"why so many gatlings?" Topic

I know why we use gatlings now, increased rate of fire, and getting rid of that horrid heat you build up from that high rate of fire.

But why have those on a grav tank or a mech? Sure you may still want a very high rate of fire. But it would seem that a rail gun could do that, without many of the drawbacks of a gatling.

First, yu can achieve a very high rate of fire with only a single barrel. All that weight you put into those extra barrels can be made into more armor, or more ammo. The energy to power it should only be a small edition to the power needed to move the vehicle, so you dont need all that bulky propellent. Again more ammo.

And heat. Heat comes from the burning of the propellent, not done on a rail gun. And from friction of forcing the projectile down the bore of a weapon. Again as I understand it this does not happen in a rail gun.

So why gatlings? Sure for near future games they maek a lot of sense, just as they do today. But farther out, when we have powerplants that can move these things, railguns seem to make a lot more sense. Or even directed energy weapons like lasers( although they have thier own set of potentialy fatal drawbacks) grasers plasma or fusion guns all seem to ofer great advances in damage potential. of course fusion and plasma likely have thier own cooling problems, and may well have a low rate of fire.

So why do we like gatlings so much? I think about half of the sci-fi models i am working on have them. certainly they are one of the more common weapons. Is the cool factor just that high?

I started this over in 15mm Sci-fi, but cant cross to here, odd as I dont see it as a scale problem. Anyway whats up with this?

owen

I think a lot of it comes down to this:

Visual familiarity.

If there were a lot of cool films with rail guns we would see more of them in sci-fi games I reckon.

Plus, when you see a mini/gatling gun you know what to expect.
When you see a gun you don't recognise, what does it do?
How to you stat it?

Nice bit of trivia, if we assume that they shoot the Minigun for 42 seconds in the film at a rate of 4000 shots per minute, they wasted about 75kg of 7.62mm ammo. Ventura's character would have close to 100 kg of ammmo on him (the weapon is fired in the attack of the guerilla camp). Add the weight of the gun and the backpack containing the ammo and batteries, bringing it closer to 150-200 kg of "portable" fun.

And you get a little over a minute of shooting for that.

They are a cliche. It's an obligation to have every giant robot having one growing out of it's arm.

Because they are cool

You're assuming that all those "gatlings" are actually relatively conventional projectile weapons. It's just as easy to assume that (say) pulse lasers work best with multiple tubes for cooling purposes, and that they're inaccurately but universally called "gatlings" by the troops. For that matter, a railgun might look a lot like a gatling – each "barrel" being a magnetic guide rail and the actual barrel being a tiny little thing at what appears to be the axis of rotation.

The powerguns of the Hammer's Slammers universe generate huge amounts of waste heat, and need multiple barrels to achieve high rates of fire – hence "gatlings" there, too. Easy to extend that to other energy weapons like fusion guns.

Now the bolt-spitting silliness of 40K, that can only be explained by the "kewl factor" argument. I still maintain that bolters incorporate a hyper-sophisticated nano-fabrication module that does nothing but create and eject fake "spent brass" for their caseless ammo. Just the sort of crazy nonsense that the Adeptus Mechanicus love – probably found the original prototype attached to a movie prop from the Golden Age of Technology and decided it was a sign from the Emperor. Or they were sold them as "upgrades" by an unscrupulous Squat Engineer who just liked jerking their chains.

Chainguns can fire nearly as fast as rotary multi-barrel cannon, and some of them can even change barrels between bursts. Revolver cannon are another popular choice, again, almost as fast as a rotary but lighter. These are often seen in Helicopter turrets, firing high velocity AP rounds. But externally they almost all just show a single barrel.

In one of the movies referenced above (not Predator) I know some of the armourer/SPFX guys – the ejected ammo was a mix of .30 and .50 brass with mixed loose links poured from a large bag in front of the camera – the real ammo – 5.56mm – was too small to film well.

Railguns have huge heating problems, from eddy currents in the barrels, switches and capacitors. The muzzle flash from a railgun is (mostly) copper plasma.

BSRLee, what chaingun changes barrels between bursts?

The most practical way a chaingun could do sustained fire like a gatling that I can think of is liquid cooling of the barrel--but I don't think there are any such chainguns in service today. Besides, would that weigh less than or more than an equivalent gatling?

Of course, there's always a conventional MG like the Vickers, Maxim, or Browning but utilizing watercooling for some very long, sustained fire (but the rate of fire is significantly lower than your typical gatling).

