For jump enhancement, nothing takes you higher than a flamethrower.

~J

Heh.

No, the "you can't shoot someone with a .50 cal" was a word of mouth by an MP years ago.

As for the rest - it's possible he was mistaken, but considering how anal the young man can be about things, you'll forgive me if I don't make up my mind either way.

I will, however, adjust the retelling of the second story as, "a new grunt once told me..."

-Siege

Why the HK XM8? The ease of cleaning, the MRBS of about 23,000 and the ease of breakdown, maintenance and role swap all seem pretty good to me. Also, they recommend that you clean it once every "5000 rounds". I am not talking out my ass. The G36 (which the XM8 is, just in different clothes) gets kudos from a Marine Infantry Officer who went into Intel.

The SA80 sucked bad, the only thing to come of the whole bloody project that was liked was the SUSAT, which was a fair decent bit of kit. The SLRs were missed, but hey, you can only use a blunderbuss '69 for so many rounds, neh? As it is I have heard rumours that the British Army is currently trying G36 & G36K on for size.

The HK416 upper is basically very much like the M16 upper, but it runs the gas backwards, easing maintenance and improving reliability(oversimplified). Don't get me wrong, I have used the M16/C7 M4/C8 weapons and did not mind them as much as the SA80 (the M4/C8 had a much higher MRBS than the SA80). But if I had the choice between a weapon like the G36K or the M4, I'd be gettin' me a sweet German ride.

The only thing I can see that shot down the XM8 program was politics. More constituencies had a hand in the M16 pie than there were in the XM8 pie, from what I can tell. The men who used the XM8 seemed to have loved the weapon due to its reliability, versatility and considerable weight savings over a similarly tricked out M16/M4. Yes, I'm big on weight, when you have to carry your shite into battle, you want it to do two things, the third is a bonus...

1). Work.

2). Be light(er).

3). Look cool.

Regarding the 6.8mm SPC. The last I heard they were still looking at the 6.5 Grendel as well, but that was in June.

Just for the record, I had to read the "Whisky Foxtrot" comment out loud before I started wondering, "what the frag is he...ooooh..."

-Siege

Armalite should just sell the CAR-15/m4/C8 design back to diemco for another round of R/D like they did with the 16A1, should work. and I blame my high school for my ignorance. we spent an entire year on ww2 Geneva and the UN, and all I got out of it was, well, I've just been corrected a lot. thanks for the education

on a side note, the bigest concern Ive heard about the 5.56 from soldiers, hunters and gun writers is that the energy delivered does not stop a person with one hit. in urban war one hit stops are a matter of life and death when the opponent does not care for their own safty. I've heard of many banellis and mosbergs sent over seas due to the fact that at spiting distance, nothin beats 00 buck. of course the entire 5 vs 7 argument is pointless, because you'll never make anyone happy.
How do you call a time out if the other guy breaks a rule of war?

In close quarters, what kind of round could be used to guarantee a drop?

Well, besides the overwhelming oomph of a shotgun.

Essentially, you'd be talking subsonic ammo, along the lines of a .40 or .45 which would absolutely suck at range - so it's a 50/50 proposition.

Some issues I just don't see being fixed in the near future.

-Siege

I think the point was theoreticly bigger is better.
I heard from a guy who was there that during th middle of WW2 when the swedes were worried about german invasion some of the costal defence units ground the tips off their FMJ 6.5x55 ammo in case they needed to actually hurt something. wonder if that is happening anywhere else?

I'd have to wait for an expert, but which is likely to transmit the greater force?

A subsonic round tumbling, or a supersonic round punching through?

-Siege

What, exactly, do you mean by force?

And yet very often not what people mean when terminal ballistics come up.

Well, there is a point at which you can have too much force. If you shoot someone with a BB from a railgun, to use an exaggerated example, it'll blast clear through him, and the guy behind him, and the concrete wall behind him, and possibly the tank behind it.

But unless you get a heart, spine, or other critical spot injury, you're not going to kill someone. If you shoot him with a BB, he may not even feel it bad enough to stop fighting, even for a split second.

That's why .45 ACP from the Tommy Gun, M1911, and Greasegun were so popular. Sure, had range for crap, but if you hit someone, that slug would flatten down, and by gum he would drop. It's a killing blow.

That's the problem with FMJ ammo. Great punch, but unless you're using a large enough round, it probably won't score a kill on the first shot. 7.62 has great killing power, but it's accuracy and punch-through is not good. To re-iterate; you want less punch-through, more "flatten out inside someone and leave a big hurting hole in him."

