Improving spore guns

[Frustration]

So, Lumar has spore guns that are capable of quite a lot, but I thought I would try and make them better.

Starting off we need to make the barrel gun out of steel, this will force the zephyr spores to generate air pushing the bullet out exclusively. Next, unless you want to make the bullet out of aluminum to kill people with invested defenses, or a spore bullet for any sort of purpose. you want to make the bullet out of iron, increasing the effectiveness of the propellent as it would apply more force directly to the bullet.

Next you want to make the hammer out of bendalloy and duralumin to force the reaction to take place even faster. This would have force the entire reaction to occur in an incredible short space of time, meaning no force is wasted.

 

Finally instead of just zephyr spores, add sunlight spores as well, increasing the temperature of the air, and increasing the rate at which it expands, further increasing the velocity at which a bullet would leave the gun.

 

Can you think of any other ways various metals and spores could be used to increase the effectiveness of spore guns?

Edited April 14, 2023 by Frustration

[Treamayne]

35 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Next you want to make the hammer out of bendalloy and duralumin to force the reaction to take place even faster. This would have force the entire reaction to occur in an incredible short space of time, meaning no force is wasted.

Can you please expand this section? They use Silver because of the properties that allow it to "pierce" the shell around the charges. If I am undertanding you correctly, you seem to think that using Bendalloy would somehow create the Allomantic effect in a Fabrial? So far, we've been able to see links between a metal's Fabrial and Allomantic effect (e. g. A-Bronze sensing investiture pulses/Fabrial Bronze enabling a warning Fabrial to "sense" <something>); but, unless I missed something, none of the Fabrial effects are exactly like the Allomantic effect. 

[Frustration]

16 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

Can you please expand this section? They use Silver because of the properties that allow it to "pierce" the shell around the charges. If I am undertanding you correctly, you seem to think that using Bendalloy would somehow create the Allomantic effect in a Fabrial? So far, we've been able to see links between a metal's Fabrial and Allomantic effect (e. g. A-Bronze sensing investiture pulses/Fabrial Bronze enabling a warning Fabrial to "sense" <something>); but, unless I missed something, none of the Fabrial effects are exactly like the Allomantic effect. 

Steel causes the spores to grow away from it, Iron causes them to grow towards it, bendalloy should cause spores to react faster, and duralumin should cause them to all react together in one massive burst.

I'm not sure what fabrials have to do with it.

[Treamayne]

Copy - you are postulating on the possible interaction there.

2 minutes ago, Frustration said:

I'm not sure what fabrials have to do with it.

I'm using the term in the Realmatic sense, not the Roshar-only sense (WoB):

Spoiler

FirstSelector

So, do you have a name, like an in-world name for a large magical construction, like the things that picks Elantrians?

Brandon Sanderson

That was why I invented the term "fabrial." It will become widespread eventually, as the term for meaning, kind of, magic-type devices in the cosmere. That's not what you call it right now, but you can start calling them all fabrials.

So, any mechanical implementation of investiture manipulation can be called a "fabrial."

[CrypticSpren]

I don't think duralumin and bendalloy will actually make a difference, since spores react basically instantaneously. Furthermore, a big appeal of spore guns is that they're extremely cheap (using resources for which one finds entire oceans) so it's kind of against the spirit of the thing to consume metals in spore gunpowder.

As for adding sunlight spores, some math is required. However, I asked my roommate (mechanical engineer) to do some calculations and the answer is ... maybe.

If y'all feel inclined to do some calcs yourself we used the following model.

• Spores are about the density of sand
• Sunlight spores release the same heat as gasoline per mass
• Zephyr spore mass converts directly into air at room temperature of the same mass

Using ideal gas law and assuming a gun/cannon of reasonable dimensions (1 meter barrel 1 kg fuel I think??) it's about half and half, but if dimensions change slightly and/or air is actually treated adiabaticaly instead of an ideal gas we can also get 100% zephyr as optimal.

We could definitely get more precise. Zephyr spore mass -> air mass is probably actually calculable if we can find some good estimates for some of the measures in the book, but I have no idea how we can get a good estimate for enthalpy of the sunlight spore reaction.

However, I think the general conclusion is that sunlight spores could be useful for spore guns; at the very least if you're trying to stretch your zephyr while sailing the sunlight seas it won't crap out your spore gunpowder. But it's quite unclear as to whether or not it's optimal.

Edited April 15, 2023 by CrypticSpren
Sunlight spores typo

[NathanJohnson]

I like your idea.

[IlstrawberrySeed]

On 4/14/2023 at 1:12 PM, CrypticSpren said:

• Spores are about the density of sand
• Sunlight spores release the same heat as gasoline per mass
• Zephyr spore mass converts directly into air at room temperature of the same mass

I highly doubt that zepher spores simply convert their mass, I expect it to be more like Allomancy. The mass (water & spore) is converted into investiture, which pulls more investiture from the SR, then that investiture turns into air. Also, considering that the air is already pushing in the right direction, I don't know that an increase in temperature would really help, as your less worried about the pressure as the initial movement. (Though I could be completely wrong about that last sentance, Propulsion is not something I've worked with much or enjoyed working with).

On 4/14/2023 at 1:12 PM, CrypticSpren said:

I don't think duralumin and bendalloy will actually make a difference, since spores react basically instantaneously. Furthermore, a big appeal of spore guns is that they're extremely cheap (using resources for which one finds entire oceans) so it's kind of against the spirit of the thing to consume metals in spore gunpowder.

The metals aren't to be consumed though (other than the iron).

 

You take a steel tube with steel backplate. The cartridge has zink, pewter, and steel (and possibly bendalloy, durilium, necrosil, or shardmetal/shardalloy) on the bakplate with the rest being rosite. The bullet is an iron nail-ish shape with shaped rosite on the front, (with a possible aluminum coating or spore fillings) with the very tip being a crimson spike (if not coated in aluminum). Rosite is slightly translucent, so you could actually go the rout of evaporated water condesnsing to fire rather than injecting the water by breaking rosite with valuable silver, but that has the potential to go off early.

