I find it interesting that the weapon itself has light recoil for a burst when the metal storm design typically has incredible amounts of recoil to handle.

I think it implies quite heavily that 3 barrels are fired in a burst. Because that's how many bullets are in a short burst. It's already (as I said) much stronger than any other light pistol (certainly in the core book); now you'd like to give it 10 bursts of 4 (DV=7), with Recoil of 1 instead of 4? It's possible this could work with the cost and mod-incompatibility, but it's far from 'obvious'. The gun, after all, *does* fire in SA mode. There are several BF weapons with clips that don't divide evenly by 3, and basically all FA guns don't divide evenly by 10.

But we're talking about a specialty weapon here. Although to be fair, I envisioned it only doing the damage of a 3 round burst with 4 rounds. I would expect a niche, high cost item, to be as practical as possible while still being totally impractical for its cost.

It's possible, but I'm saying that we should always assume normal rules (in this case, normal BF/ammo use rules) are in effect, instead of complicating things. When special rules are in effect, they should be explicit in the book (e.g., the pistols that fire Complex Action short bursts, etc.).

Shots at me aside, the game has hard written rules for bursts. They don't really conform to any kind of reality. They are designed to mesh with the simplistic combat mechanics of Shadowrun.
The recoil penalty for this would be absurd.

That, and it we're going for realism, the first two or three bursts should be restricted to Taser ranges due to insufficient barrel length. I mean, if we're talking "logically".

Of course, what you're emphasizing also displays your insufficient knowledge of firearms. It's not your fault. I'm sure you're not an expert. The bolded part you showed implied the ability to fire faster because of the fact that the in line stack eliminates the feeding mechanism.

http://www.mouseguns.com/pf9/pf9ani.gif
http://www.m1911.org/images/searanim2.gif

Firing, the projectile accelerates, the barrel is unlocked, and the casing and slide are pushed backwards, the casing is ejected, the slide is pushed back forward by the spring, a new round is fed into the chamber, and the slide and barrel lock again.

The YSF eliminates the need for everything except for "Firing" because it uses caseless ammunition and an inline stack of ammunition which is already "chambered".

http://www.popsci.com/files/imagecache/art...tal_730x210.gif

Now, Metal Storm found that the rounds couldn't be fired as fast as they originally intended because multiple rounds accelerating down the barrel at the same time left the danger of overpressure. So the weapon's ROF was reduced to make sure each round had cleared the barrel before the next one was fired. Still much faster than the ROF of a recoil or blowback operated weapon.

It is possible to construct your replies without these personal attacks.

Ho yes. The system does have a keen rate of fire, but it takes so long to reload you may as well load a cannon with scattershot.



Logically, this gun wouldn't even be available. Part of me wonders if the recoil from hitting all barrels at once would break your wrist or not.

Luckily, it has a folding stock.

Switch wrist with shoulder then.

It's a neat alternative, but I'm just not sure it's entirely feasible.

Yeah. I'll believe it when I see it, hehe.

Right. They had some concerns using the systems on lightweight drones since they lost some weight off the feed system and ammo dumps, but it didn't have the frame to withstand the recoil.

Though I suppose they've had some limited success fixing it recently.

Actually, my 1911A1 says my knowledge of firearms is just fine, thanks. I don't need a military background for firearm exposure either, I'll take being raised with them and learning to fire, disassemble, clean, and reassemble by age 8 to be adequate.

It makes logical sense for the bullets to be fired 1 from each barrel as opposed to 3 from 1 barrel for much the reason you mentioned, over-pressurization.

Lowering range to taser ranges for the first two or three bursts is logical in the real world, but from a game design standpoint is an unncessary muddling.

Also, please take the to determine the difference between logical from a game design standpoint and a real world standpoint. Thanks.

The MetalStorm type systems have another big advantage that's not often mentioned.

They make designing battle vehicles the like much much easier engineering-wise.

