Smart Armor, HMGs, and Missiles, (or hoping War comes out sooner than later) Options

[shinryu]

for my first post, let me ask questions which are likely to have been discussed before! (though i did employ the search...)

1) so smart armor only reduces the AP of incoming attacks, right? it's not rolled as part of the damage resistance test nor does it stack as far as the total armor rating of the vehicle is concerned? otherwise wouldn't something with a normal armor 20/smart armor 10 be basically invunerable to every weapon in the game except the railguns? (as an aside, can the vehicle cannons fire all the normal ammunition types? APDS rounds at -12 make this suck a little less).

2) more of a color thing than a mechanics thing: is it generally considered that the shadowrun HMG is more equivalent to the modern MMG/GPMG class of weapons? it's sort of hard to believe that the lightest available sniper rifles are firing .50 cal equivalents; suggests the barrett is in fact one of those nasty payload rifle prototypes and that assault cannon must be 30mm at least, none of which appeal to my sense of verisimilitude.

3) the damn launch weapons. it seems like the consensus is 1 standard weapon mount per + ammo bins? i would think that they would be better off as light drone rack equivalents (as medium drones are considered to be up to motorcycle size (say 250 kilos), in line with your standard AAM/AGM), but then there's the multimount problems. i prefer to play as close to RAW as possible but this is one thing they really, really need to clear up. On a related subject, why aren't people abusing the Heimdall more? as a closer equivalent to modern missiles it's way better than what we get in the arsenal writeup, and you can stuff ten of them in a multilaunch rack for macross missile massacre recreation. something like:

Ares Gungnir (Heimdall variant)

Handling Speed Pilot Body Armor Sensor
+1 3600 6 1 1 6

Ares Hemidall 1500
Anti-Vehicle Warhead 1 1500
Engine Customization Speed 1 15000
Improved Economy 1 15000
Improved Sensor Array 1 1000

Radar Sensor 6 1200
Pilot 6 15000
Signal 6 3000

53200Y

seems like it would be stupid nasty, and 50K for a missile that can engage any target within 40km isn't so bad on a military budget.

4) when is War suppose to be coming out and making it all better, anyway? can't wait for that book...