Greetings all, my first time here and I have enjoyed reading the fourms and have seen quit a few intelligent people here discussing this and that so this seemed the place to go to.

My group and I have played Shadowrun on and off over the years and have now bought SR4. We think SR4 is a great improvment over the previous versions but still needs some tweeking like any game and so we are working on a few of our own.

We had done quit a bit so far and may post them later to see what everyone thinks but for now I have this question.

Right now we are working on ammo and I was talking to a x merc friend I know about the Explosive rounds and it raised a few questions for us.

It describes the explosive rounds as a solid slug that fragments and explodes on impact. Well it can't be solid by its very nature, its more or less like a hollow point with some explosive in it from what I was told by my friend.

So these are my questions.

1) Should a explosive round be off of Ballistic or Impact Armor?

2) Based off of Ballistic, shouldnt the stats look more like:
a) Explosive rounds: +1 AP, +1 DV
b) Ex Explosive rounds: +1 AP, +2 DV

From what I have read and talked to some military people I know, I don't see how it would have such a AP mod as it does. It would seem the explosive, fragmentation part would be more damage then it would be AP, and would expend its force on the armor and then the body.

Also from what I know of AP rounds, shouldnt any type of AP (APDS) rounds actualy reduce the damage by -1 DV while reducing the AP value? Since they more or less pass right through you without any fragmentation or bounce effects going on within the body?

We are debating of making all rounds on the ballistic chart for ease of ammo comparison and leaving impact for all else.

Such as if Flechette was based off ballistic, it might look like +3 AP, +2 DV and be very cheap and availability. Not everyone shoud be walking around in armor 24/7 and would make it effective ammo for those that are not.

Also, things arent always fair or equal on give and take when it comes to tech, somtimes the balancing factor is in the cost and availability which I think many forget.

Looking foward to hearing your thoughts on this.

Deadjester

Regarding flechette rounds, see other threads like the SHP 1.3 and slivergun ones for arguments about why it is sick.

Given the mods you suggest flechette would be a straight +1DV over normal ammo with a slightly higher chance of being stun damage instead of physical, on average (each point of armour reduces damage by 1/3 on average).

Hmm I don't know how I missed some of that logic the first time but I did and has given me food for thought for the second time around.


I am curious now if DV should not be add till AFTER penetration is rolled for. That way AP and DV would be more separated in their applied values.

So it would look like:

Roll to hit and work out result
If target is hit, then see if round penetrates the armor
If round penetrates, then add DV of the round to the DV of what was rolled and work out results.

I like that idea, at the moment +1DV is for all purposes much better than +1 AP, this would balance things a bit (not much though since stun damage at the moment is preferable to physical damage since the stun track is likely to be shorter than the physical one on most characters)

Digging way into the realms of sci-fi here...

My recollection of how the movie Aliens explained pulse rifle ammunition was as "explosive, light armor piercing." You essentially had a jacketed round with a tiny explosive charge in the base and a penetrator at the core. On impact, the charge would detonate, driving the penetrator forwards (which would aid in armor penetration, if the slug had impacted armor) and blowing the jacket apart into fragments (which would aid in wounding, if the slug had impacted a "soft" or unarmored target). The Smartgun round was functionally almost identical (although slightly longer and heavier), except it had the option to be fused on firing, either for immediate detonation on impact (functioning like the standard pulse rifle round), or for a delay (which would allow the round to penetrate lighter armors or surfaces that wouldn't stop it without the charge detonating immediately, reducing it's effectiveness against lightly armored troops or targets behind light cover).

Way too advanced for Shadowrun? Well, we've got nanotech, the Matrix, and cyberwear. It doesn't seem too ludicrous to me, especially when you look at how expensive a single round of explosive (or EXEX) ammunition is.

What you're describing is basically like the multi-purpose round I mentioned earlier. The Mk 211 Mod 0 penetrates, explodes, ignites and fragments when it hits a rigid target, and it's been around for quite some time now. In itself, this is no big feat.

The problem is that if you do the same in an assault rifle projectile, let alone a handgun projectile, there is not nearly enough volume for the explosive and the incendiary substances. The Mk 211 Mod 0 has 0.84 grams of Composition A-4 explosive and 0.85 grams of an incendiary mixture in it -- downscale that into a 7.62x51mm projectile (at less than 1/4th the mass), and you get an insignificant explosive and substandard incendiary effects, as well as reduced penetration compared to a full-caliber tungsten carbide penetrator.

Here is a diagram of the Mk 211 Mod 0 on Raygun's site. Imagine that at 0.6x the diameter and length, and 0.2x the weight. It'd be a substandard armor piercing round, it'd be a completely ineffective incendiary round, the explosive effect would be worthless, and terminal effect against material or personnel targets would not be increased over what you get with a full-caliber AP round like the M993; yet it would be way more expensive than the M993. And the only way to get over this problem would be to invent new kinds of explosives which outperform the current ones by at least a factor of 2 in terms of equivalent volume for impulse output. At the rate at which better explosives have been developed for the last 150 years, that'd take some 350 more years.

