On Some Quick Maths
So I did some quick maths. Which is the best kind, really; long-drawn out maths invariably get over my head and out of control, and lead to no satisfying resolution.
Quick maths, though, let you find some interesting things out, and make useful comparisons. On the other hand, though the maths tend to be quick, the explanations can be very long.
I think the result of this bit is interesting enough to babble on about for a bit, though. So I shall.
. . .
I spent a bit of this evening looking up statistics for firearms and ammunition, as research for Light and Iron's thaumaturgic firearms. I'm still trying to figure out the physics for thaumaturgy, and having some numbers to compare things tends to help. Like, how comparable the task of keeping someone at room temperature when it's cold out is to firing a bullet at someone, in terms of energy. I've been concentrating on the latter matter for the moment.
As you might expect, there's a bit of variation among different sorts of ammunition. Handguns tend to use less powerful bullets that fire at slower speeds than assault rifles, though the bigger handguns also tend to use comparitively bigger bullets. Wikipedia helpfully provides some statistics on the matter - one of the benefits of researching modern weapons as opposed to archaic ones is that the modern variety tends to be a lot better documented. Some further poking around even found me some values on other notable firearms.
. . .
So numbers are good. But what do they tell us?
[High School Physics begins below. Those who are already familiar with the concepts may skip to the end, while those who are allergic to Science should probably consult a doctor. Exposure to medical science might seem like it's going to make things worse in the short term, but there's enough Science floating about that you really need to get it treated.]
Well, the most intersting number in the Wikipedia articles (and the reason I went "ooh" and starting doing all this math in the first place) is the kinetic energy of the projectile in Joules. What this means is probably best explained by the Law of Conservation of Energy: when the bullet is fired (which accelerates the object of mass X to velocity Y) it imbues it with kinetic energy. When the bullet hits something and decelerates back down to a standstill, it transfers its kinetic energy to what it hits. If you hit a pool ball with another pool ball, it'll knock it into motion; if you hit a person with a bullet, messy things will happen.
Heavier objects have more kinetic energy, since you have to spend more energy to speed them up. Ditto for faster objects, because you have to spend more energy to get them going faster. So when a heavy, fast object hits you, it hits you harder.
Kinetic energy isn't necessarily equivalent to lethality; the same amount of energy that's imbued in the bullet is also imbued in pushing the gun back at you (because it's being fired by an explosion, which tends to explode in every direction), and firing a gun isn't nearly as dangerous as being fired at by a gun. This can even vary among bullets: small bullets going faster may posesses more energy but not necessarily make bigger wounds. Still, a projectile with more energy can reasonably be considered "more powerful" than one with less.
[End High School Physics.]
So the concept I've been mulling over for Light and Iron is that of Thamaturgic Telekinetic Firearms, which use whatever magical method I'll have of throwing things about to throw bullets about at lethal speeds. For consistancy's sake, it's helpful to know what exactly this involves: how does firing a bullet compare to, say, the task of lifting someone in the air and throwing them bodily around? Or heating a room? Or zapping someone with a dangerous electric shock? Especially since the game balance I'm working on uses available power sources as limiters: powerful effects require big old batteries, and will drain smaller ones in a handful of uses.
I settled on a few nice round values: 10 gram bullets imbued with 1,000 joules of kinetic energy. Which means they're thrown at 447.2 meters per second - slower, if 1000J is the gun's rating and it's operating at less-than-perfect efficiency. This is something a bit more powerful than most modern handguns, but significantly less powerful than modern assault rifles and Dirty Harry's .44 magnum. It's also a tad less powerful than the above linked American Civil War musket, while firing ammunition one third of the size. 1,000 joules is a very reasonable amount of energy, and gives me something that seems to have reasonable stopping power while still keeping archaic armor types viable. (Maybe. That's more research.) And isn't, you know, orders of magnitude away from the energy requirements of other reasonable effects. Things are cool.
A bit more math makes things a little more interesting, however. The design for my Kinetic Rifles is essentially (sort of) that of a magical coilgun; the barrel is wrapped in a coil of telekinesis-inducing material, which propels the bullet along inside of it when triggered. So the energy of the weapon is directly proportional to the power of the coil and the length of the barrel. Just by magic instead of electromagnets.
