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A problem I keep seeing in Palladium games is their treatment of silver bullets.
For some reason, range is decreased.
This is inaccurate. Depending on caliber, you'll see a 10% - 25% increase in range, as well as a 5% - 10% increase on penetration. That being the case, you'll need to use hollow points to keep the bullet in the vampire's body, as opposed to a solid round which is more likely to pass through.

Just because I am always looking for more info on ballistics and stuff, do you have any source for this?

-STS

when I read up on silver bullets you DO actually loose some range, because silver is not as dense as lead bullets
there IS some penetration increase in penetration of "hard" targets because silver bullets don't deform as much when they hit things.
also silver bullets are difficult to cast because the silver doesn't flow to fill the mold as well so they tend to need machining to finish shaping them.

the good news is silver bullets are a lot more likely to survive and be reusable after firing

No lead is denser. It will travel farther in air and it will hit harder when it lands. Outside of air silver might go faster, but not a heck of a lot.
GOLD would be superior to lead but of course for normal people its cost prohibitive.
Mercury at almost melting point would probably be the very best as well as adding severe poison damage to normal flesh. But again without magic or something, cost prohibitive.

guardiandashi wrote:when I read up on silver bullets you DO actually loose some range, because silver is not as dense as lead bullets
there IS some penetration increase in penetration of "hard" targets because silver bullets don't deform as much when they hit things.
also silver bullets are difficult to cast because the silver doesn't flow to fill the mold as well so they tend to need machining to finish shaping them.

the good news is silver bullets are a lot more likely to survive and be reusable after firing

It's the opposite, as far as range and weight. The lighter bullet gains range.
And no, you don't need to machine your bullets. I cast mine just fine, thank you.

slade the sniper wrote:Just because I am always looking for more info on ballistics and stuff, do you have any source for this?

-STS

I cast 100 bullets for my .30-06 and 50 for my Colt .45 from silver, from an ingot I'd acquired on a job last year.
A couple of friends of mine and I then took the rounds to a range and fired them at targets at various distances, and measured the velocities using a chronograph. We also fired three of each into some ballistic jelly molds.

Fenris2020 wrote:A problem I keep seeing in Palladium games is their treatment of silver bullets.
For some reason, range is decreased.
This is inaccurate. Depending on caliber, you'll see a 10% - 25% increase in range, as well as a 5% - 10% increase on penetration. That being the case, you'll need to use hollow points to keep the bullet in the vampire's body, as opposed to a solid round which is more likely to pass through.

I'm pretty sure it is a game mechanics balance issue artifact.
Though I remember the Lone Ranger show where he used silver bullets because they flew straiter.

https://www.patriciabriggs.com/articles ... et13.shtml
it goes only slightly slower than lead, with a little less recoil. they lose quote a bit of accuracy at range though, because the harder metal does not expand to engage the rifling properly. this means that you'd either need to make them Sabot's or make them oversized (with the side effect of wearing down your barrel faster)

given that the listed RPG ranges are the 'effective' ranges at which you can hit a target, reducing the range to represent the reduced accuracy fits.

https://www.patriciabriggs.com/articles ... et14.shtml
with the harder metal, they don't mushroom much at all when hitting soft targets like flesh. they don't even deform much after hitting harder materials either.
so while they'd have better armor piercing, they'd do less damage.



honestly the site is amazing, read the whole thing, it'll answer a lot of questions, especially about the difficulty of making them. i got the good luck to attend a talk by her about this subject at a convention a few years back, which had a lot more about the historical origins of the werewolf myth too.
https://www.patriciabriggs.com/articles ... lets.shtml


my own take on the silver weapons of palladium is that most of it isn't pure silver but rather silver plated. we know that works with melee weapons (A pure silver sword would suck as a sword after all) so it should work find with bullets and projectiles. silver plating over lead would solve a fair bit of the rifling and mushrooming issues, since the silver plate would be too thin to stop the lead from acting normally, and it would certainly simplify things like railguns rounds where their ferrous nature is important. and since most silver plated things tend to be electroplated in post-industrial settings, that also bypasses a lot of the concerns about purity.. electroplating works from suspended metal ions in a solution, so as long as you keep your solution sufficiently clean and started with sufficiently pure silver, you won't have much purity issue with the plated silver.

