I was wondering if the experts could help me, is there an official order for the ammunition types in the Lawgiver's settings? like 1 - Standard, 2 - Armour Piercing etc?
Nope. The writers just make shit up.
There were rules in things like the Dredd roleplaying game, but they were immediately ignored in a variety of ways. Judges just have whatever the plot demands.
There's a couple of diagrams of the Mark I (https://i.stack.imgur.com/zqSyO.jpg) and Mark II (http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Fv2ydaIk4RY/UJaa-9uMZ2I/AAAAAAAAFcE/LXwXoytI6y4/s1600/2000adprog34lawgiver.jpg), but strangely neither of them mention Stallone's much-loved double whammy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cNd0hbIoQk).
The MK1 has an order if you want one (http://www.2000ad.org/images/tek/lawgiver.jpg)
But it's made up as required - there are a few other rounds available as well, tracers, stun shots etc.
I like to draw shells, and the case has a limited amount of storage for shelled rounds, so I always imagine there are two things going on:
1) Theres a base ammo type of which the shells are a part
2) there's a sort of almost instant 3d printer creating new shells as required based on some basic chemistry and whether it needs smarts or not.
Incendiary? Base plus high explosive charge.
Rapid fire? base
Heat seeker? Base + a microchip and some sort of mini steering + more energy
Ricochet? based + some sort of boing add on plus maybe some smarts to make sure it's hitting targets.
etc.
I mean I don't think about it much, but if I did that's probably how I'd imagine it...
QuoteI mean I don't think about it much, but if I did...
Sure, sure... :)
I imagine that all the bullets are standard rounds and the Lawgiver reassembles their molecules using a preprogrammed quantum scalar electromagnetic field into the configuration required.
Not that I think much about it, either...
The inside scoop from the Secret Dredd Writers' Club:
Every Lawgiver round incorporates all the special round features. The default setting is Standard, but selecting a specific round type activates that mode in the next bullet to be fired.
Lawgiver rounds are probably really expensive to make...
Good! Use your nerdy feelings, boy. Let the geek flow through you.
Quote from: GordonR on 22 June, 2018, 01:02:59 PM
The inside scoop from the Secret Dredd Writers' Club:
Every Lawgiver round incorporates all the special round features. The default setting is Standard, but selecting a specific round type activates that mode in the next bullet to be fired.
Lawgiver rounds are probably really expensive to make...
Voice activated too - that's why Dredd has to shout out what he's about to do (the side-affect of which is warning the perps what to expect) :D
Thanks for the diagrams guys, RIP grenade shot! Was that removed because of its similarity to Hi-Ex?
Quote from: GordonR on 22 June, 2018, 01:02:59 PM
The inside scoop from the Secret Dredd Writers' Club:
Every Lawgiver round incorporates all the special round features. The default setting is Standard, but selecting a specific round type activates that mode in the next bullet to be fired.
Lawgiver rounds are probably really expensive to make...
Yeah you'd assume the Judges will have revised that concept! Not only a huge waste but with the more common round types not exploding they'd be leaving unspent Hi-Ex and Incendiary material everywhere! With all the shoot-outs in MC1 there might be big black market business in salvaging Lawgiver rounds from crime scenes!
That image looks familiar. Games Workshop Dredd RPG?
I think it might have been on the back cover of one of the Daily Star Dredd collections.
Quote from: GordonR on 22 June, 2018, 01:02:59 PM
The inside scoop from the Secret Dredd Writers' Club:
Every Lawgiver round incorporates all the special round features. The default setting is Standard, but selecting a specific round type activates that mode in the next bullet to be fired.
Lawgiver rounds are probably really expensive to make...
That's nuts but not exactly unheard of. I would quite like to see a story where a judge wings someone then about a minute later, whilst being sentenced, the shell detonates by accident in a hi-ex + incendiary fireball.
Quote from: GrudgeJohnDeed on 22 June, 2018, 01:23:51 PM
RIP grenade shot! Was that removed because of its similarity to Hi-Ex?
I would've thought a grenade round has a timer before it explodes, whereas a hi-ex explodes on contact :think:
Not that I've ever given this any thought either, of course....
The grenade round is a mistake, it's supposed to be heat seeker.
It was first published in one of the specials.
Quote from: Woolly on 22 June, 2018, 03:22:12 PM
Quote from: GrudgeJohnDeed on 22 June, 2018, 01:23:51 PM
RIP grenade shot! Was that removed because of its similarity to Hi-Ex?
