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wingsofwrath β Chekhov's Armoury Part I
Published: 2013-11-18 20:02:22 +0000 UTC; Views: 28181; Favourites: 408; Downloads: 246
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Description
First part of a series on the small arms of the Inner Space world.The weapon from up-world is a coil gun firing electro-plastic spherical pellets that deform into aerodynamically stable projectiles when passing down the barrel and also gain an electrical charge to deliver an incapacitating electroshock effect at the target. Muzzle velocity is variable on wherever the weapon is fired at an armoured or an anarmoured target and is controlled by an internal computer. Sighting and control is done either via wireless data connection to the shooter's retinal and cranial implants and helmet display, or alternatively, through controls on the actual weapon and pop-up iron sights.
The three down-world pistols are all civilian rather than government designs and thus come in two distinct calibres, both semi-caseless -the charge is situated inside the body of the projectile like the real world 9X24.5mm AUPO Benelli .
The two rifles are both Marbanians government designs set apart by several decades of weapon evolution, but both now thoroughly obsolete so present only on the civilian market - the top one is a second to last generation selfloading rifle with a box magazine using modern caseless ammunition, while the lower one is an early single shot breech-loader with "traditional" brass cartridge center-fire ammunition. Both use smokeless powder though.
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Comments: 24
I love the contrast of high tech and lower tech! This combined with the description really catches my interest
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That beerkeg handle on number five tho. And are those glagolitic letters?
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Did the Marbanians have to develop firearms from crude handgonnes through the various intermediate stages to the weapons seen here?
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Chekhov? Does that mean they show up somewhere in the background and have very little influence in the story, until the end? : p
Just kidding, they're all pretty cool looking, specially the Delin-Bec and the Type VI.
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These are so cool! I love them!
What did you draw them in?
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I'm glad you made something based on the beloved 'Broomhandle' Mauser. Is the front of no.5 based on the M1928 variant Thompson by any chance?
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Actually, it was based more on the barrel of the Czech ZB-26 Machinegun, used in WW2 by the Romanian and German armies and also the basis for the British Bren.
And yeah, I really love the Mauser C96 "Broomhandle".Β I believe it was also Winston Churchill's favourite gun.
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I definitely recognized that "coil gun" as theΒ Korobov TKB-022 assault rifle
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Good eye!
It's obviously not an exact copy of the TKB-022PM since it needed to be adapted into a coilgun, but I tried to stay as close as possible to the source gun, because it has such a deliciously retro-futurist shape.
And you can rest assured the whole sci-fi part of the Inner Space arsenal will be featuring a lot of Korobov's designs, because I like to believe Vinarian and Letarian weapons designers have a sense of humour and a fondness for the distant past...Β
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Why is the Coilgun Mk. IX a firearm from the 2040s, while the other fire arms are from the 1940s?
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Well, because the whole idea behind Inner Space is that there are two technologically dissimilar civilizations that come into contact and eventually conflict. One of them is technologically advanced - I call it conventionally "up-world" (you said "2040s", but it's technology level is closer to 2140s)- and the other is quite dieselpunk and I call it "down-world" (as you well remarked, 1940s technology level).
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Is the rate of fire on a semi-auto rifle with 20 round mags really so great as to justify the expense of cooling fins on the barrel, or is there some other design principle at work?Β (And while I'm at it; recoil, gas, or blowback(!) operated?)
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It really doesn't, but it was the first weapon that used the new cast caseless ammunition and the designers were worried about the fact it developed a much higher temperature than earlier propellants.Β Basically, the down-world Inner Space arms race started with the standard brass cartridges, but then they discovered a tree resin endemic to this world that, when mixed with nitrates, not only could produce a more stable but powerful compound but it also resulted in a gel like product which then hardened.Β This allowed them to cast the propellant into mounds and incorporate the bullet and primer at the same time, removing the requirement for a brass casing.
