designing vehicles and guns? Options

[Mordrid Soud]

just wondering how difficult would it be to come up with a system for designing fire arms, and vehicles in 4th. i ask since you could do it with 3rd (though the vehicle design wasn't exactly for the feint of heart).

[Backgammon]

How difficult? That's a strange question. It's not difficult, it just has to be done. Future sourcebooks will explain how. For now, just make stuff up and run in by your GM.

[jervinator]

As a GM, I have decided to spend a little free time comparing SR3 weapons to SR4 weapons and come up with my own conversion for the Cannon Companion stuff in the interim. The way I see it, it will be a few months before I can lay my grubby mitts onan OFFICIAL SR4 book for it.
So far, I think I have decrypted quite a bit of it, though I am somewhat perplexed that Holdouts and Light pistols both have a DV/AP of 4/-0 whereas in SR3 they were 4L and 6L. Also, it used to be that MGs went 7S,9S,10S; an MMG was 2 points better than an LMG and 1 point worse than an HMG. In SR4, they go 6P/-1, 6P/-2, 7P/-3, making the MMG is one point better than an LMG and 2 points worse than the HMG.
If anybody is interested, I might post my findings upon completion.

[Kev]

[jervinator]

Honestly, yes. I personally feel that the SR4 stats are more correct than the SR3 ones. I see the LMG as an M249 type gun, easilly portable 5.56mm, the MMG as an M60, technically hip-firable 7.62mm, but better as a light vehicle mount weapon, and the HMG as an M2; a Troll might be able to hip-fire it but lesser beings shouldn't bother trying to handle the 12.7mm beast.
It's merely that a change like that makes conversion rules a little trickier to draw up.

[Lagomorph]

In general here's what I did for converting SR3 weapons to SR4.

So an old gun:
Ares MP III laser, 15M with Sniper ranges

D = DV 9 or 10
S = DV 7 or 8
M = DV 5 or 6
L = DV 3 or 4

So on that chart I'd probably give it a 5 to help balance out the AP which follows.

And with a TN of 15, I equated that pretty closely with the AP value. Since an AP of 15 is in general going to be better than an equivalent M damage gun with apds ammo, I'd give it a -5 or -6 AP.

So in the end, Ares MP III laser in a quick and dirty conversion, is a DV5(-5) weapon with sniper or long rifle ranges. If you feel it should be more powerful, make it a DV6(-6).

For vehicles, double or nearly double the armor and body, keep other options about the same. A good comparison is the Patrol-1 from both SR3 and SR4.

In general, as long as you have the reference books for the SR3 material, it shouldn't be terribly difficult to convert items over, as long as your GM takes a careful look at the converted item.

[jervinator]

What I've got is a little more involved. For weapons with an SR3 power of 14 or less, you take ( (Power +1) / 2 ), subtract 5, and then add 1 per damage level above Light. Invert the sign to get the base AP; it should be between 0 and -4.

For the DV, divide the SR3 power by 3 and round up, then add ( 2 - AP ). In some cases, like Sniper Rifles, that part may be a positive number; that's my intent. Then you add a modifier for weapon type:

0 : Holdout pistol, Light pistol, Machine pistol
1 : Heavy pistol, SMG
2 : Assault Rifle, LMG
3 : Shotgun, Sport Rifle, Sniper rifle, MMG
4 : HMG

This allows the 9M pistols to be 5P/-1 and 10M Ruger to be 6P/-2, and converts the rest nicely.

Too bad that Sakura is a Light Pistol and not a Machine Pistol. And what is up with the 4-round bursts? Why not 3 like other BF weapons??

[Blaze]

[Austere Emancipa...]

[CrimsonHawk]

:( well I finally figured out whats going on with my GM his thoughts is bringing the 3rd edition history over to 4th edition so for instance (Guns are HIGHLY illegal and theres a major crack down on them) which I guess explains the 5x to 10x the book cost for them. so being a drone runner I guess I need to keep all the guns I kill from my missions and incorporate them into my drones because I cant see putting a gun that cost me 19k in a 2k drone.


I asked about designing a gun for instance if I got the scemats from the WWW and reverse engineer a gun only suited for drones IE no stock exec... he informed me it would triple or more the price for that gun to me (5x to 10x already) so I guess i'm stuck in a catch 22 D if I do and D if I don't.

since I don't see anything in RAW to counter this atm


:( let me know your thoughts thx

[Austere Emancipa...]

If your GM really hates firearms that much, just make yourself a spandex-wearing, mullet-sporting, Dikoted katana-wielding 80s ninja. Apparently that and mages is all your GM wants to see in his game.

[Shrike30]

If your GM is charging that much for guns, one of the first things you should do is have your group mage thump a couple of beat cops (or rentacops, or corporate cops... someone with guns) and arm the rest of the group. 5-10x the listed cost for guns is ridiculous if you're not in a Bug City scenario.

For the record, even at 10x cost, the L36 (IIRC... whatever the supercheap light pistol is) still only costs you 1500 :nuyen: ... not a stupidly expensive piece compared to the rest, at that point.

[booklord]

"Six men came to kill me one time. The best of 'em carried this. It's a Callahan full-bore autolock, customized trigger, double cartridge, thorough-gage. This is my very favorite gun....I call her Vera." -Jayne

[Shadow]

:notworthy:


Now that was a nice rifle.

In reality building a gun is just not that easy. You just can't sit down with a pen and paper, whip out a design, and then run over to kinkos and have them run one off for you. You need a full on machine shop with precision parts.

The only reason I can think to even make a gun as a Runner would be to have a completely untraceable gun. In the sense that it was never ID'd or coded, or sold. Other than that, there are plenty of off-the-shelf guns that do the job very well.

[Shrike30]

Building a high-quality gun requires precision parts. You could build a WW2 Sten-type submachinegun in a high-school metal shop class, if you had the know-how.

There's actually some pretty interesting stuff out there on how to build your own firearms. It's not as difficult as you might think. Getting it to be as accurate and reliable as one of the existing manufacturers is another story, but you can put together something that goes "bang" repeatedly without a stupid amount of effort...

[ShadowDragon8685]

It dosen't have to be a perfect gun, or even a good gun.


It just has to be good enough to let you kill someone who has a good gun so you can take his good gun.

[Kronk2]

is there any real difference for vehicles? and what the heck do I do with the cf and load stats?

[Adam]

[eidolon]

Ha. I had a post written to answer the OP before I thought to check the time hacks. Oops!

Kronk2, you might have better luck getting specific answers if you create a new post for your question. Not that there's anything wrong with trying to fit it into an existing thread, but this one's kinda old and reading through the whole thing might keep people from focusing on what you need.

[Kyoto Kid]

[Moon-Hawk]

[Butterblume]

That's plainly wrong. A burst from the Sakura Fubuki is still 3 rounds. There is no evidence whatsoever to even indicate otherwise.

In fact, previous discussions have concluded that each burst comes from the same barrel.

[Moon-Hawk]

That was my understanding of it as well, Butterblume.
Still, I wish they had made each barrel hold either 9 or 12 rounds, rather than 10. Things just would've been simpler.

[Butterblume]

So true.

I allowed one of my players to use custom barrels with 12 shoots each, for a little premium, and he seems quite happy with it :D.

[Moon-Hawk]

That's cool. Did you hit him with a concealability penalty for it, or let that slide?