It seems to me that the Gauss Rifle in Arsenal is a little underpowered.

The principal of the weapon suggests that armor would do little more than annoy a gauss round and that you'd basically be picking your teeth out of the nearest tree if you were actually shot with one. It doesnt seem like the kind of hit you can just shrug off or absorb. 9P is a respectable hit, but I'd expect a little more bang for my money on something like that.

A railgun or in this case a gauss rifle does not necessarily mean its better than chemically propelled projectiles. You still have to deal with newtons laws, and that means the harder you throw the bullet, the more the bullet is going to recoil.

The gauss rifle presented in arsenal is probably toned down to the point that it can be 1-man portable. It still hits almost as hard as an assault cannon.

Not to mention, there's also the fact that the weapon itself might actually be more useful against a tank than a regular person. Regular person? Round will probably just pass through them without passing on a lot of its kinetic energy. Going to hurt like hell and possibly kill you anyway.

wasn't the gauss errataed so the armor is halved before the AP Mods apply?

All Armor values against a Gauss Rifle round are reduced by half, before applying Armor Penetration.

Many thought that's how it should have worked, to be consistent with other Gauss weapons. I thought it was accidentally cut during editing. Regardless, it has been included in official errata.

I dont see any real BENEFITS to using it. It strikes me the same way the Monofilament Chainsaw did when I saw it under B&E tools. Its there for the cool factor but as an actual component of gameplay its not worth it.

Its harder to get, takes rare and hard to get ammo, doesnt hit as hard as an Assault Cannon, and is about the same size.

I dont see any real gain to using it.

It might be of benefit if you're taking on milspec armor in a mercenary campaign. To be honest, some of these weapons do strike me as very specific in campaign application.

I call shenanigans on this. Any moron who can lathe a proper projectile could produce ammo for the thing.

Maybe the battery packs are hard to find or something, but iono what was going on with the ammo thing.

Hehe, some thread topics never stop recurring. I would house rule it that you get a bonus to intimidate people with the gauss rifle, because what you're really paying for with the increased price is the bladder-releasing power of its high-tech look (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) But it doesn't count if your target knows about heavy weapons, because he'll understand that it's just a really fancy version of an assault cannon (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

and i thought a troll carrying a panther assault cannon was high on the bladder-clearing scale...

Removed after careful consideration.

The AP of -1/2, then -4?

The fact that with 1 net hit, you can deal damage to a Force 12 Spirit?

Never seen a Troll fire an Great Dragon ATGM from his shoulder i guess?
with 20D AV SPLASH Damage, that was about the worst in SR3 . . aside for a Minigun with AV Ammo . .
but as a troll, you could actually top that damage or at least get the same damage in Close combat too.

OK, did the Thunderstruck flip off your mum or something. Even pre-errata that gun freaking rocked.

It's Semi-Auto, it does 9P with AP -5/-7 if you load it with Assault Cannon AV Rounds (since it technically takes Assault Cannon ammo, and nothing says you can't), and it halves the target's armour before applying it's AP (see the Arsenal Errata).
And it does all this from one and a half klicks away. There is quite simply no finer weapon in the entire game (do the math. Even the retardness that is the Barrett 121 loses out against anything with more than 8 armour, and only matches the Thunderstruck below 8 armour).

as far as i understood, only assault cannons can take assault cannon ammo.
and there is special ammo for the gauss rifle too, which only comes in full metal jacket or simple dart of ferrous metal . . which can only be used by gauss rifles . . or am i misremembering something?

Railguns fire magnetic accellerated chunks of metal, you are right; however Ares Predator fires chemicaly propelled pieces of something which can be regular lead, tungsten, stik'n'shock, Ex-Ex, etc., the gauss cannon just needs an outer layer of elettricaly conductive material to work (if I got how it works the right way), so if the GM allowes it there's nothing wrong having different type of gauss ammunitions.
Just remember the ammo cost is: (regular gauss ammo cost)*(cost of non-gauss ammo desired)/(cost of non-gauss regular ammo).

Pre-Errata it was at best okay compared to other Assault Cannons, & far below the Barrette.

and no, there are no AV Gauss ammunition - the ammunition in the book uses AV tech already.

So... where to get this magnificient Errata everyone is talking about?

[edit]Found it. SR Page is in need of some serious updating, though.

The Shadowrun Main Page.

Thank you, even if my SearchFu already provided me with an answer. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[edit]Now this is just getting embarrassing. I already had that errata on my hard drive... getting old, or something.

That equation would just give everything the cost of regular gauss ammo.

Edit: Nevermind. My brain shut down there.

Ooh, I'd never seen that errata before. I think... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/embarrassed.gif) Thanks for the link! I revise my earlier statement, and I put a gauss rifle on my xmas list (IMG:style_emoticons/default/love.gif)

sadly, that errata is not listed in the "erratas" list...

Said list should be errata'd to include it.

But back on topic, yes, AllTheNothing, your concept would work in theory. What you're talking about is basically a sort of nickel-ferrous sabot for gauss use. However, remember that gauss weapons are designed to fire solid slugs or darts, which do not have to be very large at all to do damage when they're flying at Mach2 or better. Therefore, I doubt that the barrel width of a Thunderstruck and a Panther are the same -- rocket and shell rounds tend to have large diameters so you can fit in more propellant/fuel. Common sense aside, I as a GM would tell a player "No!" because the half armor before AP mod rule is disgusting enough without adding AV, EX, etc, into the mix.

Also if you fired a round that big at that velocity it would shatter your bones of whatever you decided to brace it on, and if you fired it from the hip your gun would probably make a 25000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) crater behind you.