I assume a water molecule is smaller than spores. If so, then water could come through the micro-perforated backplate of the cartrage, allowing you to use a rosite wall on the back of the container.

[CrypticSpren]

1 hour ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

I highly doubt that zepher spores simply convert their mass, I expect it to be more like Allomancy.

Totally agreed. Really, in order to do any real calculations, we need a "zephyr constant" for mols of gas created per spore. We just thought that 1 kg/m^3 so the "zephyr mass -> air mass" yields that wetting a zephyr spore creates a localized zone of about 1000 times the density of the air around it, which seems more or less right - enough pressure to be dangerous if it gets into your eyes and to launch something, but not blow everything up.

1 hour ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

Also, considering that the air is already pushing in the right direction, I don't know that an increase in temperature would really help, as your less worried about the pressure as the initial movement.

Not sure what you mean by "the air is already pushing in the right direction". I think it's a reasonable assumption that, without the influence of Intent, gas from converted zephyr spores is stationary at the time of creation, as there isn't anything special about any arbitrary direction.

Just to make sure we're on the same page: the way that actual guns work is that pressurized gas is created (via combustion of gunpowder), which pushes a bullet out the barrel. The instantaneous force on the bullet is the gas pressure (that is, difference between pressure of the hot air in the back of the barrel and atmospheric pressure, at the front of the barrel) times the cross-sectional surface area of the barrel. The amount of energy that the bullet has at the time of leaving the gun - which is presumably the value we want to maximize - is that force integrated over the length of the barrel.

As far as I can tell, spore guns work the same way, only the pressurized gas is created via zephyr gas instead of gunpowder combustion.

I know we don't specifically want to maximize pressure (at time of spore activation), as you need to consider how the pressure changes over the length of the barrel. However, assuming that the chamber and barrel dimensions are roughly the same order of magnitude, the volume of the expanding gas that pushes the bullet should only change within that order of magnitude while all other values in the ideal gas law remain constant, so the pressure should only change within that (small-ish) order of magnitude. So maximizing pressure serves as a good heuristic.

2 hours ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

The metals aren't to be consumed though (other than the iron).

You take a steel tube with steel backplate. The cartridge has zink, pewter, and steel (and possibly bendalloy, durilium, necrosil, or shardmetal/shardalloy) on the bakplate with the rest being rosite. The bullet is an iron nail-ish shape with shaped rosite on the front, (with a possible aluminum coating or spore fillings) with the very tip being a crimson spike (if not coated in aluminum). Rosite is slightly translucent, so you could actually go the rout of evaporated water condesnsing to fire rather than injecting the water by breaking rosite with valuable silver, but that has the potential to go off early.

I assume a water molecule is smaller than spores. If so, then water could come through the micro-perforated backplate of the cartrage, allowing you to use a rosite wall on the back of the container.

Right, only silver actually gets consumed; I am a certified buffoon. This design concept is very cool and I hope if we ever see Tress's world again we'll get stuff like this. I love it.

[alder24]

Huh, now that I think about it, a steel barrel will act like gravity when dropping something into a theoretical tunnel through the Earth's center - spores loaded into a gun will be pushed from all that steel that's in front of them, pushing them into the back of the gun, not pushing the bullet out of the barrel. This would counteract the pressure of expanding zephyr air trying to push the bullet out of the barrel, with the force from all that steel trying to push that air away from steel - into the direction of the back of the gun. The force of the steel push would be equalized in the middle of the barrel, as equal amounts of steel are in front and behind spores, and from that point on, steel will help to push spores out of the barrel. Using steel for a barrel might backfire tragically, literally, blowing the gun in your face, as that's where steel is pushing spores. Steel back plate might help with it, but that's a tiny amount of steel compared to the whole barrel, it would only bring the point of equilibrium closer to the back of the barrel, but not by that much.

The bullet made out of iron itself would make it even worse - yes, it will pull the air towards itself, but there is little gremlin known as Newton's 3rd law of motion: for every action (force) there is an equal and opposite reaction -  this would create a force, acting on the bullet, directed at the back of the gun, slowing it down, not speeding it up.

The better construction would be having only steel back plate + a steel ring just around the back section of the bullet, rest of the barrel should be made out of different metal, with another iron ring at the barrel outlet, pulling spores to it - however iron at the end of the barrel might affect spores in the bullet, pulling them back and resulting in deceleration of the bullet (depending on when spores are activated, some like vines are activated quite early iirc).

Additionally it would be the best to change the igniter/hammer of the gun, as the gun is like guns from early modern period - its hammer is on the outside of the gun, and there is a little hole in the back of the barrel, where the bullet sits, through which gunpowder (in this case spores) inside the barrel is ignited. This hole allows the pressure to escape. A little, but still. Changing the design to more like a modern gun design, with bullets in shells, will help to mitigate that problem even more - but that's more or less outside of the possibilities of Lumar's technology for now.

[Frustration]

15 hours ago, alder24 said:

Huh, now that I think about it, a steel barrel will act like gravity when dropping something into a theoretical tunnel through the Earth's center - spores loaded into a gun will be pushed from all that steel that's in front of them, pushing them into the back of the gun, not pushing the bullet out of the barrel. This would counteract the pressure of expanding zephyr air trying to push the bullet out of the barrel, with the force from all that steel trying to push that air away from steel - into the direction of the back of the gun. The force of the steel push would be equalized in the middle of the barrel, as equal amounts of steel are in front and behind spores, and from that point on, steel will help to push spores out of the barrel. Using steel for a barrel might backfire tragically, literally, blowing the gun in your face, as that's where steel is pushing spores. Steel back plate might help with it, but that's a tiny amount of steel compared to the whole barrel, it would only bring the point of equilibrium closer to the back of the barrel, but not by that much.

I mean, maybe?

I always thought that the steel doesn't care what direction it pushed the spores it just pushed them away from itself. So while there might be more steel at the front of the gun than the back, the steel at the back is closer, which would force everything towards the center of the barrel, as far away from the circumference as possible. Not to mention that the steel towards the front would be countered by the bullet.

