Fabrial Railguns

[Heir of the Void he/him]

Considering the effectiveness of the electrostatic discharge ability displayed by the Stormform Parshendi, it is clear that the humans of Roshar must develop their own electromagnetic standoff weapon as a counter if they wish to have any chance of survival. However, considering the myriad control problems with electrostatics, this method is likely futile.

Fortunately, with just the Fabrial types currently known, a constructing a basic electromagnetic impeller is surprisingly straightforward*.

The basic operational principal of the weapon would play on the function of Augmenter/ Diminisher Fabrials, with a number of possible improvements based on Conjoiner or Reverser types possible depending on the exact mechanics of the operation of those types; if a one-way conjoiner is possible, performance could be improved enormously.

At its most basic, operation would proceed as follows. The 'Trigger' of the weapon is a pair of small Conjoiner Fabrial connected to their opposites on the inside of the weapon. This pair need not be at all powerful; the purpose of the trigger group is to allow the action to be contained in a sealed and insulated box for the saftey of the operator and device. When the weapon is to be fired, it is aimed at the xeno/heretic/traitor to be purged and the Conjoiner is activated.

Inside the action box, paired conjoiners are used to trigger an electrostatic Augmenter and Reverser Fabrial. The Augmenter generates a negative charge, and the Diminisher generates a equal and opposite positive charge.

The charge now flows the conductive rails to which the paired Fabrial assembly are connected. Seeking to equalize, the negative charge flows down its rail until it reaches the conductive projectile, flows through it, and down the opposite rail to cancel out with the positive charge. The movement of current generates the immense magnetic force (Laplace Force, for reference) with accelerates the projectile down the 'barrel' of the weapon and toward the target.

To improve performance, the resistivity of the conducting rails would be Diminished, and their strength would be Augmented so as to avoid potential damage incurred int he course of firing. If necessary, a temperature-Diminished cooling jacked could be added to the outside of the barrel for sustained fire.

While the energy demands many appear daunting, recall that a .50 caliber round used in a heavy machine gun or anti-material rifle has a muzzle energy of about 4 kilo-joules. This is enough energy to raise the temperature of 1 liter of water by 1 degree centigrade; therefore, Jasnath's bathtub, which can be assumed to contain some hundred liters of water heated by ten to twenty degrees would be far more energy intensive than firing a reasonably powerful infantry weapon. While the heated bathtub was a luxury, it did not appear to be particularly notable by Kanabrath standards.

So... Thoughts? Ideas? Criticism?

[Cortez he/him]

I've long thought that some kind of Fabrial based railgun or coilgun should be possible given what we've seen of Fabrial science so far. Personally I'm a fan of a coilgun version using attractor or repulsor (ok these are theoretical, but if you can attract something, the opposite is also possible) Fabrials which could then be activated in sequence to accelerate a projectile down the barrel. The only question for this weapon type is whether the control systems exist to do this correctly. (n.b. the first operational coilgun was made in 1904, so it isn't that complicated.). Fabrials would have a big advantage over current railgun/coilgun designs as they wouldn't require the large amount of power currently required in reality..

[king of nowhere]

good idea. unfortunately, it requires knowing electromagnetism to make it work, and i doubt on roshar they have that kind of knowledge. Also, since they don't have mass  production, manufacturing those weapons would be very expensive, the amount they could make limited. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if fabrial projectile weapons start to appear eventually.

[Heir of the Void he/him]

1 hour ago, Cortez said:

coilgun version using attractor or repulsor

The big problem here is probably the switching. That is rather difficult with regular coilguns, and gets more difficult as the target velocity increases; Birkeland only got his 1904 model up to about 100 m/s muzzle velocity; to be effective as an infantry weapon worth using in these circumstances, you'd need something in the 1000 m/s neighborhood.

Beyond that, I'm not sure we've seen any example of fabrial action-at-a-distance (discounted paired halves, which are probably Cognitively linked). The closest I can think of it the devices Navani used to dehumidify the air around the archers at the first battle with the Stormform Parshendi, and that doesn't need to have effected anything beyond it's surface.

A augmenter might simply throw itself around rather than other objects. That could be useful as a sort of (expensive) mobile battlefield artillery, though.

Then again, it might simply give itself kinetic energy with no particular velocity vector, and thus make itself... explode.

Also possibly useful.

1 hour ago, Cortez said:

Fabrials would have a big advantage over current railgun/coilgun designs as they wouldn't require the large amount of power currently required in reality..

Keep in mind that most contemporary designs are trying to achieve a velocity well beyond what you get with chemical propellants, and that kinetic energy rises with the square of velocity, so doubling velocity means you need four times as much energy.

Here, I'm only trying to ape the output of a high-power rifle, which is a much less ambitious goal. For reference, I'm aiming at up to 5 kilojoules, whereas the Navy railgun projects are all looking at muzzle energy above 100 megajoules.

50 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

Also, since they don't have mass  production, manufacturing those weapons would be very expensive

Actually, my primary concern would be manufacturing precision due to the lack of machine tools or any kind of major industry demanding this level of precision.