The main difference between the two round types (and, theoretically, SR's explosive ammo) is that you're only trying for an explosive effect, no incendiary. Half of the combustibles in the round you're referencing are used for the incendiary effect, which probably doesn't contribute nearly as much power as the A-4 being used.

I'm not trying to argue that this round is feasible today. Obviously, it's not. The main change for Shadowrun is the advance of technology by 65 years. Yes, this is a piece of tech which, while you could BUILD it today, wouldn't be effective. SR3 had handheld laser weapons and "cutter" nanotech straight out of The Diamond Age. Explosives which have doubled their mass-to-power ratio don't seem like nearly as much of a stretch.

Ok after reading some forums, I have come up with something I want to play test using some house rules I have been talking over with Razorback.

The idea behind them is based off of several factors, logic, what I call the Heroic system and just plane flavor which is very important.

I have made several changes that I hope stay within the system enough it will not have sever effects down the road in other places.

The changes for play test 1 are as follows:

Pistols were changed so that they look like Light 4 DV, Med 5 DV, Hvy 6 DV.
Resist is now a flat 6, Damage boxes are 10 + body
DV from Ammo and various types of burst fire are added after penetration has been established for damage purposes.
Ammo that will be used will be Regular since that is considered standard for balance purpoes.
Armor has been changed in the way that after penitration has been established, a flat automatic resist rate based on half the armors value will be used.
Resist check is no longer based on the body but a factor of 6 ( rolled ) for resistance to be combined with the flat armor auto resist. (This being based on that the sheer of idea of resist being based upon body, is, well lunacy and very limiting in nature. In a earlier version of SR, we had a Troll with a bigger body then a whale in the creatures books. I feel the armor idea of how they do penitration combined with a flat 10 + body opens up the field for man and machine in gaming.

Now how it looks all broken down.

I will try it in three modes with two types of armor.

In first set it will be a avg joe in skills wearing a Armor Vest 6/4 using a Med pistol and Reg Ammo.

Then I will scale them up as above avg joe and then kick ass joe in skills.

Then start over again using a Armored Jacket 8/6.

Combat will look like:

Avg joe vs avg joe up till the point its avg joe vs kick ass joe.

Combat:

Attack check: Agil + Skill vs Reaction
Armor pen check
If armor is pen, damage will be 5 DV + staging from check + DV from ammo or other factors
Resist damage will be flat 3 if Armor Vest, flat 4 if Armored Jacket ( half the armors value ) + roll a resist of 6 for standard flesh forms (humans, meta humans, animals etc)
After a flat 3 or 4 is added to the rolled resist check of 6 is done, minus it from the DV of the attack and if any is left over apply it to the damage of the victim (max damage able to be taken is 10 + body with with the condition mod now being in box sets of 4 since the damage able to be taken is now bigger)

The idea behind this is two fold, we fell that using body as a resist mod was a weakness in the old system held over to this system and limits it greatly.

Also, from a few play tests of the SR4s system we has seen some results from damage take that we feel can adversly effect the Flavor of combat.

Damage taken in a single round can be tiny to splatter, while realistic could still be harmful to the flavor depending on view.

Damage taken is not just how good the attacker rolls but also how badly the defender rolls and combined, a char that took a few hrs to make could be wiped in meer moments.

By adding a flat resist check from the armor and a various rolled resist of a static 6, the idea is to somwhat even even out the damage so that while it might get nasty, hopefully there will be few splatter effects unless sombody is using a BFG then you just SOL

And if it doesn't work, well time for revision and play test 2

But the idea behind it is hopefully logic combined with flavor to reach a happy medium.

Deadjester

The fundemantal problem is that you get about 30:1 conversion of a solid to a gas. This doesn't really change much. The best you can do is get more energy out of the material, and we know fairly well the theoretical limits in chemical bonds. So all we are doing is trying to squeeze a little extra bit out while keeping the explosive material stable until we want it to go boom.

The ammo, armor penetration, and final DV rules for SR4 are particularly wonky.

BaseDamage + Ammo modifiers + Hits VS Body + modified Armor

Increasing the DV is always preferable to AP, because it takes a lot more dice to negate DV. It takes about 4 dice to knock off one DV; taking off 2 dice of armor is only equivalent to half a DV. So, EX ammo is better than APDS in SR4, because to cancel it's effects it takes many more dice. APDS is less effective, because losing a little more armor is less of a problem than resisting a high final damage value. Flechette is much more effective than it used to be, because the bonus dice to damage far outweigh the bonus dice to armor.

