Ranger Arms SM-4, high-res houserule on reassembly Options

[Tarantula]

Let me put it a different way. You can't have aptitude armorer and aptitude longarms.

[mfb]

so? that's one die. aptitude really doesn't mean much.

[Tarantula]

Except raise the limit you can have it augmented by.

[mfb]

ah, my bad. there's a two die difference. aptitude really doesn't make all that much of a difference.

[Tarantula]

Neither does smartlink, or take aim (which, btw, if you're up to a 10 for the skill, makes it a 3 die difference (1 aptitude, 1 for the extra bonus, and 1 more for an extra take aim availible).)

I mean, why bother with any of those.

[mfb]

i'm not really sure where you're going with this. you said you can't be a fantastic weaponsmith and an amazing shot--i disagree. even within the rules, you can be both. you can't have aptitude in both, but so what? grab aptitude in shooting, since you can get up to a 3-die difference there, and settle for being a whopping 2 dice short of the best weaponsmith who ever lived. you're not going to fail significantly more often than the best weaponsmith ever, so who cares? it's certainly not going to make much of a difference when it comes to accuratizing and assempling a rifle.

[Tarantula]

Well, going by that arguement, you don't need to know anything about guns, just have a semi-decent logic, and you can put it together just fine by defaulting. (Just as long as you're not likely to glitch.)

[mfb]

yes. according to my knowledge of the rules, that is true.

[Tarantula]

So, then since all thats needed is being a good shot, whats it matter if the gun shoots well via nanites, skill, blind luck, or anything else?

[mfb]

i don't actually recall saying that it does matter. but since you ask, Spike makes a good point--the state of nanotechnology in SR makes nanites undependable, and therefore unsuited for use in the field. if you've got a weapon that can withstand significant abuse and remain fairly accurate, it's going to be favored by most operators over a weapon that is extremely accurate, but which requires extreme care and constant maintenance to remain in working condition.

[Tarantula]

Please defend your point that nanites are undependable. The fact that they are used in almost every surgery there is, as well as construction, manufacturing, even execs having nanoforges on their DESK, tells me that they're pretty dependable.

[mfb]

well, there's dependable, and then there's dependable in the field. today, an executive (or a construction worker, or a doctor) is probably going to depend on a sleek, slim cellphone for communication. the equivalent piece of equipment for a military unit in the field is a gigantic green brick that weighs something like thirty pounds. if you drop a cellphone, there's a reasonable chance you'd have to repair or replace it. if you had a SINCGARS, you could beat an elephant to death with it and then call home to report a field acquisition of one (1) deceased pachyderm, Dumbo type.

[kzt]

Nah, the equiv of a cell phone is an Mobile Subscriber Equipment terminal. Not a SINCGARS.

[mfb]

eh, whichever. MSE was a bit too high-speed for the units i was in. to your average commander, all that matters is that they both provide voice and data commo. and it's not like you're going to be stuffing an MSE terminal into your pocket!

[Tarantula]

And, just how is a nanite maintained weapon more apt to malfunction than one that isn't? Seeing as hard nanites could be made of similar materials as the rifle (or even better futuretech materials), the likelyhood of the nanites failing before the rifle would is low.

Even so, put the military grade sniper rifle through the same abuses, and I guarantee the nanite augmented weapon performs better.

[Whipstitch]

Here's the thing though, when the nanite fails, how does Joe Soldier cope with THAT? They're microscopic and require specialized equipment if they can be repaired at all. You're getting to the point where you're just swapping in and out parts again, and in this case we're bringing ridiculously tiny and expensive parts into it, and I sincerely doubt these tiny and expensive parts could possibly provide enough benefits to justify their cost.

[Tarantula]

He doesn't, the nanites aren't required for the function of the rifle, they just merely are there to augment the abilities of it. I.E. if Joe Schmoe assembles it, and does a bad job, they can self correct to make the rifle still accurate. If mr. weaponsmith does it, and does a good job, then the nanites don't really do a whole lot, since its already properly aligned.

Nanite failure just means treat it as unaugmented.

