Brand name firearms, do you play around with them? Options

[Raygun]

I'm mulling over the choice between .30-06 and .300 Win Mag. The .30-06 has worked well enough for about 98 years thus far, for just about every kind of big game walking the Earth. I've used it on elk before, I just haven't had a left-handed rifle chambered for it. I'd like to have a rifle that can do all local big game well, and the .30-06 fits that bill nicely. With the .300 Win Mag, I'd have to pretty much dedicate the rifle for Elk use, which is an idea I'm not particularly fond of. In either case, I plan on using Remington's 180 grain Swift Scirroco load for elk this year.

A .270 should work fine as well, using a 150 grain load.

The ultra mags, IMO, are kind of silly. They shoot pretty flat for a long way, but that kind of defeats the purpose of hunting, I think. The object should be to get as close as possible. That pretty much makes the ultra mags superfluous about 98% of the time. As long as you can get within about three hundred meters and you are confident of a solid hit, .30-06 or 270 should work just fine.

I'm thinking Remington 700 BDL in .30-06 with a Nikon Monarch UCC 3-9x40, if I can swing it.

[mcb]

I agree with your choice of cartridges, of the 8 guys going my hunt 4 will be carrying 30-06, one with a 300 Win Mag, 2 with 7mm Rem Mag and me with my lowly 270 Win. I see a lot of guy on some of the internet forums that say 30-06 is a bare min and then they start talking about cannons like 300 RUM and 375 H&H.

I was thinking of going with a 150 grain bullets but after trying several different boxes of ammo at the range I settled on Federal’s 140 grain Trophy Bonded Bear Claw. Its tough to argue with 5/8 inch 3-shot groups at 100 yds from a nearly 50 year old rifle. From what I have read the TBBC is one tough bullet. I did some penetration tests, firing one through a gallon juice jug full of water into a clay embankment from about 90 yds. I then dug up the bullet. It had holed the jug leaving it fairly in tack (exit hole slightly larger then the inlet hole) and then penetrated about 24 inches of clay. I washed off the clay and weight the bullet and it had retained about 93% of the original mass and was perfectly mushroomed with all the petals intact. I was pleased.

I ended up putting Leupold 3-9X40 Vari-X II on my 270. I would have like a Vari-X III but I still have to have some money left to get some other gear.

My brother bough that 700 LSS put nine rounds though it and turn around took the scope back off it and sent it out to have Answer’s Recoil system put on it. He’s a big boy going about 235 lbs and is no recoil pansy but he said it made tears come to his eyes shooting it over sand bags. With the Answers Recoil system, which include a muzzle brake and hydraulic recoil damper mounted under the recoil pad my 135lb wife can shoot it comfortably.

Good luck on your hunt
mcb

[Raygun]

[Snow_Fox]

[otomik]

[Raygun]

[mcb]

Thanks Raygun, I have read a lot of good things about Barnes X bullets but untill you pointed out that PMC in loading them the only other company I could find loading them in factory ammo was Federal. And they only load the orginal and the triple shock in 130 grains in 270 Win. I might have to give that 150 grain bullet a try. mcb

[Wounded Ronin]

I wonder if .30-.06 should have a D damage code.

[Austere Emancipa...]

[Wounded Ronin]

More like I'm confused. Most "sniper rifles" and "sport rifles" have a damage code of S. Only anti-vehicular stuff has a code of D.

.30-.06 is pretty powerful but it's not really anti-vehicular. So I'm not sure which it would be.

[Austere Emancipa...]

Okay. Well, let me put it like this: the .30-06 is only barely more powerful than the .308 Winchester/7.62x51mm. At common loadings, the latter creates around 2600-2700 ft-lbs of energy at the muzzle, .30-06 100-200 ft-lbs more than that.

