Alternate History Trooper Loadout?

[ghost-angel]

Re: Alternate History Trooper Loadout?

 

Why haven't 10mm weapons been more prolific?

 

Several reasons. First' date=' there's consumer conservatism - with high-price items (such as guns) the general public is more likely to go with what they know, barring a clear advantage. Second, 10mm is a solution in search of a problem - for large-capacity, easy fire guns we already have 9mm, and for heavier hitting we already have .45ACP.[/quote']

 

This might be a good place to diverge if that's what you're looking for. 10mm marketed itself better for whatever reason, then the public caught on.

 

The cultural ramifications are actually decently sized - "nines" as slang for 9mm Pistol now becomes "tens" ... the face of Hip Hop and Rap in your world changes!

 

It would be one of those alternate changes that's just enough to let you know you're somewhere 'different' without overly impacting the game mechanically.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Alternate History Trooper Loadout?

 

This might be a good place to diverge if that's what you're looking for. 10mm marketed itself better for whatever reason, then the public caught on.

 

The cultural ramifications are actually decently sized - "nines" as slang for 9mm Pistol now becomes "tens" ... the face of Hip Hop and Rap in your world changes!

 

It would be one of those alternate changes that's just enough to let you know you're somewhere 'different' without overly impacting the game mechanically.

 

Coulda happened too... the Bren 10 gained a big hit of popularity when Sonny Crockett started using one on Miami Vice

[Alex Williamson]

Re: Alternate History Trooper Loadout?

 

Meh. You wanna get weird with weapon calibres, have the M1 Carbine become the weapon of choice for the US military during and after Korea. Have that modified into a shorter version as an smg for officers and tankers and have the military develop a pistol with oodles of stopping power. Maybe they develop a longer barreled rifle with more powder in the cartridge as an assault rifle. That's really the only part that doesn't exist.

 

Behold the AMT Longslide .30 Carbine:

http://media.photobucket.com/image/.30%20Carbine%20colt%20long%20slide%20amt/SilentHitz/2008_1005Guns0010.jpg

And the Iver Johnson Super Enforcer M1 Carbine carbine:

http://media.photobucket.com/image/iver%20johnson%20super%20enforcer/6Gunner_photos/SuperEnforcer.jpg

http://media.photobucket.com/image/iver%20johnson%20super%20enforcer/Bell-helicopter-407/Enforcer.jpg

[Trencher]

Re: Alternate History Trooper Loadout?

 

http://www.knightarmco.com/guns.html

 

Try some from this page. Guy who owns the company worked with Colt back in the past I think.

[Ragitsu]

Re: Alternate History Trooper Loadout?

 

Any heavy weapon and explosive recommendations?

[Alex Williamson]

Re: Alternate History Trooper Loadout?

 

Keep recoilless rifles instead of guided missiles. Instead of grenade launchers, stick to rifle grenades. Keep the cranked Gatling principle for machine guns (which means electrically driven mini-guns become the norm in place of gas operation) or keep MGs water cooled ah la the Maxim.

 

Can't help you with explosives - dynamite is, well, dynoMITE! It's the BOMB. Really, TNT's invention was pretty much IT for explosives. Everything else is is just fancier, but having your campaign world stick to TNT won't make it feel all that different from reality.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Alternate History Trooper Loadout?

 

Keep recoilless rifles instead of guided missiles. Instead of grenade launchers' date=' stick to rifle grenades. Keep the cranked Gatling principle for machine guns (which means electrically driven mini-guns become the norm in place of gas operation) or keep MGs water cooled ah la the Maxim.[/quote']

I dig these ideas. A significantly worse Franco-Prussian war could easily have bred these into common military use, as these were all pretty much cutting edge tech. Gatling toying around with a motor driven gun but couldn't see a use for the insane ROF it produced, and shelved the idea because it wasted ammo. the idea could have been readopted anytime after that, certainly.

 

And then I could have a chain gun version of my 5 pound Hotchkiss Revolving Cannon...

 

Can't help you with explosives - dynamite is' date=' well, dynoMITE! It's the BOMB. Really, TNT's invention was pretty much IT for explosives. Everything else is is just fancier, but having your campaign world stick to TNT won't make it feel all that different from reality.[/quote']

Indeed, although if materials tech had progressed a little faster the idea of the dynamite cannons and torpedoes they were playing around with might have gotten further along, enough to entrench the design ideas and possibly lead to a very early development of the liquid binary high explosive propellant cannon, which are just under rail guns for *oomph* on the projectile weapons tech tree.

 

Also, if you're looking at advancing RR and gatling tech, there might be a larger demand for impact detonated Semi-AP HE rounds, like tungsten jacketed Lead Azide rounds. IIRC Silver Azide is even more volatile, but loads more expensive to produce. Could see this being a nasty upgrade to either tech (I'm thinking beehive type munitions in the case of the RR's) Rotary drum style magazines with the ability to select your rounds would be a logical advance we currently use on shotguns that'd track over to recoil-less arms. Advances in recoilless-ness tech would probably also lead to a sort of assault GL style portable RR as a squad support weapon.

[Alex Williamson]

Re: Alternate History Trooper Loadout?

