[quote="Jard"]
Dungeon Guns: yeah, it seems like taking noise into account would be super important, but I'm a little worried that if it's too punitive people basically won't bother with them. I also have no idea how to make a balanced mechanic to figure how far away they'd be heard.
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That's a good question, actually; I can't imagine there's not studies around that could be mangled to fit an average case. Have to see what the decibels are on a musket shot first, I guess.
[quote="Jard"]
Eras: so the interesting thing is, Flintlock appears to be superior to Wheellock in almost every way, except that for some reason Flintlock has a higher failure rate than wheellock in wet conditions. At least according to tables, I've already demonstrated I have poor reading comprehension at least once in this thread
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Right. To simplify immensely, imagine the Flintlock as your default Bic lighter - anyone who used to smoke knows they occasionally didn't work very well, and those are machine-made, not a hand-shaped flint on a hand-made mechanism. Little metal bit spins against a flint stone to create a spark. If either the flint or the starting powder is damp, ignition may not happen.
The wheellock, however, is a spring-loaded mechanism that has a lot more motive force behind it than just 'flicking your bic' - I dunno if you remember those spark-throwing toys that you pulled the plastic strip out of to make the metal wheel spin and throw sparks? Vague memory from the 80s...?
Anyway, the wheellock has enough spin/friction/heat generated that it burns out any collected moisture, and therefore is generally immune to moisture-related failure.