Puckle Problems

[Forward Observer]

I'm still trying to figure out what possessed the developers to include such an obscure weapon in the first place. I knew I had come across pictures of this odd weapon in one of my firearms books on the Colt revolver. It was included just because some historians thought Samuel Colt may have been partially inspired by it when he developed his first practical design of a handgun using a revolving cylinder.

However, a quick search on the net revealed that the Puckle was never successful, never produced in any numbers, and other than a couple purchased--it was never really used by the British Army--much less the army of any other nation.

The application for patent for the gun was made in 1718 by the British attorney who invented it and his patent application claimed it was primarily intended for close shipboard defense--not land use. The patent picture and the few existing models in museums are not mounted on movable carriages, but on simple tri-pods. Oddly the patent also showed two bore configurations---one normally round and the other square to fire square bullets. The square bullet model was supposedly for using against non-Christians.

All in all---the fact that it was never really used by any army and that it is only available toward the end of the technology tree, which would be chronologically incorrect given the patent date, the Puckle gun is simply a fantasy weapon.

Here is the brief Wikipedia article on it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Puckle

The brief article even mentions that the gun is included in the EmpireTW game, but the funniest quote from the article is:

The "Puckle Gun" failed to attract investors and never achieved mass production or sales to the British armed forces. One newspaper of the period observed, following the business venture's failure, that it has "only wounded those who hold shares therein."

Cheers

[FactionHeir]

I don't agree with them being damaging to structures. I had 6 puckle guns in front of the enemy settlement's gate and shot at that gate for a good 45 minutes before it finally came down.

[antisocialmunky]

I hit a wall with 6, died in 3 volleys. You just have to find a sufficiently big target. I don't think the gate coutns hits unless tis on the gate itself.