Historical Problem

First Champions/Hero then GURPS share a problem.

They are point based systems with near-zero guidance for where you should put your points.

"The good news is that nothing is decided for you. The bad news is that nothing is decided for you." - FuzzyGeff.

In OG AD&D, the RPG I cut my teeth on, you got to make two decisions in character generation:  Race and class.  Even so, your choices could be limited by shitty die rolls.

Traveller, even more so.  Bad stats rolls could force you into the "Other" career path.

This problem was less obvious in Champions because most people had a comic book character they were trying to recreate and a clear vision of your character concept steers you through the process.

Providing you do some reading.

Which made me realize that I'd seen this kind of break before.

A player who makes a fighter in AD&D makes a few rolls and buy some gear and they're done making their character.  It's a bit more complex in later editions and Pathfinder, but the player doesn't need to do much reading to get their character done and be effective.

But a player who makes a spell caster needs to select their spells.  That means they need to open the Player's Handbook and learn how the spells they've chosen work.  It takes a lot more effort.

People naturally gravitate towards either position.

GURPS rewards the player who cracks open the book and spends the time reading about all the skills, advantages and disadvantages.  It punishes the person that doesn't.  In effect, it's a game made for the person who naturally gravitates towards being a spell caster.

It's exasperating trying to get someone who just wants to play the game through the character generation process because you're constantly poking them for decisions that they don't feel, thanks to playing other games, they shouldn't have to be making.

It leads to some resentment, during play, when they cannot do something that they feel is obvious that their character should be able to do.

It's because they're unfamiliar with the choices and ended up not seeing the skill or advantage that would provide them with the ability to do the things they clearly should be able to do.  Since the GM cannot read their mind, we can't help realize their vision.

GURPS introduced templates to help with this, but they only take it so far and, too often, a player will make the template to the letter with little to no individualization.

All of this is a tall, thick wall barring entry into the hobby for a lot of people.  Especially people who're not interested in the fantasy genre. 

Do-Over

Marv and I went through his Twilight character and we made enough changes that I think it's fair we re-do the fight in Złoczew.

The reason the fight went the way it did was because Marv's character didn't know how to use the bayonet he was attempting to stab a guard with.

The problem with this is the character is supposed to BE Marv, if Marv was born about 30 years later.

Making yourself as a character is a time-honored way of learning the rules and we dropped the ball with his character by missing a couple of important skills that he has in real life.

Marv was trained on the bayonet when he was in the Army.

That means his character should know how to use one and that changes the outcome of the fight significantly. 

For Future Reference

 

Hang Anyone Who Answers

Jim Geraghty wants someone to publish how many rounds we have in our critical munitions stockpiles.

During a shooting confrontation.

Something about "aid and comfort to the enemy" comes to mind about anyone who gives Jim the "straight answer" he seeks.

I might even go so far as to include Mr Geraghty as an accessory before the fact for soliciting the information from someone who would divulge the information. 

Someting Brewing

A friend of mine home-brews.

Because he likes to try new stuff he's always asking what style we want him to make.

I keep saying "scotch ale!"

Since I demanded it, he insisted I come "help".

I didn't do much helping, mostly just watching and kibbutzing.

I learned a bit about brewing too. 

Admission

It only took a year and a half, but I have finally moved my Thunderbird profile from Crispy IV to DerpyPuter.

I guess it was time to admit that Derpy is the main computer.

Procrastination was more at fault. 

Nagasaki Day

81 years ago, Fat Man was released from Bock's Car over the Imperial Japanese city of Nagasaki.

I'm Not Pedantic YOU ARE!

Just in case you wanted to see, graphically, how complicated separate charge rounds can get in GURPS with Gun Stats...

This is just changing the charge and firing the same M107 HE round from an M198 howitzer.

To go with full detail, you'd need this many entries for EVERY 155mm round.  Fun, huh?

Paging Chomps On The Um White Courtesy Phone

 

Would Mr Fleetwood, who was actually there, like to comment on this video? 

Brave In The Attempt

The Boy failed to advance to the state level at Special Olympics bowling.

We kind of expected this.

His scores were the highest he'd ever gotten in practice, and that moved him up a bracket where his scores were just above the entry level.

There's always next year! 

 

Time Corrected

The Hiroshima post has been time corrected for the moment of detonation, which is actually on the 5th of August at 1915 hours EDT.

This happens when recording things that happen on the other side of the planet sometimes. 

Should Have Kept It As It Was

The more DSA candidates win in the primaries, the more I think we shouldn't have let Germany reunite.

We should have kept East Germany as it was as a living history museum so that when anyone started to forget that every political party with socialism or socialist in the name was evil, we could point them at the Democratic Republic of Germany so they could marvel at it's success.

Of course, like all political groups with socialism in their name, the real goals are not the stated ones.

Sharia is the more apt 'S' in the DSA name.

You only get to use the D a limited number of times before they lock the gate behind themselves once they obtain enough power.

It creates the classic situation you can vote your way into and have to shoot your way out.  And they do love themselves some gun control, don't they?

I also notice that DSA shares a trait with another socialist in the name group.  They hate the Jews.  They have a lot of overlap on the political Venn diagram with "conservative" bigots there.

Dunno if we're going to dodge this civil war.  Our luck has to run out eventually. 

You Can't Save It

As an armchair historian and a degreed psychologist...  (What an odd thing to say).

I keep watching people trying to change the word being used for something to keep someone from being offended.

I've lived through three words to describe black people politely when the previous word had become a slur.

I used to have two editions of a textbook changing the names of specific diagnoses because the name of a diagnosis was now an insult.

I've watched an NCO reply to a Black officer with, "Sir," with little doubt that he meant, "CENSORED."

I wonder how long it will be before saying "n-word" carries the same weight as CENSORED.  Especially since you can tell what word was censored there, but it's OK as long as I only allude to it without actually saying it.

But you cannot avoid people insulting other people or disparaging them.

People throw slurs.

In the long run, it's generally better to let them so you can readily identify them and avoid doing business with their like.

You cannot change the words fast enough to keep someone from  being offended.  It's best to let them get accustomed hearing the slur until it loses its power to offend.

Being offended for someone is the absolute least helpful thing you can do about someone being offensive.  Let the target of the offense get offended, or not, as they wish.  Too often I find that the target dismisses the offense because they're familiar with the source only to have a third party cause a shit storm because they're all offended for the target who doesn't really care any more. 

Near Miss

4eR has a page on their virtuousness.

Of note:

 Learn it, use it?

Perhaps we should take the time to learn suffixes on Greek derived words.

Someone who has a slave mentality is heteronomous.

Someone who has been forced into slavery is being subjected to heteronomy.

Of course they'd get the vapors if you called the parts of your brakes by thier proper names. 

PS: 

Even more amusing is they admit on p.B518 that they're aware that slavery didn't always mean Uncle Tom's Cabin.

It must be really painful to deal with the rats racing around inside their skulls trying to reconcile the world the way they want it to be, the world as it is and the world as it was. 

So They're Just Guns Now?

 GOA got a great ruling from a Federal Court in Texas that appears to nuke the NFA for items where the stamp was dropped to $0 for a large swath of specific people and likely everyone!

Summation here:

 

The government has 7 days to file an appeal to the, generally, pro-gun 5th circuit.

Hiroshima Day

81 years ago, Little Boy was released from Enola Gay over the Imperial Japanese city of Hiroshima.

Revised

Got my pdf copy of GURPS 4e Revised, 4eR from now on, today.

The biggest change is the Basic Set is now a single volume.  This isn't too huge because there's several people who reformatted the two books into a single pdf a long time ago.

The big functional change is going from 3-columns to 2-columns.  I'm surprised at how much more readable some sections are.

The Combat Lite section has been replaced with Addendum 1 and the pages for the index from GURPS Basic Set: Characters have been given over to Addendum 2.

They're optional rules, and I think I like a couple of them.  Even if several characters will need reworked from it. 

Some of the new artwork is really meh.  Like throwback to OG AD&D meh.

I know there are changes to "make the game more accessible" to people looking to be offended at every turn by being "less offensive" for them.

These changes don't stand out to me because I'm not looking to be offended at every turn.  It ends up being mox nix and probably should have just been done without the fucking fanfare they applied to it.

It was the fucking fanfare that was pissing people off, not the changes.  People are sick of virtue signalling. 

The Post Of The Beast

This is the 666th post of this year!