Or, since I started from the other direction, how powerful the coils need to be is inversely proportional to the length of the barrel. Since I know what it's supposed to end up as, the gun's got x length of barrel to get the bullet up to the proper speed. A 1 meter barrel produces both a nice round number and a properly hefty gun, so I'm using that.
So a bullet accelerating from 0 to 447.2 m/sec over the course of 1 meter takes 0.004 seconds. That is extremely fast. This means that the coils need to be capable of throwing the bullet pretty hard, to speed it up that quickly. The measure of that is watts, or joules per second . . . and 1,000 joules per 0.004 seconds is 250,000 watts. For reference, this is 335 horsepower, which wouldn't be unreasonable for a car.
On the other hand, it's still not that much energy; the tremendous wattage is because the duration is extremely short. But because the duration is extremely short, (and because I can make up the thaumaturgic properties of things) a material that "snaps" a telekinetic force for an extremely short period of time when exposed to a charge sounds a bit more plausible. It also makes fully automatic weapons a bit more difficult, if there are limits on how quickly you can "snap" the coils before they start breaking down.
Interestingly, 1000J of energy can easily be produced in a couple seconds with mechanical (electrical) generators such as this one. Which brings to mind some sort of weapon that you fire, then pull on or crank something to recharge its firing mechanism before your next shot . . .
. . . good lord, I've reinvented the crossbow. But with, uh, magic.
Well done, me.
Quick maths, though, let you find some interesting things out, and make useful comparisons. On the other hand, though the maths tend to be quick, the explanations can be very long.
I think the result of this bit is interesting enough to babble on about for a bit, though. So I shall.
. . .
I spent a bit of this evening looking up statistics for firearms and ammunition, as research for Light and Iron's thaumaturgic firearms. I'm still trying to figure out the physics for thaumaturgy, and having some numbers to compare things tends to help. Like, how comparable the task of keeping someone at room temperature when it's cold out is to firing a bullet at someone, in terms of energy. I've been concentrating on the latter matter for the moment.
As you might expect, there's a bit of variation among different sorts of ammunition. Handguns tend to use less powerful bullets that fire at slower speeds than assault rifles, though the bigger handguns also tend to use comparitively bigger bullets. Wikipedia helpfully provides some statistics on the matter - one of the benefits of researching modern weapons as opposed to archaic ones is that the modern variety tends to be a lot better documented. Some further poking around even found me some values on other notable firearms.
. . .
So numbers are good. But what do they tell us?
[High School Physics begins below. Those who are already familiar with the concepts may skip to the end, while those who are allergic to Science should probably consult a doctor. Exposure to medical science might seem like it's going to make things worse in the short term, but there's enough Science floating about that you really need to get it treated.]
Well, the most intersting number in the Wikipedia articles (and the reason I went "ooh" and starting doing all this math in the first place) is the kinetic energy of the projectile in Joules. What this means is probably best explained by the Law of Conservation of Energy: when the bullet is fired (which accelerates the object of mass X to velocity Y) it imbues it with kinetic energy. When the bullet hits something and decelerates back down to a standstill, it transfers its kinetic energy to what it hits. If you hit a pool ball with another pool ball, it'll knock it into motion; if you hit a person with a bullet, messy things will happen.
Heavier objects have more kinetic energy, since you have to spend more energy to speed them up. Ditto for faster objects, because you have to spend more energy to get them going faster. So when a heavy, fast object hits you, it hits you harder.
Kinetic energy isn't necessarily equivalent to lethality; the same amount of energy that's imbued in the bullet is also imbued in pushing the gun back at you (because it's being fired by an explosion, which tends to explode in every direction), and firing a gun isn't nearly as dangerous as being fired at by a gun. This can even vary among bullets: small bullets going faster may posesses more energy but not necessarily make bigger wounds. Still, a projectile with more energy can reasonably be considered "more powerful" than one with less.
[End High School Physics.]
So the concept I've been mulling over for Light and Iron is that of Thamaturgic Telekinetic Firearms, which use whatever magical method I'll have of throwing things about to throw bullets about at lethal speeds. For consistancy's sake, it's helpful to know what exactly this involves: how does firing a bullet compare to, say, the task of lifting someone in the air and throwing them bodily around? Or heating a room? Or zapping someone with a dangerous electric shock? Especially since the game balance I'm working on uses available power sources as limiters: powerful effects require big old batteries, and will drain smaller ones in a handful of uses.