No more worrying about where all the weapon's feed mechanisms and ammo bins and other moving parts go. There are none. It's literally just a barrel with wires coming off it.

You ever see those amateur drawings folks make of fantastic battle robots and war tanks and such? The ones where more anal-retentive folks will point out how this or that won't work because the artist didn't bother to allow for the internal weapon machinery? Where the artist clearly has no idea how firearms actually work, but just stuck a bunch of barrels and gun ports all over the thing?

Well, those designs can work now.





-karma

Copyright was what I was after anyway. I was originally more interested in who would capitalize on the Metal Storm name as a brand, because the tech as implemented would be different enough anyway that patent isn't gonna matter and would be long dead.

But basically what I was after is who in the 6th world is trying to be at the leading edge of weapons developement. I've had some good answers so far, but more insight would help as well if anyone has it

Haha! That's a good point, they would.

Those drawings never have the two support vehicles though, one filled with reloads and the other a mobile reactor to power it.

More shots at me aside...

It actually doesn't make any more sense for the weapon to fire from different barrels as it would require all four barrels to be zeroed on the same place, for variable degrees of muzzle velocity, and different trajectories. We're talking about a weapon that would need a firing computer just to operate.

Honestly, the whole weapon makes no sense, and that's why Metal Storm more or less abandoned the idea of a multi-barreled handgun. It's ammunition inefficient, slow to reload, difficult to properly sight, and requires an additional power source. Of course, almost all weapons in Shadowrun seem like they would need batteries, so that part might be irrelevant.


And is it really "logical" from a game standpoint or simply convenient? I mean, if I fire three round bursts out of a Colt M23 until the magazine runs dry, I'll only have one round left for the final shot. Does that make having a 40 round magazine "illogical"?

You are correct in that a four-barrel MetalStorm weapon COULD fire four rounds with each pull of the trigger.

It could also fire three rounds each out of a different barrel and just not fire off the fourth barrel. Then again, it could also fire two rounds, five rounds, thirteen rounds, heck, all forty rounds with a single trigger pull.

However, having it fire three rounds in a burst instead of four means not having to have special one-off rules for just this weapon, special rules which really wouldn't actually result in THAT much of a mechanical difference.

Short answer: You could do it. But why?



-karma

Except there is no "creative artistic content" in MetalStorm. The opinions of gun enthusiasts aside, that is.

There's the mechanical design, which is covered by Patents.

There's the MetalStorm name and logo, which are covered by Trademarks.

Copyrights are for books, music, art, movies, etc. Not for mechanical designs.


As for who's on the cutting edge of arms development, the answer is: They all are.

But the one company that EVERYONE of the period will tend to THINK of when it comes to Big Big Guns, is Ares.




-karma

Uhm... For US, utility patents it was 17 years from time of issue prior to '95, then it became 20 years from time of filing. Design patents only have a 14 year term. There is an extension allowed for a few years to a patent (under the Hatch-Waxman Act) due to delays from FDA approval process.

I have no knowledge from any of my experience or classes about a chance for renew to 40 years.

ack, Trademarks is indeed what I meant.

As to my thoughts of what's going on...smaller company that doesn't have the economic backing and market presence that Ares does and so is trying to break into the market with "cutting edge" tech (whether its viable or not).

I had been leaning towards Cross because of their longstanding rivalry with Ares, but I they have been showing up a lot recently and I'm not sure if my players would start to get too wary.

Why do they have to be zeroed in to the place? That would be overly delicate and time consuming. The barrels are all within 2 inches I have to imagine, probably less. You have a vertical variance in the grouping then with no horizontal variance and it effectively still within the game rules equates to a "burst".

Food for thought - since it already fires electronically, shouldn't it retroactively get a RC of 1 due to Arsenal?

An interesting thought, but give how potent the YSF is as a light pistol I'd be wary to extend the recoil compensation to SA mode. Besides, that's what the folding stock is for.