The underlying problem is scale. A Ruger Super Warhawk Dirty Harry gun has a base damage and AP of 6P, -2. Put EXEX in there, and you have 8P, -4 without even rolling dice yet. This is very close to a Panther assault cannon, which is 10P, -5AP, and it can't take any fancy ammunition. So, in terms of scale and relating back to "realistic physics", the problem stems from putting super duper nuclear high explosive bullets in a 44 magnum and it does nearly the damage of a 20mm (?) recoiless rifle. So, that right there is the first part of the problem.

The second part of the problem is using dice hits to create a linear modifier to the final DV. Because of DV spiraling up so easily, you can have a streetsam do more damage with a light pistol as an unskilled shmuck with a panther cannon.

So, according to the physics of SR4:
1. A weapon, no matter how tiny, is a death machine in the right hands.
2. Ammuntion that enhances a weapon "in the right hands" is usually more desireable than a more powerful weapon.

So, now what we're left with is a system that is conducive to story telling than to "realistic" combat. When a streetsam shoots a dragon in the eye with his fancy gun, with its fancy ammo: it is very cinematic and cool. When game masters realize this same design is also something they can use too, it becomes significantly less cool... for players at least. Major vililans that can do stuff the players can do is pretty interesting.

We've generally stuck with house ruling the armor penetration check *before* adding dice hits to determine the final DV. Otherwise, the idiot savant with the Red Rider BB gun could get enough hits to blow up police cars and vape spirits with one shot. There are supposed to be some things in shadowrun that the mundane just shouldn't do anything but avoid... An "uber" streetsam player character should not be able to look over a great dragon and think, "I can take him." Our solution to the invincible Red Rider has been to make armor worth a damn. Not perfect, but it's working well enough.

There doesn't really need to be a lot of pow inside a EX round. The focus could be on how the remains of the bullet get dispersed by the explosive. A technological leap in this field doesn't seem implausible after 60 or so more years of violence and war. Let's face it, the necessity to excel in war is not going to stop being relevant. In SR, they even had corporate-sponsored wars for the sole purpose of testing their prototype gear.

Double post!

I also am pretty sure that some of the super-duper armor piercing ammunition in SR will be entirely common by 2070.

Here's a hypothetical design for APDS pistol ammo:
1. Take a standard pistol bullet, but cut it into a quarter the size.
2. Make that 1/4 size bullet a dart penetrator, but make it out of Osmium or some other massive metal (depleted uranium?). Now it is 1/4th the size, but 1/2 the weight.
3. Put a sabot on your tiny half-weight round so that it fits in a standard cartridge.
4. Propel the projectile with electrothermal technology instead of a cordite chemical explosion. I seem to remember from somewhere, that electrothermal propulsion resulted in much higher velocities than traditional ammunition.

The principle is that you put alcohol or some other liquid in the cartridge with a fairly low vaporization energy. Then, you expose that to a strong electrical discharge similar to a taser. This results in much more energetic and complete vaporization of the propellant, and thus the projectile is inclined to leave at significantly higher velocities. Viola! Teeny little penetrator for piercing armor, and wounding capability is preserved because of hydroshock.

Whatayathink?

(PS, don't use that underwater.)

If you replaced the core of the slug with DU, or better yet osmium, you could greatly increase the mass for a given caliber without increasing the slug length. So say a 180gr .308 slug would come in around 250 or 260gr. If you have the powder to push it and the firearm to manage that extra push I don't see why penetration of body armour and light vehicle armour wouldn't improve.

At the very least this sort of round could help give even better performance to subsonic rounds.

The enviromental problems are minor compared to the ballistic problems. Exotic heavy metal slugs have poor rage and accuracy compared to standard amunition.

There are potentially ways t make an explosive-cored handgun bullet far more damaging that a similar deforming handgun bullet athough they would certainly be dificult to implement.

Consider, for example, a bullets that a rolled from a single sheet instead of molded around a slow-burning explosive core. Upon penetration, the explosive causes the rolled bullet to unfurl, dramatically increasing wound diameter. Yes, I know it is an insane idea with will probably be show unfeasable by experimental data. Untill I see such data I'm sticking with the idea.

Not that the "realism" discussion sin't interesting, but don't any of you people rule these things looking at game balance?



It's clear to just about anyone that the current ammo rules are no good:
Normal Ex-rounds are cheaper, more readily available, and just as good in all respects as APDS. ExEx-rounds is a better armor piercing tool than APDS.
Flechette rounds are ALWAYS better than regular rounds (which isn't too bad a tradeoff imo, they cost a bunch more)


When comparing the diffrent values of ammo, keep in mind that 1DV equals -3AP (on avarage, three dies generate one hit, right?)


With this in mind has anyone drawn up some balanced ammo rules for me to use?

Ok from what I am reading it is pretty obvious that we have some pretty intelligent and knowledgeable people on this subject.

So I have something to propose while I am working on the house rules I posted above and checking their results.