15 hours ago, alder24 said:

The bullet made out of iron itself would make it even worse - yes, it will pull the air towards itself, but there is little gremlin known as Newton's 3rd law of motion: for every action (force) there is an equal and opposite reaction -  this would create a force, acting on the bullet, directed at the back of the gun, slowing it down, not speeding it up.

I don't see how that would slow it down, yes the bullet is(probably, do we know if iron is pulled towards spores, I feel like it shouldn't be, otherwise you couldn't sail with it but at the same time it does in Allomancy... I don't know) pulled towards the gas, but that would only come into play after the trigger was pulled, where the strongest pull would be from the gas closest to it.

[alder24]

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

I always thought that the steel doesn't care what direction it pushed the spores it just pushed them away from itself. So while there might be more steel at the front of the gun than the back, the steel at the back is closer, which would force everything towards the center of the barrel, as far away from the circumference as possible. Not to mention that the steel towards the front would be countered by the bullet.

I am almost certain it would act just like a normal, directional force vector. Just like in Allomantic steel push, it has one direction in a straight line, away from you. While the distance to the steel will be a factor, increasing the force if steel is closer, in a steel barrel at any point there is the same strong force acting from a steel just around the bullet in front of it and behind it, making the steel very close to the bullet have almost no effect on that bullet, while all effect would be from metal away from it, which isn't countered by any metal behind it, even though the force of that metal is weaker than the force of metal metal surrounding the bullet, there is still a foot or more of steel in front of the bullet, adding it up to a lot of force, pushing it into the back of the barrel. Even a steel backplate would add something, but not as much to overcome the force of the whole steel barrel pushing it back, you would need a very big backplate to counteract that.

That's a messy explanation, I can't word it in a better way.

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

I don't see how that would slow it down, yes the bullet is(probably, do we know if iron is pulled towards spores, I feel like it shouldn't be, otherwise you couldn't sail with it but at the same time it does in Allomancy... I don't know) pulled towards the gas, but that would only come into play after the trigger was pulled, where the strongest pull would be from the gas closest to it.

What I mean is the force of an iron bullet being pulled towards expanding gas will negate the additional force of expanding gas being pulled towards the iron bullet. Just imagine 2 magnets stuck together at opposite poles, by pushing the one magnet you push also the other magnet with the same force - that push is the pressure of expanding gas, but the magnets don't gain any more speed due to them being attracted to each other. Basically you gain nothing from it, an iron bullet will behave just like a lead bullet in this configuration. The force of aether gas pulled towards an iron bullet is nullified by the force of iron bullet being pulled back towards aether gas. 

[CrypticSpren]

Ok, my gut tells me that I have a feeling that if a bullet is traveling sufficiently fast to be a good bullet, the barrel material isn't gonna matter that much if it isn't silver. But micro-optimizations are fun, so I'm gonna put out my opinions here.

14 hours ago, alder24 said:

... Even a steel backplate would add something, but not as much to overcome the force of the whole steel barrel pushing it back, you would need a very big backplate to counteract that.

I could be missing something obvious, but shouldn't the overall steelpush effect being outwards once the bullet is halfway through the barrel make this a non-issue? By symmetry, the "allomantic potential" (that is, integral of the steelpush vector field over arbitrary path from the bullet origin) should be zero. Of course, if the expanding gas is too weak to push the bullet halfway through the barrel then the gun isn't going to work at all, but assuming that it does I think the gun should work fine.

14 hours ago, alder24 said:

That's a messy explanation, I can't word it in a better way.

Nah what you said totally makes sense. I just hope that what I say also makes sense

14 hours ago, alder24 said:

What I mean is the force of an iron bullet being pulled towards expanding gas will negate the additional force of expanding gas being pulled towards the iron bullet. Just imagine 2 magnets stuck together at opposite poles, by pushing the one magnet you push also the other magnet with the same force - that push is the pressure of expanding gas, but the magnets don't gain any more speed due to them being attracted to each other. Basically you gain nothing from it, an iron bullet will behave just like a lead bullet in this configuration. The force of aether gas pulled towards an iron bullet is nullified by the force of iron bullet being pulled back towards aether gas. 

Physics I logic makes me think that the iron bullet actually should be a little bit worse. Assuming that your logic regarding the extra forces cancelling out (which I'm inclined to believe is correct) the total amount of energy that the bullet has exiting the barrel should be the same. However, an iron bullet will also pull zephyr gas along with it, effectively giving it more inertia than a lead bullet of the same mass without the potential to do more damage. Some of the iron bullet's energy will go into propelling this gas instead of speed, so it will overall be slower and deal less damage.

That being said, this effect is likely insignificant since air is light. I would guess that turbulence effects more relevant. However, I can't speak to what those would be since I know literally nothing about fluid mechanics; there's a reason why I've been assuming IDEAL GAS LAW GO BRRRR in all my posts thus far.

[alder24]

7 hours ago, CrypticSpren said:

I could be missing something obvious, but shouldn't the overall steelpush effect being outwards once the bullet is halfway through the barrel make this a non-issue?

I talked about it in a previous post, yes, halfway through steel will help and push the bullet towards the muzzle. But that’s half a barrel length through which the bullet suffers through additional declaration, opposing the force of expanding gas. Of course that force shouldn't nullify the force form pressure of the gas, but it isn't efficient design, which I wanted to point out.

7 hours ago, CrypticSpren said:

Physics I logic makes me think that the iron bullet actually should be a little bit worse. Assuming that your logic regarding the extra forces cancelling out (which I'm inclined to believe is correct) the total amount of energy that the bullet has exiting the barrel should be the same. However, an iron bullet will also pull zephyr gas along with it, effectively giving it more inertia than a lead bullet of the same mass without the potential to do more damage. Some of the iron bullet's energy will go into propelling this gas instead of speed, so it will overall be slower and deal less damage.

