to believe that animals are a threat if they are 10x bigger than you!
Way back (N2verse- N3verse), I had a big-game-cartridge service rifle for Orange, with a lighter rifle/carbine introduced 1912-ish.
I've been thinking megafauna with armor combined with some small fast poisonous flying critters, thick vegetation (short sight lines), burrowing leeches, and some fungi which have aleopathic properties fatal to terran vegetation.
Thus making terraforming via flamethrower- just for standoff distance and to allow vegetation to grow, necessary.
In that environment, Shotguns for the small flying stuff- or slugs- might be useful, while a big bore rifle to penetrate and take down the big stuff might be the combo.
For that role I'm intrigued by the Gustav m/42 - a 20mm recoilless rifle with AP or HE capacity. At 1.4m long and 11.2kg, it's portable, and with a 108g bullet at 950m/s it would take just about anything.
I'm also inclined towards some sort of infantry body armor- perhaps useless against firearms, but if the foe is something that pops out of the brush and bites you...