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. 

Don Is Coming To His Senses

The Iranians never stopped firing so it wasn't really a ceasefire, ceasefire is no longer in effect. 

The Iranians were lying?  PERSIANS lying?

OMG!  Did the sun come up in the East?

Is water wet?

Does fire burn? 

Downgraded

Colorado State University has reduced their prediction from April.

They now say:

9 Named Storms

4 Hurricanes

1 Major Hurricanes (Cat 3+)

This is down from:

13 Named Storms

6 Hurricanes

2 Major Hurricanes (Cat 3+)

 

Amazing

Isn't it amazing that parts that are warrantied for 5 years and 100,000 miles when the car was new are only good for a year and 5,000 miles when added later? 

My God It's Full Of Math Errors

I have made a serious dent in the cannon list.

All the Kwk guns from 3.7cm to 8.8cm for Mr Mustache Man.

The 17 pdr, 20 pdr and L11 guns for the Brits. 

All of the US 75mm and 3" guns.

Just about all the T2K guns for the US and Soviets.

A couple of the WW2 USSR guns for good measure.

One sheet per gun.  29 guns.

And because I was looking at tables in the Gun Stats pdf and doing a lot of copy-pasting...

I introduced a lot of errors.

Errors which were corrected when I figured out the IFS function!

Now it accounts for the three variables from bore diameter, two from velocity, one from the TL and if it's a smoothbore or not.

Save early.  Safe often! 

Dear Anon Commenter

Your question was already answered in the linked article a few posts back.

Read the article hosted by the white supremacist and your questions will be answered!

Which is as nice as I can be about saying, "do your own homework."

Google AI For The Win

If you search for every individual round, by name and case dimensions, Google's little AI scourer will give you the weight of a complete cartridge for WW2 German tank rounds.

I am still shocked that someone didn't put this on wikipedia in a nice, easy to read, table like was done for just about every other round I've been trying to punch into GURPS: Gun Stats.

Next up, the L11 120mm cannon for the Chieftain and Challenger.

It's Baked Into The Language

The paper that was posted on the white supremacist site (much to the author's chagrin), and I can't find it posted on a non-racist site, focuses on how most African languages have no concepts we consider bedrock ideas in Western Civilization.

Without these concepts, you cannot be a true member of Western Civ.

The sooner you are exposed to these concepts, the easier it is to learn them.

And the question becomes the old nature vs nurture debate.

I believe that the average African-American can learn these concepts and be successful in American society.

I base my hypothesis on the fact that they used to be successful members of American society before the Democrat party actively hamstrung them.

In fact, it often seems as if every time racism is almost dead and black Americans are poised to become full members, some Democrat comes along and fucks it with a dick dipped in resin and rolled in ground glass.

I believe that race has nothing to do with their circumstances because the same failures are present in Appalachia.  Thomas Sowell has mentioned the similarity more than once.

That similarity has the "fucked by Democrats" in common. 

Wildly Wrong

I was hoping that GURPS: Vehicles 2nd edition for GURPS 3e would suffice for getting ammunition weights.

It will not.

Using its formulas will give 106.7 lb. for a 120mm APFSDSDU round.

The M829 round is 41.2 lb.  It's a 120mm APFSDSDU round.

Notice the problem?

Me too. 

Gonna Examine It

Science is.  Science is often not what you want it to be, because the facts don't care.

I strive, desperately, to not be a bigot in my behavior and thinking.

I tend to reject the bigot's answers for things because their answers are trite and made to fit preconceived notions.

But there's a kernel of doubt.

The OG racists in America were southern slave owners.

The people most familiar with American blacks, over and over, described "childlike" behavior and attitudes.

I always chalked that down to a culture imposed upon them because:  How much culture does a slave need to be a good slave?

They were not inculcated with Western Civ's values because those didn't help them be good property. 

Because I think in science, I read stuff that has conclusions I dislike.

Like this.  It's published by a thoroughly white supremacist group.  Take it with a carton of salt.  Remember what I said about trite answers fitting preconceived conclusions.

Just because I don't want the problems with American Blacks to be inborn and uncorrectable, doesn't mean I shouldn't consider it.

Science will not care if I don't want it any more than it doesn't care if a bigot does.

We're not going to do the research for real because it asks hard questions and the best solution could ultimately be extremely racist because, if that paper is correct, we'd have to, structurally, treat black people differently from white people.

That doesn't align well with "All men are created equal" in a document we just celebrated.