That being said, this effect is likely insignificant since air is light. I would guess that turbulence effects more relevant. However, I can't speak to what those would be since I know literally nothing about fluid mechanics; there's a reason why I've been assuming IDEAL GAS LAW GO BRRRR in all my posts thus far.

That sounds logical. 

7 hours ago, CrypticSpren said:

Ok, my gut tells me that I have a feeling that if a bullet is traveling sufficiently fast to be a good bullet, the barrel material isn't gonna matter that much if it isn't silver. But micro-optimizations are fun, so I'm gonna put out my opinions here.

I see a potential danger. The amount of zephyr spores used for guns must be very little, Tress got her face wounded by just a few of them in the open space. In many cases a single spore creates a big Aether, so you don't need a lot of spores for guns. And then as we saw when Tress was patching the hole in the hull, a small amount of steel was pushing away Aether expanting in that direction. That's the reason for my concern. If there is a 30 cm long barrel, a few millimeters thick, that's a lot of steel, more than Tress used when patching a hole. Just a few spores might not create sufficient force during ignition to escape that force of steel barrel pushing Aethers into the back of the barrel. And there is a little hole in the back of the barrel for the ignition mechanism, a hole through which all that air would want to escape. And that might explode your gun.

[Duxredux]

I'd advise against using iron in the bullet. I'm not sure on the gun barrel side as I'm looking down range. It seems possible if not probable that any nearby growing Aethers, Verdant, Crimson, or Roseite would intercept bullets or actively reinforce impact sites. I'm assuming that iron and steel affect the growth of the Aether, but do not feel a Newtonian push or pull, similar to a plant growing towards the sun. At least, that's what it looked like to me. Even if the attraction effect drew the growth from other spore projectiles, I doubt this would be any improvement on just hitting with the spore in the first place. Since this is likely going to be used in conjunction with other spore-based weapons, it seems wisest to stick with shooting spores, silver, aluminum, or ammo material that has no interaction with spores, unless it's specifically for a situation down range. Using iron just to get a faster shot seems like it could cause all sorts of unwanted side effects. Now steel rounds for a smooth bore weapon might do interesting things for defensive spores. I'll let others debate on if it will fire well or not.

As for Zephyr and Sunlight used in the propellant, I suspect that Zephyr specifically creates oxygen atoms in both O2 and ozone. Ann comments on the smell of lightning when there's a puff of Zephyr, which sounds like ozone to me. I haven't run into a class that gives me the formulae for figuring out optimal ballistic performance so someone else would have to tell me if that would change the propellant side, but with instant ignition and a potent oxidizer, that sounds like a dangerous impact charge.

[CrypticSpren]

14 hours ago, alder24 said:

If there is a 30 cm long barrel, a few millimeters thick, that's a lot of steel, more than Tress used when patching a hole. Just a few spores might not create sufficient force during ignition to escape that force of steel barrel pushing Aethers into the back of the barrel. And there is a little hole in the back of the barrel for the ignition mechanism, a hole through which all that air would want to escape. And that might explode your gun.

Oh, I did not read your earlier post carefully enough earlier. Yeah, this is definitely a big problem. No steel barrel.

8 hours ago, Duxredux said:

As for Zephyr and Sunlight used in the propellant, I suspect that Zephyr specifically creates oxygen atoms in both O2 and ozone. Ann comments on the smell of lightning when there's a puff of Zephyr, which sounds like ozone to me. I haven't run into a class that gives me the formulae for figuring out optimal ballistic performance so someone else would have to tell me if that would change the propellant side, but with instant ignition and a potent oxidizer, that sounds like a dangerous impact charge.

Totally forgot about the lightning smell; that is a very cool observation. I have to wonder - would mixing zephyr spores with traditional hydrocarbon-based gunpowder be any good? That is, since the ozone provides oxygen to combust normal gunpowder.

[alder24]

14 hours ago, CrypticSpren said:

Totally forgot about the lightning smell; that is a very cool observation. I have to wonder - would mixing zephyr spores with traditional hydrocarbon-based gunpowder be any good? That is, since the ozone provides oxygen to combust normal gunpowder.

If you can make sure that zephyr air won't blow away gunpowder, than yes, from Wikipedia:

Quote

Ozone is among the most powerful oxidizing agents known, far stronger than O2. It is also unstable at high concentrations, decaying into ordinary diatomic oxygen. Its half-life varies with atmospheric conditions such as temperature, humidity, and air movement. Under laboratory conditions, Half-Life Time (HLT) will average ~1500 minutes (25 hours) in still air at room temperature (24 °C), zero humidity with zero air changes per hour (ACH).

This reaction proceeds more rapidly with increasing temperature. Deflagration of ozone can be triggered by a spark and can occur in ozone concentrations of 10 wt% or higher.

Decomposition of ozone into O2 can be explosive on its own.

[IlstrawberrySeed]

On 5/22/2023 at 0:58 PM, CrypticSpren said:

Totally agreed. Really, in order to do any real calculations, we need a "zephyr constant" for mols of gas created per spore. We just thought that 1 kg/m^3 so the "zephyr mass -> air mass" yields that wetting a zephyr spore creates a localized zone of about 1000 times the density of the air around it, which seems more or less right - enough pressure to be dangerous if it gets into your eyes and to launch something, but not blow everything up.

Not sure what you mean by "the air is already pushing in the right direction". I think it's a reasonable assumption that, without the influence of Intent, gas from converted zephyr spores is stationary at the time of creation, as there isn't anything special about any arbitrary direction.

Just to make sure we're on the same page: the way that actual guns work is that pressurized gas is created (via combustion of gunpowder), which pushes a bullet out the barrel. The instantaneous force on the bullet is the gas pressure (that is, difference between pressure of the hot air in the back of the barrel and atmospheric pressure, at the front of the barrel) times the cross-sectional surface area of the barrel. The amount of energy that the bullet has at the time of leaving the gun - which is presumably the value we want to maximize - is that force integrated over the length of the barrel.

As far as I can tell, spore guns work the same way, only the pressurized gas is created via zephyr gas instead of gunpowder combustion.

