Why is a Black powder gun considered Primitive? Sure the loading, firing and manufacturing methods are primitive compared to post American Civil War guns, but that doesn't mean they're not effective. Some muzzle loaders had a .50 Cal. ammo and/or could shoot Shot and are still used for hunting big game today.

It's one point weaker than a Autogun as far as dice rolls, but with the Primitive Feature it's effectively half of that against anyone wearing none Primitive armor.

Well, the designers thought that the simple lead balls would be too soft for 'modern' amor. And history seems to proof them right.

During the second siege of Vienna iirc the invading turkish army stopped using their muskets and switched back to bows with bodkin arrows. Allthough a musket ball makes bigger holes in unarmoured people, they lacked the penetrating power against the metal breastplates the austrian kurassiers (i hope that's an appropriate translation) used.

I can see how a muscket ball would act like that, but what about modern hunting rounds. Muzzle loaders use Full Metal Jacketed Sabot rounds for hunting big game. Wouldn't it have the same effect as a single shot from the Hunting Rifle?

Ichiban11 said:

Perhaps, but those are modern rounds. Muskets are primitive weapons, and it's not too great of a stretch to say that only primitive planets will use them. Maybe nobles will use muzzle-loaders with the ammo you described on not-primitive worlds for sport or as a manner of tradition, but for the most part muskets are confined to primitive planets, which won't have things like FMJ Sabot rounds. They'll use big blunt balls of soft lead, which will do very little in the way of penetrating high-tech modern armors like carapace, mesh, or flak.

Good point. How would I go about making that connection?

Example: LEts say I wanted to arm a group of Primitives with musckets against a Modern enemy. No time for building and training with Lasguns so I stick with just upgrading their ammo. Fluff whys I give them Sabot rounds and modern powder.

How would this translate to game mechanics.

I thought about just taking the Primitive and if they had rifled muzzle loader the Inaccurate off the Muscket rateing. Would that be too much? They're limited by the reload time. And just saying they got Manstoppers instead is just too much.

Ichiban11 said:

Actually removing the primitive quality and treating it as a manstopper isn't too far off. Remember that most muskets had quite a large bore (For some reason my mind is floating towards .75 calibur, but I really don't know if that's right) and if you are upgrading to better ammunition, it stands to reason that better propellant will also be used, which would increase damage as well. Not to mention treating it as manstoppers might offset the rediculous reload time a bit, especially if the enemy you are fighting has less archaic technology.

Can you edit posts? If you can, I can't figure out how.

Anyways, what I wanted to add in my edit was that you might consider counting your FMJ sabot rounds you are talking about as man-stoppers for the musket and charge accordingly, and the regular soft lead balls as dumdums, but retaining the primitive quality... That way you have a bit more variety in ammo, and it makes the soft lead balls even less effective vs. armor, but also makes them an attractive option vs. unarmored targets.

Texas_Ben said:

There's a time limit. After five minutes you can no longer edit.

*edit* And perhaps information about HOW might be useful. It's not a button, just some text at the top of the post.