Ranged Combat, the SR3R way Options

[mmu1]

[Kagetenshi]

Fair enough. Scrap that idea. With regard to the blow-through, that's already reflected in their ability to load "Shock-Lock" rounds that other weapons can't.

Now the pistols question. Ugh. Anyone else want to chime in on this before I come to a preliminary decision?

~J

[DrJest]

[DrJest]

[Yoan]

[Shadow]

I still think AR's should do more damage than a pistol. The velocity the round is spat out at seems like it should. I don't know, maybe I am off on this.

[DrJest]

I think the velocity would be a factor more in penetration than in damage. Raygun said a few pages back that he applies an armour modifier to high velocity rifle rounds.

I was really following the (apparent) consensus among the respective firearms gurus round here that, versus an unarmoured opponent, a single rifle shot and a single heavy pistol shot would be similarly effective, but that rifles penetrate armour better.

[Yoan]

[Kagetenshi]

I'd personally prefer just a higher Power if we're changing at all.

~J

[Austere Emancipa...]

[Raygun]

[Yoan]

[Catsnightmare]

Here's the the version I'm gonna playtest if I can get a group back together.

All Heavy Pistols will be dropped in power from 9M and 10M to 7M and 8M respectively and Assault Rifles will have their power upped to 9M.
However, if the players still want 9 and 10M hand cannons they can have them since the police/sec will too, but it will cost.

Firepower Ammo: High power ammunition designed for heavy pistols. Adds +2 to the power of of heavy pistols, and +1 to all recoil modifiers. Availability and as per explosive rounds, cost 70 nuyen a box.
However all that added power puts too heavy a strain on a pistol and requires that it be heavily customized and reinforced, the cost of this reinforcement after manufacture doubles the cost of the weapon. Pistols modified to handle firepower ammo can fire regular ammo as normal. Attempting to use this ammo in an unreinforced pistol will warp the handgun giving it a permanent +1 TN to accuracy with each shot fired up to +4 when then gun will explode in the users hand from the stress.
Only a few select pistols are manufactured specifically to handle this ammo, The Ruger Thunderbolt, and the Ares Predator II and III.

Also thinking of allowing suppressive fire with a semi-automatic weapons. The max number of shots = to Quickness attribute to a max of 10.

[DrJest]

[Yoan]

[DrJest]

Horses for courses. I favour ARs and HPs having similar Power Levels and halving the armour. To each their own.

However, a higher power also makes the round harder to resist for an unarmoured target, which - according to the forum experts - shouldn't necessarily be the case.

[Yoan]

[Kagetenshi]

Then what is the interaction between rifles and APDS? Quartering? That seems excessively powerful to me.

~J

[pragma]

I'm in favor of dropping the power of heavy pistols by 2-3 points in order to bring their power in line with rifles and leaving light pistols and holdouts alone.

Regarding armor piercing rifles, I think that it is a sound idea but would make assault rifles very powerful, which seems like a reasonable idea given their various drawbacks (concealibility and legality). If the armor piercing rifle is implementd I would rule that APDS is redundant when fired from a rifle to prevent sniper rifles from completely ignoring hardened military armor much less anything smaller. (12/12 would go to 3/12 if a sniper rifle with APDS were fired at it, making the human wearable tank shell little more effective at stopping bullets than armored clothing.)

[Kagetenshi]

On a side note, part of the reason I'm not thrilled about the idea of applying an armor modifier to certain classes of weapons is because part of what I consider "simplicity" isn't just ease of calculation, but also making things act the way one would expect them to act. Granted that this is at times contrary to the way they actually do act, but (and keeping in mind that I'm heavily tainted by knowledge of the SR3 rules) I might expect a Power difference while I would not expect an armor modification. I'm still considering it, though.

Maybe I just need to find someone who hasn't played Shadowrun and ask them what they'd expect.

~J

[mmu1]

I don't like the idea of making ARs armor-piercing by deafult, but that's primarily because I think changing anything to "make more sense" or be more "realistic" when said change affects several other game mechanics is a bad idea.

Are you going to re-design armor to reflect this? Will availability be adjusted? Do you actaully want to increase the default lethality level of the game by making changes like these?

I think these sort of rule changes are detrimental to the game when implemented piecemeal, and since, as far as I know, there's no plan to implement something like Raygun's gun system...

The question that needs to be answered first is whether we want to change some of the basic definitions of the game - like a gun being defined by Power and Damage Level - because if we do, simply patching things by introducing a lot of exceptions to existing rules is probably not the best way to go about it.

[Kagetenshi]

[Yoan]

[Raygun]

[mmu1]