Quote:
Originally Posted by tshouryuu
ATC... who are you trying to fool?  This isn't a magical weapon at all. Its an thinly disguised ion/electric cannon (i think) with an exotic power source (mana) that requires a mage to use with an insanely long range. I don't know about the rest but this is a personal request from me. When you design stuff, could you consider throwing away all the sci-fi stuff out of the window? |
The point is not to fool anyone. His point is to try and get around the TSAB. And he could just have written a hand-waver about "technical advances in magic" allowing magic to shoot to 20km.
In fact, there is no firm canon evidence of his Limitation 1 and 3 in canon at all, and even 2 is merely an observation. If he renamed it a "High Velocity" Magic rifle to solve for 2 only, what would you do?
In fact, the biggest problem here is not so much the shot as the fire control. A Scope is OK to 2000m, but 20000. This brings in complex considerations more typical of artillery fire control, but stricter because he wants to use it as a non-homing sniper rifle, not just get shells into the right grid square.
He might not just need the local environmental conditions (which can be obtained with relative ease), but also the conditions throughout the flight path to the target to input into the computer to ensure precision. So before he does any shoot, presumably he has to send out a magic reconaissance round to scan out the whole route. Which will take minutes and may or may not alert the target.
For that matter, at 20000m, the thing might as well be placed onto a tripod and be allowed to swing itself into position. Especially since the thing supposedly produces an injuring shockwave upon firing...
Further, at max range, flight time is still 10 seconds, which is plenty of time for a target's movement to dodge the shot. And the whole system will still be defeated by spaced shielding (the round might overwhelm one shield, but ultimately it is limited in power and thus blocked) if the target is warned, which becomes a lot more likely thanks to his magic recce round requirement.
If he just wants 20km class engagement capabilities, and the thread allows such a thing, may I suggest using homing weapons instead?