 

Ok, here's a twist on anti-armor weapons and armor design. Tank armor progresses with anti-tank weaponry. Basic anti-tank weapons are the HEAT (shaped charge) round and the APFSDS (sabot) round. There's another one though that is often overlooked: the HESH (High Explosive Squash Head) round. If tank armor progressed more rapidly at the early stages of HEAT round development, incorporating honeycombing and ceramics to dissipate the HEAT round's explosive jet then sabot rounds would have developed earlier as well. Anti sabot armor might not have to be thicker or stronger, but more capable of deflection, possibly via an inherent brittleness, designed to flake off chucks with an impact, turning the penetrator to decrease its straight-line effectiveness (which is why they work in smooth bore weapons - they require a flat trajectory with no spin; rifling makes them lose energy on impact). So, now you have a layered and brittle armor, PERFECT for a HESH round to cause significant damage. The HESH round pancakes on an armored surface and then explodes, causing structural damage to and THROUGH the armor plate. The interior of the armor flakes off due to the shock sent through it. This spalling is what kills the crew and ignites ammunition, destroying the tank. So, an earlier development of certain armor systems/technology could make a different round the go-to anti-tank weapon. So loaders would be yelling "HESH UP!" instead of "SABOT UP!" as they do now.

 

Of course in game play, there's no real difference. But it's good fluff.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Alternate History Trooper Loadout?

 

Um, sabot rounds were field-tested in 1940, and were in widespread use before the first HESH warheads. In fact, it might have beat true HEAT into service.

[Markdoc]

Re: Alternate History Trooper Loadout?

 

Um' date=' sabot rounds were field-tested in 1940, and were in widespread use before the first HESH warheads. In fact, it might have beat true HEAT into service.

 

It didn't, but it wasn't far behind: the Brits were using true HEAT rounds in the PIAT by 1943, and the Germans had beaten them to it by two years. DS rounds in contrast were not issued in large numbers until August 1944 (for the 17 pounder), but they immediately became the standard AT round, and production was never able to keep up to demand. British tankers used to call them "Tiger Rounds" because the Sherman Fireflies that could use them were only issued small numbers - so they disdained to use them on lesser tanks.

 

cheers, Mark

[Sundog]

Re: Alternate History Trooper Loadout?

 

Come to that...the PIAT launcher was less than effective, but the concept wasn't awful: use a big spring to throw a bomb at your target. The problems were 1)range (that spring had to be weak enough for a soldier to reset the gun for the next shot) and 2) the ammo (the magnetic rounds didn't attach to German tank hulls most of the time, and the direct fir bomb was both unreliable and too small). But with a little more development...

Instead of one-pull reset on the spring, use a ratchet arrangement to winch it back down - allowing the use of a much more powerful spring. Use an improved fuse, and an impact-fuzed HEAT bomb (and for anti-personnel work, a fragmentation bomb). Suddenly, you have a powerful mid range support weapon that doesn't give away it's position when you fire it.

[Markdoc]

Re: Alternate History Trooper Loadout?

 

Come to that...the PIAT launcher was less than effective, but the concept wasn't awful: use a big spring to throw a bomb at your target. The problems were 1)range (that spring had to be weak enough for a soldier to reset the gun for the next shot) and 2) the ammo (the magnetic rounds didn't attach to German tank hulls most of the time, and the direct fir bomb was both unreliable and too small). But with a little more development...

Instead of one-pull reset on the spring, use a ratchet arrangement to winch it back down - allowing the use of a much more powerful spring. Use an improved fuse, and an impact-fuzed HEAT bomb (and for anti-personnel work, a fragmentation bomb). Suddenly, you have a powerful mid range support weapon that doesn't give away it's position when you fire it.

 

My Dad had long and personal experience with the PIAT under combat conditions and served with a guy who knocked out three German vehicles in just a few minutes with one (unfortunately a tank spotted the trench where he was lurking and spun it's tracks on it, turning him into a spray of red mush ).

 

His comments were:

1) it was bloody inaccurate. To get any kind of range, you had to had to aim above your target and arc the bomb down onto it. The hefty kick of the spring didn't help.

2) It was bloody heavy (30 lbs/15 kg) without the bomb in it. As a result, the troops used to dismantle it into its component pieces while on the move, with each bit being carried by a different soldier. The result when any kind of enemy AFV was spotted, was that the soldiers dropped their bit of the useless PIAT and sought cover. Dad says it was basically only used when they could be certain well in advance that they would need it, so that they had time to reassemble it and then take the load off the gunner and distribute it to others. As a result, it was rarely used against AFVs, instead being used to pop defensive positions.

 

Once the troops got a chance to get their hands on bazookas, the PIAT was basically left in the back of a Bren carrier and rarely used. Dad had an amusing story about their first use of a bazooka, though. Being used to the PIAT, which essentially had no exhaust, they first fired a bazooka at German half-track from inside a stone house. Dad doesn't know if they hit it or not as the half-asphyxiated soldiers with their uniforms and hair on fire, baled out of every available window and door in the house, and were too busy dealing with their own injuries to worry about Germans for a while.

 

cheers, Mark

[Alex Williamson]

Re: Alternate History Trooper Loadout?

 

Um' date=' sabot rounds were field-tested in 1940, and were in widespread use before the first HESH warheads. In fact, it might have beat true HEAT into service.

 

The timeframe of armor development is what I was stressing. Armor technology progressing differently would have caused other anti-tank rounds to gain favor, as they were deemed more effective vs the new armor tech.