Need GM feedback on an item for HA, This ones gonna be controversial.... Options

[HullBreach]

PLEASE READ THIS PAGE PRIOR TO VOTING:
http://heavyangel.com/?page_id=61

This ones going to be rough. The page for this is not live (linked into the other pages) at my site yet, as I want to get some opinions on it as written.

The rules on this are a little complex, so I do ask that you please read them carefully before making your decsion. Also, note that this ammo is ONLY availible for light pistols and Machine pistols.

Once again, I thank the Dumpshock community for helping me out with Heavy Angel!

[Ravor]

Well, personally if they are supposed to be 'extremely illegal' then I think they should be F Grade instead of R.

What I would do is something like this..

AP -2
DV +2
Glitches on 1-2 and ruins the gun
Critical Glitches ruin the gun and does damage as you suggested

Roll 1d6 everytime the gun is fired, on a '1' then the round was loaded even hotter then this ammo was meant to be, and the stats become...

AP -3
DV +3
Glitches on a 1-3

Oh and I think it should be allowed with heavy ammo as well, but perhaps add an +1 to whatever is considered a Glitch if you think a heavy pistol using this is too powerful. (However, I personally don't think it is as I know that I would never load this type of ammo with my characters unless I had no choice or figured I was making a last stand anyways...)

Still I can totally see some macho ganger or street sam overloading his ammo in his basement hoping for a bigger bang and losing a hand when his weapon explodes.

***Ok as a disclaimer, although I own several firearms and have shot many different types of firearms in my life I do not claim to be a gun nut and the numbers that I've posted are just numbers that I've pulled from the air that sound good to me, they are *NOT* meant to repersent anything even remotely resembling the real world and I am *NOT* the least bit interested in debating the real world physics of using pistol powder in rifle rounds or anything similar...

[Kyoto Kid]

...echoing the previous reply that thes rounds should have an F legality.

They should also have a higher availability than 12 so as not to be available at chargen.

I would also think that if they toast Silencers and Sound Suppressors Gas Vents would also be vulnerable. So the only recoil comp you can apply are Shock pads, folding stocks and Barrel counterweights (the last which should be forthcoming in Arsenal).

All I can say is thank heaven these can't be used in a Super Warhawk.

And don't think of putting them in your Fabuki. 2000 :nuyen: (4000 if internally Smartlinked) is a lot to waste on one big shot.

[HullBreach]

Oops, I actually meant for that to be an F.

The reason I coded the AP abillity and damage the way I did was to represent the low mass of the round resulting in a rapid decay of its abillities. Part of the point here is that these actually out-perform ADPS at point blank ranges because they completely ignore saftey as an aspect of design.

Im going to boost the availibillity and include some rules for manufacture by a player with the appropriate skills and gear (loading ammo is pretty easy to do).

[Thane36425]

Not all rifle loads are maxxed out. In fact, most of them are less than that to ease wear on the gun and make the shot more controllable. Your standard 5.56 has a roughly 3100 FPS velocity. However, you can hot load the shell to get well over 4,000 FPS. The problem is that the heat and pressure destroys the barrel very quickly. Even some of the purpose bilt hotloaded rounds like the .17s that are available wear out the guns if used often.

I definitely agree that it should be prone to failure. In RL, it is easily possible to overload a round. Now, that round might work in one kind of pistol, but another of the same caliber might not be as strong and would burst under the strain. An example of this is the .38 range of revolvers. These pistols can fit everything from .38 to .357 with several steps in between. However, not all can handle the power of a .357. All of them have, or should have, a rating stamped on the pistol telling the maximum round that can be safely fired from it. It is right on the side of the barrel on my .357.

It is an interesting concept, and one many reloaders play with. Just have to be very careful about.

There are some pistols that use rifle caliber rounds. They are single shot, bolt action peices mostly.

[Clyde]

Use some mechanic besides glitches to replicate failure. The skill of the guy aiming the gun should have nothing to do with how much wear it takes from a given (over)pressure load. Different classes of weapon might have a higher chance of going kaboom - HV rounds in a machine pistol would be a really bad idea.

[Thane36425]

[MaxHunter]

I would use the stats of the old exex ammo: +2 DV -2 AP, or if you would like to stick to that flavor text on your link then kinda of a boosted APDS +1 Dv AP -4.

I like the rule of 1s and 2s counting for glitches, as well as the suggested effects.

Even though "realism" would call for a generic rule for wear and tear and not the usual skill linked glitch roll, I would not suggest more ad hoc rules. I thinks it's better for streamlining and quickness to keep it simple... i.e. use regular glitch rules.

Availability should be f but not necessarily 12, after all, anybody could make one with the right tools.


I have also enjoyed that sequence from GITS. Have you seen the second film?

cheers,

Max

[Austere Emancipa...]

From the standpoint of realism... the projectiles are full caliber, very light (probably as light as the subcaliber projectiles of APDS rounds), have cores much softer than those of dedicated armor piercing rounds, and are not moving hugely faster than APDS rounds are right out the muzzle.

Because of the natural limitations to how much velocity you can crank out of a conventional firearm, if you're going to put in massive amounts of fast burning propellant in the case you'll be better off with a heavier and harder bullet. You can't outpenetrate an 0.24", 80gr, 3800fps tungsten carbide projectile with an 0.3", 80gr, 4500fps aluminum projectile, but you can with an 0.3", 120gr, 4000fps WC one.

I remember the scene from GitS, but I can't remember how or even whether the projectiles themselves are described, so if you wish to stick precisely to that description I guess you don't have much wriggle room there.

