Shardblades

[Weltall]

Responding to the general question, it's possible (but difficult) for most spren to form 'complex structures' but there are limits to what they can become and they still have to be one piece. Making anything with two or more separate pieces requires splitting the soul of the spren and they really wouldn't like that. This means that even if you could get a working Shardgun in a single piece, the bullets would have to be separate (and thus have none of the magical advantages of a Shard-weapon) or you'd need to make the spren the projectile and then you'd need a fully working gun, in which case you might as well just make those for normal people let the spren do something more interesting. Shard-chakrams for example, which would be a hell of a lot more effective at killing things than a Shardbullet given how the Spiritual damage works.

15 hours ago, Watchcry said:

I know he plans to use the Lightweaver fabrials to make a laser gun. That should be cool. 

Do you have a source for this one? I know he's mentioned (paraphrased) that things will get interesting when Lightweavers figure out enough science to learn how to make lasers but not that they could be weaponized in fabrial form. Though that would get pretty crazy and I can definitely see something like that happening by the time we hit Mistborn Era 4.

On the other hand, a fabrial that can replicate a Basic Lashing is pretty much a magical railgun, which seems like it would be easier to make and potentially much more devastating, especially against something like a thunderclast.

[Nathrangking]

It was a scorpion like device which was ancient roman tech.

[Bigmikey357]

Shard Railgun. No gunpowder. If one can make a weapon that accelerates a projectile fast enough it will punch through Shardplate like toilet paper. Finding a projectile that won't break up upon firing would probably be the tricky part.

[Quantus]

11 minutes ago, Bigmikey357 said:

Shard Railgun. No gunpowder. If one can make a weapon that accelerates a projectile fast enough it will punch through Shardplate like toilet paper. Finding a projectile that won't break up upon firing would probably be the tricky part.

If there's a surge that can mimic/create Lightning (Division perhaps?) it wouldnt be that hard to do it the real way (as in the way our current militaries can pull it off) it just takes a boatload of electricity before the Lorentz force kicks in enough to be useful (which is why they dont scale down the way more purely magnetic coil guns do), and the projectile would still just be a hunk of metal. 

That being said, Plate isnt actually all that strong on the scale of modern earth projectiles from what I can see, if it can be beaten through with uninvested hammers and oversized bows

[Bigmikey357]

 

3 minutes ago, Quantus said:

If there's a surge that can mimic/create Lightning (Division perhaps?) it wouldnt be that hard to do it the real way (as in the way our current militaries can pull it off) it just takes a boatload of electricity before the Lorentz force kicks in enough to be useful (which is why they dont scale down the way more purely magnetic coil guns do), and the projectile would still just be a hunk of metal. 

That being said, Plate isnt actually all that strong on the scale of modern earth projectiles from what I can see, if it can be beaten through with uninvested hammers and oversized bows

I was thinking more Gravitation surge as a driver in lieu of complex mechanisms. Kinda like a super slingshot. But not sure upon thought if the physics work out.

[Quantus]

10 minutes ago, Bigmikey357 said:

I was thinking more Gravitation surge as a driver in lieu of complex mechanisms. Kinda like a super slingshot. But not sure upon thought if the physics work out.

Ah, gotcha.  On that Im with @Kon-Tiki, it would take so many lashings as to likely be impractical.  The first weaponized railgun (the General Atomics Blitzer system) was doing accelerations around 60,000 Gs.  Due to the Lashings being Rosharan G's rather than Earth Gs, would require something closer to 85,000 Basic Lashings to be applied to the slug simultaneously.  They'd probably be better off using Soulcasting to create some kind explosive fuel and just stick to more traditional muzzle-style rounds. 

[Watchcry]

5 hours ago, Weltall said:

Do you have a source for this one? I know he's mentioned (paraphrased) that things will get interesting when Lightweavers figure out enough science to learn how to make lasers but not that they could be weaponized in fabrial form.

It's another source. I can't remember where it was tho. I kind of imagine both Lightweavers and Truthwatchers creating lasers and using their Shardblades to guide it. Total and absolute mahem. 

But at some point the Navanis of the world will learn how to concentrate the fabrials into a laser weapon, I believe. 