I know we don't specifically want to maximize pressure (at time of spore activation), as you need to consider how the pressure changes over the length of the barrel. However, assuming that the chamber and barrel dimensions are roughly the same order of magnitude, the volume of the expanding gas that pushes the bullet should only change within that order of magnitude while all other values in the ideal gas law remain constant, so the pressure should only change within that (small-ish) order of magnitude. So maximizing pressure serves as a good heuristic.

Right, only silver actually gets consumed; I am a certified buffoon. This design concept is very cool and I hope if we ever see Tress's world again we'll get stuff like this. I love it.

K. 

I meant the initial velocity of the gas isn't 0 because of the iron in the bullet. I thought pressure was simply used to direct force, but after reading the posts since, I've changed my mind.

On 5/23/2023 at 6:09 AM, alder24 said:

I am almost certain it would act just like a normal, directional force vector. Just like in Allomantic steel push, it has one direction in a straight line, away from you. While the distance to the steel will be a factor, increasing the force if steel is closer, in a steel barrel at any point there is the same strong force acting from a steel just around the bullet in front of it and behind it, making the steel very close to the bullet have almost no effect on that bullet, while all effect would be from metal away from it, which isn't countered by any metal behind it, even though the force of that metal is weaker than the force of metal metal surrounding the bullet, there is still a foot or more of steel in front of the bullet, adding it up to a lot of force, pushing it into the back of the barrel. Even a steel backplate would add something, but not as much to overcome the force of the whole steel barrel pushing it back, you would need a very big backplate to counteract that.

That's a messy explanation, I can't word it in a better way.

What I mean is the force of an iron bullet being pulled towards expanding gas will negate the additional force of expanding gas being pulled towards the iron bullet. Just imagine 2 magnets stuck together at opposite poles, by pushing the one magnet you push also the other magnet with the same force - that push is the pressure of expanding gas, but the magnets don't gain any more speed due to them being attracted to each other. Basically you gain nothing from it, an iron bullet will behave just like a lead bullet in this configuration. The force of aether gas pulled towards an iron bullet is nullified by the force of iron bullet being pulled back towards aether gas. 

You want a steel handle. More steel behind the initial position than after it.

For the most part, but during the first segment the bullet cannot be pulled back but the gas is pulled forward.

On 5/24/2023 at 11:27 AM, Duxredux said:

I'd advise against using iron in the bullet. I'm not sure on the gun barrel side as I'm looking down range. It seems possible if not probable that any nearby growing Aethers, Verdant, Crimson, or Roseite would intercept bullets or actively reinforce impact sites. I'm assuming that iron and steel affect the growth of the Aether, but do not feel a Newtonian push or pull, similar to a plant growing towards the sun. At least, that's what it looked like to me. Even if the attraction effect drew the growth from other spore projectiles, I doubt this would be any improvement on just hitting with the spore in the first place. Since this is likely going to be used in conjunction with other spore-based weapons, it seems wisest to stick with shooting spores, silver, aluminum, or ammo material that has no interaction with spores, unless it's specifically for a situation down range. Using iron just to get a faster shot seems like it could cause all sorts of unwanted side effects. Now steel rounds for a smooth bore weapon might do interesting things for defensive spores. I'll let others debate on if it will fire well or not.

As for Zephyr and Sunlight used in the propellant, I suspect that Zephyr specifically creates oxygen atoms in both O2 and ozone. Ann comments on the smell of lightning when there's a puff of Zephyr, which sounds like ozone to me. I haven't run into a class that gives me the formulae for figuring out optimal ballistic performance so someone else would have to tell me if that would change the propellant side, but with instant ignition and a potent oxidizer, that sounds like a dangerous impact charge.

The Iron has effects on the bullet beyond speed. I've had another design.

Also, I'm pretty sure the steel overrided the iron completely despite being only slightly in front of the shield, so directional pieces should be possible without aluminum.

Steel gun with Iron at the end of the barrel and aluminum & steel coating on the front, using front loaded bullets with rosite cartridges with pewter and zink being the base the rosite grows on and the "SprePoweder" sits on. The bullet is iron with steel tip and nail shaped, with the body made of rosite and crimson spines. The front is hollow tipped, preferably aluminum or hollowed out crimson. In the space between the back of the bottom of the hollow and the steel, put crimson and sunlight spores. When the bullet splits, the spores will be released into the targets body.

[CrypticSpren]

9 hours ago, alder24 said:

Decomposition of ozone into O2 can be explosive on its own

Eh, I guess that means that there are only trace amounts of ozone in Zephyr gas, as otherwise people would know about how volatile it is. Thanks for the Wiki check!

1 hour ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

I meant the initial velocity of the gas isn't 0 because of the iron in the bullet.

Hmm, I was assuming the model that the initial velocity of the gas is 0 no matter what the surroundings are, and that iron/steel applies a force on the gas. But seeing that iron and steel seem to affect the direction that rosite grows without affecting rosite that's been sitting around for a while, it might be the case that there is a very small time interval after being wet for which the zephyr spores become investure, which is affected by iron/steel, which promptly turns into gas that maintains the velocity of that investirue (ozone + other stuff), which is not affected by iron and steel.

If that is the case, then yes the initial velocity of the gas would not be 0 because of the iron in the bullet. But also, because the time frame which the zephyr is in investiture form is near instantaneous (which we know because the air blast seems to happen as soon as the spore is wet), that means that iron and steel have very little effect at all.

1 hour ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

You want a steel handle. More steel behind the initial position than after it.

Probably. Never have done any calcs with gases that aren't exerting equal pressure in all directions, so I have no idea whether the improvements from this would be significant or not.

1 hour ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

For the most part, but during the first segment the bullet cannot be pulled back but the gas is pulled forward.

I can't figure out what you mean by this. Do you mean that the normal force from the cartridge will cancel out with the backwards force from the pull of the gas on the bullet? I don't think this will help in any significant capacity, as the gas already starts immediately behind the bullet. I assume that the gas is always evenly distributed across the area of the barrel behind the bullet in my model anyway so it wouldn't even factor into the calculations I would do .

