Sometimes you want evidence.

~J

Which is why I made *everything* caseless, at the standard price and capacities. Much less math involved, and a lot less bookkeeping. If a player really wanted to shoot a Colt 44 Dragoon, I said he could find or make ammo for it just as easily; it was just that all the modern firearms had switched over. Weapons that fired cased rounds were going to be vintage or antique, possibly even collection pieces-- definitely not something you'd want to have on a run.

I understand what you're saying here, but you might want to know that the Colt .44 "Dragoon" is caseless. It's a blackpowder revolver. Any cased/caseless switchover is pretty irrelevant here as it doesn't even use cartridges. Just make sure to apply a few complex actions to reload it.

Marginal simplicity at the cost of realism. Bah.

So, does that mean that I coal load a volcanic rifle with ammo from a random security guard's rifle but I'd have to special order cartriges for a sawed off winchester?

Oops. Well, we know why I never try and argue the gun experts....

Huh? If you mean, do I let players swap rifle ammo freely, then answer is yes, because I can't be bothered to track all those details. I'm aware that there's lots and lots of rifle calibers; but I don't know enough to represent them accurately. As my previous mistake shows.

As far as a sawed-off Winchester, I kind-of assume that Winchester is also making modern firearms, and thus their rounds are caseless as well. Old-style cased ammo is just as availiable as standard ammo in my games-- not necessarily the most realistic, but I assume that there'd be enough of a vintage gun market to support it. Nowadays, you can find all kinds of odd ammo types at a good gun store-- I can't imagine that changing.

It depends on how the ammunition is stored. In a conventional box magazine where cartridges are stacked one on top of the other, it's unlikely to make much difference at all because cartridges with equivalent performance are going to be roughly the same diameter.

In a tubular or helical magazine where the cartridges are stored end to end, there could be a significant increase in capacity due to the caseless cartridge being shorter than a comparable cased cartridge (the bullet is stored inside of the propellant charge, rather than ahead of it). For example, the 4.73x33mm DM11 caseless cartridge used in the G11 has an overall length of (you guessed it) 33mm (1.3"). The conventional cased cartridge equivalent, the 5.56x45mm NATO, has an OAL of 2.1" (53.3mm). The caseless cartridge is 38% shorter.

The G11 had an increased capacity (50-round magazine as compared to the conventional 30-round) due to the design of the rifle, not the ammunition. A similar example of this would be the design of the MP5 in comparison to the P90. Both cartridges are cased, but it's the design of the firearm and magazine that gives the P90 its 50-round capacity, compared to the MP5's 30-rounds.

Here's my theory.

SR3 says that all firearms are available in cased or caseless versions. Same cost and availability.

The only way I see that being feasible is by simply rechambering the firearm for a caseless cartridge. It's doubtfull that they would change the magazine or receiver design, as this would likely be cost prohibitive. This way, all they would have to do is change the barrel, and possibly the bolt.

So, if the magazine is the same size, the cartridge needs to be close to the same overall lenghth to feed properly, correct?

Perhaps they simply make the cartridge slimmer, closer to the bore size, but kept overall length the same? If this were the case, wouldn't that allow a greater magazine capacity?

I'm afraid it's far more complex than that. There's no way it can be made that simple to switch between both types of ammuntion, mostly for the reason that in a firearm using cased ammunition, the case itself performs the very important functions of sealing the breech and acting as a heat sink. In a firearm using a caseless cartridge, the firearm itself has to somehow perform those operations. Those are differences that would very significantly alter how an engineer would approach the design. Enough difference to make it impractical for both types of ammunition to be used in a firearm of the same design.

I suggest you search for caseless ammunition in these forums. I've explained it before in far more detail.

Length is very important, but so are diameter and shape. The magazine may have the same external dimensions, but if the dimensions of the cartridges are signficantly different (say a much smaller diameter), the internal dimensions of the magazine are going to have to be different, meaning separate production lines for each magazine at some point.

As far as functionality is concerned, there is some room for variation in most automatic firearms, but not a whole lot or you tend to compromise reliability. In any case, any difference in cartridge dimensions are going to call for a bit of re-engineering, even if it is minimal. Say a step or two added to the end of the production line. If one of those cartridges were to be caseless, it would complicate production by a few orders of magnitude, to the point where the firearms would effectively be two independent designs.

Yep. Welcome to the (so far) century-old conundrum. How to make propellants offer equivalent performance at reduced volume. Progress has thus far been marginal.

I understand completely that the ammunition is NOT interchangeable. The firearm either fires cased ammo, or caseless. Not both.

My point was in regards to a production standpoint.

I doubt any company would want to create two drastically different versions of the same product. It would seem much simpler to use the existing furniture, trigger assembly, and receiver of their current line. In fact, I am sure they would like to use as many identical parts as possible.

My theory was that a new barrel and bolt would likely be the only real difference between a cased and caseless version. Of course, if they could mold the caseless ammunition into the same shape as the cased version, perhaps all they would have to change is the bolt, for sealing purposes. In that case, the cartridges would be virtually identical.

I'm just trying to figure out if the 20% increase in magazine capacity would be justified or not.

ETA: It seems that the real difficulty would be in reducing heat without the use of a brass case. I don't know how it would be accomplished, but it seems the engineers in SR3 have found a way...

it can't be, though. the entire firing chamber has to be redesigned from scratch, since caseless weapons use electronic ignition and cased still, as far as i'm aware, use impact ignition in SR. moreover, as Raygun pointed out, since a caseless weapon is not ejecting a hot chunk of brass (effectively cooling the weapon), the weapon itself has to absorb all that heat from firing. that means the entire weapon, pretty much, has to be built to different, more heat-resistant tolerances.

