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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3372503" data-attributes="member: 4937">I thank you have your history right in the facts, but I'm not sold on your interpretation of them.Not really until the 18th century or so (plenty of cavalry charges often successfully until then), and not much more so than the crossbow or the longbow obseleted the cavalry charge when deployed with sufficient mass (Agincourt, Crecy, etc., etc.).  Besides which, the real death of massed cavalry charges is disciplined heavy infantry.  Whenever a nation can field a large amount of disciplined heavy infantry, the unorganized charge becomes obselete as a tactic period.You are talking about a world that can smelt adamantium, and can open gates to the plane of fire.  Someone is going to know how to make a blast furnace.You don't need steam power to produce standardized parts.  You can go by a hand crafted AK-47 copy in wide swaths of Asia and Africa that was made using techniques available in the 18th century.  Granted, the quality of the metal is not so great (but it could be, they just use scrap because its cheap), so the rifles rust easy and are prone to vibration and the tolerances tend to make for even more erratic fire than normal for the '47, but there is really nothing about them that couldn't be made by a 17th century blacksmith.  The secret to standardized parts is not steam power, but high quality measurements and drafting and getting your toolsmiths to conform to a unified standard.  Standardized parts are largely social technology, not physical technology.  Toolsmiths aren't going to want to produce standardize parts because it makes the work less rewarding, in the long run less demanding, and ultimately they will correctly recognize that it will push the value of thier trade downward in the socio-economic heirarchy.  The real value of the wages of thier craft will fall because it will be easier to train people how to do it.  Toolsmiths will become as interchangable as the parts that they make.  Eventually, the craftsman will be replaced by a laborer on the assembly line with a fraction of his knowledge and skill - and therefore demanding a fraction of the pay.It should be no real surprise then that standardized parts were first invented in France, but first actually used in America.As for your gun rules, they sound pretty good to me and they certainly seem like they'd be meeting your design goals.</blockquote>

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