The Govt. Type VI rifle uses a delayed blowback mechanism, but had a rather short service life, of it's rather complicated mechanism and especially it's two part bolt which was very susceptible to jamming. The bolt is comprised of two parts - an outer one to which the charging handle is attached and which moves only when arming the rifle or after the last round is fired at which point it locks open, and an inner part which moves along a spiral path inside of the outer part and which performs the chambering of new rounds, the spiral motion ensuring both the locking-unlocking of the lugs as well as providing the necessary delay for functioning of the mechanism. In case of a jam the shooter can cycle the jammed round out by pulling back on the charging handle.
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Thats... not a mechanism for the faint of heart XDΒ Clearing the jammed round must be interesting too, unless each bullet is provided with a machined groove that an extractor can grip (and then, you'd need a way for said ejector to be moved out of the way when the round is fired, unless you wanted it to tear part of the round off)
Still, at least you don't have the heat-dissipation problems of a true caseless system - I seem to remember reading somewhere that a brass cartridge case carries away 90% of the heat generated by firing (I don't vouch for the accuracy of my memory, mind, so I'd take the number with a pinch of salt).
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It really is not a very reliable mechanism, hence why the firearm was short-lived. XD
The rounds look very close to the real life LSAT caseless ammo (After testing since 2011, this type of ammo was chosen by the US Marine corps in August and will be introduced to the front line starting 2015) so they do have a groove for the extractor. Since the case itself burns but doesn't really go anywhere (unlike the bullet), there are no mechanical forces working on the extractor, which, in any case, grips behind the bullet.
Also, since the actual propellant is no longer nitrocellulose based, the ignition temperature is much higher so there are none of the cook-off problems associated irl with caseless designs, even with the lack of a brass casing to act a s a heat sink.Β In the end the barrel cooling fins proved unnecessary, like the cooling shroud on the Lewis gun, so succeeding designs did away with them. (but oddly, some of them introduced a system somewhat similar to the afore mentioned Lewis cooling shroud)
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Ah, I see.Β I'd gotten confused and thought that the rifle used the same sort of semi-caseless ammo as the various handguns (my bad 
Are they still using a cylindrical cartridge form, or does it use square-section ammo like the G11?
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Well, even with the semi-caseless ammo, the extractor lies flush with either the bolt or the chamber wall normally and only gets tripped once the slide starts moving back - in normal semi-auto operation, since the mechanism relies on recoil, the bullet is halfway down the barrel by that time so the extractor closes on thin air (actually hot gases, but I digress), but if the bullet hasn't fired yet and the slide is worked manually, then it gets gripped and yanked back out of the chamber.
The ammunition is almost identical to the LSAT one (no sense of inventing new systems when perfectly good ones already exist, methinks), so it's cylindrical.
There was nothing wrong with the square shape of the G11 rounds, quite the contrary, it filled magazine space more effectively, but the feed system was quite complex which is completely against Inner Space weapons manufacturer doctrine - their weapons usually follow the AK47 mantra of -simple, reliable, cheap and easy to produce...
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Ah, I see.Β That makes sense.
Do they have issues with extractor and firing-pin erosion from the hot gasses?Β I seem to recall that the needle-fire rifle ran into problems with that, but I guess with clever metalurgy/ wibbly propellant gas composition can get round the problem.
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Well, corrosion can be warded of by simple maintenance even with regular steel. In the case of the needle gun it was a mix of the fact the metal wasn't amazing to begin with, the design called for a very long thin firing pin that was not in any way protected during the firing cycle and the fact the soldiers themselves weren't that keen on proper care and cleaning...
In the case of the Inner Space guns, the firing pin is identical to "normal" centrefire guns, because the primer is not on the actual bullet like on the Dreyse, but on the back of the propellant block like on a regular round.
Same goes for the extractor.
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Yeah, I knew that most of the problems with the needlefire were down to the peculiarities caused by putting the primer at the bullet end of the cartridge, rather than the breech end.Β Still, I brought it up because it was pretty widely used (by the standards of caseless/semi-caseless firearms) and the firing pin was exposed to the full brunt of the propellant gasses.
Incidentally, how does your system achieve obduration around the firing pin? (or is the pin fixed and it fires from an open bolt?).Β I'd guess that (assuming the firing pin does move) keeping the firing pin channel free from propellant residue would be fairly important, otherwise you might run into all sorts of unpleasant problems (such as a runaway on what is meant to be a semi-auto)
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