As far as the burst-fire bullet count, I'm with karma on this. The combat rules specifically state:


And for the YSF:


All emphasis mine. Nowhere does the YSF's entry state it fires additional rounds, only that its firing mechanism is at the very least superficially identical to a Metal Storm weapon - which, as karma pointed out, can fire any number of rounds per burst depending on its programming - and that the second burst fired in every action phase has lower recoil. As the burst-fire rules state that a single burst is three bullets and the only weapon-specific special rule is a reduced recoil penalty, I see no reason why the YSF would fire four rounds per burst - especially when the only mechanical difference to having a four-round burst is 10 bursts per full reload as opposed to 13 bursts and one semi-auto shot.

Which is why I'm baffled at its lack of a built-in smartgun system.

The design as it is could have tiny internal adjustments to the orientation of the barrels all fed to it by the smartgun system's microwave range finder. Each barrel slightly splays apart inside the main body of the gun like fingers on a hand, so as to make all the bullets land on target at whatever range. That's some relatively workable sci-fi awesome technomagic.

And, if the GM decides to make it 7p 4-round bursts or whatever, that's awesome. Give it to the cops. Runners can already do basically that much damage because they're prepped for heavy conflict. Officer Errant throwing that back at them with a sidearm is problematic though.


As to the recoil, players can shoot off 8 free-standing shots from a Barrett in 3 seconds if they have the twitch for it. For a -2 penalty they can do it one handed...

And for just about every piece of source code which does more than "hello world". Which would be relevant in the 6th World, if anybody would give a damn about copyrights



Uhmmm...thanks for repeating what I wrote, I guess...

The point was, copyright doesn't apply here. There's no creative content (or software, for that matter) in the subject at hand. Only mechanical design and the trademark attached to it.

And software being covered under copyright is kinda a recent idea, only appearing in the 1970s. Previously you'd have to file patents on software if you wanted to protect it.



-karma

It basically does - recoil is handled as a SA as it is.

..that Traul said "IP laws are still important in 207x" and I said "IP laws don't seem to be enforced too much, since extracting a scientist makes no sense if all his work is copyrighted and you have to respect the trillion of NDAs he's bound to". We were not even talking about a concrete example, just our ideas of the legal situation in 2070

Even if that is still the case in 2070, it only protects the source code, neither reverse engineering nor extracting the author and having him rewrite the program.

As for NDAs... before a corp can sue one of its former citizens for breach of NDA, they have to find who he works for now, and they they found it they would have a much more serious case than breach of NDA. Extracted scientists and their new boss tend to keep a low profile

...but is it -1 for Perception tests to find the source of a shot?

Sure, might as well. A pretty minor house rule, if nothing else.

1. Patents would definitely be expired barring any change in patent law.
2. Metal Storm is an Australian company (if that matters at all). So if you're looking for a company that would have "inherited" the design specs, look for something out of Australia.

--



Functionally, it would be a rather simple matter to put a chip in the weapon that accounts for a firing mode selector. If it's set to semi-auto, the chip sends out a signal for one bullet to be fired each time the trigger is pulled and burst fire would trigger three bullets. Full-auto is what runs into the problem you're describing. If anything, I would expect this line of weapons to all come smartlinked and have the ability to trigger firing through the smartlink. That would be the only reasonable way to make the weapon work in full-auto, otherwise it would probably be every bullet firing from the weapon when you do full-auto..... and if we consider that each additional bullet functionally works out to +1 DV that could be.... well disgusting.

--



I don't think that would happen. It may be dystopic and corps may run everything, but do you think they would extend patent durations that long? Just look at the AAAs alone. Do you think they would really extend patent durations when any of the other eight AAAs could come up with the next great design and lock them out of ever producing it?

I actually could see them eliminating the patent extension and leaving it at about 20 years. Then they hirer shadowrunners to lift the prototypes and designs, shuffle them off to one of their "hidden" labs and then start working on their own designs so that they can pop them out as soon as the patent wears off.

