Guns and Armor made simple.

Phil

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For example, during the days of the Galactic Republic, mercenaries fearing an intervention by Jedi Knights used rapid-fire slugthrowers that were impossible to completely deflect, unlike blaster bolts. They were also popular amongst forces looking to take advantage of the explosive nature for intimidation or to

taken from the wookieepedia article.
Couldn't finish it?

Using a shotgun within grabbing distance would be extreamly difficult to push back, Me thinks. You'd better off keeping your distance.
 

Nirvana

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I think I prefer the Tau weaponry.... Now that was a pain in the ass to ever deal with, if it was Orks vs Tau..

True true, pusle weaponry. highly effective against..... well everything. but when orks come in to cqc, then it's over for the tau. unless they have kroot with them.
 

Orphen

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Agreed, nothing like a good old bolter.

Funny, that's where i got the micro caseless missile things from. But apparently as said by Jiang, they're useless, so. ;) Unless he was being sarcastic... Fail. Lol.

I'm an eldar Fan, i have an eldar 'dumb' army. Nothing wrong with four squads of ten wraithguard with 3 fire prisims LOL! So brutal...:CScool
 

Jiang Winters

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Funny, that's where i got the micro caseless missile things from. But apparently as said by Jiang, they're useless, so. ;) Unless he was being sarcastic... Fail. Lol.

I'm an eldar Fan, i have an eldar 'dumb' army. Nothing wrong with four squads of ten wraithguard with 3 fire prisims LOL! So brutal...:CScool

I said useless for standard slugthrowers. If you'd read my post, you'd have known that. ^_~

Any projectile smaller than 12.7MM just doesn't have enough explosive punch to be truly useful, and if you try and cram a propulsion system, tracking system, and all that other jazz into it to make it a 'micro missile', then you end up with an even smaller explosive charge at which point it just becomes utterly, completely useless. So, yes, micromissiles are useless. :3

But a bolter? That's an entirely different breed of projectile. Your standard bolter uses a .75 caliber gyrojet projectile with a kick charge to give it its initial propulsion, and angled rocket ports to give it its actual speed and spin. [Spin, in projectiles, stabilizes the round and makes long-range fire possible.] It's actually not a missile, since Bolter rounds are 'dumb' weapons and so don't classify as missiles, but as it's rocket-propelled and can boast multiple different payloads it's closer to a rocket. However, it's actually a gyrojet [which is a subclass of rocket used in small arms] because of the design of the propulsion system and the operation of the bolter itself.

At any rate, you stated micro-missile, which implied a miniature guided projectile with an onboard propulsion system and payload, which is the very definition of a missile. And, as I said, a micro-missile would be wholly useless. Even bolter projectiles would quickly become useless if they were fitted with guidance systems; in fact, even in WH40K canon, the closest thing to a 'missile' in the bolter's ammunition family is the Ulysses round, which is essentially a bolter round without a payload and a rugged tracking beacon jammed in. It's used to track targets like vehicles, dropships, etc etc, and Space Marines can follow the bolt using a handheld scanner. But it's not capable of even tracking targets.

As for micro-missiles themselves, the closest you could practically get is a Self-forging submunition fired from a full-sized rocket launcher. Self-forging projectiles basically disassemble them in flight [think MIRV] and produce anywhere from two or three to several dozen smaller projectiles. Depending on the size of the parent missile and the submunitions, the submunitions may be self-propelled or possess their own targeting system. For example, in the cold war, an artillery rocket was tested that would dispense submunitions over an armored column. Those munitions were grenade-sized shaped charges with small control surfaces and primitive guidance systems; they'd home in on the top of vehicles and would then detonate. At least, that was the plan. The entire project, I believe, dropped off the radar because it just didn't work. Not as well as Hellfire missiles, anyways, but those are stupidly expensive. [Seriously, look up the cost of an AGM-114 Hellfire.]

In Star Wars you might, just might, be able to get around the tracking problem and produce a powerful enough tracking system to stuff into a projectile smaller than 12.7x99MM, but you still run into the problem of its explosive payload and its drive system, not to mention control surfaces. You'd end up with such a small bursting charge in the end that, for all the cost and effort that went into producing the round, you'd have been better off firing a solid chunk of copper-plated tungsten at the enemy.

EDIT: Though that's all irrelevant because I'll /rageface on anyone who tries to make a micromissile that can be fired out of anything short of a 60MM cannon. Mini-missiles just don't work; every NATO nation you can think of has looked into it at least once or twice, and they've all abandoned it because of cost and low stopping power or what-have-you. A tactical dream, yes, but an engineering nightmare. Plus, it'd wind up OP because... Well, gun firing mini-homing missiles from a 30 round clip. Problems, methinks. xD
 
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Insanity

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I used a pair of custom droidekas with heat-seeking mini-rockets... Not caseless or anything, mind, because they were rockets...

