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Published: 2015-05-08 04:04:47 +0000 UTC; Views: 12503; Favourites: 61; Downloads: 36
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Description
Three cannons made by House Valcas on contract for the Valnothron Navy in 36 IA.The first is a fairly typical pre-infrastructural smoothbore Twenty Vaul cannon, weighing in at about 2.65 tonnes. Such weapons are the primary armament of Ships of the Line, are fairly common aboard frigates and a few sloops for about a century, with a few refinements made as time went on in minor areas. In addition to their sales to the various Drow houses a few of these cannons have been sold abroad. In the last decade many of these guns have been rifled, extending their maximum range from about one and a half kilometers to two to two and a half kilometers.
The second is a new pattern muzzle loading 20 Vaul rifled cannon, the heavier counterpart to the previously described 10 Vaul Rifled Cannon . These guns have a range of up to four kilometers thanks to improved ballistics and the fact that they can take a greater charge of powder (although accuracy at said range is very poor even in nominal conditions) and weigh 1.5 tonnes. Using steel tipped projectiles these weapons have demonstrated significantly improved penetration against slabs of wrought iron when compared to it's precessesors, especially at ranges of 500 meters or less. The gun carriage design remains unchanged from the older model.
The third cannon is an experimental gun that as of the Battle of Daagsgrad has just finished it's first batch of tests. It is an cast steel rifled cannon based partially off Infrastructural designs, but it differs due to complications in replicating the interrupted screw breech block which is the norm in Infrastructural Artillery. In it's place, a sliding block mechanism is used, a semi-cylindrical block of metal on rails which can be slid aside to allow shot and ammunition in and then slid back and fasten in place. It weighs 422 kilograms and has a maximum range of 3.5 kilometers. In general this increased the rate of fire, even if it does rely on an external caplock mechanism to fire and unlike the Type-6FG (the closet analog in in the Infrastructural Army) its projectile and powder charge are not cartridged, though work is continuing in that field.
It was planned that a few of these guns would be provided to the Valnothron naval elements of the invasion forces. However development was delayed (which might have been at least in part the result of sabotage by one of House Valcas's rivals) by a couple of months so that the first completed batch of eight units was completed the day after the Invasion fleet left Hansoliath. New crews are being trained rapidly to man these weapons and work has begun on upscaling these weapons.