Why did the bolt catch go extinct?

a lead bullet is not ferrous therefore has no magnetic properties, which is why gausse guns use a steel projectile,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coilgun

ITT: Gun nuts overthinking things.

And that video just goes to show how far off we are from getting viable hand held coil guns. he couldn't even get that huge slug to go through a laptop screen . they make awesome toys though.

protip: google images third search result.

Lol. Man, how many times will people referrence this video?

Or Korean War in space. Or Battlefield Vietnam in space. That's just one side constantly zerging the other.

The thing is: why would you use a lead and copper bullet in a Gauss rifle. These metals arent ferromagnetic, therefore don't get accelerated by magnetic fields.
BTW: A longbow CANNOT pierce a plate or chain armor.

railguns by basic definition only requires that it accelerates its projectile along two magnetic rails traveling along the full length of the barrel.
Vanu weapons use batteries to power the rails and create the magnetic field that packages the plasma projectile in basic sci-fi fashion. You may note that the most common shape for a railgun (plasma or solid) is a square or rectangle to keep it straight in the barrel:


you might also note that vanu guns have square barrels with four powered rails protruding from the end, one would surmise that the second set are for the plasma packaging process.



furthermore, nearly all of vanu's special tech relies on either plasma or magnetic field manipulation, is it a stretch to assume they use them both for their guns?

Plate Armour:


no maille shirts under there, the plate is by far enough protection. Remember that you don't want to be massively encumbered and plate is specially made to be very flexible and easy to move in. Wearing more stuff would require larger, worse fitting suits.

Any arrows that are shot from a close enough range to pierce articulated plate armour and manages to hit orthogonally are usually stopped by the padded protection the doublet offers, Simple indian silk shirts can stop arrows dead in their tracks.
This is why plate armour was not used in conjunction with shields, the previous best arrow deterrent, as they were simply not much of a threat. This is what lead to the development of two handed weapons such as longswords and polearms becoming the predominant infantry killing weapons.

It was not until the advent of reliable, semi accurate firearms that plate was phased out.

The reason crossbows and longbows stayed in use is that they were the only viable form of long range combat not that they were really good at it and because large portions of armies were made of peasant levies who could not afford plate.

hmm got my wavelengths turned around. Thanks for correcting me.

that would only work if the plasma packet was able to conduct the driving current between the two rails without the propelling force exploding it.

indeed, which is why it is unrealistic.
thus sci fi

Technology in WW2 surpasses Planetside 2's technology ten fold. This is more like WW1 with automatic rifles and no trenches.

I didnt until I watched a random video of it. That is actually kinda funny.

yeah, really.

The action-reaction physics is what's causing the magnetic force to propel the bullet in the first place, so that doesn't apply. Nor does conservation of momentum as one genius said, as that only applies when two bodies collide.

But it's pretty obvious that NC weaponry aren't gauss rifles. Poor wording on SOE's part. Gauss Weaponry requires a charge time. You can't just hold down the trigger and put rounds down range. That is unless they've gone crazy and Gauss tech as we know it has changed. In which case, there's no point theorizing at all about something that doesn't exist(It may come as a surprise to people but we do have gauss weapons IRL and super-heated plasma does exist).

Secondly, there wouldn't be a flash. The flash from rifles comes from gun powder ignition.

No no...this OP has a point. Assuming I'm interpreting the idea of Gauss weapons correctly, this is the concept of using an electromagnetic field to launch a solid metallic projectile at a target, yes? *merely skimmed the posts on the way here*

Well, Vanu weapons function muchly the same way. Air is drawn into the plasma accretion chamber, and the weapon uses energy from its battery to de-ionize the gas with a microwave generator in order to create plasma. Then, a pair of electromagnetic fields force the plasma forward, which is why plasma weapons are sometimes called "Pinch Guns" in other realms of fiction and theoretical sciences. Once the plasma is on its way, the target is likely to be very unhappy.

Given that plasma is the 4th state of matter, its mass is going to be less than the average metallic projectile, which explains how Vanu weapons are so accurate and low on recoil. How much recoil NC guns see is going to depend greatly on the mass of the projectiles they're using, but a larger projectile doesn't always mean more damage. After all, in theory, a paint chip can be accelerated to the point where it strikes with the power of a nuclear weapon.

I'm sure several other thinky types like me have already said this, but recoil has nothing to do with friction and everything to do with Newton's third law, every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

So the harder a round hits, the harder the recoil. Unless you start using rocket propelled ammo or start ejecting a counter mass out the back of your gun for every round you fire (ouch), you will never deliver more kinetic energy onto your target than you feel as recoil.

i dont think you could get a paint chip to do that in the atmosphere, it would likely just evaporate and disperse the energy.

you might like this site though if you like that kind of stuff

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php


ctrl-f boom table

Actually, I've thought of a good canonical reason why Vanu weapons have some recoil. (I haven't had a chance to get my geek on like this in a long time, so I'm really enjoying this thread.)

A mass of plasma must be constantly directed by a magnetic field to maintain coherency when traveling any distance through an atmosphere. Without a magnetic field, a mass of plasma ejected into atmosphere will very quickly disperse (picture throwing a handful of fine, dry sand). Unfortunately for the Vanu, magnetic fields always loop back on themselves, so if for any reason the VS soldier missed a shot, the plasma would continue to follow the magnetic field and loop back around to its source. So in a very rare outburst of pragmatism, the VS decided to design their guns to fire small, lifting body (to explain no bullet drop) magnets to carry the plasma to the target, thus the recoil.

Oh, and since plasma would cool upon exposure to the atmosphere, wouldn't that mean that the whole damage fall off model that the VS hated so much was accurate? Just saying.