WAR! gives us (yet again) more ammunition types, Or: can we combine things without going straight to Munchkin Land? Options

[Kerenshara]

With the arrival of WAR! we have even more new kinds of ammunition, and I was updating my personal spreadsheets which I use for quick reference, pulling everything from multiple pages and sources and tables, and I noticed something: only a single ammunition feature was listed as being "+" for either Availability or Cost.

I hadn't really considered it in depth before, but with some of the new toys WAR! makes available, I wanted to combine a few things. Since a couple of the firearms call for the High-Power ammunition in their description, does that mean they can't use sensor rounds? Or bullets made from "Special Materials" (read: silver)? And what's to stop somebody from making the round Hollow Point?

OK, so here's the conundrum: How do you adjudicate the Availability and Cost, and how do you delimit legal combinations?

Here's my take on it:

For Availability you have two choices: use the highest of all or do the math and add up all the "net" increases over 2 (the Availability of Standard Ammunition) and the higher of the Freely Available / Restricted / Forbidden tags. Personally, I favor the second choice, making it pretty hard to find RFID-tagged sensor rounds for weapons chambered for High-Power ammunition.

For Cost, you have two similar choices: add up the net Cost increases over standard ammunition, or you could figure out the "cost multiplier" of each modification. The first way is much simpler, but the second reflects the increasing difficulty of packing more "stuff" into each round. For myself, I am inclined to lean towards the second but I'm still on the fence.

Lastly, to determine legal combinations, I think it's good to break the round down into component parts. For simplicity I will call them: Payload, Chaser and Case.

Payload refers to the actual slug being delivered down-range. It would be hard to have a capsule/sensor round because both options take internal volume. Likewise, you can't (effectively) have an Armor-Piercing core in a Hollow-Point round; you're shooting (sic) for different objectives.

Chaser refers to things which don't measurably affect the function of the Payload itself, but still travel down-range to the target WITH the payload. Notably this would include RFID-tagging and Tracer options for automatic fire weapons. I'm not really sure an RFID tag would like being parked next to a tracer incendiary and still be able to perform its job so it's probably best to be an either/or on that.

Last, we have Case. I don't mean things like caseless versus brass, either. I'm referring to just how hard you're pushing the round down the barrel. In particular, I'm thinking of Subsonic, High-Power and Standard. Subsonic uses less propellant, High-Power uses the same amount but of a much higher energy propellant.

So here's my thinking, for what it's worth:

• Select Availability system: Additive or Higher
• Select Cost system: Additive or Multiplier
• Break the "ammunitions" into their respective category: Payload, Chaser and Case.
• Allow one of each category (so up to three total options).

(OK, side note here: I think that weapons chambered for High-Powered ammunition should be able to be switched - say with a complex action or simple action with a Smart-gun - to firing conventional ammunition. The Remington / Bushmaster Adaptive Combat Rifle offers this capability IRL to allow you to select compensated / uncompensated recoil action without having to change ammunition or other parts by turning a valve. Essentially, this is changing the amount of force needed to actuate the loading action of the weapon. It would seem the same logic could apply to the higher recoil-forces of High-Power ammunition. The only way it would be EXCLUSIVE would be if you said it took MORE powder and a bigger casing to hold it, whereas the fluff clearly says it's a SPECIAL KIND of powder. That's how I plan to run it, anyhow. I'm open to argument on this one.)

Thoughts?

-Kerenshara
(Glad to be back. It's been a while.)