1 hour ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

The Iron has effects on the bullet beyond speed.

Like what? As an aside: in case it wasn't clear: @Frustration's argument for a iron bullet is flawed, as stated by @alder24 in his response about Newton's 3rd Law.

1 hour ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

Also, I'm pretty sure the steel overrided the iron completely despite being only slightly in front of the shield, so directional pieces should be possible without aluminum.

Honestly I kind of brushed over your design last time with a "very cool" because I had to go to sleep, but now that I have some time to take a decent look I've realized that I have no idea what is going on. This is all very hard to understand without an actual schematic. What do you mean by override? What is this shield? What are directional pieces?

2 hours ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

Steel gun with Iron at the end of the barrel and aluminum & steel coating on the front, using front loaded bullets with rosite cartridges with pewter and zink being the base the rosite grows on and the "SprePoweder" sits on.

I get that you want iron in front for the same reason that you want steel in the back, but I can't figure out the rest of the gun design.

• Why aluminum and steel coating in front? I don't see why you'd want to safeguard against silver, and as far as we know, that is all aluminum does with regards to spores. Also, wouldn't steel in front cancel out the effects of iron in front?
• Why pewter and zinc? We do not know how they interact with the spores AFAIK.
• What is "SprePoweder"?

2 hours ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

The bullet is iron with steel tip and nail shaped, with the body made of rosite and crimson spines. The front is hollow tipped, preferably aluminum or hollowed out crimson. In the space between the back of the bottom of the hollow and the steel, put crimson and sunlight spores. When the bullet splits, the spores will be released into the targets body.

This kind of makes sense, but honestly is a bit confusing. A drawing for clarity would be much appreciated.

[alder24]

10 hours ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

You want a steel handle. More steel behind the initial position than after it.

A steel handle is below the barrel and its fore vector would be pointing mostly upwards, providing little force in the direction of the muzzle. And what is above the Aether in the barrel? A hole for ignition where a force from a steel handle is pointing towards. It can help but that is where most of the force would be poining. 

10 hours ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

For the most part, but during the first segment the bullet cannot be pulled back but the gas is pulled forward.

Just because it can't move doesn't mean the force isn't there - the force of an iron bullet is still pushing it towards the back of the barrel, even if it doesn't move at all.

10 hours ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

The Iron has effects on the bullet beyond speed. I've had another design.

Also, I'm pretty sure the steel overrided the iron completely despite being only slightly in front of the shield, so directional pieces should be possible without aluminum.

Steel gun with Iron at the end of the barrel and aluminum & steel coating on the front, using front loaded bullets with rosite cartridges with pewter and zink being the base the rosite grows on and the "SprePoweder" sits on. The bullet is iron with steel tip and nail shaped, with the body made of rosite and crimson spines. The front is hollow tipped, preferably aluminum or hollowed out crimson. In the space between the back of the bottom of the hollow and the steel, put crimson and sunlight spores. When the bullet splits, the spores will be released into the targets body.

Iron bullet with steel tip? Hollow? That would provide very little penetration. A simple piece of armor would stop it. Especially a tip made out of aluminum (there is steel and aluminum tip? How many tips does this bullet have?), which is 4x less dense than a steel, from which armor would be made. Crimson would likely shatter on impact with that speed, or maybe even during ignition.

The problem with overly complicated bullets is that it is still a gun bullet, there is not a lot of space inside that bullet, it still needs to penetrate the target, armor or even thin pieces of wood. Less mass, which your bullet would have, means less penetration. Less density means less penetration. Less mass and less density means it's easier to deform and break on impact. While it could work against unarmored opponents, your bullet is small and overly complicated, which creates a lot of failure points. It can easily get destroyed during ignition.

But putting Aethers inside bullets is a cool idea. 

But again, those era bullets are round, with no cartridges, no tip. Early modern period bullets. Round like cannonballs. Your design is a bit too advanced for this time period.

[CrypticSpren]

11 hours ago, alder24 said:

A steel handle is below the barrel and its fore vector would be pointing mostly upwards, providing little force in the direction of the muzzle. And what is above the Aether in the barrel? A hole for ignition where a force from a steel handle is pointing towards. It can help but that is where most of the force would be poining.

Yeah. For some reason I thought the spore guns are tube-shaped instead of gun shaped, but now looking back at the text there is nothing to support that at all.

12 hours ago, alder24 said:

Iron bullet with steel tip? Hollow? That would provide very little penetration. A simple piece of armor would stop it. Especially a tip made out of aluminum (there is steel and aluminum tip? How many tips does this bullet have?)

I was confused by that too .

12 hours ago, alder24 said:

which is 4x less dense than a steel, from which armor would be made

I think Mistborn Era 2 actually addresses this - aluminum bullets are good for anti-investiture purposes but are considerably worse overall. Don't quote me on that though.

12 hours ago, alder24 said:

Crimson would likely shatter on impact with that speed, or maybe even during ignition.

What do we actually know about crimson? What suggests that it will shatter on impact?

[alder24]

10 hours ago, CrypticSpren said:

What do we actually know about crimson? What suggests that it will shatter on impact?

Only that it's a crystal. A thin shell of crimson would be more or less like a glass in my opinion. 

[IlstrawberrySeed]

On 5/25/2023 at 8:14 PM, CrypticSpren said:

Eh, I guess that means that there are only trace amounts of ozone in Zephyr gas, as otherwise people would know about how volatile it is. Thanks for the Wiki check!

Hmm, I was assuming the model that the initial velocity of the gas is 0 no matter what the surroundings are, and that iron/steel applies a force on the gas. But seeing that iron and steel seem to affect the direction that rosite grows without affecting rosite that's been sitting around for a while, it might be the case that there is a very small time interval after being wet for which the zephyr spores become investure, which is affected by iron/steel, which promptly turns into gas that maintains the velocity of that investirue (ozone + other stuff), which is not affected by iron and steel.