I would've thought a grenade round has a timer before it explodes, whereas a hi-ex explodes on contact :think:
Not that I've ever given this any thought either, of course....
Grenade and Hi-Ex both just have Number 4 Cartridge envy.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 22 June, 2018, 03:08:01 PM
I think it might have been on the back cover of one of the Daily Star Dredd collections.
That's certainly where I have the pic - I think another collection had a similar lawmaster diagram.
1. Ricochet
2. Ricochet
3. Ricochet
4. You get the idea.
I hate that idea of one generic bullet that instantly configures itself into different types, for two reasons - first, it's batshit implausible in a handgun even by MC1 tech; and secondly it precludes those many occasions when the plot demands that Dredd has run out of a particular type of round - I love the scene in Dredd 2012 when he cycles through his available ammo and only has one hi-ex left so he just explodes the bad judge's head. I'm sure there have been many similar examples in the comic.
It's the other way around for me. Running out of one type of bullet suggests all six kinds are present in the magazine, so once all the standard rounds are used the magazine is still full of unused ricochets, incendiaries and what have you - which sounds both wasteful and complicated to me.
Maybe it's more like a printer (though the 'advanced' printers at work refuse to do anything, even scanning, if it runs out of one type of toner).
It's technomagick!
I'm with Dandontdare in this. The instant creation of ammo worked as an idea for Nikolai Dante's rifle, 600 years in the future, but I don't buy it in Judge Dredd. Also if Wagner says that Dredd can run out of one kind of ammo but not another, then that definitively rules out that idea anyway.
Perhaps something in-between could be true, the bullets' casings are empty ones that are loaded with the correct innards upon request (changing ammo setting for example, then also immediately as the next round needs loading after firing). That way you could still run out of a certain type of ammo. There also could be a sharing of resources in that situation, like all rounds draw their initial propellant from the same explosive reservoir as Hi-Ex, just in much lower doses, and incendiary could be the same explosive with an extra chemical added or air-ratio changed or something.
Quote from: GrudgeJohnDeed on 23 June, 2018, 10:19:39 PM
Perhaps something in-between could be true, the bullets' casings are empty ones that are loaded with the correct innards upon request (changing ammo setting for example, then also immediately as the next round needs loading after firing). That way you could still run out of a certain type of ammo. There also could be a sharing of resources in that situation, like all rounds draw their initial propellant from the same explosive reservoir as Hi-Ex, just in much lower doses, and incendiary could be the same explosive with an extra chemical added or air-ratio changed or something.
That's what I was getting at in my last post - except I rushed it out and didn't really explain what I was thinking. So if you print a page on a colour printer then most pages will use black toner (the base cartridge), then add whatever colours are needed from magenta, yellow and cyan. If the printer is out of one of those colours then it can either refuse to work (even if you're scanning and not using the printer functions at all) or it can print away, but miss out whatever colours it's run out of.
Gotcha, yeah that's the system I'd back.
Just for reference, the diagrams are from:
- Lawgiver Mark I - prog 34
- Lawgiver Mark I (updated) - prog 996
- Lawgiver Mark II - meg 3.50
(https://i.imgur.com/Ip2Tn2x.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/SwjXpBg.png)
ooh thanks for that, very interesting.
I think if you spent more time trying to understand how a writer's mind works and less time how a future space gun works, you might get to the answer more quickly.
If nothing else, I don't think Wagner nor Grant ever wrote a story where a Ricochet round was used to stun anyone! If anything, it's one of Dredd's most lethal techniques... It's Titanium Rubber, not regular only-occasionally-fatal Rubber.
in "Vienna" (I think), Dredd stuns the perp with a glancing shot to the head - can't remember if it mentions whether it's a special round or just an implausibly effective use of a standard execution bullet.
The Mk II (and III?) does have a seldom-used stun function, of course, but its some kind of electromagnetic pulse emitted from beneath the barrel, rather than being a round... Somewhere (somewhere) Dredd remarks that its not reliable enough to use in life-threatening situations.
Quote from: GrudgeJohnDeed on 21 June, 2018, 08:12:29 PM
I was wondering if the experts could help me, is there an official order for the ammunition types in the Lawgiver's settings? like 1 - Standard, 2 - Armour Piercing etc?
Gun by me from Judge Minty, imagination and art by Steve Sterlacchini ;-)
(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4119/4921603764_33a2cf436c_b.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/8uUvkj)Judge Dredd Lawgiver Mark 2 Pistol (https://flic.kr/p/8uUvkj) by Steven Sterlacchini (https://www.flickr.com/photos/40863689@N08/), on Flickr