[mfb]

[Tarantula]

What points of reference it uses? Please, explain how the nanites can screw up. Yes, a significant amount of them could be destroyed, causing them to be unable to perform their function. Other than that, they can't get reprogrammed to mess up the gun, nor do I have any idea what "reference points" you're talking about.

Nanites aren't a point of failure, anymore than the color of the rifle is a point of failure. Sure, you might like your rifle black but if it hits the mud, its gonna turn brown. Does it being brown reduce your ability to shoot with it? I rather doubt it.

Take two identical guns, one with nanite augmentation to correct misalignments and one without such. Now, put them through the same stresses. Which one will shoot better? Most likely the nanite one. At the worst, the nanite one will still fail just as much as the unaugmented one, so whats there to lose?

[mfb]

the purpose of the hypothetical nanite system we're discussing is to fine-tune the assembly of a firearm such that the firearm is as accurate as possible. in order to perform this function, the nanite system must have points of reference within the parts of the firearm itself, so that the nanite system knows whether or not the assembled parts are correctly aligned or not.

that's just a hypothetical example for this hypothetical nanite system. there's other stuff that could go wrong, depending on the finer details of how the technology works--finer details which we have no idea about. basically, it all depends on how dependable the SR tech writers want to make nanites. in my opinion, judging by the uses to which nanites are put in SR technology, nanotechnology is not developed enough in SR to be useful in standard sniper rifles or other firearms.

i don't view nanites as magical fairy dust that you can sprinkle on something to make it better. i don't see that SR's technology supports that view of nanotechnology. if you do, great. run with that.

[Falconer]

Tarantula, it makes no sense because you're telling someone who's been firsthand involved in molecular electronics research while in school. That some silly little nanite massing next to nothing can shove a large barrel assembly around. It can deal w/ the massive pressures and forces generated by firing the gun repeatedly as well.

Nanites in shadowrun are used pretty much exclusively at the microscopic levels. I don't expect them to get a large macroscopic effects. Or if they do it'll take them a really long time compared to combat rounds. (building something up a grain of sand at a time can take a while).

As I said earlier, given the chapter on nanotech in augmentation. I can see uses for them. To borrow a page from the M-16's bill of goods... a self-cleaning rifle. Using hard nanites to clean junk and oil the gun's action makes sense to me. Using them to adjust and move things at the macro scale doesn't. They wouldn't be able to survive the barrel, because the gilding metal which mates would scrub them out of the barrel every time it fires. I don't see them fine-tuning the rifle for you, potentially as a sensor net (akin to the nanotech bioscanner) AIDING someone actually doing the fine tuning, but not doing the fine tuning themselves.

[Tarantula]

mfb, its hypothetical, I believe from the chapter in aug on nanites that they would be capable of doing such, you disagree.

Falconer: A nanite doesn't do a whole lot on its own. All nanites are microscopic, thats part of their definition. Nanites work because there are tons of them. They all do a very tiny job, that adds up to something overall. For example, they can build buildings as quickly as a construction team can. Thats not exactly a really long time.

Hmm, i'm thinking, heres another way they could be useful. Nanites are used in construction because they can create items without seams. Perhaps, instead of aligning the rifle, it instead joins all the seams together, creating one solid piece of metal instead of a bunch of detachable parts. When you're all done, you tell it to undo it, and then you can break it down again.

This prevents it from being able to be bumped out of alignment, as bumping it doesn't change the alignment at all.

[Mercer]

That's actually a really interesting idea. I don't know anything about nanites, either real, theoretical or in the game (I prefer to call them miniature nanobots, after all) but if the ones in the game can be programed to build an exact replica of something, a sniper could sight his rifle, put it in the nanomizer (where the miniature nanobots work their magic), and carry his sniper rifle around in a ziplock baggie. It'd be a neat way to get through Customs.

[mfb]

the thing is, that's a bit too interesting. that kind of technology would reshape the world overnight. governments would topple, the megacorps would be broken forever, the world economy would mutate into something completely unrecognizable. nothing would ever be the same again.

[Mercer]

The older we get, mfb, the more we realize nothing ever was the same.

If a sufficiently revolutionary technology is sufficiently expensive, the revolution will wait. I haven't read Aug, so I don't really know what miniature nanobots are capable of in SR, but there's always going to be someone ahead of the curve.