Considering the 7S (Light Sporting) -> 9S (Medium Sporting) -> 14S (Sniper Rifle) -> 14D+ (Heavy Sniper Rifle) Damage scale of rifles in SR, you could call 7S something like a .30-30 (170gr @ 2200fps, 1830 ft-lbs) or a .243 Winchester (100gr @ 2960fps, 1945 ft-lbs). 9S would then correspond to .308/7.62x51mm, .30-06, 7.62x54mmR and other 7.62mms which hover somewhere slightly under 3000 ft-lbs. 14S would correspond to the hefty .338 - .34 Magnums, pushing 250gr bullets at about 3000fps for ~5000 ft-lbs of kinetic energy at the muzzle.

This is pretty much how Raygun does them, BTW, only he puts .243 Winchester and .30-30 at 8S instead of 7S. I use 7S here, because I wanted to use the canon Damage Codes, and don't like the idea of having something like the various hot .22s do Serious damage.

.30-06 ain't got nothing on anti-material/heavy sniping rifles. The .50 BMG creates almost 14000 ft-lbs of kinetic energy at the muzzle by getting a 660gr bullet well over 3000fps. This is well over 4 times the kinetic energy of a .30-06, with bullets nearly 4 times as heavy fired quite a bit faster.

Sniper vs Sporting rifles, one of many threads on the new forums touching upon the subject of sporting and sniping rifle calibers.

This post has been edited by Austere Emancipator: Nov 2 2004, 06:35 PM

[KarmaInferno]

[otomik]

about 12 grams each 9mm cartridge (brass cased) IIRC.
of course CCI makes a cheap lightweight 115grain aluminum cased round, i haven't measured but there's a noticeable difference.

[Austere Emancipa...]

Yep, 12 grams is the closest whole figure for an average 9x19mm cartridge. 2.2kg empty weapon + 1.2kg ammunition + 0.5kg empty helical magazine (no idea what it actually weighs, just guessing) is still under 4kg, whereas several SMGs, and certainly ARs (like the original AK-47s), weigh well over 4kg empty.

The helical magazine is very wide, which is part of why such a weapon would be rather difficult to hide inside clothing. I'd say the Calico pistol (M950) is a firm Conceal 4 in any case.

[DrJest]

Most of this discussion is waaaay too technical for me, so let me boil it down into simple questions to assist my game, and specifically my search for the Perfect Gun Kata Adept ™ ;) :

1) It is a given that most targets worth shooting at in SR will be armoured. Given that the GKA will be firing one-handed (a pistol in each hand), what round would you say reflects the best ratio of controllability to penetration?

2) What about penetration to tissue damage? And how would that affect controllability?

3) What gun would you say best complements that shooting style?

BTW, completely unrelated - the Calico (as seen, I believe, pretending to be an alien handgun in the old Dolph Lundgren schlock-scifi film Dark Angel), isn't that the one that let you tune the rate of fire from between 600 and 2000 rpm with (relative) ease? Frightening thought, even if it was limited to the .22 (which I believe the 2000rpm was, but then I know very little about guns) that's a drekload of lead to be spewing around.

EDIT: You'll probably laugh, but at the moment I've been considering the Beretta 93R. Option of SA or BF, 15 or 30 round clips, two barrel lengths - makes for a nicely customisable weapon.

[Austere Emancipa...]

[DrJest]

Well, we were looking at Raygun's site as the source for firearms, along with that firearms creation guide thingummy. But I'm also an author considering doing some writing for the genre, so some more detail than the standard fluff would be nice.

[Austere Emancipa...]

How much better than an average RL person will this guy be able to handle recoil? How well do you personally think whatever gadgets you glue onto your guns will help diminish recoil? How much do you think firearms and ammunition technology, as well as armor technology, will advance in the next 60 years? Do you want to fire akimbo guns in burst-fire or even fully automatic modes?

[lorthazar]

Of course I use brandname weapons in Shadowrun. Most times I just uses the statistics of the closest applicable gun, but for a few I have had to make my own. Like the .475 Linebaugh Revolvers one of characters carries for these I had to disregard the custom gun creation rules and just use what makes sense.