Rob

Part of it could be energy requirements for firing. With conventional ammunition you don't need energy to shoot it as you would to generate the power to shoot a rail gun.

If that is a problem because you need to power force fields, other primary weapons (like a rail gun) plus the anti-gravity whatsit to keep you mobile you might have a few of these in place.

Angel Barracks FTW. Just watching Predator is winning.

Just watching Predator is winning.

LOLOL

It's all about heat dissipation

I suspect an energy weapon might generate a fair bit of it

A railgun is an overgrown linear electric motor. How hot does an electric motor (or generator) get? Hot enough to need some kind of cooling, whether that's forced-air like on a car's alternator or water-cooling like on most industrial generators.

Railguns get *really* hot.

kreoseus2 has already answered this question.

What Kreoseus said and because they look baddass, the definative "kill-o-zap gun" (hitchhikers guide) a gun that its designers made obvious that it had a right end and a wrong end and if you where at the wrong end, things were not looking good…

"And heat. Heat comes from the burning of the propellent,"

I'm sorry but this is not true. 60% or more of the heat in a modern gun tube comes from friction. This is why modern bullets need to have a jacket to stop the bullet from melting on its way down the tube.

Ouzel von Schwartzwolfe,

I mentioned friction in the second half of that sentebce. What I didnt know was the percenage from each each part. I should have included that Is upose, but this way I learned the nubers.

Owen

Lion in the Stars.

As the net does not carry expresion well, the following contains no irony, sarcasm, inflection deflection or any other shadings of meanings. Just a few questions for further knowledge. And I dont do caps for emphisis, but I have a hypersensitive capslock key tht gets away from me regularly.

Perhaps I dont understand a railgun as well as I tought. It is basicly a long series of magnets that pull the projectile along. So, no friction as it is not forcing anything to contain the propellents, and no burning propellents. I get that the energy from that is high, but dint think it was that high. Also, as a railgun can be built much more open than a gunbarrel, cooling should be a lot better. Or am I wrong about that as well?

One of the problems I see with to many gatlings is a lack of understanding of what a gatling is for. Most of the population (which dont come here so this is not directed at most of the folks on TMP) They are not meant to fire long sustained blasts to chew up acres of terrain. They are amde to put enough ammo on a target to damage it in a short period of time. So aircraft that cant keep a weapon on target very long use them. Same thing with antiaircraft guns, and antimissle units as well. What you dont see are very many of them in an anti-infantry role.

Since WWII we have been able to produce single barrel machineguns that can fire at over a thousand rounds a minute. Yet we dont. Or at least not as a general use gun for the infantry. Th reason is that if you put one to two bullets into the ordinary combatant, he quites fighting. You dont need to put twenty rounds into him and spatter him over two acres. Even for supressive fire, you just dont need that high of a rate. Sure, a high rate is not a disadvantage in and of it self but….

The real problem of a two thousand round per minute machinegun to an infantryman is that he cant carry an unlimited amount of ammo. He has a very limited carry capacity, and amo gets heavy very quickly. If you add the extra weight of a gatling or metalstorm, he cant carry any ammo. Not to mention the electrical supply they both eed, gatling more so than metalstorm, but it still needs a battery.

And even a mch has a limited amount of storage capacity. Now for killing other mechs, a gatling does make sense the same way it makes sense to have one on an A-10. But, a good railgun should have better penetration on a round by round basis. Why tanks have a big cannon instead of a gatling. So again I think the railgun makes more sense. Unless there is some problem that makes them not workaboe in combat. But, it looks like we will work most of thsoe problems for railguns long before we work out how to make even a small mech. If we ever do. Not soe sort of powerassisted armor, we might have that in ten years, but big stompy robot types. Or walking tanks if you prefer.

I know i am a bit sensitive to ammo loads, but I ran out of ammo in afirefight once. And at a bad time (is there a good time to run out of ammo in a firefight?). So I am always looking at How long you can stay in a fight with a given weapon. most gatlings have less than ten seconds of ammo available. That is almost usless in a normal fiorefight. I have seen a limited number of ground vehicles that carried gatlings, but they wherre intended for limited circumstances, and not general use.

Owen

Are you seeing gatling guns instead of regular cannons? I haven't noticed that trend, but I don't purchase many 15mm tanks, so it could easily slip by me.

I mostly see gatlings in similar places to today… a secondary weapon on a ground vehicle (Perhaps these SF gatling guns can reduce their rate of fire to the point where they are useful in a general suppression role in addition to the roles you mentioned?), a weapon on a VTOL or ground attack vehicle… those sorts of vehicles.