 Have some Maiden!

 

Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad

Took a... something to the left front on Moxie.

The 'T' part was encased in rubber that fell apart while I was pulling it out of the tire.

Update: Reader Red's Woodsman appears to have ID'd it.  The metal parts of a bicycle brake pad. 

Sadly, the plugs don't appear to have taken and the hole still leaks.  Time to take it to the local ma & pa tire place for a patch.  Update: Ma & Pa tire place charged me the princely sum of $25 to put a patch over the hole that the plug failed to seal.

The back-up camera on Moxie was a blurry mess.  $25 plus tax replacement from Amazon and it's crisp and sharp!  It's amazingly good now!

Got the oil and filter changed on my father in law's truck.  We'd missed the scheduled window because...  I was convinced he'd taken it to a shop to have the oil done.

He hadn't.  But since we used the extended miles synthetic stuff, prolly no harm. 

Battle Of The Geeks

Having a discussion on a GURPS forum where someone asked how we'd stat out the Santa-Barbara Sistemas 106mm M-DN11 high explosive anti-personnel round.

I posted the description of the round here. 

I gave two ways of doing it.

First is to just treat it like it's an HE round and let it do 6dx7(0.5) pi++, linked 6dx3[5d+1] cr ex.

Second is to come up with a new round combining shrapnel and HE which has 1,000 1d-1 pi+ balls expanding from the detonation point with a linked 6dx3 cr ex.

Them: But what about X?

Me: I accounted for X.  You forgot a lot of things figuring out the weight of the projectile and your reply to that tells me you have a reading comprehension problem.

Them: But I don't like how you did it!

Me: OK, do it how you like it.  I don't think that matches the description of the round and I explained why when I gave stats for the new shrapnel HE round.

Them: But I don't like that way of doing it, what about Y?  This makes new rules that do a better job of describing the shape of the pattern that I'm getting wrong because I'm not accounting for the fact that the round is traveling down range at the same time it explodes.  Plus, let me compare it to a round I rejected as a model for this earlier.

Me: Don't care.  I've figured it out to my liking and it even "will it GURPS" OK with Argentinian and Chilean usage.

Them: But you didn't answer about Y!

Me: Not going to.  I explained my reasoning, said I was happy with what I came up with, and didn't need to write new rules.  There's no need for Y now that I'm done.

The thing that ticks me off the most about this is Chile and Argentina appear to be the only customers for this Spanish designed and made, German type designated round.  It's just not going to come up in anything I'm going to be playing.

The whole rest of the world is using clones of the US designs. 

Recoilless Difference

The 90mm M67 Recoilless Rifle is ST 15B†.

If you forget to apply the Rcl 1 for being recoilless it's ST 36B† and Rcl 29.

That's pretty dramatic.

That B in the ST stat means that you really only need 2/3 the ST requirement, or ST 10, to avoid penalties using the weapon...  Assuming you actually use the bipod.

The † means you've got to use both hands to wield it and there's a lot on p. B270 that goes with that. 

Stuff You Find

While calculating the stats for the rounds for the M67 90mm reckless ryetuful, I found an oddity.

The M591 HE round is an 81mm mortar round (looks like an M374 round) with a sabot to shim it up to 90mm stuffed into a 90x427mmR case for use in the recoilless rifle.  They even left the fins on!

That is relentlessly pragmatic.

The reference I have says it's XM591, so I am not even sure it went into service.

Update: Willard remembers there being HEAT rounds (M371A1) in the ammo bunkers when he was in 2-75 Rangers and heard from troops back from 'Nam using the multi-flechette APERS rounds (M590) but nary a mention of an HE round.

Shhhhhhhh

 

ARGH

What kind of round is a 106mm M-DN11 HEAP for the M40 family of recoilless rifles in GURPS terms?

The 106 mm HEAP M-DN 11 is a fixed round with the projectile rigidly secured to the perforated steel cartridge case by a crimping groove. The projectile has two indexing buttons 180º apart on the forward bourrelet and a pre-engraved copper drive band encircles the projectile just forward of the base. The projectile is a thin-walled aluminium shell with a conical ogive, filled with 770 g of hexogen with 5 per cent wax. The internal surfaces of the shell body are lined with 1,000 steel pellets set in resin. A nose-mounted M-DN 121 fuze may be preset for either instant impact functioning or delayed action. In either instance the usual blast effects are enhanced by the scattering of the 1,000 steel pellets. The perforated steel cartridge case may either be M93B1 or M94B1, both with an M57 percussion primer press fitted to the base. The propelling charge is 3.65 kg of M26 propellant powder in multiperforated cylindrical grain form, known in Spain as Fil 349. This round has a maximum effective range of 1,500 m, although the maximum range possible is 7,640 m. Muzzle velocity is 560 m/s. This 106 mm (actual calibre 105 mm) recoilless rifle HEAP round is produced in Spain by SANTA BARBARA SA and DEFEX SA. It is primarily intended for anti-matériel or anti-personnel use and contains 1,000 steel pellets.

 

That sounds like a normal, everyday, HE round with the pellets added to make up for the thin skin of a recoilless round. 

Why Does Not Answer How

Ubuntu has three "Power Modes."

Performance, Balanced and Power Saver.

Performance notes, "High performance and power usage."

Balanced notes, "Standard performance and power usage."

Power Saver notes, "Reduced performance and power usage."

I have Balanced selected; or so I thought.

Derpyputer was not performing up to spec and it was right after a restart for an update, a browser update and installing a different music player.

Uh oh.  Which of those things broke the computer?

I just endured the slower performance while I waited for my brain to hit a space where I could endure looking for the answer.

Somewhere in here, while tabulating the stats for the Type 64 rifle, I noticed the built in screen would dim much sooner than expected.

So I went into the settings to change the time setting for that.

Turns out there's no discrete setting for that, but this is where I see that "Power Saver" has been selected.

I changed it back to "Balanced" and all is better! 

I have no idea how this setting got changed!  There's supposedly no keyboard shortcut for it, but I suspect feline involvement. 

A Reply To The Help

7.62x51mm Purple Tip

Japan decided that full up 7.62 NATO was too powerful for its purposes, but also wanted to remain ammo compatible with US forces.

So they made a 7.62x51mm NATO rifle and issued a reduced pressure load to its troops.

For years I didn't have much information on it.

The internet has grown since then.

It's a 139gr bullet at 2,300 fps from the same barrel length as a H&K G3.

The G3 sends a 146gr bullet downrange at 2,625 fps.

The Japanese round, according to Gun Stats will do 5d+2 pi out to 700/2,900.  The G3 does 6d+2 pi to 840/3,500 (High Tech says 850/3,750) and so does the Type 64 firing NATO spec ammo!

The Type 62 GPMG, with a longer barrel will do 6d pi out to 730/3,100 and 7d pi to 900/3,800 with NATO spec ammo.  That 900/3,800 is the same as what the M14 calculates to, but High Tech says should be 1,000/4,200; plan accordingly.

Why did I figure this out?

I made something of a 'verse hopping setting and the players start as tourists at Ayer's Rock Urulu in Australia when the Japanese invade in 1994 inspired by Tom Clancy's Debt of Honor.

I knew the Type 64 rifle fired a reduced power round, but didn't know things like bullet weight and velocity so I made some shit up and called it good when the players captured a couple guns.

Ever since then, I periodically check up to see if more information has escaped the relentlessly classified JSDF records.  It's this kind of secrecy that had the Japanese using the Type 64 in 1994 instead of the 5.56 Type 89!

Older Is Newer

There's no iTunes for Ubuntu.

There was iTunes on my Win7 and OSX 10.6.8 installs on the dead Mac Pro.

This has led to a discovery of just how much music was in the DRM locked m4p format.

Amazon is happy to sell me the music again in mp3 format without any DRM attached.

SIGH.  I sometimes miss Napster.

Going to be a bit of a slog finding and replacing the locked music.

But I get the bitter amusement that this is not the first time I've had to repurchase a large chunk of my music.

I've gone from vinyl to cassette to CD to mp3 to m4p and now back to mp3!

Yay! Fun! Yay! 

Almost A Good Deal

Harvey found a oscillating fan to replace the dying Lasko on the back porch for half-off at $10.

While it wasn't the sturdiest design, it would have served just fine.

Until I broke it trying to adjust the height.

