What can use flechette, types of guns Options

[Turjon Apocritus]

Hello all, i know its another flechette question but i didn't see anything about my question in search. I am running a campaign now and some runners are looking at picking up flechette ammo (because of how well it is now) for some guns that i thought shouldn't be able to use that type of ammo. I have shot alot of guns and know what certain barrels can take and whatnot, what i don't know is if in the year 2070 is there newer technologies that let all barrel types shoot whatever ammo they want. Looking through core rules i only see stipulations about case and case-less ammo.

In the book only certain weapons have the (f) beside them so does that mean that only those weapons can use flechette or just those have the DV already in them?

[Oracle]

Those weapons marked with an (F) use ONLY flechette ammunition. All guns CAN use flechette unless stated otherwise.

[Turjon Apocritus]

That sounds a bit funny a sniper rifle using flechette ammo, or a compact pistol for that matter. might be time for house rule on this one. Thx for reply

[buddha]

Using flechette ammo with a sniper rifle would not present any problems, but the range should suffer some penalties. As a house rule you can say that flechette ammo in rifles uses the shotgun ranges.

[Austere Emancipa...]

Does SR4 describe "flechette" ammunition in a way that makes any sense to begin with? By the description given in SR3, "flechette" ammunition would be useless when fired out of any kind of firearm.

[Turjon Apocritus]

[Slacker]

Keep in mind, SR flechette ammo is not meant to be shotshell. Shotgun shotshell just uses the same rules regarding armor penetration and damage.
SR Flechette ammo does not spread out like a shotgun blast. It is made up of small projectiles that all shoot along the same path, sort of like multiple tiny bullets fired simultaneously.

[Turjon Apocritus]

[Austere Emancipa...]

If the canon explanation remains more or less the same (several small pieces of metal instead of a single bullet), then you really shouldn't worry about whether sniper rifles are good platforms for firing this out of. That kind of ammunition doesn't exist in the real world for a reason. If you're the kind of person who thinks logic has a place in shadowrun, you'll be forced to describe flechette in some other way -- and you might as well describe it in a way that allows it to have external ballistics nearly identical to more conventional small arms ammunition types.

[Slacker]

[Sandoval Smith]

SR4 page 313.

Guns with the (f) in the description already have the bonuses from Flechette ammo worked into their damage code. I think that any gun where you can swap ammo types (gel, ex ex, etc,) can take flechette.

[Azralon]

[Slacker]

[Turjon Apocritus]

Thank you for all the replies everyone, i guess i got of track in the "logic" of it as Austere pointed out. I guess my main thing was that weapons that have the (f) say they are already figured with flechette because either thats all they can use and other weapons that can use the flechette say it specifically in the descriptions.

Thanks for the chat everyone.

[Slacker]

There are some guns, the Ares Viper Slivergun being the only one i can think of offhand, that say in their description that they can only use flechette ammo.
Some shotguns list flechette ammo as the default, but I believe you can still use slug ammo in them. At least, I don't remember reading anywhere that they were flechette only.
And, to the best of my knowledge, there aren't any weapons that say they can't use flechette ammo, nor are there rules limiting flechette ammo to only certain types of weapons.

[Thorncrow]

I've always thought of flechette ammo as analogous to current day glaser rounds. THe round is coated in fiberglass that shatters on impact sending fiber shards tearing through the target. The entry wound is exactly like whatever the given caliber of the firing weapon is, but the exit wounds are several magnitudes more horrific.

[Azralon]

Per (past) flavor text, flechette ammo consists of nothing but slivers. No solid core like your glasers.

[Austere Emancipa...]

The Glaser safety slug doesn't have a solid core. What it does have is a jacket that remains intact until it hits something, and you're right in that according to all the descriptions I've seen there is no such thing in SR flechette ammunition.

[blakkie]

The description of flechette rounds:

[Slacker]

Thanks for doing the double checking for us blakkie. I figured that it hadn't changed from SR3 to SR4, but it's good to have quotes to back that up.

[blakkie]

BTW the damage code is really, really messed up for true flechettes. One of the big knocks against flechettes, if i remember correctly, is that because they had a small cross-section, and didn't deform (they are hard to be able to penetrate light armour) they generally did less damage to the person they hit. There just was no cavitation of note.

P.S. I believe they were "effective" to a few hundred yards though. Much, much further than shot range. EDIT: Unless you were shooting in vegetation or the rain, because the projectiles are so light that those conditions royally screw with the flight.

EDIT: Though i guess "flechette" as the BBB describes it would be closer to SCMITR which does better damage than the flechette darts because it is more bladelike, like a 2-finned arrowhead, to cut the flesh.

[Austere Emancipa...]

There are two types of small arms ammunition in the real world which are called "flechette". Both are based on arrow- or dart-shaped projectiles ('flechette' = small arrow).

One only appears in shotguns, or larger weapons like cannons (for example, the US 105mm M546 APERS-T), and consists of a large number of small flechettes -- it would be quite useless when fired out of a smaller bore firearm. The flechettes are made of steel. Because of the ballistic properties of a metallic dart, they have better range than shot ammunition, and they are stable enough (thanks to being fin-stabilized) to penetrate light cover and keep going in the right direction.

Since they are small, pointy, and made of steel, they make small holes in tissue -- wounds caused in humans will be significantly less severe than what you get with shot. Whether this type of ammunition penetrates common forms of body armor when fired out of a shotgun, I have no idea; it has the small area, sharp point and hardness of steel going for it, but the individual flechettes are extremely light and aren't moving that fast.

The other has but a single saboted flechette -- this type of round is not used by any small arm currently manufactured nor has any weapon designed for it ever been manufactured in large numbers, the only examples I can come up with are the Steyr IWS 2000 and the Steyr ACR (warning: overhyped websites). The flechette is more often made of tungsten in this case. A single very small, very light, very hard, very sharp, very fast arrow-like projectile provides good range, accuracy and penetration, as well as particularly small wounds in human tissue.

This latter type of ammunition is also known as Armor Piercing, Fin Stabilized, Discarding Sabot, and sees a lot of use in cannons, ranging from the 25mm M919 APFSDS-T to the 120mm M829 APFSDS-T.

Note that neither type of ammunition fits the SR description of "Flechette" ammo.

[buddha]

Here is a link to the flechette description from Howstuffworks.

[Austere Emancipa...]

Someone needs to let HSW know they've got patent bullshit on their site. "Banned by the Geneva Convention" indeed... And who knew getting holes into you was painful?!

[FrankTrollman]

Actually, there is an ongoing legal argument over whether flechette shells are in contravention of the geneva convention as an indisciminant weapon that causes unnecessary suffering in civillian areas. That's a legal dispute where nations of Israel and the United States claim that the shells are used very discriminantly in anti-terrorist actions and a whole bunch of civilians with their arms torn off disagree.

Regardless, you can use a directionallized flechette distribution system all you want under the geneva convention. The ongoing court cases about flechette tank shells have to do with the fact that they spread tearing metal across huge areas and potentially shred large numbers of noncombatants. A flechette-firing handheld weapon would not have that legal difficulty.

-Frank