Barret Ammo, Different ammo? Options

[toturi]

Can the Barret Model 121 load any other ammo other than its special ammo?
Would you allow it?

Can it load a capsule round? or an AV or fletchette round? I was thinking of allowing customised ammo for the Barret but that ammunition would have to be specially made for the PC (ammo type avail/normal ammo avail x Barret ammo avail) or he would have to do it himself. What do you think?

[Dashifen]

I wouldn't allow it to load normal ammo types but I would allow it to load customized ammunitions designed for the barret. If it's custom made for the player, though, they better be for damned sure they trust the guy making it!

[Fortune]

And pay through the nose for it. :D

[northern lights]

i have had nearly every character i have ever made buy a barret. everything i have seen says no other ammo. with one exception and that is to have it custom made.

to add a little bit of "real world" clarity to that, it means that the character must keep the spent cartridges (brass) and then either reload it himself or have someone do it gor him. this would be a long and costly process requiring much if not all of the following:

1. getting and using the correct primers. may be standard, may be proprietary.
2. the right powder charge. both in type and amount.
3. the correct bullet. this would likely be proprietary.
4. getting the tools to do it. press, etc.
5. getting the die set to do everything. this should be by far the hardest part except the possibility of #3 if you had to have the bullets cast.

so i am going to relate things in approx present day us currency

1. 20-??? depends on if it uses primers that other rounds use or its own.
2. less than 50 unless it is a special type of power. and that should last for many rounds.
3. hmm. from sheer size i'd suggest 100 for a box of about 20. if they are cast, hike it to 100 per bullet or more to have them cast and/or machined in such a high tolerance way.
4. this would suck and be a thou or two easy. it would also require a shop, tho you could put it in a van, but vans full of reloading supplies like powder and primers go boom easily.
5. even if barret somehow made these available, i wouldn't let a character get their hands on them easily. these should need to be custom machined after getting the specs from the barret grid or something. i'm guessing a minumum of 5k for a full set to do everything from removing the primer to necking to seating the new bullet. though you could get a few years out of them if you take care of them so it is likely a one time expense.

also, the character would need to keep track of his brass after each shot. not hard - people with barrets should never be rushed. though i'd say any particular piece of brass is only good for 25 shots or so before it is in danger of blowing at the neck and eliminating the shooter. so it makes sense to keep buying rounds.

these numbers are rough guesses, it's been years since i sat at the reloading bench, and i never once worked with anything as big as a barret, though i have dealt with 50 cal and 20mm stuff, just never reloaded it.

[Austere Emancipa...]

Never figured out exactly why the Barrett has special ammunition, while others (like Remington 750 and 950) fire the same ammunition but do different damage.

Basically, you'll need to decide whether the Barrett follows the path set by its predecessors, ie whether it's still chambered for a common HMG cartridge (.50BMG). If it is, you should have no trouble getting any of the special ammunition types for it. In fact, if that were the case, you should be capable of buying just about any HMG ammunition and firing it from the Barrett.

If, however, the Barrett 121 has strayed from that path and is more akin to something like the Steyr IWS 2500, ie it is chambered for a cartridge specifically designed for the weapon, and the whole weapon is designed to fire only specific kind of loads (apparently APDS, perhaps even APDSFS), then you might need custom ammunition.

If you're doing the latter, the high demand of the Barrett would certainly have forced Barrett Firearms to do other kinds of ammunition for the gun. I suggest allowing Anti-Vehicular (after all, that's the main justification for the existence of this gun), (EX) Explosive, Regular, and Incendiary. For everything but AV ammo, +2 - +4 Availability, a few more days, and maybe doubled cost. The AV ammo shouldn't get Availability modifiers (since if it's common for any gun, it should be this), but the cost should probably be hiked to 300 or 400 (since the standard ammo already costs the same as AV for other weapons).

This post has been edited by Austere Emancipator: Dec 23 2003, 03:09 PM

[Kagetenshi]

Just a note, flechette Barret ammo won't exist, as it's a waste of money. At D base damage, all it'll do is make the gun less effective against anything that had a hope in hell of surviving in the first place.

~J

[northern lights]

the 750 and 950 are sporting rifles. they share ammo cause they have no terribly special designs. they are for game, tho who uses them for that in the shadows? in any event they have no special needs such as silencing or subsonic speeds. barrets are designed different because they are silent. though the amount of suppression is never made clear. although i would be inclined to wonder what effects the suppressor would have on other types of ammo.

ae is right, if the gun is chambered for a common caliber then the player only needs to determine the correct powder charge for the round to function in the barret. that should make these types of ammo pretty available though slightly more expensive.

[Austere Emancipa...]

I'm willing to bet the game designers didn't have a clue about how sound suppression works when they made the Barrett 121, so people should feel free to disregard the whole internal silencer bit.