I didn't have the collet unscrewed far enough to let the shaft slide freely and should not have forced it.

Well, we now have a $32 Lasko fan... 

Power Only

I noticed that I didn't have a song I wanted to listen to on my phone.

Then I discovered that I did have the file on my phone, but it was DRM locked from iTunes.  You can't have iTunes on an Android phone.

No problem!

Buy the song, again, from Amazon, in a DRM-free mp3 format.

Plug in the phone to transfer the file.

No little notice asking if I wanna change from charge only to file transfer.

Mutter under breath...

This is the first time I've tried to do this since getting the Samsung, so maybe a default setting is wrong.

Search the search engines for answers.  Find them.  Change settings.

Plug in phone.

Nothing.

Get frustrated.

Realize that I might have a charger only cord plugged in.

Try different cord.

Get the expected notice asking if I wanna change from charge only to file transfer.

Move song from computer to phone.

In fact, I deleted the contents of the music folder on the phone and replaced it with the music folder on the computer, just to make sure I have all my tunes again. 

6.5x43mm NATO?

Canada is moving to have FN's 6.5x43mm LICC NATO standardized.  The UK is also interested.

120gr copper OTM bullet at 2,800 fps from a 14.5" barrel.

That's quicker than 6.5 Grendel from a 16" barrel!

Even more fun is it's the same size factor as an AR-15 instead of the M7's AR-10.

Of course, there are GURPS stats, why do you even need to ask?

 Not sure what they plan on using for an optic.

The Modernization Of Dottie Continues Apace

Swapped the Vortex SPARC AR red-dot for a Vortex Spitfire AR.  Ditched the fixed A2 rear sight for a Magpul MBUS3; it's interesting that I'm OK with how this looks with the Magpul handguards where it was unacceptable with the A2 and A1 handguards.

The Spitfire AR is a 1x prism optic with an etched reticle which is much better for my astigmatic eyes than the Star Trek photon torpedo effect of a conventional red-dot.

It's a dot inside two concentric circles.

Disappointingly, it does not have a quick-detach and the base cannot be removed to install one.  Hopefully I will be able to use the irons through it.  Eyes crossed.

The etched glass protects me somewhat against battery failure and modern optics are getting ever tougher.  Vortex has an outstanding warranty too.

A Modest Proposal

First, since the Department of War gets substantial exemptions from the evironmental bullshit laws...

Let's build some nuclear power plants!

Call them training centers for the Navy and use standardized designs they are already using in subs and carriers.

Yes, they are teeny reactors compared to the "real thing," but we can compensate by building lots and lots of them.

Electricity production is a byproduct and we can sell it to the local electrical monopoly or direct to customers at cost.  Or at the local rate.  Doesn't matter.

Any protesters get stroppy and they're threatening a military base not a Department of Energy facility.

I think we could do the same thing with refineries in places like California.  Fuel production is a vital national defense necessity.

Run it like Lake City and let them sell overruns to the public. 

Remember

 

Just because things are going well now, it doesn't mean you're not fucked in the end.

Ratioed

Did some math.

Being a long term hot-rodder it bothers me that the rear gear ratio in The Beast starts with a 2.

2.92:1 to be exact.

I think this bothers me because I had 2.56 gears in my '79 Camaro when I got it and they did not play well with the 305 small block and TH350.

The final ratios were 6.45/3.89/2.56.

It got better when I dropped a 350 small block and found a 2.73 posi rear.

6.88/4.15/2.73.

And a bit perkier with the Jaguar rear's 2.88.

7.26/4.38/2.88.

The Biscayne SS, with a 5.7L LT1 and 4L60E and 3.08 gears got:

9.42/5.02/3.08/2.14

The first gear ratio was like having 3.73 gears in the Camaro, but better than the 2.56 for cruising.  Everybody wins! 

The Beast's final ratios are:

 11.76/6.90/4.44/3.36/2.49/1.95

That's like having a 3.73 rear in the Biscayne or a 4.56 rear in the Camaro for the launch, plus extra gears for mileage.  70 mph highway rpms would be about 2,400 in the Biscayne and 4,200 in the Camaro versus 1,700 in the PPV.

A common mod for a PPV is to go with a 3.27 rear from a 5th Gen Camaro, it's stronger too.

Those ratios end up being:

13.17/7.73/4.98/3.77/2.79/2.18

To match that launch gear the Camaro would have needed 5.38 gears and would "cruise" at almost 4,600 rpm at 70.  Yikes!

The Biscayne would need a 4.56 gear set.  Cruise rpm would be just over 2,700.

The PPV would cruise at just about 1,900.

I kinda dig these new transmissions.  Plus, it doesn't seem like many people are complaining about the 6L80's strength. 

Tax ID

If the entire point of the NFA process is about taxes and proving the tax is paid; why is it the only tax that requires fingerprints?  And photo ID?  And a background check?

I don't need any of that to pay my property taxes.

I don't need any of that to pay my income taxes.

"But this is the registration of an item!"

I don't need any of that to register my car.

In fact, after decades of open border nonsense, they don't even check to see if it's actually ME who's paying my taxes.

All of this adds up to prove that the tax power justification is bullshit.

That was before the taxes on some NFA items dropped to $0.

Now there isn't even a tax power justification to this.

I've also noted silence on getting SBR's and Silencers removed from the NFA lately.

Were we so easily distracted? 

Found My Notes!

Marv and FuzzyGeff's T2K characters are in Złoczew, Poland three days after the battle of Kalisz, July 21, 2000, just before dawn.

Marv's character is wounded.

The NPC's have brought up their M240G and the tripod.

They are ready...  Maybe?

Aside:  Ubuntu has a handy way to make the 'ł', so did the Mac.  Windows made it a pain. 

Gen 2 Grippy

On a whim I took my G17.2 out to the range Tuesday and noticed something.

No little scrape on the side my hand from the slide.

The G17.1 clones scrape my hand.  The Gen 2 grip textures were/are an improvement over the Gen 1.  Gee, I think I remember reading the GunWriters® saying something about that in the way back...

I shoot low with it, though...

I'm Getting A Little Sick Of This

One of the things you get with being a 100% service connected veteran in Florida is a property tax bill of $0.

$1 property?  $0 property taxes.

$500 million property?  $0 property taxes. 

Apparently they will be most affected by the referendum on increasing the homestead exemption. 

How?

Increased ad valorem.

Increased ad valorem that everyone will have to pay if the local politicians don't get the message about reducing their bloated budgets.

It's a scare tactic to get us to vote against our own interests in favor of these "poor" veterans.

Oh, a married 100% vet gets $4,158.17 a month ($49,898.04 a year tax free) for their service too.  So Mr Young complaining about ad valorem going from $2,000 a year to $4,000 a year can cover it with a single month's check.  Or he can space it out and hold $333.33 a month until tax time.

If he's living on that disability check exclusively, he shouldn't be living in a city with $2k ad valorem.  I'm willing to bet that he and his wife have jobs and are making decent money and this is just a "I don't wanna spend an extra $167 a month to cover the services of the municipality I've chosen to live in."  For example, the total taxes on the inlaws house, where we get no tax breaks, is less than the ad valorem Mr Young claims he's paying.

The average home value in Loxahatchee, according to Zillow, is about $860k.  Mr Young is already skipping out on approximately $10k in property taxes every year, but having to pay an extra $2k is going to break him?

I am, myself, a disabled veteran, but I am growing ever sicker of listening to people who are less fucked up than me with a much higher rating complaining about the benefits they're getting.  They're the kind of people who say, "You're welcome for my service," unironically. 

In the process of trying to find out how much Mr Young is being assessed, I discovered that I should be taking an additional $5k off my home's assessed value because of my own disability rating. 

PS: There are approximately 60,000 100% veterans in Florida.  That's 0.2% of the population.  Yes, let's design our entire tax policy around this teeny constituency. 

Anomaly

I'm still wrestling with Gun Stats and round nose bullets.

.30 M1903 uses a 220gr, 1.308" long bullet fired at 2,300 fps.

.30 M1906 uses a 152gr, 1.123" long bullet fired at 2,700 fps.

1903's ranges are 1,240/5,200.

1906's ranges are 890/3,700.

Longer bullets do tend to hold velocity better and, thus, go farther.

The advantage of the lighter, faster, spitzer rounds was supposed to be the flatter trajectory not extended range.  This should show in the Accuracy column.

