Talk:Gatling Blaster

Terminology Quibble and Bolter Casing Huh?
I'm not too sure these are errors, so I'll mark them down as just a pair of minor questions. First, the cannon in question is described as both pneumatically (gas-driven) and hydraulically (fluid-driven) driven, which is somewhat conflicting since they're not exactly the same sort of motive transfer. That said, I can see why the Mechanicus would choose pneumatic over hydralic, since you could always scavenge spare gas from bolt round exhaust in some fancy, sci-fi manner. Finding spare hydralic fluid in a vacuum, on the other hand, could be a bit of a poser.

Yoinked from Wikipedia to detail differences:

Advantages of pneumatics

 * Simplicity of design and control—Machines are easily designed using standard cylinders and other components, and operate via simple on-off control.
 * Reliability—Pneumatic systems generally have long operating lives and require little maintenance. Because gas is compressible, Equipment is less subject to shock damage. Gas absorbs excessive force, whereas fluid in hydraulics directly transfers force. Compressed gas can be stored, so machines still run for a while if electrical power is lost.
 * Safety—There is a very low chance of fire compared to hydraulic oil. Machines are usually overload safe.

Advantages of hydraulics

 * Liquid (as a gas is also a 'fluid') does not absorb any of the supplied energy.
 * Capable of moving much higher loads and providing much higher forces due to the incompressibility.
 * The hydraulic working fluid is basically incompressible, leading to a minimum of spring action. When hydraulic fluid flow is stopped, the slightest motion of the load releases the pressure on the load; there is no need to "bleed off" pressurized air to release the pressure on the load.

The other question (possibly better served on the bolter page itself, but meh) is that has GW made if clear that bolter rounds have a seperate disposable casing (like modern rifle and pistol ammo)? The description of bolter shell construction from the bolter page implies that there's not much of casing, and that casing is mostly or entirely explosive in nature. I understand the concept that bolter rounds are based on is primarily a caseless round concept (a gyrojet concept, but this is not necessarily always caseless), so the idea of a case-return system for a honking big gatling system seems superfluous. -Wulfenbach (talk) 18:29, December 28, 2012 (UTC)