[Tomothy]

"He hosed us with high-velocity AP rounds! That car door's no cover!"
"ln a submachinegun? The guy must be nuts. "

Then later

"That's what you get when you overload the ammo rating."
"Frame's bent all to hell. The barrel's shot, too."

Edit: Speaking of GitS I wouldn't mind a briefcase gun...

[X-Kalibur]

[Crakkerjakk]

I agree that the glitch mechanic is handy, but shouldn't necessarily be tied to the round itself malfunctioning. I can't really see any streamlined way to handle it though. One slight suggestion, if there's more twos than ones on your glitch, you succeed in setting something on fire with your new gun-blowtorch(this is more realistic as low skill characters are more likely to accidentally do this.) Keep the critical glitch result.

[HullBreach]

[nezumi]

"If the weapon is fired in full auto mode for more than two turn’s consecutively"

Remove the apostrophe.

Hmm... It would seem to me that the damage value should be lower, since this high speed, light projectile is more likely to overpenetrate or whatnot.

If its inspired by an SMG wielding bad guy, why can't these be loaded into SMGs?

[HullBreach]

[Thanee]

So, are these some sort of gyrojet-like ammo (microrocket-propelled bullets, basically)?

As for the mechanics, I wouldn't use the 2 counts as 1, but rather lower the threshhold by some fixed number (see Gremlins for what I mean), mainly because that mechanic already exists in the game.

Maybe even give a flat penalty of -2 to the firearms test (in addition), because they are most likely more difficult to aim (heavy recoil just doesn't cut it for single shot weapons... for the MPs that will wreak havoc with your dice pool, though).

Also, shouldn't hypervelocity increase damage? Hydrostatic shock and such?

As written (unless I missed something) these things are utter crap, even though stylish. ;)
APDS gives almost the same benefit (-4 AP) and NO disadvantage.

Make them +2/-2 like the original EX-Ex (that's roughly equivalent to -8 AP, so technically twice as good as APDS).

Maybe they should also increase range bands somehow (i.e. double them), considering that they travel faster, shouldn't they also travel farther?

Anyways, that's my thoughts on the matter. :)

Bye
Thanee

[mfb]

i don't think using non-glitch mechanics to determine glitch-like failure is a very good idea. yes, realistically speaking, the shooter's skill shouldn't determine the chances of catastrophic failure in their ammunition. but skill shouldn't determine the chances of misfires, jams, double-feeds, and the like either--all of which are possible results of glitches. if you're going to switch from using the glitch mechanic to some sort of reliability mechanic for one item, you should do so for all items.

[HullBreach]

[Thanee]

I see. :)

Still, I see little incentive to actually use those over APDS...

Bye
Thanee

[HullBreach]

[HullBreach]

Ran the numbers on SMG's and I think its do-able. Im thinking that SMG's should be restricted to using the machinepistol range table when using these though, to represent the rapid energy loss of the rounds.

Once I get a little more feedback on these, I'll edit them again and post a second poll for HV Ammo 2.0

[Austere Emancipa...]

"Hydrostatic shock" can't happen when a projectile hits a body anyway. Shock in general, as in supersonic pressure waves in tissues, can only happen at around 5000fps or beyond, as HullBreach said, and whether that'd make much of a difference compared to pressure waves at 4000fps is questionable -- I've not seen studies on that.

Small, light, non-deforming bullet = small wound = little damage. That it's moving at a staggering velocity won't help much unless you hit the liver or the brain. Might make for a nice splatter if you hit a gopher with it, though. On the other hand a penalty to the DV is not necessarily called for since it won't be much worse off than standard FMJ rounds for the same caliber -- except against trolls, because ammo like this would absolutely suck at penetrating deeply into bone and tissue.

[lorechaser]

I like them. Conceptually, I see exactly where they fit. I don't ever consider ADPS because they're hard to get. These are easy to make, but deadly to use, and I think they fit the SR theme very well - life's cheap, and if you risk it, you'll put holes in a troll.

The 1/2's is a simple mechanic, and one that I think could be expanded in a number of ways - d20 modern has the Ultramodern Firearms, and has the idea of unstable effects - each effect increases the glitch range by one. That's significantly more dangerous in SR, but could still apply - if you want to use an incindiary over-packed round and get a glitch on 1, 2 or 3, you can. But know that very soon, you go boom.

[HullBreach]

Ive always liked the reliabillity system from CP2020, as it gave individual weapons a little more personallity. I had a player who managed to jam a pistol on three consecutive attempts to fire it (and wound up beating the intended target to death with said pistol) and swore he'd never carry anything from that manufacturer again. He held to it, and trash talked them every chance he got.

[Spike]

I...

Hrm. How to start this. First of all, the rules are reasonable, particularly if you are talking home made crap, then the availability isn't that much of an issue. I think the glitch mechanic should be streamlined as much as possible, but that's a given.

The real issue is that it seems to completely ignore the mechanics behind ammo construction... particularly with caseless rounds becoming more common (I think they are standard in shadowrun now, yes?). YOu can't just squeeze more powder into a caseless round without changing the shape of the round! I suppose you could argue for 'filler material' and purity of the powder involved.

Gas expansion has limits, that is to say even with an infinite amount of powder available you are never going to get fps higher than a certain point. Obviously different chemical compositions will have different rates of expansion. Further, while yes, many rounds are made with less than 'maximum' effective powder, there is still a limit to how much you can squeeze in for added power and still fit into the case. Most Wildcatters expirement with larger casings, necessitating using different mechanisms.

So to sum up: If emulation of GiTS is your goal (seems reasonable), then you've got gold here.

If emulation of real world gun mechanics/physics is your goal you have done left the tracks.