But it doesn't because of the length to diameter ratio of the longer bullet getting a +1 and the relative velocities being in the same bracket. 

.30-06 does have a lower ST and Recoil with 9 and 3 versus 10 and 4, making it easier to shoot.

I don't think, as a whole, this passes the reality test. 

Gotta Read The Whole Article

Road rage or self defense?

Iowa is a Constitutional Carry state, so what does, "one count of being a person ineligible to carry dangerous weapons," mean?

Is that how Iowa phrases, "felon in possession?"

But look how far down the article you have to get before you find out that the person with the gun is the victim of a rear-ending and the person who rear ended them has a history of driving without a license and insurance.

That mentioning the behavior of this person post-impact was, in fact, criminal is tossed in as an aside.

This case might end up, eventually, at the Supreme Court over whether felons have the right to own a gun to defend themselves.

And since the cops have, repeatedly, used "tried to run me over" as a positive defense for shooting someone trying to run them over, pulling a gun to get someone who's just rear ended you from continuing to move their car seems fairly justified. 

Start With Compassion

I have tried to say something of this sort before.

Every time I do, the list of banned commenters gets a little longer. 

The Spirit Of Aloha

Hawaiian cops have, so far, declined to call assault a hate crime despite use of racial slur.

Racism is racism and if we're going to have hate crime provisions, then they need to be applied to everyone equally. 

GURPS Alts

Gun Stats vehemently disagrees with some of the published ranges.

But here we go anyway!

5.56x45mm M193 from an M16A1: 5d pi, 430/3,000; ST 8, Rcl 2.

5.56x45mm M193 from an XM177E2: 4d+1 pi, 360/2,500; ST 8, Rcl 2.

5.56x45mm M855 from an M16A2: 5d+1 pi, 530/3,700; ST 8, Rcl 2.

5.56x45mm M855 from an M4: 5d-1 pi, 490/3,400; ST 8, Rcl 2.

The Soviet opposition:

7.62x39mm M-43 from an AKM: 5d+1 pi, 520/2,200; ST 9, Rcl 3.

5.45x39mm 7N6 from an AK-74: 4d+2 pi, 480/3,400; ST 9, Rcl 2.

The Loyal Opposition: 

6.5 Grendel 123gr @ 2,457 from a 16" AR: 6d-1 pi, 670/4,700; ST 9, Rcl 3.

6.5 SPC II 115gr @ 2,550 from a 16" AR: 6d-1 pi, 760/3,200; ST 8, Rcl 2.

.300 Blackout 123gr @ 2,215 from a 16" AR: 5d pi, 500/2,100; ST 9, Rcl 3.

.300 Blackout 220gr @ 1,010 from a 16" AR: 3d pi, 570/2,400; ST 9, Rcl 3.

22 ARC 75gr @ 2,953 from a 16" AR: 5d+1 pi, 680/4,800; ST 8 Rcl 2.

6mm ARC 108gr @ 2,626 from a 16" AR: 5d+2 pi, 810/5,700; ST 8 Rcl 2. 

.30 Remington AR has been discontinued, so we're not going to show that with 125gr @ 2,800 fps from a 22" barrel R-15 did 6d+2 pi, 640/2,700; ST 9, Rcl 3.

Piece Rate

One of the most corrosive effects of unions is the need of the business they've extorted to make a profit now that the wages are higher and the sale price of the good is inelastic.

That means you can't just raise prices for you SEIU members.

You can't lower wages, the union has seen to that.

But what if you can get the union worker to make more units in the same time frame?

So you engineer things to be easier to assemble and automate the assembly of as many parts as you can.

I got laughed at for pointing this out, but a bot can make a circuit board with embedded relays on it for lot less than paying a UAW worker to install relays in a fuse box.

Thus, we end up with a $500 part we need to replace because a relay failed rather than a $5 relay.

It's why we have to buy assemblies and cannot buy parts. 

It's Just That We Don't Trust You

Something I keep wondering about is if why do we even have things that can be abused by the government?

Gun registration lists cannot be used by the government to track gun owners if there is no list.

But they make a list and tell us they're not accessing it.  Because it's illegal.

I don't want it to be illegal to misuse a list, I want it to be impossible.

The only way for that to happen is for there to be no list at all and not collecting any information that could be used in a list.

Not even if a non-governmental entity holds the list, government will access it. 

Flock cameras are the same thing. 

Because it is possible for the government to use the information to violate my rights, they will do so.  "They have not done so yet!" is a very weak defense and Flock's own spokesman doesn't much reassure me that they won't enthusiastically assist government in fucking me over.

But if there are no Flock cameras... 

Penetration

Sometimes it seems like a given round is underperforming in GURPS.

But it's a game, not a simulation...

For example, the WW2 M82 APC (APEX in GURPS terms) does 6dx10(2) pi++ with a linked 6d+2[4d+2] cr ex.

That was calculated from a formula that gives all six dice their average value of 3.5 to, mostly, match the muzzle penetration value against rolled homogeneous armor.

Thus that round will penetrate DR 420 or rolling a 21 on six dice or ((6x3.5)x10)x2.  Dr 420 is 6" (152.4mm) of RHA.

But you could roll a 6 on six dice, do 60 damage and penetrate 120 DR or 1.7" or 43.5mm.

OR you could roll a 36 on six dice and do 360 damage and penetrate 720 DR or 10.3" or 261.3mm. 

Officially it penetrates 143mm or 5.6" or DR 393 or 6dx9(2) pi++.  At the muzzle.

Gun Stats gives it a little extra performance.

Realistically, that 393 points of damage should be at the muzzle and it should get smaller as the range increases.

But you can roll all ones for 6x10 at 1 yard and all sixes for 36x10 at 6,660 yards.

Again, game.

Balance between playable and accurate.

It's hard to strike sometimes.

The randomness of the dice and the chance at unrealistic results allows the game to account for anecdotal stories where people went, "Did you see that shit?"

A DR 4 M1 helmet will not stop even the minimum damage of a 7d pi K.98k, but there's examples where the round bounced off.  Result of a miss by two?  A miss by one is a torso hit (ever notice that all misses by 1 go low not high?)  The GM has to provide narration to what's going on to the players.

There's examples of "no way that will penetrate" going right on through.

Things tend to GURPS.  It's what I like about the game.

I don't wanna have to do the math that calculates the impact angle against the angle of the armor's slope and the velocity at that EXACT range.

Dice will suffice. 

For Comparison's Sake Gun Stats Update

Updated from this post. 

GURPS: World War II has stats for WW2 vehicles, surprisingly enough.

Since I've been mentioning the performance of Cold War stuff, and many people are more familiar with WW2 shit...

It's Front/Sides/Back/Top/Bottom (if needed)

Sherman M4A1 Hull: 300/150/150/75/50; Turret: 300/200/200/100

Gun Motor Carriage M10 Hull: 255/85/85/55/50; Turret: 275/100/100/0

Panzer IV Ausf H Hull: 315/120S/80/40/40; Turret: 200/120S/120S/40

Panther Ausf G Hull: 540/190S/160/60/120; Turret: 600/260/260/60

Tiger Ausf E Hull: 400/420/320/100/100; Turret: 425/310/310/100

Königstiger Ausf B Hull: 850/310/310/155/100; Turret: 700/310/310/170

T-34/76 1940 Hull: 350/250/175/75/75; Turret: 350/250/175/80

Guns!

M4A1 Sherman's M3 75mm firing the M61 APCBC or just AP does 6dx6(2) pi++.  That's good for a whopping 252 DR.

The "long 75mm" 76mm M7 cannon firing M62 APCBC delivers 6dx12(2) pi++ and a linked 6dx2[4d-1] cr ex.  This punches 504 DR.  M93 HVAP does 6dx12(2) pi++ without the linked explosion and punches the same 504 DR  This was considered HOT ammo!

The 7.5cm KwK40 L48 on the Pzkw IV-H firing a PzGr 40 APCR or APHC does 6dx12(2) pi++ that will penetrate DR 504 with most dice.

A KwK42 7.5cm on a Panther G lobbing a PzGr 40/42 does 6dx14(2) pi++.  That's good for punching holes in DR 588.

Tiger E's KwK36 8.8cm gun gets the most penetration with the PzGr 40 which is an APHC round doing 6dx13(2) pi++.  That'll punch 546 DR on average.

