They also have a tenth of the mass & are easier to divert.

Theoretically, the advantages of a needlegun over other projectile weapons are its compact size, high rate of fire, and ultra-high muzzle velocity. A needlegun takes advantage of the principles of kinetic energy and conservation of momentum, allowing a low-recoil delivery system to inflict significant damage to a target. Recoil is governed by momentum, which is the product of velocity and mass. By conservation of momentum, the change in momentum of the gun must equal the change in momentum of the projectile. The needle projectile has a very small mass, so its large change in velocity does not result in much recoil (change in velocity of the gun itself) since the gun has a mass much larger than the mass of the needle. Damage inflicted is related to the kinetic energy imparted by the projectile on the target, which is 1/2 the projectile's mass multiplied by its velocity squared. Since the needle has a very high velocity and a negligible mass, recoil is minimized at little cost to the kinetic energy of the projectile and its damage potential. The high rate of fire allows the user to fire many needles quickly with a minimal loss of accuracy due to recoil effects, giving the needlegun supposedly large damage potential and precision in combat.

-Wikipedia article on needleguns, emphasis mine

Except SR flechette rounds are described as:



So SR flechette rounds are your tiny shards. I don't see a weapon in SR4 or Arsenal that disagrees with this description.

If you want to go all RL on the topic, that same Wikipedia article also says that the US developed several flechette weapons, but none had significant advantages over the M-16, so they didn't bother with them after. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for making super-AP flechette weapons.

Use APDS instead. It's exactly what you want.

Actually, it says they didn't meet the 100% improvement over the M-16 the military required.

Rent a firearm, in Canada? HA! I can't even legally TOUCH someone's rifle without the right licenses. The likelihood of me getting one feels less likely every year, too.

As for why I know I want that particular type, a few reasons. Research for once. Secondly, they're Canadian. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) With the new laws about magazine size, I'd probably get their version of the 1911 rather than the high capacity models they started the company with. (They actually started making conversion kits for original 1911s to give them 14-round magazines.). Cripple magazines are not a good idea.

As for learning about them in the military, the Canadian Armed Forces still uses Browning Hi-Powers. I remember hearing somewhere that they're still issuing pistols that were manufactured for WWII, which are still waiting in the original crates, still in the packing grease. So I doubt I'd be able to play around with other options there. But to answer your question, no, I was never in the Canadian Armed Forces. I would never have been able to pass the physical.

"Although all the designs worked well, none managed to meet or even approach the 100% improvement over the M16A2 that the program demanded." If you drill down ever further.

Oddly enough, Ares Incorporated submitted an entry.

Steyr put in one of the more successful entries, but the round their weapon fired is definitely APDS.

Epicedion, you never actually read people's posts. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Tyro was saying that he'd *like* flechette to shoot individual 'needles', as opposed to a *cloud* of tiny shards.

'Flechette' derives from something like 'little arrow', whereas SR4 flechette is something like 'sharpened shot' (instead of lead spheres).

Tyro, I don't value the -1DV as heavily as you do, that's all. The ability to breach -5 armor is a really big deal, compared to the highly-illegal APDS. For me, just being able to do P damage massively more often is enough to justify -2DV. Combine this injection toxins or something if you need more damage. I also *really* don't agree that they'd pierce 'hard' armor at all, but SR4 doesn't model that category anyway.

I'm on your side for the concept of low-damage, soft-armor-piercing flechette. It makes sense, because there are a lot of people out there in 2070 wearing armor clothing and the like. It's also a step against the basic SR4 system of the 'if it gets through armor at all, it's enough to kill you' problem. I continue to find it very strange than all the weapons have AP much lower than DV, ensuring large amounts of Stun damage, or the above 'catastrophic kill' situation.

Easily solvable, quad rails, AR style buffer tubes to mount AR stocks on, grips with storage and most other AR like accessories are readily available for AK and AK variants on top of thier own unique style accessories like side rail scope mounts. Granted AK 47 rounds do tend to have a lot more drop and are affected more by windage, but this is where a smartgun system would really shine, close the gap in accuracy and raw power becomes a much more important factor (althouh at longer ranges the AK 47 loses a lot of that raw power).

You need to make some trips to the states. I'll supply the ammo, though I don't have a 1911 yet, its on my list right up there with an AK47, AK 74, or Desert Eagle.

Someday...

Random idea to the OP:

One other attribute you could add to your mega-chart is Quick-Draw ability- Smaller, lighter, or lower-ammo-capacity pistols should be slightly easier to get out of the holster than the big honking Ares Predator.

One way to model this is just have a single number for each frame, or each individual gun that represents the quick-draw threshold, the standard is 3, a machine-pistol might need 4 hits, or a specifically designed easy-to-draw light pistol might only need a 1. Furthermore, if the balance was right, there might be certain specialized SMGs that -could- be quick-drawn, but the threshold would be quite tougher - 5

You might need to re-work the quick-draw holster rules to add dice to the test as opposed to lower the threshold (threshold 0 tests are rather undramatic).

This could be a nice way to help balance-out the heavy-pistol vs. light pistol choices.

I do read the posts. What he wants is for SR4 flechettes to resemble certain kinds of RL flechettes, that SR4 already effectively models as APDS.

As for low-damage/armor-piercing: why? You seem to want a bullet that's specifically designed not to do Stun damage, but also not to kill people.

I'd call it a subsonic round, better for use in enclosed spaces since it's quieter leaving the barrel.