--



From what I've recall of metal storm weapons, they make up for the barrel length by adding more barrels, thus reducing the number of projectiles that are loaded in each barrel. If the weapon is 12 rounds, they'll have 4 barrels of three rounds each and it would be of similar length to modern handguns. However, you also have to consider that each bullet that is fired from the barrel extends the barrel length -more- than the length of the round + propellant since that will cause the propellant of the rounds following it to be compressed.

My personal opinion on Metal Storm has always been that the technology is really cool, but not so useful for personal firearms with the exception of hold outs. I've also felt that Metal Storm grenade launchers are silly unless the grenades are impact detonated and are explosive in nature rather than fragmentation grenades.

Metal storm works well for cramming the most rounds into the smallest space. The stacked GL that holds 3 40mm rounds is a pretty good idea you don't lose anything and you gain more fire power. As any time you would be able to load the GL your likely able to load 3 rounds not just one. Plus not having to reload after every shot would give you a distinct advantage over the current system.

Metal storm tech out side secondary weapons and point defence is limited though any large amount of rounds is a bitch to reload. So it only really works fro underbarrel weaponry or compact secondary weapons. They plus is it makes the GL on the pulse rifle from Aliens perfectly workable loading caseless rounds of GL or shotgun in a compact underbarrel system would offer grate utility though some way to tweak the load or possiblely multiple barrels might be needed for it to work perfectly. In SR terms additional "clip" or ammo switch systems.

The contemporary Metal Storm design is a fully electric gun, meaning no mechanical linkage between trigger and firing action. The trigger is just an electrical switch, I bet you could wire in a doorbell button and it would work nearly as well.

It is a trivial bit of engineering to put logic in the weapon that sends a firing impulse every <unit of time> while the selector switch is on full auto, and the trigger is pulled.

However, that negates the recoil benefit of Metal Storm. The weapon is recoilless in the sense that the bullets are fired so quickly that the barrel doesn't have time to rise before the last round leaves it. If you throttle full auto to work out to a firing rate not too dissimilar from conventional full out, then you will have the same barrel drift problem. Thus Metal Storm turns into nothing more than a way to load ammunition, albeit one that removed the need for some external magazine. Thus it would only apply a concealment bonus.

Yeah. It seems my USPTO scheduling information is a bit outdated. Back in '98 when I checked it out, you could file utility patents for 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, or 20 years, and could renew once for 20 more years added to the end.

True, but there is no reason you can't have it both ways. When your gun is fully electric, Safe/SA/BF/Superburst/FA are all just programs, and programs are tiny and cheap. The UI would be the hardest part of the design, but Shadowrun Smartgun links and AR would handle that nicely.

I can imagine a real Shadowrun combat MS weapon. I assume that advances in ceramics would make lightweight, disposable barrels practical.

The core is simply a stock with a built-in electronics/SG/sighting package. Need a SMG? Attach a pod of 7, 9mm low-velocity barrels. Need an assault rifle? Attach a pod of 7, 6mm high-velocity barrels. Need a sniper rifle? Attach a pod of 3, 8mm high-velocity barrels. Grenade launcher? A single 25mm barrel. ANything larger, and you would probably need a different, heavier stock with built in pistons to help with the recoil.

The downside, like today, would be the weight and bulk of your ammo.

Did you miss the part where it fires 1,000,000 rounds per minute? (well at least in stacks of 5 per barrel.)

That means that 20 bullets could leave the YSF in .0012 seconds based on current models. Barrel can't rise that fast...

But, again, we run into the problem that MS tech is too next level to mess with. Rolling with two 4P +19p narrow bursts in a pass just isn't going to happen. Also wrist fracture.

That still makes the barrel significantly shorter for the first round and noticably shorter for the second one. Also, compressing propellant and bullets? What are you planning to load to archieve enough pressure for that?