Now, this changes if your enemy has body armor. If you shoot someone wearing a vest with that .45 ACP, he won't take ANY damage. If you nail him with that 5.56 FMJ, he'll take some damage, which is better than none. Of course, if you catch him with a 7.62, it's even better.

God, please, just stop! Stop! Aughh.

Well, speaking generally about bullet wounds:

To have a high chance of producing 'eventually fatal wounds', a bullet has to penetrate on the order of 8 to 16 inches of 'flesh' before it has a chance to hit the major arteries, important organ bits, etc of the thoratic cavity.

After penetration depth, the permanent wound cavity that the bullet leaves behind is also important. A larger wound cavity will produce more tissue disruption, tending to produce greater blood loss, shock, etc. In addition, a larger permanent would cavity means a greater chance of damaging something important.

Next, there is the temporary wound cavity. This is essentially caused by the 'shock wave' caused by the bullet as it hits the (relatively fluid) body. In general, only supersonic bullets produce any appreciable temporary wound cavity (that is larger than the permanent wound cavity). However, the human body is generally quite resistant to the 'stretching effect' caused by the temporary wound cavity. Notable exceptions: the liver, the aorta, the brain, the bladder, and the large intestine.

The liver is generally non-elastic, so liver tissue that is distorted by the temporary wound cavity is usually destroyed. The brain can not usually stand up to temporary wound cavities either. The aorta may be damages by the TWC, but it is generally robust enough to ignore these effects, provided it was not already damaged. The large intestine and the bladder, provided they are full of water, can both be severely damaged by the TWC, as the sudden changes in fluid pressure are not good for them. Of course, many people in combat situations, erm, empty the bladder, which returns it to being part of the body that can generally ignore the effects of the TWC.
Short version: the TWC is not a major contributor the wounding effects of a bullet.

So in general, 'heavy pistol' bullets as 'close range' are excellent, in that they have sufficient energy to achieve the required depth of penetration and their relatively large diameter produces a large permanent wound cavity. However, as the range increases, pistol bullets relatively quickly lose their ability to penetrate the requisite distance into the human body, thus greatly reducing their effective wounding potential.

For most 'combat pistols', their performance is good to 20-30? meters, with 'adequate performance up to around 60? meters.

The same bullets fired from the longer barrel of a sub-machinegun (thus, having greater velocity) remain excellent wounders up to 40? meters? with adequate performance up to 90? meters.

Rifles bullets, with their much higher velocities, are able to penetrate much deeper into the body (or pass completely through it) however, the additional effect of 'even more penetration' is somewhat low. In addition, rifle rounds have generally lower diameter of rifle bullets when compared to pistol. This means that rifles tend to produce smaller permanent wound cavities (I’ll address bullet tumbling, fragmentation, etc in a bit) than pistol bullets. On the other hand, rifle bullets, with their much higher velocities, are able to maintain their ability to penetrate the required distance out to much greater distances.

Taking a look at the 5.56mm bullet, it will maintain good penetration for 350+ meters, a far cry from the much sharper drop offs of the pistol bullets.

However, as ‘short’ ranges, a rifle will tend to produce ‘equivalent’ wounds to that of a combat pistol cartridge, as the pistol bullet is still sufficiently energetic to penetrate deep into the body. (Ignoring bullet tumbling and fragmentation, anyway. Of course rifle bullets tend to do one or both at short range.)

Expanding bullets:
Since permanent wound cavity is an important factor in wounding, it is much better to have the bullet expand, as long at the bullet is still able to penetrate the required distance into the body.

Bullet fragmentation:
In general, the massive deceleration of a bullet when it hits the body can cause it to burst into several fragments (this is almost exclusively the province of high speed rifle bullets, pistols do not develop sufficient velocities).

Bullet tumble:
Speaking simply, the ideal aerodynamic shape for supersonic flight is a ‘pointy nose’ with a ‘rounded tail’. The ideal aerodynamic shape for subsonic flight is a ‘rounded nose’ with a ‘pointed tail’. (Compare shapes of supersonic to subsonic aircraft.) As bullets are typically ‘pointy nosed’ (especially rifle rounds), supersonic bullets will tend to tumble so that they are traveling ‘big end first’ once they have been slowed by the body sufficiently. This will tend to increase the PWC.