The Mandos didn't seem to lose anyone to them, utterly ignoring the fact that someone should've gotten a head blown apart at least...
 

Insanity

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Considering the mini-rockets had enough yield to destroy fortifications, you'd think armour wouldn't be any better....

Jeez, Mandos so gimped. OPed, anyways.
 

Jiang Winters

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You actually need a lot of bang to blow up fortifications. If I'm remembering correctly, because I'm better with small arms than explosives, you need a 30x173MM projectile filled to the bursting point with explosives and a decent fuze just to take out a small room. So you'd probably need a rocket about half a meter to a full meter long, at which point you're basically just using a sub-caliber training rocket, but with a live warhead instead of an inert warhead. [Inert meaning it doesn't go kaboom.]

Generally speaking, though, if you're doing anti-fortification work with anything short of a man-portable anti-tank rocket launcher, you're probably going to need repeated hits to actually do any sort of serious damage. Now, against light structures [ie sheet metal and thin wood paneling] then you don't need much at all. I've even seen BB's from airsoft rifles go through some of that stuff. It's not good cover, heh.

Anyways, as for anti-infantry, most any explosive projectile greater than 20x99MM will do the job. The hard part is getting the round close enough to do the job, especially if it has an impact fuze, not a proximity fuze.
 

Insanity

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Well, both droidekas had one heavy rocket which blew up a very, very fortified gate. The rest of the mini-rockets had high-impact warheads, as it were, which were designed to basically tear up light cover and personnel armour.

... Shoulda killed some Mandos. ~.~
 

Jiang Winters

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Welp. That makes no sense. Obviously, they have magik on their side.
 

Insanity

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Magick Mandos... Greeeat.

I'm gonna go and stare at the TV.

Goodbye!
 

Jiang Winters

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OFC mando's have magik on their sides, what else would it be.

9e9bf67fa8279c1f6250094b111fd70e.png
 

BLADE

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I would just like to address the issue of bullets vs lightsabers very quickly. Not to geek out, but Nite's presumption is in my view, relatively unsupported by canon evidence. The notion of a lightsaber having some sort of Nuclear Disrupting Force (NDF effect) is unlikely. All the visual evidence points to lightsabers having a thermal effect. Of course, this brings up some issues (I generally subscribe to the plasma blade theory, since while it would have massive power requirements, this is SW and the universe can do plausible massive power requirements) like how the lightsaber doesn't burn people through its thermal effects (arguably all three: radiation, conduction, convection.) My pet theory is that there's some sort of magnetic lock on the lightsaber which only "unlatches" and allows it to become potentially lethal when making contact with something else. This would explain how non Jedi/Sith/etc. can use sabers, but would proscribe certain maneuvers (like cutting through a blast door using a lightsaber without Force-based protection.)

In any case, for durasteel, I assume properties relatively similar to tungsten, but with a higher melting point (around 6,000 K) and some other properties irrelevant to this particular debate but necessary to make it conformable with SW engineering standards. Anyhow, since lightsabers can cut through durasteel (and melt but not evaporate it) I would assume a lightsaber temperature of 8000K.

Now let's assume it is trying to block a tungsten bullet (since that is the element most commonly mentioned here.)

Rate = k•A•(T1 - T2)/d

Where k is the thermal conductivity constant (173 in the case of tungsten) A is the area of a cylindrical bullet (2pi*rsquared+2pi*h) with radius being 1.25 cm and h being 10 cm. T1 and T2 are the temperatures of the lightsaber and bullet respectively. I am assuming 350 K for the bullet based on the thermal loss bullets experience once fired from the muzzle all over the distance which the bullet must travel through the lightsaber (15 cm.)

Plugging the values in:

173 * (2pi*2.25+2pi(1.25)*10)

(173 * 92.7 * (7650 K))/.15

Which gives us ~820 million watts or 820 million joules per second.

Dividing by the mass of the bullet (volume*density or pi*rsquared*h *19.25) 602,000.

Taking the specific heat capacity of tungsten (.13) and dividing...

~4.6 million K per second.

Of course, that elides the speed at which the bullet will be traveling (I would assume 1500 m/s at most ranges of engagement considering SW tech.)

Time = Distance/Speed (ignoring friction since I'm lazy.)

=

.15 m/1500 m/s

.0001 seconds.

.0001 seconds * 4.6 million K/second

Or 460 K

Plus the original temperature (350K)

810 K total for a tungsten bullet. Mind you, it could be a steel bullet and it still wouldn't be near melting let alone evaporation temp.

In other words, bullets are indeed quite an effective counter-measure against lightsabers.

/Power of PHYSICS!
 
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