The heavier Tiger II's KwK43 8.8cm gun shooting a PzGr 40/43 round gets 6dx16(2) pi++ to routinely stab through 672 DR.

The pride of the Soviets 76mm L-11 gun firing BR-354P APHC does a mere 6dx9(2) pi++ for an average penetration of 378 DR.  And people were bagging on the M3 in the Sherman!

Update: The D-5T 85mm gun from the T-34/85 firing a BR-365 APHEX round will do 6dx13(2) pi++ with a linked 7d+1[4d+1] cr ex.  That will penetrate 546 DR on average.

As a reminder, the 90mm gunned M48A3 has Hull: 606/314/96/113/87; Turret 716/314/281/129; Cupola: 386/386/386/193.

The M41 gun firing M332A1HVAP APHC does 6dx12(2) pi++ for 504 DR penetration.  Not enough for a lot of the heavy Nazi armor.  Damn the Tiger II is tough!  The Patton is somewhat vulnerable to the King Tiger's gun, but it's even more mobile than the Sherman that maneuvered around it to get rear shots.  But HEAT is what we thought would be the real armor puncher.  The M348 HEAT round does 6dx4(10) cr ex with a linked 6dx 3 cr ex that will burn a hole in 840 DR.  The hull front of a Königstiger is still not penetrated!  But the more visible turret front is!

However its expected opponents the T-54/55 and T-62 aren't near so well protected, but they're a lot more mobile:

T-55: Hull 330/218/165/68/55; Turret 565/358/165/165

T-62: Hull 281/218/126/85/55; Turret 667/421/110/110

Good thing the Patton is mobile and reliable.

The 100mm D-10T firing a BR-421D APHEX round in 1953 does 6dx17(2) pi++with a linked 5d+1[5d] cr ex.  That will punch DR 714.

A 115mm U-5TS firing a 3BM4 APFSDS round in 1963 will do 6dx28(2) pi++.  That gets past 1,176 DR.  Yes, the Soviets were ahead of us on tank guns.

But what if we drag an M60 into the argument with its M68 cannon?

The 1959 issue M392 APDS does 6dx23(2) pi++ for 966 penetration.  The M456 HEAT will do 6dx5(10) cr ex with a linked 6dx3 cr ex and make a 1,050 DR deep hole.

 

Heroes

The California Highway Patrol is staffed by heroes.

 Ayup, that's one super deadly gun there.

Not one mention of returning it to its rightful owner, is there? 

Citing Your Religious Text Is Not Making An Intellectual Argument

It's OK to have faith, but you cannot cite your religion's text, traditions and dogma when trying to convince someone outside your faith to start or stop something your faith requires or forbids.

You have to use other means to convince them.

M14M

Get ready to tell the kids they're going to a community college because you're emptying their college fund!

The CMP is going to get some genuine M14 rifles to sell.

ATF has approved a method of modifying the receiver to get past the, "once an MG, always an MG," rule.  Contrary to popular belief, they've done it before with M2 Carbine receivers.

No word whatsoever about pricing and availability.

Clinton's Cap'n Crunch ate a lot of these guns, and their valuable parts, so it's anyone's guess how many there are to give to the CMP for sale.  An arfcom thread had an AI guesstimate of about 10% of the 1.38 million made are still in inventory or service.  That's close to the same numbers they had for the 1911 sales.

Their time as designated marksman rifles means a lot of what's left got rode hard and put away wet in the middle east.

I wonder what condition and configurations will be coming out of this.  Wood stocks?  SAGE stocks?  Fiberglass?  Scope mounts? 

Jeff, You Cleared Up Any Doubt For Me

FOP is constantly on the wrong side of freedom and liberty in Florida and this scare tactic is bullshit since funding for fire, law enforcement and schools is guaranteed.

In other words, Jeff is lying through his teeth and he knows it.

Again.

I remember FOP and their position on conceal carry, open carry, campus carry, 18-21 year olds carrying, waiting periods, bump stocks, and anything NFA.

So, pardon me, if I just vote for my self interests and tell the help they can suck it up or find productive employment. 

Much Newer Than I Expected

The term "sound suppressor" refers to a device that reduces the sound intensity of a firearm when it is discharged. The earliest use of the term "suppressor" in this context dates back to a US patent in 1985, while the term "silencer" was originally used by its inventor, Hiram Percy Maxim, in 1902.

It's a quote from Wikipedia generated by the Duck Duck Go AI, so apply the appropriate levels of salt.

If the term silencer is wrong, and was never used and it's always been sound suppressor, what were they called for 83 years?

I am thinking that the youngin's are at it again and forgetting a lot of us old grognards were there when the changes happened.

I watched this happen with "assault weapon".

Assault weapon and assault rifle were terms the gun community itself was using for military look-alike guns at least as early as 1986.

I remember when the gun control people starting using it against us.

I remember when we tried to say it was always referring to a select-fire, intermediate cartridge firing rifle or carbine.

I remember when we tried to say we'd never used it for describing a semi-auto clone.

And I remember when a group of very young internet gun bloggers tried to "take it back." 

Odyssey

I am starting to see a divide in the YouTube pundits over Christopher Nolan's Odyssey.

They either love it or hate it.

I think I spotted the why of it.

It's the same as when Paul Verhoeven did Starship Troopers.

Some people loved it.

Some people hated it.

There's no middle ground.

So I asked the people who loved it, "Why?"

They loved it because it's a funny, sci-fi action movie.

"What about all the changes from the book?"

"Book?  What book?"

And there's your divide.

The people who hated Starship Troopers wanted to see the book, not an unrelated property with character names from the book.

I'm willing to bet that the people who don't like Nolan's Odyssey are in the same camp.

They wanted Homer's epic, verbatim.

PS: John Leguizamo is an epic hypocrite!  John, if you're going to whine about Anglos in Hispanic roles, you shouldn't take on roles where you're not playing an Hispanic character.  Or roles where the character is significantly older than you, what about all the genuinely elderly actors who need the work, John? 

Hmmmmmmmmmm

 

MilSpec

"No civilian should have a military specification handgun!" paraphrased because I cannot be arsed to find the actual quote.

Found it! 

Well, ignorant gunbanner, this is a Revolver, .45 Caliber, M1873, "Altered."  Not quite state of the art in 1892 but still military issue and a genuine weapon of war.

I notice you never mention six-guns when you're frothing about "military" guns.

In point of fact, every single bolt-action hunting gun has a lineage that can be traced back through some military arm.  Some retain more of that lineage than others, but a staggered internal box mag on a bolt gun is a military innovation.

No You're Wrong

Dear everyone clucking like you know what the fuck you're talking about:

A thing you screw onto the end of your gun's barrel to make it quieter is a SILENCER.

How do I know that?

Because that's what it's called in the 1921 patent by Hiram Percy Maxim.

Got an earlier patent for one that's called a suppressor?

Because if you don't, saying "there's no such thing as a silencer, they're called suppressors," just makes you sound ignurnt.

The person who invents something gets to name it.

Maxim named it a silencer.

He could have called them mufflers, because that's the only earlier patent for something that makes the noise from a tube quieter. 

Speed Test

Now that Derpyputer has replaced The BeastMac on the desktop, I wondered if I'd see a speed difference if I plugged the CAT6 cable into it.

In a word, yes.

It also led to checking the speed with both logins on the router.

Insertrouternamehere got:

53.76 Mbps down and 40.01 Mbps up.

Insertrouternamehere-5G got:

300.27 Mbps down and 237.94 Mbps up.

The wired connection to Insertroutername got:

 503.36 Mbps down and 421.70 Mbps up.

I think I can live with that. 

Stupid Attitude

 

I would say that I don't care how much enjoyment the thief gets from my stolen property, but that's not true.

I do care.

I want them to be utterly miserable from their theft.

Far more unhappy than I am about the loss.

I want them to contract a slow moving, incurable, untreatable, painful disease that also, perversely, prolongs their life.

I want them to experience this in a poorly run prison, where their cellmate considers their affliction a kink.

For Fuck's Sake!

Where does the idea that someone who steals from you being happy about stealing being a good thing come from?

Perhaps the idiots who think this way should be treated more harshly than thieves.

The thief's depredations are far more limited in scope than the idiot depicted in the comic.  That idiot will go out to vote, get laws changed and make it impossible to punish thieves.

Shitheads like this think, "property can be replaced, so it's wrong to kill thieves," and, "your property isn't worth more than their life!"