Armor and intervening ‘stuff’:
Note that you are usually not shooting at naked people, who are standing out in the open. Your bullet may have to pass though things like body armor, walls, automobile parts, plant matter, etc. In general, rifles have a large advantage over pistols here, as a rifle round may still be energetic enough to penetrate deep into the body after passing though intervening material.

There, how’s that?

I don't think Arethusa was referring to you, Siege.

So why not just use a 12 gauge slug for your short-distance combat needs? If he's wearing a vest, yes, he probably will survive (though it might take him a bit to figure out whiskey tango foxtrot just happened,) but the current world is not Shadowrun's world, where children's clothes are made out of ballistic weave.

Because underslinging a shotgun is heavy, awkward and cumbersome?

Or so I would imagine.

Not to mention, reloading would be a pain and carrying the extra ammo to support the shotgun adds kit to account for.

In the grand scheme of things, I think the cost/benefit ratio is more heavily weighted the other way, except for special applications like lock busters.

-Siege

The M203 is not a frequent use weapon, compared to a CQB weapon system.

An underslung shotgun for the express purpose of CQB would be expected to be used quickly and often, both requirements would be impeded by the factors I mentioned before.

-Siege

Edit: And I have to wonder about potential recoil, as well as the feasibility of keeping a hand on or near the trigger in order to best utilize the weapon on extremely short notice.

However, the XM-26 does look pretty sweet as a room-clearing weapon.

Considering Shadowrun never, ever dealt with the real ramifications of that electronic trigger bullshit, you're better off just ignoring it.

hmm, i have a feel that if underslung weapons become more common, one should look into electric, or atleast semielectric triggering.

ie, still use a mechanial hammer, but the hammer is released by a electric charge. you dont even need a battery. just hook a dynamo or something to the trigger so that when pressed it will generate the power needed.

this way you can use one trigger for both the underslung weapon and the gun itself. just need a connector (best buildt into the attachment of the underslung weapon so that you both attach and connect at the same time) and a new trigger selector on the gun itself.

then the question becomes, how reliable can this be compared to the existing purely mechanical one...

there has been at least one reported and documented case of a police officer taking a hit from a shotgun ar close range, if IIRC the shot was from a 12 guage under 10 yards, was a standard 2 3/4 full sized lead slug, she was wearing a class 3 or possibly 3a vest, without trama plates. she was hit square in the sternum, went down, but was able to get up and re-enter combat seconds after. so using a shotgun is still no garantee, unless you can expect little to no armor on your opponents. (current iraq conflict)
as far as electronic firing of cartriges, remington has such a beast on the market, and it has been tested to be reliable under all conditions. (and if you are going to ask about being struck by lightning.....) the systen involves two electrodes that touch contacts on the primer, which has the same dimentions as a large boxer type rifle primer. other sizes are suposedly in the works in case the idea takes off. personaly I like the idea, mechanical stuff is just too unreliable (one uninteded discharge is enough for me) and by 2050 could be the most likly method of firearm discharge, which makes the smartlink at least a little plausable.

Yeah. I guess my point was that it would be a bit more difficult than it seems on the surface, but most users aren't going to be concerned with the lockwork anyway. In general, I can't think of a reason why a cybernetic trigger wouldn't work.

Yep. Certainly nothing we could do, say, today, but trivial in comparison to all of the other things SR allows cybernetically.

Although it's a side of the game that really doesn't add much to play, it would be interesting to come up with guidelines for how long it takes for one to "train" oneself in the use of cybernetic equipment. I mean, after using it long enough it should be pretty similar to, say, physically pulling a trigger, but how long is "long enough"?

~J

I dunno. I recon it'd be a few hours down at the range, generally about the same amount of time as it takes to pull the trigger on a gun manually.

Generally you aren't trying to learn how to move your finger when you're down at the range.

I mean, certainly once you hit that point once place it ought to be like that for other things—if I can operate the Matrix in pure DNI, learning how to fire a gun should take a few minutes tops. It's the first-learning that's the interesting question.

~J

Bet not to worry about it, eh?

Oh, definitely. It's like the surgery rules—realistic, but doesn't really add anything enjoyment-wise. Still interesting to think about, IMO.

~J

Well, if you really want to know, I'd guess that learning to do it yourself would be like going through physical therapy.

That said, this is the 2060s. I imagine they imprint the knowledge of how to use your new cyber when you get it.

I've always envisioned some type of simsense orientation method that helps a person become familiar with their newly-implanted tech.