SR4 Firearms: Caseless and Cased on one weapon? Options

[Vuron]

My personal choice is having weapons with individual ammo characteristics. While there might be fewer ammo types than current not every heavy pistol should use the same ammo type.

Caseless weapons should be rare and only work with caseless ammo and vice versa.

Some weapons should possibly have the ability to load multiple ammo types similar to the FN SCAR but they should be exceptions rather than the rule.

Ohh and gyrojet and laser weapons should be really expensive and rare.

[Critias]

I think the cased/caseless concern is just about the last thing wrong with "Shadowrun and Firearms."

[Patrick Goodman]

Especially when it was mentioned, in either SR3 or Cannon Companion, that a weapon was one or the other. All the weapons in the book were able to use one or the other, i.e. they had two models (a cased model and a caseless model).

I wish I had my books with me, I'd give you a page reference.

[Austere Emancipa...]

"Many weapons offer two versions, for standard loads or for caseless ammunition, though the latter is far more common in the 2060s. A weapon can fire either type of ammunition, but not both interchangeably." sr3.277
Which, of course, is bulldrek. To make a conventional firearm designed to fire cased rounds fire caseless rounds instead would require replacing or modifying most or all of the action of the gun. For some designs, it might require re-designing the whole receiver.

If you bought the idea that caseless has become as, or indeed more common than cased ammunition for small arms, then major firearm producers would no doubt offer very similar models, one for cased and another for caseless, of their more popular guns, but no way would that be the norm and the weapons would be too different to be called the same model.

But, like Critias, I do not consider this a priority for SR4. There's a bunch of things way more screwed than this in SR3 that I'm praying they'll fix first (so that I don't have to house rule them again).

[mfb]

what austere said--offering the same weapon in cased and caseless is unbelievably stupid. unlike him, though, i think it's a priority for the simple fact that a) it's high-profile, and b) it's really easy to fix. changing that would be a very visible nod towards realism in SR4, and it takes all of five minutes to fix--just run down the list of firearms and put an X beside the ones that use caseless.

[Pthgar]

I understand that there were two versions (cased and caseless) of each gun, but I still thought it was goofy. I like calibres. The calibre of the round and the type of projectile should determine the penetration and damage of a firearm, not the frame.
I like the idea of caseless prevelence in SR though. I think that it should be the "new automatic." Popular and good tech that is improving, but not as reliable as the old proven tech. Revolvers wouldn't be available in caseless.

[Austere Emancipa...]

Shotguns and choke would have been really easy to fix. The silly Damage Codes (such as those of machine guns) would have been really easy to fix. And I know I'm forgetting something (or several things) which I've ranted in length about on these forums. Which goes to prove that screwed up things that would've been very easy to fix do leak into finished products all the time.

Of course I rather have a reasonable set of rules and tables and all for ranged combat in SR4, but I don't think that'll ever happen in a pen & paper RPG, so I rather they concentrated on the most obvious things.

[Kagetenshi]

To my mind, the entire debate between Caseless and Cased comes down to the following question: do we want Runners to have to specifically ensure that spent casings aren't left as evidence, or do we want that taken care of automatically?

It seems to me that the prevalence of caseless is a nod to the latter. I can't imagine why they left cased in (though I would have been fine with them going the other direction, it's the waffling that I don't get). I'm not sure that there's much more to the issue than that unless you really want to make a push towards realism.

~J

[mfb]

well, there are plenty of weapon designs that would still be around in SR3 and even SR4 that use cased ammo. caseless might be popular, but i honestly doubt that it would have the lion's share of the market. (of course, it's equally unlikely that wireless tech would take the sudden leap to the forefront between '65 and '70, so...)

[Critias]

Let me edit -- yes, the cased/caseless thing should be fixed. But no, I don't think it's the most important thing we've got to worry about, when it comes to firearms.

Some reasonable damage codes would be my first, second, and third choices for revision.

[Pthgar]

When my chars don't want to leave evidence laying around, they use revolvers or SuperSquirt II/Gamma-Scop.

If you check out the HK G11 here it seems to me that the mechanism was needlessly complicated. I don't know if this was a product of the caseless ammo or just some more conept design on the part of HK. If all caseless ae this complex, I want no part of them.

[Vuron]

Caseless ammo at current is pretty much limited to failed products like the G11 rifle and IIRC some very heavy machineguns. Fundamentally when you start looking at caseless you beging needing to look at the reasons why caseless would even be used. Using the G11 as the main example the gun fired a much smaller bullet but made up for that weakness in having a high ammo capacity, high ROF and very low recoil. If you begin looking at heavier rounds like the 7.62 NATO round the advantages of caseless begin to fade.

In terms of the dealing with spent casings for shadowrunners if it's that big of a concern then presumably you could have a nomex bag over the case ejection assembly that would catch the spent cartridges. It would be somewhat bulky but if leaving no casings is that big of a concern then it's definitely an option.

Of course I've always wondered why people are that concerned about casings anyway, presumably when you load the clip you could use gloves to prevent fingerprint matches and in terms of matching a bullet to a gun the actual bullet and the grooves left by the rifling are the more important concern.

[Pthgar]

That depends on wether on not "ballistics fingerprinting" (hah!) is wide spread. Firing pins leave pretty distinctive tool marks as well.

[Vuron]

[Raygun]

[Pthgar]

[Vuron]

As a key need to fix mechanic I would tend to say yes it's of a minor sort but like many people have said it's a very simple thing to correct it in the gun descriptions and pretty much retcon it out of existence.

And sense presumably a good percentage of the fluffy bits around the system haven't been written it's a great time to see things like caseless ammo disappear into the sunset.

[Pthgar]

[Raygun]

[FrostyNSO]

[Vuron]

[Raygun]

[Vuron]

[mfb]

[RunnerPaul]

Since it's been part of the game since the start, I wouldn't mind them keeping the caseless/cased dualtity, but only if they could come up with believable in-game explanations for all the questions it raises.

One of the times the caseless/cased debates came up in the past, someone suggested that perhaps SR's caseless is something of a misnomer, that it actually has a thin case made out of a material (aluminium, perhaps) that vaporizes away as the round ignites. While that could potentially explain away some of the caseless/cased issue's wierdness it doesn't address why that sort of "vaporizing case" ammunition would be developed and find its way into widespread use in the first place.