So I don't see it in direct competition with a rail gun (which has more in common with a tank cannon).

badger22, in a railgun, the projectile is necessarily in contact with the conducting rails, since it forms part of the electrical circuit. The high projectile velocity causes high friction and thus heating. In addition, the electric current itself will cause resistive heating in the rails, as will any flexing of the rails due to the magnetic forces involved (the same forces that throw the projectile up the barrel also try to force the rails apart).

As to why they're common in games? probably because they're common in SF (as well as the ones from Predator, Terminator 2 and a variety of Vietnam movies, they seem to appear in giant robot anime, too:

In TV and film, it could simply be because they're visually interesting; the shape is noticeably different from "normal" guns, there are additional moving parts* and you get that cool electric whine both as a warning that loud violence is imminent and as a counterpoint to the tinkle of falling brass after the violence has ended.

On miniatures, it's probably partly because film and TV have "taught" us they're cool, but also partly to make the vehicles look different to real vehicles.

The first "well-known" rotary-barrel weapons in SF gaming I can think of are the assault cannon used by Space Marine Terminators in 40k, and the autocannon used on the original plastic epic-scale Warlord titans from the same setting. Battletech seems very fond of them these days, but I don't think they were as common in the late 80s when they were still mostly using old anime designs.

So why gatlings? Sure for near future games they maek a lot of sense, just as they do today. But farther out, when we have powerplants that can move these things, railguns seem to make a lot more sense. Or even directed energy weapons like lasers.

40k features gatling lasers:

and gatling plasma guns:

*http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GatlingGood

It whirs when there's no more ammo…

AndrewGPaul,

See I did learn something. But does it produce enough heat to need to go to the bulk of a gatling? Even if it does though, not sure a high velocity small bullet high rate of fire thing is the best option to kill other mechs. A better penetrater at a lower rate of fire seems to be a better bet, less ammo problems, and fewer movng parts is always beter i military gear. but I can certainly see a small gatling railgun spewing out clouds of flechetes to keep pesky infantrymen from fireing AT weapons.

I dont actualy object to gatlings, just so many of them it seems.

Owen

Ref: Chain guns that change barrels – several 30mm helicopter mounts have 3 barrels that do not rotate when the mount is fired. From the often unclear videos I have seen, the barrel unit rotates one place between bursts, the 3 barrels have a couple of disk shaped separators/ collimators on a central shaft.

As the bolt in a chain gun can be made to lock directly to the rear of the barrel there is negligable stress on the mount, unlike a Hotchkiss or Mauser style revolver cannon, which have no effective lock between the breach face and the barrel.

The only real down side to this is the enforced pause between bursts. Chain guns, being powered by a separate motor, can fire much faster than conventional gas or recoil operated guns, and they can be made lighter than multi-barrel rotary guns, hence the helicopter mounts.

I'm with kreoseus2 on this one. They just look cool!

On the railgun topic, I think a "coilgun" is what many people are referring to when they use the term "railgun". A coilgun doesn't have any part of the projectile touching the energizing system, so you don't get the same wear-and-tear as with a railgun. Either way, they're just too cool not to have one in a sci-fi setting.

Badger22--re: Gatlings vs Infantry

Puff the Magic Dragon (armed C-47 predecessor of AC-130)used MG's (I seem to remember they were the 7.62 Gatling variety) for anti-infantry shooting--I suspect, since these were fixed (or at best semi-fixed) side mounts, that sustained area fire was the purpose. And the AC-130 used the 20mm Gatling for a while--not sure what the current ones use, though.

Rob

AC-130: take one Hercules and fill it with equal parts LOL and WIN.

Puff worked pretty well with the gatlings. But, from an aircraft at that time, regular MGs just could not cover enough area fast enough to keep up with the C-47s speed. They also did guns a gogo, which is pretty much the same thing only with a chinook helicopter.

Even in WWII they did fire support aircraft like that. I have seen a picture of the interior of some cargo plane that had thompson submachineguns along one side. I believe there was a crewman back there to change magazines between fireing runs.

I dont object to gatlings at all. In certain situations they are a great weapon system. But they are not a panacea. There just seem to be to many of them in to many places.

One of my favorites comes from cyperpunk 2020. even though it is alommost exclusively a caseless ammo setting, they have the pictures of powerarmor throwing steams of brass form thier gatlings. Just doesnt fit the background, although the gatlings themselves do.

Owen