Those are in Arsenal. They exchange an AP penalty for better Perception penalties, especially with a suppressor.

Anything that transfers less energy is going to do less damage and be worse against armor. There's no way to make something that's awesome at penetrating body armor but then poor against the flesh inside, unless you make slow-moving highly elastic teleporting bullets.

You're right, Epicedion. Tyro is talking about something that is in some ways similar to APDS. And I addressed the *numbers* in my post, but the concept is the same.

As for this bit ("There's no way to make something that's awesome at penetrating body armor but then poor against the flesh inside")… Sure there is. We're specifically talking about something that pierces. It goes through the soft armor, but then makes small holes in the flesh. So, you're right again: we *are* talking about something that's good at Physical, but is *balanced* by being less total damage (in boxes). Do you find that ridiculous?

At the moment, we're specifically talking about the Slivergun; it's weird (at least to me) that the slivergun is an automatic hand-shotgun, instead of a needle gun. I personally think it would be interesting if at least this one weapon had a funky piercing (and perhaps non-spread) attack. I'm pretty sick of everything doing Stun, or just murdering you outright. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) The fact that real-life flechette exists (even just as a concept) provides a nice opportunity to tweak things.

Actually, I do. Your steel/ceramic/duraplast/kevlar/ferrocrete/whatever shell of armor, even if it's just armored clothing, is orders of magnitude tougher than human skin. Its job is to absorb and distribute the force of a projectile impact, because the only way the projectile does serious damage is by concentrating its force on a small area. The better a projectile is at piercing the armor, the more energy that projectile is going to carry beyond the armor. The more damage it's going to do to whatever soft target is behind the tougher exterior.

Even in the case of overpenetration, the bullet is going to go clear through the target, causing rip-roaring entrance and exit damage.

What might do what you're thinking would be a bullet specifically designed to penetrate a certain kind/quantity of armor. We're talking exceedingly fine-tuned, beyond what would be reliably practical. This hypothetical bullet would be designed to breach that specific kind of armor, and then still have just enough leftover kinetic energy to do light damage.

But it would never function in the "real world."



The Slivergun isn't a shotgun, so doesn't use the shotgun spread rules (those rules are specific to shotguns, not all flechette weaponry). My view of the Slivergun, based on its description, is that it fires a light spray of small shards as opposed to bullets -- this isn't exactly the same as a shotgun firing flechettes, but the idea is that it has equivalent DV and AP mods. These shards lack any armor penetrating punch, but work well against bare skin.

The Slivergun is an assassin's weapon -- integral suppressor, burst fire, and the tiny fragments probably can't be analyzed and matched to a specific firearm.

I'm not really worried about the 'real world', though. The SR game world has this crazy Stun issue, and it would interest me to change it. I don't particularly like the unclear spread-flechette vs. non-spread flechette issue (is it explained anywhere?), either. AFAIK, anything firing flechette that's not a shotgun is simply limited to Narrow Spread (mechanically identical), so I'm not saying there's a rules problem there. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I certainly don't like weapons that function totally differently against bare skin vs. Rating 1 armor clothing (the famous leather jacket phenomenon). I also think that standard spherical shot fully covers the 'high damage, terrible against armor' paradigm, without wasting the flechette concept.

I understand that this thread is ostensibly about realism, and this might not go here, of course. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

That is simply not true. This creates a kind of bullet wound called a through and through. This is typically a high velocity bullet that passes completely though the body. Typically the bullet remains completely stable, traveling point first, exits fully intact at high velocity and the very small amount of tissue it destroys holds nothing important. And the guy struck is largely unaffected. .30 cal carbine bullets were notorious for this in WW2.

Stable, solid, deeply penetrating are exactly what you want from an AP bullet. This is NOT what you want to maximize incapacitation.

Ideally, you want a bullet that penetrates armor with little to no lost energy, and then expands and ricochets around the innards, tumbling wildly.

In otherwords, a magic bullet.




-k

Indeed, kzt. I'm certainly not saying it would be optimal; far from it. I just think it would be an interesting, balanced alternative option in the game. The sort of opposite of a gel round. Especially with an injection poison gimmick option, or someone immune to Stun, or possibly a spirit's armor (tough call, there).

Oh, good to know. About .30 cal carbines I mean.

How does that compare to .357 magnum FMJ?

I don't see what the big deal about physical damage is. Stun incapacitates as well or better (orks and trolls especially tend to have fewer stun boxes than physical ones), is better for your public image, is good for taking hostages/prisoners, and you can easily kill them later in many cases. 1 DV is equivalent to 3 AP on average, assuming you don't have more AP than they have armor. Needle ammo as I've suggested is less effective at damaging targets than EX-EX, but is relatively silent, essentially recoilless, has BF/FA capability in a small package, and is compact enough for very large magazine capacity; I see it as balanced. Changing needle-type flechettes to ballistic only makes sense, as they actually go significantly FASTER than standard bullets.

Incidentally, if you want something with great AP capabilities which also does massive internal damage, your best bet is probably a fin-stabilized dart which explodes once it pierces armor (maybe some kind of sensor to detonate it a hair after the resistance changes).

The funny thing about physical damage is... it kills you.

If they go faster than normal bullets, they're not silent (-er, -ish, anything).

The thing is, there are already plenty of options for stun: SnS, Gel, Capsule, shotguns (effectively), etc. I'd like something that could reliably do Physical, without being brokenly powerful. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Just for kicks. Physical is harder to heal, for one thing.