Freedom Arms .475 Linebaugh Revolver
Cost: 1200 nuyen
Damage: 12S
Conceal: 6
Mode: SS
Ammo: 5(cy)
Weight: 1.5 kilos (that is what it weighs now)
Availibility: 8/2 weeks

Of course I had to give it such a high power and damage level becuase this is a pistol designed to kill bison, cattle, moose, bears, and even elephants in a single shot. It is single shot becuase of the horrendus recoil. Ammo costs are tripled becuase of the extreme power of this weapon.

Fore a ballistic comparison look Here i now it is Rayguns site but I have checked the math and he is actually being conservative.

[Austere Emancipa...]

You do realize how completely that contradicts what you said earlier in the Vehicle Damage thread about the Ruger Super Warhawk being "a .454 Casull or .475 Linebaugh in terms of power"?

Most of the more powerful loadings for the .475 Linebaugh seem to float just below 1900 ft-lbs from an 8" barrel, with a few just above 2000 ft-lbs (this site uses an example loading that gets 1566fps out of a 385gr bullet). If you consider this to be 12S, then the Ruger Super Warhawk is more like a .41 Magnum.

Including just one weapon which is "realistically powerful" in an otherwise canon game is a bad idea to begin with, and I have to say this is even more broken than usual. Here's why:
If you consider penetration of hard materials to be as important a factor as depth of penetration in tissue for the Power of a gun, that also has the funny side effect that a 7.62x51mm would absolutely count as 14S -- so you could create a weapon that resembles the M14 on Raygun's site, except it has a Damage Code of 14S, and tell your GM that "you had to give it such a high Power and Damage Level". Or create a 5.56x45mm AR which has a DC of 11M. How about a 10G shotgun with a DC of 16D? Or, fuck it, a Barrett M82 that does 18LN?

[lorthazar]

Now I did contradict my self about the Ruger Super Warhawk only becuase I forgot to list that it would be light .475 and .454 loads. (btw are you really that.... never mind you aren't worth my time.) I'm sorry if that causes confusion and panty bunching.

As for a singular powerful weapon in the group. Are you kidding me? Our troll designed an Assault Cannon with bulpup, increased concealability, and shortened barrel so he could hide it. Our dwarf rigger carries a a MadMax that loads .700NE that he uses with his gyromount arm. Our Elves all carry .44 Automag SMG's. Somehow our Merc got ahold of a Ares MP3 laser. And the less I say about the Giant physical adept archer the better. I created one gun that was slightly non canon and even made it something real life. So far my bodyguard has collected a half dozen of them from enemies. The point is be realistic about what you create and what you use.

[Austere Emancipa...]

Woah. Okay, in that kind of game, it certainly doesn't matter. I feel for your GM.

And yeah, I really am that bad at remembering stuff written to me only yesterday that I had to go back to copy/paste that quote. It wouldn't matter if it had not been an important part of your argument in the other thread. It certainly makes the short discussion that followed on how powerful the 10mm Auto is all the more amusing.

[lorthazar]

Actually it was all the GM's fault at first he told us how to do such things. Of course the group has calmed down a little before it ended, becuase the GM had been using the same tactics against us that we used against guards. Only my character and the troll samurai lived to retirement. By retirement I mean buying a controling interest in Beretta and SIG and merging them into an ultra high quality weapons manufacturer in my own campaign. they are expensive weapons but not out of line for 3rd Edition. Yes, the .475 linebaugh is offered but only in troll sized hand cannons.

My own campaign has it's headaches: Immortals, Pretenders, Free Spirits... but in the end i think it is worth it if the players are engaged.

BTW: I am sorry for my outburst

[Austere Emancipa...]

And I'm sorry I was a bit of a prick.

It's true, there's nothing inherently wrong with playing an extremely high-powered game. You can have fun playing just about anything. You could always try playing some other game and make sure it stays normal-powered and then come back to playing SR, that could help keep it under control -- it's often good to get some perspective to RPing through another game system and game world. But if your group likes powergames, that's just fine.

[lorthazar]

We alternate quite proficently. We play GURPS Horror (the PC's are us and a dare you to powergame that), Rifts (but only classes form the main book), Mercenary 2000, Battle Tech, D&D, Rolemaster, and Toon