If that is the case, then yes the initial velocity of the gas would not be 0 because of the iron in the bullet. But also, because the time frame which the zephyr is in investiture form is near instantaneous (which we know because the air blast seems to happen as soon as the spore is wet), that means that iron and steel have very little effect at all.

Probably. Never have done any calcs with gases that aren't exerting equal pressure in all directions, so I have no idea whether the improvements from this would be significant or not.

I can't figure out what you mean by this. Do you mean that the normal force from the cartridge will cancel out with the backwards force from the pull of the gas on the bullet? I don't think this will help in any significant capacity, as the gas already starts immediately behind the bullet. I assume that the gas is always evenly distributed across the area of the barrel behind the bullet in my model anyway so it wouldn't even factor into the calculations I would do .

Like what? As an aside: in case it wasn't clear: @Frustration's argument for a iron bullet is flawed, as stated by @alder24 in his response about Newton's 3rd Law.

Honestly I kind of brushed over your design last time with a "very cool" because I had to go to sleep, but now that I have some time to take a decent look I've realized that I have no idea what is going on. This is all very hard to understand without an actual schematic. What do you mean by override? What is this shield? What are directional pieces?

I get that you want iron in front for the same reason that you want steel in the back, but I can't figure out the rest of the gun design.

• Why aluminum and steel coating in front? I don't see why you'd want to safeguard against silver, and as far as we know, that is all aluminum does with regards to spores. Also, wouldn't steel in front cancel out the effects of iron in front?
• Why pewter and zinc? We do not know how they interact with the spores AFAIK.
• What is "SprePoweder"?

This kind of makes sense, but honestly is a bit confusing. A drawing for clarity would be much appreciated.

Huh.

No idea how much it would help, as I said before, I orginally thought the pressure was there only to direct the force properly.

This is what I was saying.

Structural integrity of the rosite bullet.

I'l try, but it's goin to be text (and at the bottom)

Aluminum should prevent the metal from acting on the spores/aether same as it stops silver from acting on it.  The aluminum would prevent the front steel from pushing while it's inside and the front iron from pulling once outside.
I am assuming the effects on rosharian fabrials are similar to that which we get here. Of course they won't be identicle, but both pewter and zinc have effects that strengthen related effects.
gunpowder -> Sporepowder. It isn't ever just spores; we see it mixed with sand whenever made into a fabrial.

On 5/27/2023 at 4:03 AM, alder24 said:

Only that it's a crystal. A thin shell of crimson would be more or less like a glass in my opinion. 

Didn't know that.

My attempt at a text schematic. I know this is a little advanced, but considering what spores can do that can minimize the requirements for a cartridge based design, I think it's possible within 40 years or 5 with a little (knowledge based) help.

Spoiler

Spoiler

Key:

I- Iron; S- Steel; P- SporePoweder; R- pre-grown Rosite; T- tip (aluminum, rosite, crimson, etc); A- Aluminum; (Whitespace)- gap or not part of design; C- Spore Charge; B- Backplate; E: else.

The gun:

SSSSSSSSSRRRSSSSSSSSSIIIASS
SSSSSSSSS
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSIIIASS
EEE
EEE
EEE

A cartridge and bullet. (Stylized Rosite are separate pieces from differnt stylized)

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRTT
RBBRRRIRRRR CC RTTTTT
RBPPR     IIIIIIIAS CCC    T
RBBRRRIRRRR CC RTTTTT
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRTT

There is one reason I believe this is possible to fire without a hole or advanced mechanics. Sunlight spores. If you put something watery enough to trigger it when melted in your spore charge, then sunlight spores can melt the fat to fire the bullet. (I say one, but this is one variation of several remote detonation possibilities, which have included some sketchy "This is going to blow my arm off" kind of thing) Some mirrors behind the spores on the outside, and you have something akin to a basic frontloader. After fireing, tilt down to let the cartridge fall out, then toss another in and either pore more sunlight spores in or remove the opaque slide from between the spores.

There are chromatic ways to do this, but needing breaths for each cartridge would be expensive (to get started, but actually quite profitable, since you need to use the same supplier to reset the cartridge.)

Edited May 30, 2023 by IlstrawberrySeed
Accidentally put S instead of P for Spore-Powder

[alder24]

28 minutes ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

Aluminum should prevent the metal from acting on the spores/aether same as it stops silver from acting on it.  The aluminum would prevent the front steel from pushing while it's inside and the front iron from pulling once outside.
I am assuming the effects on rosharian fabrials are similar to that which we get here. Of course they won't be identicle, but both pewter and zinc have effects that strengthen related effects.

Aluminum has an area of effect, it would interfere with most of the gun.

31 minutes ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

There is one reason I believe this is possible to fire without a hole or advanced mechanics. Sunlight spores. If you put something watery enough to trigger it when melted in your spore charge, then sunlight spores can melt the fat to fire the bullet. (I say one, but this is one variation of several remote detonation possibilities, which have included some sketchy "This is going to blow my arm off" kind of thing) Some mirrors behind the spores on the outside, and you have something akin to a basic frontloader. After fireing, tilt down to let the cartridge fall out, then toss another in and either pore more sunlight spores in or remove the opaque slide from between the spores.

I don't think so. Put something wet in a spore charge and it would instantly suck out the water and explode. Sunlight spores inside the charge would burn away the rest of the spores. Not to mention thin Roselite might crack under the temperature. That won't work.

Plus bullets might be tightly fit, especially a cartridge that was pushed back into a barrel by explosion, you won't make it fall out of the barrel just by tilting the gun. In real guns bullets have to be pushed far back with a "stick". But I'm not really sure how  tightly fit those things are - there should be as much as possible, but that’s my view on this.

Your design doesn't fit early modern period guns. That's a modern pistol, not early modern. Not to mention bullets. Your bullet looks like a single piece of Roselite, which would make separation of cartridges impossible. Not to mention growich a Roselit in that shape would be also almost impossible. Aethers decay, they would fall apart, and that bullet would disintegrate after some time (per TLM and WoB about water cycle on Lumar).