I shouldn't be surprised to find that's a close quote to something Che Gueverra said, "The life of a single human being is worth millions of times more than all the property of the richest man on Earth."

That's wrong-think.

The proper attitude is, "nothing here is worth getting killed over."

It's not me deciding that my property is worth more than their life, it's them deciding that their life is worth less than my property.

It's illegal for me to act morally on this. 

Gaming The System

The feint rules in GURPS are pretty simple.

There's a quick contest of weapon/defense skill rolls and margin of success is the penalty to their defense next round.   See p.B365.

It doesn't get used much because, most of the time, the players are overpowering their opponents and they don't need the bonus to land hits.

But something I noticed a while back was when you announce that you're feinting, the opponent goes all-out-attack that same turn.

They KNOW they don't need to defend that round, because a feint isn't an actual attack, and they get a +4 to hit.  If they hit, the penalty from wounding the character doing the feint more that offsets the risk of a penalty to their defense next round.

That seems unclear to ME as I write it.

Turn 1:

NPC feints at Player.  Contest gets a -3 to the NPC's defense in turn 2.
Player all out attack (determined) the NPC scores 3 points of damage.

Turn 2:

NPC suffers effects of injuries, -3 to hit.  Misses.
Player has defenses again, at -3, but that doesn't matter because the NPC missed.

Thus nobody feints!

At least not when they have the initiative and move first.

If you go after the Player, then they have to decide to use all out attack BEFORE you announce your feint.

So to make this work, you have to take a wait maneuver to let them attack first.

If you've got good active defenses, like il Gatto, then this is a good plan. 

PS: Suddenly a lot of cinematic and SCA fights I've seen make more sense in gaming terms.  If there are numerous wait and feint maneuvers going on, that explains the circling each other slinging soliloquies! 

Conceited

Something I noticed that's made it hard for me to watch some CarTube channels is the obvious wealth of the presenter.

Their being richer isn't the problem.

It's the conceit that they're experiencing the same problems I would have in getting the money together for the project while they casually mention dropping thousands on it.

Additionally the "old friend" from the car rags days has returned.  Parts donated by a vendor and deals I won't get because a seller isn't trying to get ME to mention them on my channel.

So, no, will not be taking my $100k F350 and $20k enclosed car trailer to pick up a $3,500 car with a seized engine.

I will not be finding a 6.2l aluminum LS engine, that already has a Summit stage 4 cam, laying around for less than $5k.  I will not be handed a $5k exhaust system.  I will not be spending the day getting my car dyno-tuned, a $1,500 to $3,000 value.

But most of all, I will not be doing it in my forty-thousand square foot shop with 8 two-post lifts.

Because of all that, it rubs me wrong when they start complaining about how much a fucking water pump would cost.  I might, by necessity, need to skip the $200 water pump if I needed to get my car back on the road after an engine swap.

But I also don't brag about "being under ten grand" on a project that has, at least, another $10k in parts donated to it.

Your project is $25 grand to the rest of us and I can't pretend otherwise.

My suspension of disbelief is no longer willing. 

But Did It Happen

I am certain there are racists out there doing racist things.

Some of them try to comment on my blog, that helps with the certainty.

Despite this, I still get a record scratch moment when a black person mentions experiencing racism.

I think I might have figured out why.

I didn't do racism.

I lived someplace where nobody around me did racism.

So I never saw racism directly.

I did get to see and experience the hate that is reflected from the racists doing racist things.

It was quite an epiphany to realize that hate was racism too and that I was experiencing it as a victim.

So I spend my entire life after that crippled by the knowledge that someone out there hated me because I was white and dedicated all of my waking moments to forcing the government to punish them and enrich me!

Actually not.

I tried to understand why they hated me.  I have not, and likely never will, succeeded in understanding hate based on skin color.

Having internalized that whole individual responsibility thing, I can hate individuals for their crimes but can't really transfer that hate for superficial similarities between people.

There's a whole raft of dissonance and hypocrisy when I think about invasive cultures amidst my own culture.  I'm still working through it. 

The Very Butcher Of A Silk Button

Cirilo di Faenza has the highest skill I've ever given a character with a sword.

A skill of 17 with a rapier gives a 14 or less to hit the vitals.

He then delivers 1d+1 imp.  On average that's 4 points, and typically without DR so that becomes a 12 and his opponent is looking to make a consciousness roll to keep fighting.

It's -9 to hit the eye, but you get x4 damage to hit there.  That wouldn't change if they die in one shot or not, but 16 is closer to dead than 12.  Even if they live, they're down an eye.

All out attack (determined) would give a +4 to hit that eye so 12 or less net.

All out attack (strong) would give a +2 to damage.  That'd be 6 points on average to the vitals and 18 delivered.

All out attack robs you of your defense and he's not stupid enough to do that.

What is the best course, with his skill is the seldom used feint.

That might even get a good roll at that eye without needing to all out attack. 

 

I Need An Equalizer

Something I've noticed about Ubuntu and media is a lack of an equalizer to shift the preponderance of bass down a notch.

I know there's a nerd or two reading this.

What do I need to do? 

Hit The Ballpark

I decided that artillery rounds would get a base cost calculated from 1/1000 of the starting wealth for the TL times the weight in pounds.

Then you multiply that by the cost factors in Gun Stats.

The TL7 M107 round is $15 times 116.3 lb. (Shell, PD fuse and powder bags) to get a base of $1,744.50 and x2 for HE rounds...  $3,490.

An actual M107 runs $2,860.  I'm acceptably close.

Especially since my price is in $GURPS not USD. 

Generic

Rather than have five HE rounds for the 155mm and four APFSDSDU rounds for the 105mm...

I decided to go generic and just use the best APFSDSDU-T round for every tank gun.

I found out that the older rounds would go back to the factory and the uranium would be melted down and re-alloyed into more advanced rounds.  Even the Russkies!

For the 155mm because the M107 HE and M795 HE have such different performance, I called them TL7 HE and TL8 HE.  Some nations never updated to the later rounds like the US and UK, so lots would still be around...

One could make the argument that the newer stuff is the scarcest because it got fired first.

T2K is, in a lot of ways, a fantasy setting. 

PDMTSQEIEIO

Nearly every cannon round fuse is built in and goes off when it hits something hard.

Howitzers and mortars call this a PD fuse for Point Detonation.  It's an impact fuse.

This is the default fuse for GURPS: Gun Stats.

But there are others!

Most common is the Mechanical Timer Super Quick or MTSQ.  This is a fuse that has a clockwork timer in it the gunner can set to go of before impact, if they time it right, it creates an airburst over the target and more things get attacked by fragments.

Proximity fuses do the airburst thing too, but at a fixed altitude rather than selected time from firing.

MOFA are Multi-Option Fuse, Artillery.  This is everything all in one.  Impact, timer, and proximity.

Just to be confusing, there's also an anti-aircraft proximity fuse, but the sensors look sideways instead of forward.

All of the timed and proximity fuses I've found have an impact mode too.

Where this gets sticky for GURPS terms is your basic M107 HE round can take any type of fuse changing it from a PD to an MTSQ to a Proximity round with a spin.

The entry for all of the timed and proximity rounds is "Airburst".  +2 cost factor to any round.  Which makes it a little awkward because the various base rounds will have different prices.  One would think that the price increase would be the same for all rounds of the same chambering.

Worse, some rounds have to be timed fuses or they just don't work right.  DPICM, for example. 

If You Have Nothing To Hide You Have Nothing To Worry About

I do so love being able to toss this back in the faces of the Democrats.

They're busted and they know it and that's why they're scared of the SAVE America Act.

Their objections at state level attempts to clean up the voter rolls were not the reaction of a group that's innocent of the charge. 

NBC Notes Updated

Twilight: 2000 has five chemical round categories:  HC Smoke, Irritant Gas, Blood Agent, Blister Agent and Nerve Gas.

Irritant is easy, that's tear gas.

Nerve is also easy, that's nerve gas.

What differentiates blister and blood in their effects is whether you can get by with just a gas mask or if you need an NBC suit.

Blister agents include mustard gas and you need a suit.

Blood agents include chlorine gas and you don't.

What's interesting about researching chem rounds is how the blood agent rounds disappear after WW2.  Mustard and nerve keep going and the US added tear gas to the 4.2" mortars and 40mm grenade launchers. 

Update:

Poisons on p. B439 will give us our game effects:

HC Smoke will be treated as Smoke. 