I would like to see a proposed Ammo guide from those who are willing to do it based on that AP and DV are calculated separately. (AP is rolled first and if successful, then DV is applied from Ammo)

Also availability and prices are also important in the SR4 universe so please add you thoughts in on this, has great RP value.

Feel free to add in Hallow Points, FMJs, Diakote or anything else you come up with to the present Ammo that is in SR4, but I would like to see it under the guidelines above.

I understand that in RL they maybe one in the same but for game purpose for the house rules I am working on I would be interested to see the results from people who seem to be well versed on Ammo and Weapons.

Looking foward to seeing your ideas.

Deadjester

@Serbitars House-rule Package

If you want me to use that, which I am not going to for various reasons, why do you have all that justification text cluttering it up? Joe Friday said it best, "All we want are the facts, ma'am".

You are even proposing more changes than I do. (Removing ExEX, severey changing flechette . . .).
But the question of importance is: Is my ammo system balanced against itself? And the answer is "mathematically yes". If you dont like it as a whole, dont use ist.
If you have a better overall system, post it. If you have suggestions how to alter mine, post them. If you have only negative criticism with no ideas how to fix the weak points, better keep to yourself.

How do gel rounds and ExEx fit in this? How does this fit to the "flechette is devestating against unarmored but useless against armored targets" description?

You cant just change one ammo type. If you do, you have to balance all the existing ammo types (regular, flechette, explosive, exexplosive, gel, stichnshock, apds).

Why is +1DV/+3AP poorer against heavily armored targets? +1DV/+3AP cancels out in the standard rules. Its armor independant.

If you really feel the need to include ExEx, just make it +1DV/0AP. Still worse than APDS except against light armor.

Another good move is to drop the APDS moniker and just make it AP (Armor Piercing). As covered well by Austere Emancipator discarding sabot doesn't really work in small caliber weapons.

You could then have a couple of grades, -3 AP and -4 AP. They are going to eventually come out with some funky new ammunition in the supplement that also makes little sense. So you might as well get ready for it now.

A grade of -2 AP would have its uses too. It would be more like a premium grade of commercial ammunition instead of full on military/law enforcement.

Apart from schools, penetrating which is obviously a matter of caliber and not of projectile type, tungsten carbide can already do all that. There is no body armor available today (or being developed that I know of) which can reliably stop the M993 round at close range. NIJ level IV, the highest ballistic protection rating commonly used, is only rated to defeat steel core AP rounds, like the venerable .30-06 M2 AP. And, again, I wouldn't be so sure that DU would actually penetrate body armor any better.

If this elite squad is facing a probable threat of heavily armored vehicles while only armed with small arms (up to and including shoulder arms in 12.7x99mm and similar calibers), then going for DU wouldn't be completely insane. Just highly unlikely.

Highly unlikely is about the best your can hope for in Shadowrun. So that sounds like a winner!

Normal Rounds..: +0 DV (vs. ballistic)
Gell....................: +0 DV, Stun damage (vs. impact)
Flechette...........: +2 DV. Double impact armor (vs. impact)
Armor piercing...: +0 DV, Halve ballistic armor then subtract 2, to a minimum of 0 (vs. ballistic).
*Explosive...........: +0 DV (vs. impact).
*EX-Explosive......: +1 DV (vs. impact).
Stick-n-Shock.....: 5S(e) damage, Halve impact armor (vs. impact).

* Critical glitches are bad with these. Check the BBB for more details.

This is what I came up with after a few hours of number crunching. Check it out. It keeps in theme with what the ammo was intended to do (i.e. each ammo type has it's own niche to fill). I came up with the above values by first determining what the goal of each ammo type was, then making the math fit it.

Normal rounds: Yeah, you know what it is already. Pros: It's cheap. Cons: Not as good as any as the other ammo.
Gell: Less lethal rounds.
Flechette: The best ammo choice effective against unarmored and lightly armored targets. Actually ends up doing less damage than even normal rounds against heavilly armored targets.
Armor Piercing: The round punches through armor. It's effectiveness increases relative to all other types of ammunition as the target's armor increases. It's the best ammo choice against moderately to heavilly armored targets.
Explosive: Generally slightly more effective than regular ammo. This doesn't really shine, but it's still kinda cheap.
EX-Explosive: Generally slightly more effective than explosive ammo. It's always the 2nd best ammo choice for any situation.
Stick-n-Shock: Turn your gun into a taser.

EDIT: After checking out the prices, I think the only change that needs to be made is flechette dropping to 70 nuyen per ten rounds.

And here's some examples of ammo types vs. various armors using my modified values for the ammo types... I didn't include Gel, explosive, and stick-n-shock for simplicity's sake:

Yeah, if you want to learn how to clean stuff, join the Marines.

EDIT: Umm... is anyone noticing my balanced ammo chart?