Guns Options

[Blacken]

[Marc Hameleers]

Oh, i know it''s dumb and that they aren't equipped for what they are doing. They are equipped for what they would do ....In germany!!!.

Re-equipping them for the actual tasks at hand probably cost to much :(

[Adarael]

On the EX-EX vs APDS thing....

I always thought APDS was stupid in terms of game execution. Come on, sabotted rounds being harder to get than lead-azide cored FMJ rounds? That struck me as wierd. One of these rounds is a police, security, and military round. One of these SHOULD only be a military round. Especially given how it craters barriers at full auto.

Besides, I love Ex-Ex. I don't think I've ever made a character that didn't have it as his primary sidearm load.

[mmu1]

[Austere Emancipa...]

[Autarkis]

[Kagetenshi]

Not bothering to explain to someone too dimwitted to realize why rounds designed to penetrate armor should kill people in armor better than rounds that are designed to break apart on impact is defensive?

:please:

~J

[Autarkis]

Responding with a one liner and not expounding on your arguement seems defensive. :eek:

<shrug>

But at least now you expanded your point. :D

[Arethusa]

He's not defensive. He's tired. I don't really blame him. I realize not everyone is familiar with firearms, but there is a difference between ignorance and willful, obnoxious, brazenly stupid ignorance.

[Adarael]

[Raygun]

Well, this has certainly been an amusing read. Hopefully I'll be able to finish it sometime in the near future. Sorry I haven't been around to pitch in. Looks like SR4 is going to leave plenty of work for us "gunheads".

[Wounded Ronin]

[Wounded Ronin]

[Wounded Ronin]

[Autarkis]

Yeah, nothing like giving people guns and then being suprised when there is a disaster they flip out and use them...

[Clyde]

I thought the MP7 and its cohorts were designed to be a replacement for pistols in military use, not assault rifles. I'd never trade a G36 or M4 for one, but I'd gleefully hand in a Beretta in exchange for something better.

This is quite the same thing that happened with the M1 Carbine. As a replacement for the .45 it totally rocks. Only five pounds or so, with better than twice the range and better than twice the ammo. As a replacement for the M1 Rifle it's kind of weak.

As for New Orleans, that situation is just messed up beyond belief. They need Marines or something in there.

[Sabosect]

They have Marines in there. The marines are having problems as well, and in some cases are destroying the supplies they are supposed to deliver with how they choose to deliver them.

[Autarkis]

The "how" they choose to deliver them is more from the fact that when they attempt to land the helicopters, they are rushed by mobs. So, instead of being allowed to land, drop of the supplies and leave, they need to fear for their own safety and drop the supplies from 10 feet in the air which is cracking water bottles and breaking packaging.

[Sabosect]

It isn't just helicoptors they are doing that way. And when people attempt to approach the land vehicles to help, they get held at gun point.

Really, this entire mess could be dealt with and in a way that would end the problems. The fact is that if we did it, it would likely cost us on another front. Either way, we lose. The difference is if the loss is influence or lives.

[Clyde]

I'm going to try to defend SR4's handling of assault rifles and heavy pistols. Then I'm going to propose a possible house rule or two for those of you who like that sort of thing. :)

First, I have to make a limiting statement. I'm judging realism based only on combat peformance against human targets. I don't know enough about the vehicle or barrier rules to judge that stuff.

Second, I'll have to make some assumptions. Everyone makes assumptions when they argue, but I'll attempt to do so up front where we can see them.

Assumption 1. Body armor is intended to mitigate, rather than eliminate trauma.
Assumption 2. Body armor in SR4 defeats a threat if it converts physical damage to stun damage on a reasonable number of net hits.
Assumption 3. Full Body Armor is significantly heavier and bulkier than an armored jacket or lined coat.
Assumption 4. The severity of injury from a gunshot wound is primarily related to shot placement. Caliber, velocity and bullet type are all secondary to the exact area hit.

So, to work.

Firstly, the Heavy Pistol has a damage code of 5P, -1AP while the Assault Rifle has a damage code of 6P, -1AP. While there appears to be very little difference between the two (and no difference at all in the AP statistic) I believe that in SR4 there is a world of practical difference.

On two net hits, the Heavy Pistol does 7 damage with a -1 armor modifier. An Armor Jacket, with 8 points of ballistic armor, is sufficient to convert this to stun. Thus, wearing an armor jacket is sufficient to defeat the threat of heavy pistol rounds.

On two net hits, an Assault Rifle does 8 damage with a -1 armor modifier. An Armor Jacket is insufficient to convert this to stun. An Armor Jacket is not capable of defeating assault rifle rounds. Full Body Armor, with 10 points of Ballistic Armor, does convert an Assault Rifle round to stun.

Combining these disparate data, what do we know?
1) The amount of body armor required to defeat a heavy pistol is fairly light and wearable, even concealable in some circumstances.
2) This amount of body armor is utterly incapable of defeating an assault rifle round. It will cause physical trauma and possibly a lot of it.
3) The amount of body armor required to defeat an assault rifle round is bulky and very heavy. It is likely not concealable under any circumstances.
These three facts lead to the conclusion that an assault rifle has very much more penetration than a heavy pistol in practical terms. We know this not because of what the statistics tell us, but because of the amount of kevlar and ceramic that those statistics represent. In essence, the armor, damage and armor penetration ratings are not linear.
4) The actual amount of damage done in an attack is most directly connected to how many Net Hits are scored on the attack roll. Lots of Net Hits will tell over weapon type.
This fact leads to the conclusion that in SR4 good shot placement defeats almost all other considerations.