Irritant Gas will be treated as Tear Gas.

Blood Agent will be treated as Chlorine Gas.

Blister Agent will be treated as Mustard Gas.

Nerve Gas will be treated as Nerve Gas.

NBC Purge

Something I've noticed about using the internet to look up artillery rounds for Twilight: 2000 is how few write-ups on many weapons still include the chemical rounds.

In 1995, in the Home timeline, the Chemical Weapons Convention was drafted and signed already and well on its way to being put into effect.

The US and Russia had been happily destroying their stockpiles, informally, since the end of the Cold War™®.

Many of the weapons in service now, were in service then, so they get listed without their, now-defunct, icky chemical weapons.

In the OG T2K timeline, however, the Cold War™® was still in full swing in 1995 when what would be known as the Twilight War began and chemical weapons were still a thing, if only to keep the other side from using them with impunity.

You kind of have to dig to get information on the rounds. 

It should be noted that the Soviets were firmly convinced that we'd use chemical weapons first and lavishly and they only held their stocks for retaliatory purposes.

NATO had the same conviction about the Soviets... 

I Will Say It Again

I don't mind immigrants.

An immigrant is someone who has decided to move to a different nation and become a citizen of that nation.

They adopt that nation's language and culture.

They change from a them to an us.

The thing I rail against is not immigration.

While it might not rise to the level of colonization, we do have enclaves of foreigners who have no intention of adopting our language or culture.

Most of these people have not entered the nation legally, and there's a significant number of people who entered legally but did not return home once their visa expired.

But adoption of culture and language is important.

Hell, I'm even willing to compromise on the language part if they're doing our culture well enough.

That I have to make this post is an indication that people who hate America have managed to shift the language so that immigrant doesn't mean what I've indicated, but anyone who's managed to cross the border.

The best you can call a small number of them is "expat."  But expats enter legally and keep a low profile. 

Never Done

The 4.2" mortar would still be in service in T2K.  I forgot it.

I am torn between adding the specific round designations for mortars like I did for other cannon; or going generic on the cannon.

On one hand it's simpler to just say APFSDSDU.

On the other, there are several APFSDSDU rounds with different performance and old-stock would be brought forward as the good stuff ran out or was late getting to the front because of production delays.

The OG game certainly didn't worry about it, but it was much coarser grained than GURPS.

It gives me something to tinker with. 

Illuminating

The deep dive into artillery for GURPS led me to discover something neat.

We have IR illumination rounds now.

That is really cool!  Hot?

Not sure if they would have had them for T2K or not, but it's still neat. 

Hold On I Got This

Apparently, illegal aliens being detained in Miami are being treated like animals...

I will bet that they will be treated like people in their home nation.

Since they find how they are treated in MY nation not to their liking, I invite them to head home.

90% of the reason they are being detained is a refusal to just be deported.

Fuck 'em.

However...

I wish someone would treat me like an animal based on how my friends and I treat our pets.

Yet another example of how the media and these illegals don't understand America. 

Done Again!

I have updated my Twilight: 2000 to GURPS 4e to account for the effect of Guns Stats.

Many of the older stats I'd pulled out of my ass.

If they're still wrong, they're all wrong the same way now! 

An example:

If the range stays the same, I didn't repeat it until it does.
 

Missed Opportunity

Babylon Bee is sleeping at the switch.

They should have had a headline, "Trump, taking inspiration from Mars Attacks 'addresses Congress'."

Area woman says, "he killed Congress!"

Film at 11. 

Tinker Tinker

I've tried all the rifle length handguards on Dissipator Dottie!

First is the round A2 style that came with the upper:

Then a set of USGI A2 handguards that look so similar to the ones that came with I can't tell the pictures apart!

I tried out an M5 RAS:

I was happy with reproduction triangle A1 style:

Now I'm trying out the Magpul:

I've long liked how the Magpul handguards have felt, I don't even mind how they look.  The rifle length is a bit too long for where I want my light, but it's workable on the other side.

ARs are, indeed, Lego for men.

Wait That's The Same

Something about explosives is the Relative Explosive Equivalency Factor.

GURPS calls this REF when you're figuring dice from boom.  It's also another example of GURPS using real world numbers for things.

An M107 155mm HE shell can be loaded with 15.1 lb. of either good old fashioned TNT or Composition B.

Comp B has an REF of 1.4, making it the equivalent of  21.14 lb. of TNT.

An M795 round is filled with 20.1 lb. of either TNT or IMX-101.

IMX-101 has an REF of 1.62 making it the equivalent of  35.6 lb.

The M107 is constantly criticized for not having enough boom, but the supposedly superior M795, when loaded with TNT, has less than the M107 when loaded with Comp-B.

I have no information about when or why or how many rounds get loaded with TNT as opposed to the better explosives. 

Blacked Out

Harvey and I were out back watching movies last night and we could clearly hear helicopters.

Definitely 4+ blades. 

Normally that means a Coastie Jayhawk, the sheriff's 406 or a Lifeflight EC145.

I always go out to look.  Just in case it's a Hind sneaking up on me.

No lights.

Sometimes the sheriff's helo will do that.

Look up the ADSB.

The only thing in the area was a Cessna 152 that I'd seen and they were in the opposite direction of the rotor sounds.

The closest helo on ADSB was the county to the south's sheriff helo and that was way too far away and the wrong direction.

I am wondering if we're hearing training from MacDill up and around here.

They've done it before. 

I'm Much Cheaper

It turns out I did more about 155mm shells than General Dynamics did last week, and I didn't spend $500 million to do it.

Ooops! 

Though it appears that GDOT did a, "we think this might work, but we won't know until we try to actually do it," deal by using older machinery to make newer rounds.

Well, we now know that the machines that made M107 rounds don't make M795 rounds.

Reading between the lines, to me, it seems that they're getting a handle on it, but the worst case scenario played out. 

A Long Long Time

The US has been using 155mm artillery since we bought guns from the French in WW1.

What surprised me is the rounds are nearly identical to what we're loading today into an M777.

We have developed a handier charge than the silk bags packaging, but the M107 HE round dates from WW2 and isn't very dissimilar to the HE Mk. 1

The HE Mk. 1 is the round that came with the guns in 1917.  It's developed into the M102 then M101 then M107.

They made the walls a little thicker to handle higher velocities in the newer guns.

They changed the threads to accept different fuses.

They changed the weight and kind of explosives.

But if you sat all of the HE rounds from WW1 to today next to each other, you almost need the markings to tell them apart.

There's just enough difference between them to see on the GURPS stats, but if you treated all 155mm howitzers the same and gave the same numbers to all the HE rounds, you wouldn't get too far off track. 

 

Net Positive?

While I will miss AutoCAD and Photoshop, I had not actually used them for much of anything in years.

What I have gained, is desk real-estate!

That tower and the two monitors took up a lot of space.

I should be able to run a second monitor from any of my Ubuntu laptops.

I'd long since stopped using the drives on the Mac for primary data storage.  Technically, the data is still on the hard drives.  I have several ways to read those if I need to. 

PS: I am much less upset about the machine's death than I expected to be.

Maybe because it'd become progressively less useful as time went on and neither OS was safe to have online anymore. 

Sad Day

My 2008 Mac Pro A1186 has died.

With it goes my copy of AutoCAD and Photoshop. 

Ah

I found the section in the Take Care of America's Veterans act that has all the big names in a tizzy against it.

It's deunionizing the staff at VA hospitals.

It was never complaining about future veteran's care, it was all about lining the union pockets.

AFL-CIO and SEIU are against this bill.

My kneejerk is to be for it now. 

Stronk

I have been operating on the idea that ST for mounted cannon didn't matter.

Otherwise the average character isn't going to be able to use them.

p. B270 backs this idea.

But I noticed that vehicles have a ST value.

Is your tank strong enough for the cannon?

There aren't rules as written for this, but I can see several ways of using it. 

Universal Metric Fails Again

It's not a huge failure, but I bumped into how naming a round is simpler and clearer than caliber x case length again.

You end up using the names.

20x110mmRB Oerlikon.
20x110mm Hispano
20x110mm USN

The US Navy used all three in the same time period.

There are guides on how to tell them apart.  USN and Hispano are very difficult to tell apart visually, the USN round for the Colt 20mm guns is derived from the OG Hispano gun and round.

Isn't history fun!

