Re: GM-controlled Bad Luck points

On Aug 7, 12:05 pm, psychohist <psychoh...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> While the military talks about reliability, they are much more willing
> to trade off reliability for performance or other features than
> civilian customers generally are.

Apples and oranges on the jet engine example there, on a number of
levels. Unless you're interested, I'll just let them pass as we're
going a little off topic.


> Even an order of magnitude reduction
> in jams from, say, 2% to 0.2% would be of far less benefit than a 33%
> increase in ammunition capacity, even ignoring the potentially
> improved firing rate from the semiautomatic action.

At the time of the Miltary's switch over to the 1911, it was only a 1
round ammo improvement (from 6 to 7), or 17%. In some nations, there
was no increase in ammo in their move to semi-auto. Reload times was
the driving factor and on that point, they were willing to pay for
slightly reduced reliability.

Things changed in later years of course, but interestingly enough the
Marines choose the ammo capacity of the 1911 over weapons that carried
far more.


> While the basic M-1911 design dated from 1911,
> there had been changes in the intervening years, and there were
> certainly manufacturing improvements.

As an owner and firer of both, I can attest to the fact that there
were basically no reliability improvements. The gun recently brought
by the marine corps is the same design (being rebuilt 1911A1 pistols),
although modified to closer tolerances to provide better performance
at the cost of a reduction in reliability. The Marine corps, with
their tradition of outstanding weapons maintainance (and the fact the
weapons were intended for their more elite members) considered this a
fair trade off.

Manufacturing improvements tended to be on the cost of production side
and many would say that actual quality has been reduced as a result.
Bob Munden certainly was of that opinion in a conversation I had with
him a couple of years back when I had him do some gunwork for me. And
judging from the solid quality of an Army issued 1917 revolver I have
(it's lockwork and function matches that of my hand tuned modern
production Python, if it's finish is horrid and trigger pull very
manly to say the least) I'd have to agree although I'm sure there are
exceptions.


> Another way of
> putting it would be that the police applications were becoming more
> like military applications, causing the police to make tradeoffs
> closer to the ones the military made.

There is some truth in that. The whole firepower (more rounds going
down range) school of thought certainly mirrors that of the miltary in
the 70s and 60s. Interestingly enough, currently the US Army has moved
away from that back to quality of fire.

There are however significant differences.

Law Enforcement is based here in the US with immediate access to
maintainance and the time to perform it. The enviromental conditions
are also far more friendly. Those two factors allow them to use
weapons that would produce unacceptable failure rates under military
field conditions. They are also quicker to change than the military as
few police departments have the large logistics tail of the military
that could require replacement.