[Bigmikey357]

On 1/7/2019 at 4:14 PM, Quantus said:

Ah, gotcha.  On that Im with @Kon-Tiki, it would take so many lashings as to likely be impractical.  The first weaponized railgun (the General Atomics Blitzer system) was doing accelerations around 60,000 Gs.  Due to the Lashings being Rosharan G's rather than Earth Gs, would require something closer to 85,000 Basic Lashings to be applied to the slug simultaneously.  They'd probably be better off using Soulcasting to create some kind explosive fuel and just stick to more traditional muzzle-style rounds. 

Not sure you're gonna need that much. I mean, increasing pressure in a small chamber and then giving a projectile a means of escape is basically what a gun is. If one can manipulate pressure itself then one need not use another means to generate it, like explosions. Lashings work on an entire body as we've observed so far but if a Radiant can learn to focus that lash on a smaller space they get much more bang for the buck, exponentially so if I remember my high school physics correctly. Plus, nobody said that all projectiles fired from a shardgun need to travel at the same speed. For normal targets one can fire almost instantly. You may have to charge up to one-shot a thunderclast however.

[Fanghur Rahl]

On 2019-01-06 at 10:29 PM, Solomonster said:

New thought, against shardplate a gun would be insanely OP.  Shardplate can shatter if you hit it hard enough with something.  Swords, axes, rocks, anything.  The force applied by a bullet to a single section of shardplate would annihilate that piece.  It would be the same revolution that occured in Europe when gun powder was introduced and suddenly knights became irrelevant.  

Imagine:  

Shardbearer:  Behold my shiny, awesome armo...

Darkeye with a shotgun:  *BOOM*

Chestpiece shatters.  Darkeye wins!

Not necessarily. I mean, Kevlar armor can theoretically tank a machine gun, but jab/slash it with a sword and it wouldn’t stand a chance. And arrows aren’t overwhelmingly less powerful than bullets are and yet they don’t even scratch Shardplate under most circumstances. We’ve never seen Plate damaged by anything other than Shardweapons or weapons/projectiles weighing ridiculous amounts, like half-ton hammers or mini boulders thrown from slings. And even if a bullet could put a hole in the plate, so what? Good luck with the one-in-a-million shot required to put a second bullet in exactly the same place as the first.

Edited January 9, 2019 by Fanghur Rahl

[Quantus]

3 hours ago, Bigmikey357 said:

Not sure you're gonna need that much. I mean, increasing pressure in a small chamber and then giving a projectile a means of escape is basically what a gun is. If one can manipulate pressure itself then one need not use another means to generate it, like explosions. Lashings work on an entire body as we've observed so far but if a Radiant can learn to focus that lash on a smaller space they get much more bang for the buck, exponentially so if I remember my high school physics correctly. Plus, nobody said that all projectiles fired from a shardgun need to travel at the same speed. For normal targets one can fire almost instantly. You may have to charge up to one-shot a thunderclast however.

Oh absolutely a pressure-based gun would get you there much easier, that's what I meant about soulcasting a fuel-based projectile, guns are converting stored chemical energy into an extreme pressure that is looking for release (our military likes the idea of railguns mostly just because there's no explosive fuel required, and the battleships they mount them on already have huge electric generators, often nuclear so electricity is basically unlimited).  Soulcasting would bypass that entirely, and they could use all kinds of crazy explosives and chemical reactions that we'd never use because we still have to store and transport them, where they could create them at need.  Seriously, a soulcaster with a proper grounding in modern chemistry would be terrifying...

In the case of gravity-based lashings, there isnt any advantage to "concentrating" it down, all objects fall at the same rate, and whether they are attaching the lashing to the whole object or just a piece of it the acceleration will be the same.  The concentration effect you are thinking of (if Im reading you correctly, apologies if I misunderstand) is all about manipulating the pressure (Force Per Area) part of the equations, where you take the same force but squeeze it out of a smaller area, like in pistons, hydraulic systems, etc.  But gravity doesnt give you much opportunity for that sort of thing, at least not without some other much more complex mechanism to store the energy in another form (spring catapult, gas compression, etc), and those are all about manipulating the Time part of the equation, storing energy up more slowly and then releasing it all at once (which at its most basic is what a bow is doing).

 

This conversation is making miss the Punkin Chunkin' competitions they used to have