Quit a bit less damage? Compared to what?

Sniper rifles?
Sniper rifles have about 2P -2AP over battle rifles and lack the burst fire option.

Shotguns?
While the shotgun is superior at close ranges (as it should be) due to its multi-target capabilities that superiority quickly drops off with distance making the comparison a moot point since the weapons are designed for different roles.

Sport rifles?
Flat out worse than battle rifles.

Assault rifles?
Well, the issue of moving from longarms to automatics weapon group aside. The assault rifle group's sole advantage over the battle rifle is its full auto mode and a slight advantage in ammo capacity. Battle rifles have the higher innate damage code as well as longer range. The problem for assault rifles is that battle rifles are already BF. That means is a small modification (1 slot, 300 nuyen) to modifier a battle rifle to accept FA firing. At that point, the battle rifle is superior to the assault rifle.

No, the problem with battle rifles is they make assault rifles redundant and obsolete. The single largest reason that we do not equip the majority of armed forces with battle rifle type weapons over assault rifles just happens to be a reason that is not modeled in Shadowrun. Weight. In fact, if you're taking automatics just for the assault rifle and have no plans to use SMGs or machine pistols you're much better off swapping all the points from automatics to longarms and taking that 1 mod slot 300 nuyen tax to mod a battle rifle for full auto. In return you gain access (read skill) to the best close range weapons and access to the longest range non-heavy weapons in the game.



You're still wrapped up on the fluff problem with the rule. The mechanic parts of it are extremely clear. "High-power rounds inflict a -2 dice pool penalty when fired due to excess recoil." Since Fire Weapon and Fire Automatic Weapon are actions that one takes it's fairly obvious this penalty applies when you make an attack action with the weapon.

I'm going to remove the fluff from the rule. "High-power rounds inflict a -2 dice pool penalty when fired." Recoil controversy eliminated! I'm also going to add some words which make recoil compensation apply. "High-power rounds inflict a -2 dice pool penalty (neutralized by recoil compensation) when fired."



That falls about in line from what I would expect from the general design of a thor shot weapon. I think people have a rather unrealistic representation of what a thor shot would do due to poor research and writing on the part of science fiction writers. A thor shot style weapon is a kinetic weapon and not an explosive weapon. The best real world example of what a thor shot would do is to take a bunker buster bomb and remove the explosive ordinance from it.

Now a thor shot will destroy a building, but not by flattening it underneath it. It's going to rip through the building down through the foundation destroying huge amounts of structure support as well as foundational support. The odds are that after such significant damage the building will collapse under its own weight. A lot of the area damage is probably being causes by fragmentation of the object hit, superheated air plasma, heat from air friction of the projectile, and perhaps even some damage based on the supersonic speed.

It gets worse. Battle rifles use automatics as well.

To assault rifles or machine guns. Although yeah, they do 1 point of damage more than assault rifles, and while they cost about twice as much with the mod, they are usable. You seem to be right with this one.

Except "inflict -2 recoil penalty to a dice pool" would mean the second variant, which the rule obviously implies. And that is what makes it bad.

Except that ballistic kinetic weapons tested so far produce a crater still, not a point-of-impact shaft. And Thor missile is said to be equivalent "to the force of a one-kiloton fission bomb", destroying everything in 200 meters. So it's by far not a bunker buster, it just goes from "destroyed outright" to "pretty much nothing happens, howitzer rounds deal more damage".

Light machine guns are 6P -1AP and are usually a bit cheaper.
Medium machine guns are 6P -2AP and cost more than battle rifles.
Heavy machine guns are 7P -3AP and cost way more than battle rifles.



Yes, that would mean the second option except that's not how it's worded.



Correct, but most of those large scale tests that leave craters are being done so against soft targets like dirt and sand. At the values of energy that we're talking about, dirt, sand, and even rock are practically fluids. The largest portion of that crater is going to be caused by the projectile displacing mass out and up (mostly up) away from the impact point with more mass filling the the hole left behind by the projectile. A 5-10m radius crater would probably be about right for a 0.3m cross section thor shot.

You'll never see a clean hole against anything but an entirely solid mass. Most objects hit by such a weapon contain so much crude running throughout them that the projectile cutting through it is going drag, fracture, and otherwise impair surround material so it will collapse in around the impact hole.

HMGs are better, but they're strictly F and have higher availability, so you can't get them at default chargen.

It is worded ambiguously, which is precisely the problem.

"Anything within 200 meters of the strike is destroyed, blasted to powder by the energy of the blast".

If you want to take my comment as an attack, by all means do so, I don't give a rat's behind, but I will point out that to be a 'personal' attack, a single person needs to be singled out--which didn't happen. All I did is state my opinion which is mainly drawn from being sick and dang tired of people thinking they can do a better job writing rules than those who are paid to do so, and most likely have more experience (discounting house rules which are tailored to one group).

You don't have to be a professional writer to spot glaring problems in logic or mechanics.

And some of the folks complaining ARE professional writers.

I'll also note that in the RPG field, much of the writing pool does NOT have any sort of real formalized training in writing, grammar, or the like. It's mostly ascended players and GMs who one day decided to submit some ideas to their favorite game and got a call back from the game company.

It's not just the writers though. Problems are also supposed to be caught at the editing and playtest stage.

Shadowrun product has historically been pretty decent, aside from sometimes really needing a "gun guy" to look over their gear sections. WAR was an anomaly. It has a lot of nice stuff, but it also really needed a few more rounds of editing and testing.



-k

>"Your text is basically someone saying this shit and that".
>Not a personal attack
I am honestly surprised that you're still trying to pass it as a valid argument in a crunch discussion.

You don't need to be a cook to tell that the steak is burned. Similarly, you don't need to be Gary Gygax to point out that a certain set of rules is horrendously broken, up to the point of failing to read rules from the other splat and comply with them (yeah, I do mean vehicle stats in War!).