Fenris2020 wrote:

guardiandashi wrote:when I read up on silver bullets you DO actually loose some range, because silver is not as dense as lead bullets
there IS some penetration increase in penetration of "hard" targets because silver bullets don't deform as much when they hit things.
also silver bullets are difficult to cast because the silver doesn't flow to fill the mold as well so they tend to need machining to finish shaping them.

the good news is silver bullets are a lot more likely to survive and be reusable after firing

It's the opposite, as far as range and weight. The lighter bullet gains range.

Then why dont we use cork in bullets?
Cuz it would travel 2 feet and then drop straight down.

Shorty Lickens wrote:

Fenris2020 wrote:

guardiandashi wrote:when I read up on silver bullets you DO actually loose some range, because silver is not as dense as lead bullets
there IS some penetration increase in penetration of "hard" targets because silver bullets don't deform as much when they hit things.
also silver bullets are difficult to cast because the silver doesn't flow to fill the mold as well so they tend to need machining to finish shaping them.

the good news is silver bullets are a lot more likely to survive and be reusable after firing

It's the opposite, as far as range and weight. The lighter bullet gains range.

Then why dont we use cork in bullets?
Cuz it would travel 2 feet and then drop straight down.

Funny.
You go from a logical argument to the absurd.

drewkitty ~..~ wrote:

Fenris2020 wrote:A problem I keep seeing in Palladium games is their treatment of silver bullets.
For some reason, range is decreased.
This is inaccurate. Depending on caliber, you'll see a 10% - 25% increase in range, as well as a 5% - 10% increase on penetration. That being the case, you'll need to use hollow points to keep the bullet in the vampire's body, as opposed to a solid round which is more likely to pass through.

I'm pretty sure it is a game mechanics balance issue artifact.
Though I remember the Lone Ranger show where he used silver bullets because they flew straiter.

Any time someone says it's a game balance thing in Rifts, I laugh even harder than I do when someone uses the term for other games.

drewkitty ~..~ wrote:Though I remember the Lone Ranger show where he used silver bullets because they flew straiter.

From what I remember it was more because the high cost in firing a gun and the potential for killing someone with a gun.

As to the original topic, wouldn't it be harder for the silver bullet to take advantage of the rifling as it's a hard not soft metal and how much spin would a silver bullet be able to get?


Daniel Stoker

Silver bullets are less dense so they don't go as far
Silver bullets are harder so they don't work with rifling as well
Silver bullets are harder so they don't deform so much on impact, causing them to punch through a target
Silver bullets are expensive & have a high melting temp which can make it difficult to cast
The Lone Ranger used silver bullets for a number of reasons. First, because it's a "pure" metal that represents purity, truth, holiness, etc. It's similar to a paladin, also, Silver bullets are expensive so it represents the cost of taking a life & the weight of having to use it.

Any discrepancies in the handling of RIFTS silver bullets could come down to the material acting differently in an MDC/high PPE environment

Silly but fun video recently posted showing silver bullets in action against a "werewolf". Definitely will help frame up the imagery for my games involving silver ammo. This channel also has videos for bone, horn, and wood bullets for those interested in exotic ordinance.

Happy Halloween!

Thanks!

From 23:30 there is still more data as trying to smash a werewolf with big hammer is way less effective than the .50 BMG.
Anyway, great find. I like a lot of KY/Scott's stuff.
Not the most scientific, but the video allows for decent extrapolation of terminal effects.

-STS

Daniel Stoker wrote: ↑Mon Jun 05, 2023 4:25 pm

drewkitty ~..~ wrote: Though I remember the Lone Ranger show where he used silver bullets because they flew straiter.

From what I remember it was more because the high cost in firing a gun and the potential for killing someone with a gun.

As to the original topic, wouldn't it be harder for the silver bullet to take advantage of the rifling as it's a hard not soft metal and how much spin would a silver bullet be able to get?


Daniel Stoker

From the experiments my friends and I did, we didn't see that much of a decrease in accuracy, not that much difference in range, and more penetration.
The video below does an alright job, but he needed a chronograph.
See my original post on our findings, compare with the findings in the video.

edit: The ranges we used the .30-06 rounds on were 25, 50, 75, and 100 meters. For the .45, it was 25, 50 and 75 meters. So nothing very long range. Our results might have been different at the 250 to 500 meter ranges for the rifle.

slade the sniper wrote: ↑Fri Nov 03, 2023 7:47 pm From 23:30 there is still more data as trying to smash a werewolf with big hammer

THAT was the best bit... just kept bouncing... must be SDC weapon vs MDC beastie...