I've got Oerlikon and USN finished for GURPS.  Working on Hispano now, at least the US issue rounds.  Like the Oerlikon, everyone and their brother used the Hispano-Suiza HS.404 in some form or another. 

Clogged Again

My toilet has been perfect for three weeks!

Not any more.

Got the Green Goobler main line clearing goop soaking now.

They say minimum of 30 minutes, but recommend overnight.

Thankfully, the house bathroom uses a different route, so we still have a toilet. 

That means we can limp it along until we're not having to call the emergency guy and pay those rates. 

Update: 

We're flowing again!

Letting the Green Gobbler gobble for 8 hours did its trick.

It's grease buildup.  We have to do something to clear that narrowing of the line or it's just gonna keep happening. 

GURPS ALL THE GUNS!

 With nothing else to do...

I took Gun Stats at the guns in this video.

GURPS: SEALs in Vietnam had the 5"/38, Bofors and Oerlikon, but I ran down the stats anyways.

And found an error in SEALs.

They used the stats for 20x110mm USN for the 20x110mmRB Oerlikon.

Here's what you need to change to make your stats right! 

AP-T is 6dx2(2) pi++, Acc 5, Range 840/4,700, ST 29M, Rcl 3.

HE is 6dx2(0.5) pi++ linked 1d+1[1d+2] cr ex, Acc 5, Range 820/4,600, ST 29M, Rcl 3. 

Ding Dong

Now that I've amended my spreadsheet a bit...

These numbers are no longer valid. 

The 16" High Capacity Mk.13 does:

6dx73(0.5) pi++ linked 6dx24[6dx3] cr ex.

Range is 17,000/39,000 (9.7/22.2 miles) 

ST is 210M.

Rcl is 6.

The 16" Armor-Piercing Mk.8 does:

6dx57(2) pi++ follow-up 6dx12[6dx3] cr ex.

Range is 25,000/57,000 (14.2/32.4 miles).

ST is 218M

Rcl is 7. 

USS Alabama with her shorter L45 guns firing the same rounds "only" gets:

16" High Capacity Mk.13 does:

6dx71(0.5) pi++ linked 6dx24[6dx3] cr ex.

Range is 17,000/38,000 (9.7/21.6 miles) 

ST is 208M.

Rcl is 8.

16" Armor-Piercing Mk.8 does:

6dx52(2) pi++ follow-up 6dx12[6dx3] cr ex.

Range is 23,000/52,000 (13.1/29.5 miles).

ST is 214M

Rcl is 9.

USS Texas with her 14"/45 guns:

14" High Capacity Mk.19 does:

6dx72(0.5) pi++ linked 6dx20[6dx3] cr ex.

Range is 23,000/52,000 (13.1/21.6 miles) 

ST is 202M.

Rcl is 11.

16" Armor-Piercing Mk.20 does:

6dx44(2) pi++ follow-up 6dx11[6dx3] cr ex.

Range is 17,000/40,000 (9.7/22.7 miles).

ST is 192M

Rcl is 9.

Game Called On Account Of Books

There's scanty information about Soviet and Russian artillery rounds.

I need the weight of the projectiles, type of explosive and weight of the filler.

I have this in abundance for Western rounds.

So I have given up on the internet and bought a copy of Janes Armour and Artillery, 97-98.

Since my primary focus is on WW2 and T2K, it should suffice.

I hope.

It wasn't super expensive, so fingers crossed. 

Oh My God

Linky

During a routine inspection in 2026, museum staff uncovered a shocking secret hidden inside a WWII Panzer III tank that had gone unnoticed for more than 80 years. Beneath an internal floor panel was a 7.92×57mm Mauser round, the same ammunition used by the German MG 34 machine gun mounted on the legendary armored vehicle. The discovery stunned experts because the aging bullet was potentially dangerous and had to be carefully deactivated before being added to the collection. This rare Panzer III, one of only two surviving examples still running, carries a mysterious history dating back to the North African campaign and the Battle of Alam el Halfa in 1942.

So, a live round was rolling around under the floorboards for 84 years, and the lack of men in the UK caused a panic?

Potentially dangerous?

Maybe if you tried to swallow it.  It's not like it's an HE round where the explosive's stabilizers have been slowly breaking down leaving something behind that makes nitroglycerine seem easy to juggle.

I love the line about carefully deactivating it.

In America a quick poll would have been taken among the workers to see who had a 98k and they'd have shot that round to see how badly the powder had degraded. 

"Historian Ian Hudson said he could not definitely say the round was a wartime artefact but “it’s certainly very likely”." 

Are you fucking shitting me, Ian?

A fucking historian doesn't know to look at the headstamp?

I am ever more convinced that we should have helped the Germans in 1918. 

Flock

I did not save the link...

But it would appear that Flock's surveillance and its use by the cops was found to not be a violation of privacy because there weren't enough cameras in use to provide 100% coverage and thus the person surveilled could have routed around them.

There are Supreme Court cases holding that milder infractions are violations of our right to privacy.  The recent one about geo-fencing is one.

It would appear to me, reading the tea leaves, that even one use without a warrant is a violation and Flock is digging it's own grave by pointing out how many cameras they have operating.

Someone is eventually going to tie a penumbra to these cameras from the cyberstalking laws and the "we did it to everyone" defense is just going to increase the number of counts in the charges.

Because while government can use the "we did it to everyone equally" defense, they're not allowed to do it to anyone without a warrant.

"We did it to everyone," is not a defense a private party can use when invading someone's privacy. 

But I Remember

The Veterans of Foreign Wars is all in a tizzy about veterans benefits being cut.

They care about ALL of us now?

Because I remember, back in 1992, when what my paltry 10% service connected got me was dramatically reduced.

You now need to have a 30% serviced disconnected disability to get those benefits.

The VFW didn't give two shits about me back then.

The Cold War didn't count, see.

To see the power the VFW had, look at the difference in benefits Nam ERA vets get compared to anyone serving from the end of Vietnam to the beginning of the War on Terror.

I'm not opposed to them fighting this fight, but I remember when they didn't care about me.  They still won't support me directly because my DD214 doesn't reflect my entire service.

There still isn't a single veteran's organization that represents all of us.

The smaller VSO's are geared more to discourage us from making claims.  Ask me how I know.  I am discouraged, they are successful. 

If you're about to ETS, look at the dates CAREFULLY on the DD214 they ask you to review.  You have that moment and 90 days after that to fix any errors.  If you notice that someone typed 89 and not 90 as your separation date, and you notice in 01...  It's a nightmare to get fixed inside the VA's system and you will NEVER get a new DD214 showing the correct dates.

"I was popping percocet like M&Ms when I ETS'd," is not grounds for missing the clerical error! 

I'm Just Not Imaginative Enough

A company that just went bankrupt had a heck of a scam.

You send them money and they say you bought some gold or silver, which they hold for you.

As long as the music keeps playing, and there's chairs left, this works.

But one day the music stops when someone notices there was no actual gold or silver, just pieces of paper.

Whups!

I'd have never thought of this. 

I Have A Better Solution

How's about you keep your citizens in your country where ICE has never had to shoot them?

Mexico's president wants to sue ICE for her citizen getting shot.

I think I like the cut of her jib.  We should endorse punishing the nation that's enforcing its laws in accordance with their own legal system.

Time to sue Mexico back to the dark ages over arresting Americans who accidentally, but illegally, brought a firearm into Mexico.

Or, is that different? 

I've Talked About This Topic Before

A Gun for Dinosaur

L. Spraugue de Camp (1956)

.600 Nitro on T-Rex. 

Amended with Gun Stats...  .600 does 9d+2 pi++ now.

.375 H&H does 8d+1 pi.

Popping the Rex in the vitals with the average damage roll of  33.5 points gets 31.5 to penetrate for 94.5 damage.  A single consciousness roll from a HT 15 critter means you're going to have to keep shooting.

You need to do 106 to get a death roll out of one.

A second hit to the vitals gets you there.

The .375 rolls an average of 29 points, 27 penetrate for 81 points of damage.

Two, well placed, rounds of .375 H&H has enough medicine to take down the tyrant lizard.

SPOILER ALERT

I suspect the late Mr Holtzinger didn't hit the vitals even once.  A hit to the body would only do 27 points of damage and three such shots are the same as a single vitals hit.  A fourth would get to death rolls, but that HT 15 looms large if you're going for this big game at close range.