So how does this treat assault rifles versus heavy pistols?
1) An assault rifle has more range and ammunition than a heavy pistol.
2) An assault rifle inflicts more serious wounds against armored and unarmored targets.
3) Heavy, obvious armor is needed to stop assault rifles while lighter concealable armor can stop heavy pistols.
4) An Assault Rifle is always a better choice than a Heavy Pistol in a shootout (although the HP might be better for going unnoticed).
5) Despite that, skilled shooting is the single best way to win.

In light of all that, I'd say SR4 does a pretty darned good job of portraying assault rifles and heavy pistols. In fact, it does it a lot better than SR 2 or 3. The AR has a clearcut advantage in single shot mode over HPs. SR2 and 3 did NOT have this (in fact it was the other way around).

For more proof, consider this: it takes 3 points of ballistic armor or Body to counter the extra point of DV that an assault rifle has. Given what we know about assault rifle penetration and wounding mechanisms this makes sense.

Two house rule options for those who want them.
1) Change Assault Rifle damage code to: 5P, -4AP. Statistically, this is equivalent to the current damage code. However, it makes wearing soft armor around an assault rifle pretty much pointless and might solve some issues with barrier ratings or vehicles.
2) Simply remove the -1AP from heavy pistol damage codes. While this doesn't nerf them, it does provide a slightly more clearcut superiority to the assault rifle.

[OSUMacbeth]

Thank you Clyde, you have made some of my points for me. In SR4, the effectiveness of a round is all in how much armor it can defeat. One thing that people seem to be ignoring is that the armor-piercing stat on a gun is actually far less useful than a DV mod when trying to hurt someone. For purposes of defeating armor, -1 AP and +1 DV are the same, except the +1DV also hurts the target more. So yes, AR rounds are more penetrating than pistol rounds. No, it's not orders of magnitude, but it is significantly better in-game. Add this to the fact that assault rifles can burst fire, full auto, and can have nifty accessories like grenade launchers, and it is clear who comes out on top in this game. Clyde's -4ap rule above is a great compromise numerically. Keep in mind, however, that while the stat named "armor piercing value" would get a boost, this would actually make ARs worse than they are. As it stands, they are better than a pistol in every sense of the word when it comes to a firefight.

I've seen the weapons in all 3 previous editions, and though I have my problems with 4th ed, guns is something they definitely balanced right this time, without sacrificing reality. Remember, an identical armor-piercing stat in this game does not mean two things defeat armor identically well. I can't believe that a gun balance this well-designed is taking so much flak, so to speak.

OSUMacbeth

[Ellery]

Clyde, that's a nice analysis, but there are two flaws.

First, why is dealing stun a disadvantage?

Second, don't you think you should consider the variability in the outcome, not just the average outcome? For example, with 6 dice, there's a 9% chance of getting no hits, a 26% chance of getting one, 33% of getting two, 22% of getting three, and 10% of getting more than three.

[OSUMacbeth]

/agree with Ellery on the stun thing. My above praise of the system is not meant to be praise of this. The stun should be halved or something.

OSUMacbeth

[Clyde]

I don't consider dealing stun to be a disadvantage. The point of this little thought exercise was to determine whether assault rifles penetrated more Body Armor than Heavy Pistols by some practically useful margin, despite the fact that they have the same AP. This is hard to figure out on its own - SR4 uses an abstract combat system that doesn't tell you whether or not the armor was actually penetrated. For one thing, it doesn't use positional hitting (i.e. a hit location system like Godlike or Cyberpunk) so you don't know if the armor was even hit. That's why I had to limit the number of Net Hits for purposes of comparison. If I let the shooter have 4 or 5 Net Hits it becomes increasingly likely that the shot has hit an unarmored but still important area such as the throat, head, groin or even under the arm (a traditional weakpoint in many armors). So we have a limited number of Net Hits. That indicates that you struck the target. If the armor is now the reason you are taking Stun damage from a bullet, then I conclude that it's because the bullet hit an armored area and simply did not penetrate.

I could have tried other methods. For example, we could decide the bullet did not penetrate if the target takes 2 or fewer boxes of damage regardless of type. However, I don't think that's a fair test of the armor because the character's Body stat must be computed. Hence I made stun damage conversion the factor. It's the only thing solely dependant upon the armor involved.

Ultimately, what I found was that while there may not be a big difference in their stat line there's a huge difference in effect. If you want armor rated to stop an assault rifle round it's big, heavy, obvious and may even come with some mobility penalties. That implies that assault rifles have a serious penetration advantage over the measley heavy pistols.

Taking a big fat pile of stun damage isn't any fun. An HP toting character is still nothing to sneeze at even when you are wearing full body armor. Consider an attack with 2 Net Hits against FBA. The Damage will come out to 7 points of Stun, while you'll only have 9 points of armor to resist. That probably pulls away 3 points of stun, which leaves you with 4 to handle on Body alone. Unless you have a 6 Body (maximum unaugmented human, in other words) you are going to take some penalties. And this is from only one shot - a double tap will put you more than halfway up your stun condition monitor. And that's standard ammo. Clearly you must always take cover in SR4. It is no longer sufficient to rely on body armor alone. Which is yet one more realistic point about firearms to consider.

[Clyde]

Ellery, I didn't consider variability in the system because of its abstract nature. 0 net hits doesn't test the armor at all. I don't think a whole bunch of net hits tests the armor either. Because it was penetration of armor I wanted to test, we had to use a narrow range of hits. But that variability is one thing I consider a major bonus to SR4 on its own merits. For one thing, it means that mooks can occasionally hit even the fastest of street samurai just by pure luck (which they ought to be able to do). It also means that occasionally you'll take an Assault Rifle round off your full body armor and take only a point or two or Stun damage (which ought to happen occasionally). Likewise, even a big troll can blow his damage resistance test.