And the spore charge in the bullet is the cartridge charge pushing the bullet out of the barrel, or a bullet part, meant to grow inside people's body?

Your double tip is non aerodynamic, it would be tremendously slowed down by air. Not to mention the center of mass of the bullet which is very tip heavy, it would make the bullet roll and fall to the ground faster. It would also strike the target at weird angle. The shape of the bullet would make little penetration. Your tip is like a coin, which is bad shape for a bullet. And it has a hole in the middle.

For reference, that's the gun Crow is using:

Spoiler

 

[IlstrawberrySeed]

3 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Aluminum has an area of effect, it would interfere with most of the gun.

I don't think so. Put something wet in a spore charge and it would instantly suck out the water and explode. Sunlight spores inside the charge would burn away the rest of the spores. Not to mention thin Roselite might crack under the temperature. That won't work.

Plus bullets might be tightly fit, especially a cartridge that was pushed back into a barrel by explosion, you won't make it fall out of the barrel just by tilting the gun. In real guns bullets have to be pushed far back with a "stick". But I'm not really sure how  tightly fit those things are - there should be as much as possible, but that’s my view on this.

Your design doesn't fit early modern period guns. That's a modern pistol, not early modern. Not to mention bullets. Your bullet looks like a single piece of Roselite, which would make separation of cartridges impossible. Not to mention growich a Roselit in that shape would be also almost impossible. Aethers decay, they would fall apart, and that bullet would disintegrate after some time (per TLM and WoB about water cycle on Lumar).

And the spore charge in the bullet is the cartridge charge pushing the bullet out of the barrel, or a bullet part, meant to grow inside people's body?

Your double tip is non aerodynamic, it would be tremendously slowed down by air. Not to mention the center of mass of the bullet which is very tip heavy, it would make the bullet roll and fall to the ground faster. It would also strike the target at weird angle. The shape of the bullet would make little penetration. Your tip is like a coin, which is bad shape for a bullet. And it has a hole in the middle.

For reference, that's the gun Crow is using:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Where is that mentioned? It sounded to me worked like in Era 2 with preventing the strait lines of allomancy; preventing the strait lines of silver.

I don't mean something currently wet. Either something like wax that surounds the water or something that is fine as a solid but activates as a liquid.
And they would't be on the outside. I neglected to put it on the drawing due to other potensials, like the current hole. It would be outside the gun.

Well, that may be an issue, but if their wedged that tightly, then you might be able to use zepher to push it out due to the cartrages seal. And the rosite on the cartridges could easily be made to break on firing, which wouldn't allow it to wedge itself.

I the spore charge is meant to be released into their body; the spore powder acts as their version of gunpowder.

I don't know how double tip bullets are made, all I know is that they exist in era 2, at least in the MAG if not mentioned cannon. The wheight might be an issue though.

Huh. I was imagining something older, more pipe less gun. Mine is more modern than theirs by a good margin, but that's mostly the cartridge, which is similar to what they do now with projectiles, but the initial launch instead.

[alder24]

1 minute ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

Where is that mentioned? It sounded to me worked like in Era 2 with preventing the strait lines of allomancy; preventing the strait lines of silver.

Aluminum hats for example. On Lumar both silver and aluminum are lined on the objects because it has a field of effect. There was a WoB on that, I don't know if it is this WoB or different:

Spoiler

ParshendiOfRhuidean

If an [attractor] fabrial is blocked by aluminum in a certain direction, will the attraction bend around the aluminum or does it work purely off line of sight?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh man... *mumbling* *sigh* All right. This could bend around aluminum. I believe. So. CAN bend around aluminum. Which would allow you to do some cool things. Yeah. That is, I believe... the aluminum is going to set up a big patch of... an interference pattern. Like, imagine it's going to make a shadow. How about that. That's a really good example. It'll bend around the corners like light is going to bend around a corner to a similar extent. Hopefully that helps in your theorizing.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 5 (Dec. 2, 2022)

 

10 minutes ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

I don't mean something currently wet. Either something like wax that surounds the water or something that is fine as a solid but activates as a liquid.
And they would't be on the outside. I neglected to put it on the drawing due to other potensials, like the current hole. It would be outside the gun.

I don't understand how you want to use Sunlight spores in your design. A ball of wax, inside is water and Sunlight spores? Ball melts and water evaporates before you even put it in a gun. 

12 minutes ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

Well, that may be an issue, but if their wedged that tightly, then you might be able to use zepher to push it out due to the cartrages seal. And the rosite on the cartridges could easily be made to break on firing, which wouldn't allow it to wedge itself.

So your whole bullet would shatter on ignition. That's not good. The metal tip can go in any direction after leaving the muzzle.

14 minutes ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

I the spore charge is meant to be released into their body; the spore powder acts as their version of gunpowder.

I'm blind, but I don't see spore powder anywhere (P). And that means that R is a part of the bullet, not cartridges, it would likely shatter on ignition. Bullets are small. very small. There isn't much space there to fit all of this. Spores alone are quite big, if Tress was able to pick up individual pieces.

17 minutes ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

I don't know how double tip bullets are made, all I know is that they exist in era 2, at least in the MAG if not mentioned cannon. The wheight might be an issue though.

I've never heard of that. There are bullets with round or flat tips but I've never heard of double tipped bullets. And I don't remember them from Era 2. None of the hazekiller rounds has a double tip. Look at Coppermind https://coppermind.net/wiki/Hazekiller 

20 minutes ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

Huh. I was imagining something older, more pipe less gun. Mine is more modern than theirs by a good margin, but that's mostly the cartridge, which is similar to what they do now with projectiles, but the initial launch instead.

Hand cannon? That's a late medieval gun.

Your gun doesn't have any ignition mechanism tbf, not to mention outside one. That's a big leap.

Yeah, cartridges are similar yet it took like 500 years to develop. I wonder why (rhetorical, I know why). In the early modern period they were using paper cartridges, first separate from bullets, later together.