I settled on a few nice round values: 10 gram bullets imbued with 1,000 joules of kinetic energy. Which means they're thrown at 447.2 meters per second - slower, if 1000J is the gun's rating and it's operating at less-than-perfect efficiency. This is something a bit more powerful than most modern handguns, but significantly less powerful than modern assault rifles and Dirty Harry's .44 magnum. It's also a tad less powerful than the above linked American Civil War musket, while firing ammunition one third of the size. 1,000 joules is a very reasonable amount of energy, and gives me something that seems to have reasonable stopping power while still keeping archaic armor types viable. (Maybe. That's more research.) And isn't, you know, orders of magnitude away from the energy requirements of other reasonable effects. Things are cool.
A bit more math makes things a little more interesting, however. The design for my Kinetic Rifles is essentially (sort of) that of a magical coilgun; the barrel is wrapped in a coil of telekinesis-inducing material, which propels the bullet along inside of it when triggered. So the energy of the weapon is directly proportional to the power of the coil and the length of the barrel. Just by magic instead of electromagnets.
Or, since I started from the other direction, how powerful the coils need to be is inversely proportional to the length of the barrel. Since I know what it's supposed to end up as, the gun's got x length of barrel to get the bullet up to the proper speed. A 1 meter barrel produces both a nice round number and a properly hefty gun, so I'm using that.
So a bullet accelerating from 0 to 447.2 m/sec over the course of 1 meter takes 0.004 seconds. That is extremely fast. This means that the coils need to be capable of throwing the bullet pretty hard, to speed it up that quickly. The measure of that is watts, or joules per second . . . and 1,000 joules per 0.004 seconds is 250,000 watts. For reference, this is 335 horsepower, which wouldn't be unreasonable for a car.
On the other hand, it's still not that much energy; the tremendous wattage is because the duration is extremely short. But because the duration is extremely short, (and because I can make up the thaumaturgic properties of things) a material that "snaps" a telekinetic force for an extremely short period of time when exposed to a charge sounds a bit more plausible. It also makes fully automatic weapons a bit more difficult, if there are limits on how quickly you can "snap" the coils before they start breaking down.
Interestingly, 1000J of energy can easily be produced in a couple seconds with mechanical (electrical) generators such as this one. Which brings to mind some sort of weapon that you fire, then pull on or crank something to recharge its firing mechanism before your next shot . . .
. . . good lord, I've reinvented the crossbow. But with, uh, magic.
Well done, me.
On Snoozing and Loosing
Ah, crap. Someone else made a game called Somnia. It's nothing like my concept, and looks damn interesting . . . but I liked the name.
(Apparently it is a shadow-walking puzzle game, which sounds kind of really cool.)
I guess this is what I get for sitting on a concept for upwards of a year without doing anything really about it. Aesop: DELIVERED.
(Apparently it is a shadow-walking puzzle game, which sounds kind of really cool.)
I guess this is what I get for sitting on a concept for upwards of a year without doing anything really about it. Aesop: DELIVERED.
On Dragons and Other People's Maladies
Finished arts, that may be prints material:
Artwork done for a friend of mine who had best stop being deatlhy ill if they know what's good for them. (Angry face.)
Artwork done for a friend of mine who had best stop being deatlhy ill if they know what's good for them. (Angry face.)
On Addemdum and Compulsion
Also, because I feel like posting some of the other sketch stuff I've got lying about:
On Printing and Progress Shots
So I've been working up a couple pieces suitable for printing onto paper. Because people buy that sort of thing, right?
Right?
If all goes well, I might try and peddle them at Anime Boston, or something. Anyways, I felt like posting something, so here are a couple of progress shots of one of them:
I think I'm refining my work process a bit. Turning quick sketches into more solid, polished pieces. I've been hurming and harming for a bit because I haven't really been happy with a lot of the sketches recently, until it occurred to me that they're, you know, sketches.
Anyways, that should be finished soon, at which point I'll lob up the finished thing.
Right?
If all goes well, I might try and peddle them at Anime Boston, or something. Anyways, I felt like posting something, so here are a couple of progress shots of one of them:
I think I'm refining my work process a bit. Turning quick sketches into more solid, polished pieces. I've been hurming and harming for a bit because I haven't really been happy with a lot of the sketches recently, until it occurred to me that they're, you know, sketches.
Anyways, that should be finished soon, at which point I'll lob up the finished thing.
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