That said, there might be a solution involving Soulcasting. We've seen Ardents with Soulcasters transmute air directly into shaped buildings, so there might be something there.

That said, starting with artillery pieces might be better. It's not like early cannon were in any way cheap, but they still used them whenever they could get them.

47 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

it requires knowing electromagnetism to make it work, and i doubt on roshar they have that kind of knowledge.

Yeah, their James Clerk Maxwell probably died on some random, irrelevant battlefield somewhere as a random, irrelevant spearmen because of Vorin Discrimination. #Stormwarden #Heresiarch

 

[cometaryorbit]

23 hours ago, Heir of the Void said:

to be effective as an infantry weapon worth using in these circumstances, you'd need something in the 1000 m/s neighborhood.

I dunno... Rosharans don't have conventional guns to compete with, and guns became dominant in Earth warfare before they had muzzle velocities anywhere near that high. Black powder muskets had muzzle velocities around the speed of sound (~300 m/s) or below it.

And it depends on what you are shooting. Black powder muskets were just balls - arrows were lethal at like 50 m/s.

EDIT:  For that matter, do Rosharans even have crossbows? They have bows, but the Alethi warrior tradition doesn't seem to have either an English/Welsh style longbow tradition or a Mongol style horse archery tradition, so their archery probably isn't as good as our best Earth historical examples.

So a fabrial-gun's performance wouldn't need to be very impressive at all to be the best available ranged weapon.

Edited October 9, 2016 by cometaryorbit
crossbows?

[Darkness he/him]

If I remember correctly, they dont have crossbows. They have bows, shardbows, and a blowgun (possibly from offworld), Amaram seems quite confused when he sees it. Also, I highly doubt the Alethi at least have even a basic understanding of electromagnetism. They dont even have electricity, and the great majority consider cymatics (more related to waveform than magnetism I suppose, but still similar thinking in my mind... Probably because I did it with a magnet and iron filings in university physics) to be magical proof of the Almighty, since it's 'incomprehensible'.

Something like a railgun would be leagues ahead of where they seem to be right now, so I'd say it's highly unlikely we'll see it, but if we do it will definitely be a major game changer.

[Heir of the Void he/him]

I wouldn't really be surprised; on Earth, a bow is a useful hunting implement (on the steppe or in a forested environment), and as such you could maintain some number of archers able to dedicate the time needed to master the craft at less total cost than, say, mounted warfare because it had a productive purpose. The English Yeoman archers would probably be a good example of this.

Conversely, it has been explicitly stated that the bow is a poor weapon for hunting shell-beasts (slings are better), so archery would be a full-time professional trade, and as such the opportunity cost of archers is cavalrymen or heavy infantry. If I recall, many of Sebarial's archers were low-level lighteyes, which is probably indicative of a fairly high upkeep.

2 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

And it depends on what you are shooting. Black powder muskets were just balls - arrows were lethal at like 50 m/s.

Yes, but arrows weren't all that effective against men in armor - neither were Renaissance firearms, for that matter - and the Parshendi in Stormform seem to have retained some of the Warform's natural defenses. A smaller, faster projectile would also be less impacted by any wind-based defensive shenanigans they might attempt.

2 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

crossbows

Not that we've seen, which is strange, all things considered.

Although, beyond this, the lack of mass heavy cavalry is going to have a profound effect on the Rosharan battlefield.

But then, consider that we're looking at problems like Thunderclasts.

6 minutes ago, Darkness said:

so I'd say it's highly unlikely we'll see it

Is that really the point, though?

[Darkness he/him]

Fair enough. I was actually thinking about slings as I wrote my post. I don't know how effective a sling would be against anything with natural armor. At best, you'd have to score a direct hit to even penetrate the shell. To me that's the penultimate predecessor of a railgun (ultimate is throwing a rock by hand). But all things considered I'm not really surprised that the easterners at least don't have slings... I mean, are chull-herders going to be able to ward off whitespines with pebbles? More likely they have spears or something... Now maybe they have slings in Shinovar to keep the rogue chickens in line, but who knows?

All I'm saying is, while it would be awesome, I don't see that Rosharans have all that much impetus to develop that avenue of technology.

As a point in the other direction, I could easily see fabrials going that direction if Cultivation decides to take more of a direct hand.

[cometaryorbit]

7 hours ago, Heir of the Void said:

Yes, but arrows weren't all that effective against men in armor - neither were Renaissance firearms, for that matter - and the Parshendi in Stormform seem to have retained some of the Warform's natural defenses. A smaller, faster projectile would also be less impacted by any wind-based defensive shenanigans they might attempt.

Not that we've seen, which is strange, all things considered.

Arrows and early firearms weren't very effective against good plate armor of the say 1350-1500 era, but that was far from available to everyone. That armor was really highly developed stuff. I can't see a Parshendi's chitin armor being anywhere near as capable.

I think the lack of crossbows is a combination of a generally low tech level (barring fabrials and such) and tactics focused on close combat, probably somewhat warped by the importance of Shards.