No, I didn't miss that. It's the fundamental problem with full-auto and how Metal Storm would not work within the current rules for full auto. Under current rules, a weapon that is in full-auto can fire short bursts, long bursts, full bursts, and suppressive fire. Given that Metal Storm is capable of firing 16,666 rounds a second I think it is quite reasonable to assume that no character (expect an AI) would be capable of preventing a Metal Storm weapon from discharging all of its rounds when pulling the trigger (or pressing the button) in full-auto mode. Thus the only way to achieve a full-auto mode that doesn't discharge all your rounds is to fire rate limit the firmware on the chip to say "when in full-auto mode, discharge x rounds per trigger pull per y unit of time". With a smart gun it would be reasonable to assume that the user could modify or override that setting but you're still locked to it until you change it. So if you have full-auto mode set to 10 rounds (full burst) you're denied short and long bursts in addition to being denied suppressive fire until you change the setting.

It is precisely those problems with full-auto that lead me to believe that Metal Storm is -not- a good technology to use for personal firearms that have a purpose of putting rounds down range unless full-auto mode is rate limited like similar firearms and the ammunition is used because it reduces weight through removal of an external magazine an metal casings. In which case, we're basically talking about using caseless ammunition which is already in the rules and offers no benefits. I even struggle to justify using the Metal Storm firing method on machine guns. I feel the technology has it's uses on burst fire weapons since it, in theory, increase the accuracy of three round bursts by negating most of the muzzle drift from firing, but I just see a huge number of issues that would need to be overcome when using it in full-auto.

I think it's an awesome idea for computer/ai controlled weaponry when it comes to full-auto, but it boils down that human thought and reaction speeds will never be good enough to effectively use full-auto metal storm without some sort of limiter.

--



That's how current Metal Storm technology works. Each round consisted of the bullet with a propellant skirt that fits over the head of the next bullet. The propellant isn't solid like the bullet and it uses the force from the previous propellant charge to compress and help form a tighter seal for the ones following it. The additional barrel length gained through compression probably amounts to maybe an additional 2-3mm over the course of the rounds, but it does occur.

The question is not how "solid" it is, but what the bulk modulus is...and most caseless ammo schematics I've seen so far had the propellant "hull" only barely go over the tip ofthe round, not much space to compress anything there.



What do you want to seal in what effectively is a muzzle loader? There is no chamber which can leak gasses.

It prevents the ammo behind from cooking off and firing beyond the burst you wanted, IIRC.

You're asking the wrong person. All I know is how the technology works, not whether that is an intended design or a side effect.

You mean "how the technology is supposed to work, according to TV shows which basically hype up whatever a well-paying sponsor claims to produce moar dackka and flashy explosions".

Has anyone else here actually read the wiki on the Metal Storm systems?

There's only one system that has a theoretical rate of fire of over a million rounds a minute, and that's because it's a 36-barrel monstrosity.

Patents are "moar dakka and flashy explosions".

However this patent should address that if you don't feel like reading through the Metal Storm patents.



Bolded for emphasis.

So unless I understand pressure and physics incorrectly. If I apply pressure to something it should very well compress, thus reducing the dimension which is having the pressure applied.



1,000,000 / 36 = ~463 rounds / second / barrel = ~1389 rounds / barrel / combat turn = ~347 rounds / barrel / IP for a 4 IP character

I still find it dubious that even the most reaction tweaked character could -control- firing in full auto without some sort of limiter.

Considering the 36-barrel gun isn't man portable, I don't think the reaction-twinked character has to deal with it.

Doc Chase, you *know* how stupid that statement is. This is Shadowrun. Neraph is *at this moment* munchkin-ing up the Fomori Ghoul Mystic Adept required to *make* it man portable.

Cybertorso, gyromount for the win?

Psh. You'll need more twinkery than just that. It's not a Heavy Weapon, it's a Vehicle Weapon. Maybe you could use that ridiculous, 'no really, my character is a humanoid vehicle' argument.

Ah
So Medium Sized Drone is all you need with the basic rules