Shadowrun canon doesn't require anything special from ammunition to be suppressable -- APDS and AV can be suppressed just fine. IRL, where full suppression is quite counter-productive in a long-range anti-material rifle, and (IIRC) a suppressor often has a (minor) detrimental effect on the accuracy of the weapon -- I seem to remember from an earlier thread somewhere that it causes some instability at the muzzle -- a weapon like the Barrett wouldn't have a built-in suppressor. Either way, the suppressor can be ignored.

[ShadowPhoenix]

I would think an internal silencer as opposed to a removable silencer would probably cause sufficiently less accuracy issues as there is no gap or splice between the two components. As for the ammo, I would imagine that the people who designed the Barett 121 were thinking along the lines of .50 BMG round firing Sniper Rifles, which when compared to any other rifle would be "special ammo" whereas it may be more common in Heavy MG's. could be the MG and Rifles were made by seperate people or on seperate days of the game design process? :P Anyway I would say that the Barett 121 probably uses fairly unpopular(at least in present time) .50 BMG rounds. and that is what would qualify as Special Ammo, and I don't see why you couldn't use modified rounds.

[Austere Emancipa...]

[The Jake]

[Austere Emancipa...]

The spell Increased Reflexes +3 is broken, it's clearly stated in the book how it works, and still people discuss it in a thread here every now and then. Some might say called shots are broken, the books clearly state how they work, and they cause loads of discussions. The AVS is obviously broken, and the books are very explicit about how it works, yet people have discussed it in innumerable threads.

What is it about the Barrett 121 and the ammunition for it that makes it indiscussible? Especially when doing some of the things that have been discussed in this particular thread make the gun (and the game in general) more sensible?

[BitBasher]

[northern lights]

it's because the book states that it fires only it's own ammo. so you can't buy other types of ammo on the street. but as we should all know, runners can't sate themselves on street gear. face it someone made one type of ammo for the barret. someone can make other types of ammo for the barret. it is all a matter of finding a qualified individual to do it. now granted there's probably 5 of those the world over, but it could be done and thus discussed.

[Luke Hardison]

I personally wouldn't see a problem with letting someone make their own rounds for the 121, or hiring them out, with a few stipulations.

1) They will be difficult to obtain (high TN for the creation, high avaliability for the supplies, on par with barret's availability +2 or something)

2) The new rounds will not be more effective than the current rounds. They may add extra effects (capsule rounds) or be more situational (gel rounds), but I wouldn't want anything more deadly coming out of the barrel of that particular weapon.

3) By our house rules, the Barret rounds are avaliable in regular (in book) and AV (for double the cost and +2 avail.)

[Austere Emancipa...]

[The Jake]

The weapon does just enough damage as it is. If a player wants to do any more, then they can start using heavy weapons or gunnery.

I can appreciate someone wanting to use stun rounds or gel rounds for increased functionality as opposed to increased damage. I would weight that up as the issue arises, but if someone were to ask me for a blanket answer it would be no.

That said, at some point preservation of game balance must prevail. Otherwise we may as well allow players to start creating man portable rail guns and nukes, ala. Syndicate Wars.

- J.

[Aramus]

Maybe the '121 just use is own ammo 'cause the company wanted to make it more hard to use it to "every normal citizen of the world that play in the shadow". With special ammo, you have to put some more nuyen and time, something that not everybody can have ...

If the Barret 121 use special ammo it's because there a good reason, no ?

[Austere Emancipa...]

There's no small arm that's closer to Heavy Weaponry than the Barrett. And you don't think there's anything wrong with the biggest damn rifle in the game being far less (ie half as) useful against vehicles than the teeny-weeny RA SM-3s etc?

[toturi]

[Austere Emancipa...]

Oops, you're right, sorry (The Walther MA-2100 is the CAS standard issue sniper rifle -- the RL weapon WA-2000 is not standard issue in any army). In that case, there will only be perhaps ten thousand in use by militaries in North America plus another ten thousand in other militaries around the world, a few thousand in law enforcement agencies, and maybe extra fifteen-twenty thousand by corp armed forces.

In any case, it's going to be a common weapon, because there apparently aren't any other extra large caliber sniper rifles in the world. And just a few thousand weapons in active use is quite enough to call for the design of a huge variety of loadings. Designing and manufacturing ammunition is, after all, pretty damn cheap, compared to many other items that are supposed to be more common in the 2060s (Tactical Computers, M-B-W-2, Wired-3, Articulated Cyberarms, DamComp 6-9, SynapticAccel, Weapon Foci, etc).

This post has been edited by Austere Emancipator: Dec 25 2003, 05:07 PM

[Aramus]

Just a simple question about the Barret, do you think that a Barret-121 can be put into a violoncel (cello) case ?

[Raygun]

[Aramus]

Thanks Ray !

[Crusher Bob]

You can probably fit the disassembled rifle into a case pretty easily as well, since removing the barrel will give you plnty of extra inches to work with.