Thus Spake Zarataylor/FiredustCannons

izzylobo [2003-12-14 at 06:01:20]

>> NOC >> Fierdust is not gunpower\\ > TheScreenJockey > An excellent point, and why I feel that actual firearms as we think of them won't be happening i Exalted any time soon. In fact, those fire cannons that actually fire projectiles seem a little odd to me. Based on the desciptions, it's clear that firedust burns much more slowly than gunpowder, produces less expanding gases, and probably burns at a lower temperature. As such, it order to use it to hurl a projectile with it, you'd need LARGE amounts of it compacted into a VERY small space . . . and even then, the projectile wouldn't fly terribly fast (compared to real world firearm projectiles).

The Shore Cannons used in Chiaroscuro, and entering deployment in Lookshy (to replace Shogunate and First Age weapons that have succumbed to decay and can't be replaced, or are needed for other duties) are massive, giant affairs - these are guns on the scale of the huge shore batteries used in the Civil War (and likely are breech-loading, etc. like them) - a dozen or more slaves, pair of Warstriders, or four automata (or some kind of mechanical spider-automaton that the gun rests on) are needed to line the guns up, and a Chiaroscuran battery of six guns likely has a crew of over a hundred to line up and fire accurately (the crew listed in Savage Seas is probably low, actually, when you take into account re-aligning or moving the gun into firing position).

The big advantage of shore cannons isn't damage, or lack of Essence expenditure (although that is an advantage for Chiaroscuro, at least) - it's the range. Most Essence-based weapons are relatively short ranged (Lightning Ballistas are a notable exception) - in general, if you want to hit them way out, you start plinking with Powerbows at maximum range, using Charms to negate distance penalties - then you open up with the implosion bows and such later, once they've entered range (and, hopefully, been weakened by a dozen or more arrow hits). A Shore Cannon lets you hit stuff that is just coming over the horizon (or would be if Creation had horizons in the same fashion Earth does...), long before any of the weapons on the approaching craft can start responding.

And yeah, it took a long time for the Chiaroscurans to figure out how to turn flamethrowers into cannons - and they can't really build, at present (or for the last few centuries) anything smaller than a shore cannon - if you make it smaller, it has to just rely on the firedusts elemental nature, not use it as a propellant.

That being said, working too hard to figure out how firedust works will make your head hurt - its magic, not physics. It doesn't work like gunpowder, even though it resembles it - but at the same time, it doesn't behave like any normal explosive or accelerant, either. It's firedust, and afaict, it acts sorta like some kind of dehydrated (not the right word, but right concept) fire - you ignite it, and WHOOOSH, you get twenty times the volume of fire, for one-tenth the mass, but wait, there's more! You can use it in alchemy (smoke bombs etc. are based on firedust) to make cool smoke/fire based weapons, and probably can use it for other effects as well, but trying to pound it into some physics-based template is likely fruitless.

Scott Taylor