Actually, my specific referance was to the volcanic rifle, produced in the middle of the ninteenth century by the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company. It was one of the earliest lever action repeating rifles and one of the earliest rifles to use caseless cartriges.

By SR canon, all caseless rifle cartriges are interchangable (and all removable magazines are interchangable in spite of capacity differences; must be magic) so I should be able to load brand new ammunition into my 200 year old rifle in spite of the fact that the type of caseless cartige use by the volcanic rifle is not the same as modern caseless cartriges.

Of course, by extention, generic shadowrun cased pistol ammo will fit my Dardick model 1500.

Actually, that wouldn't require a different chamber, just a different firing pin (or lack thereof).

I imagine that it would still be possible to use percussion primers in caseless ammunition, especially if you could design one that was consumed completely upon ignition.

As for the cooling factor, perhaps all caseless weapons are water-cooled, and require a radiator backpack with hoses...

Completely and utterly false. The Barret 121 sets the precedent for rifles of sufficiently unusual variety using special ammo that is not interchangeable with normal ammunition.

~J

It would be nice if it were that simple, but it just isn't. Again, I've explained this in much greater detail previously. Please use the search function. Keyword: caseless; filter by member name: Raygun; search posts from: any date. You're likely to find some useful info.

Here's the part where I give up and repeat myself:

Except that by doing so you're marginalizing the usefulness caseless ammunition. Caseless (for small arms) was developed specifically to increase the rate of fire of the infantry rifle, in order to increase hit probability by putting more bullets in the air in a shorter span of time. Now, because you've chosen not to use that increased ROF by utilizing a form of operation that is also compatible with cased ammunition (which has to, you know, eject empty cases, which takes time), you're left with two very questionable benefits: A) no case signature, and B) a slight savings in ammunition weight over PCA (about 12-17%). And you've increased R&D and production costs of the rifle for these marginal benefits. Now the guy who's been making cased ammunition rifles for decades outbids you on the contract. Oops. And on the other side, you can't outbid the guy who makes caseless only rifles on the cost of ammunition production. Oops. So what you're left with is a rifle that might sell to a niche market if you're lucky. Now it's going to be a while before you recoup your investment. Why did you get into this damn business anyway?

As I've already said, it depends largely on the type of magazine being used and/or the layout of the firearm. You're looking for a cut and dry answer where there isn't one. If that's what you want, the easiest you're going to make it is to pick an answer and stick with it, like Cain has. In that case I'd suggest no difference. Can't make it any simpler than that.

Either type of cartridge could use either type of ignition (percussion or electronic). All have been made. (G11 = caseless/percussion, Voere VEC91 = caseless/electronic, Remington EtronX = cased/electronic.)

More importantly, the propellant of the caseless cartridge, which comes into direct contact with the chamber wall (or at least as close as through a waterproofing lacquer), has to be at least as insensitive to heat as conventional propellants through a brass case. If you don't have parity there, you don't have a better product.

Well, I freely admit that I knew nothing about the volcanic rifle until just now. Like I said, I'm not a gun expert-- I leave that to the pros like Raygun.

What I *will* say is that carring a 19th century weapon into a 21st century firefight is stupid on so many levels, ammo swapping would be the least of his worries. First of all, he's bringing an antique firearm, which may or may not have been maintained properly to keep its firing performance. Second, if he loses it, he's not going to be replacing it soon-- he'll have lost a valueable heirloom. Even worse, there's not that many people who own that sort of rifle, so if it's found the corp will be able to track him down easily. Third, I've also made the assumption that both armor and ammo have improved in abilities over the years; this is to compensate for several problems Raygun has explained. An older weapon's damage code is therefore reduced to reflect the fact that it's not as effective against 2060 body armor, or sometimes treated using the flechetter penalties (but no flechette bonuses).

That sounds more like you've got issues with the SR3 interchangeability rules. Like I said, I know perfectly well that there's many kinds of rifle calibers-- I just don't know anything *about* them.

You mean kind of like carrying a katana, nodachi, claymore, or generic "pole arm" into a firefight? Because that's also so ineffective in the world of Shadowrun.

"Ineffective", I couldn't say. But it might not be "stupid", if you're playing a dedicated melee specialist. You'd want combat-ready weapons, instead of museum pieces.

Raygun, thanks for the replies.

I guess my real problem with caseless ammunition in Shadowrun is the fact that according to canon, ALL firearms are available in both cased or caseless versions.

I keep trying to find a way to internally justify this, and it just doesn't seem to be working...

I guess I'm going to stick with the rules from Fields of Fire. I like the idea of having caseless firearms cost more, and be harder to acquire. I don't know if I'll keep the added magazine capacity, but since it is simpler than changine the ROF for caseless firearms, I will likely use the rule as it is. After all, you should get some sort of advantage for the extra money you are paying...

Thanks for all the replies, everybody!

Buy a Japanese sword, and you won't have that problem. Having exited feudal times only 150 years ago or so does have *some* advantages; swordcrafting is among them.

Here are a few possible ways to consider it:
1. Maybe not ALL firearms are available in case and caseless versions; it might just be that for any given firearm, someone makes one with equivalent game stats in either form. This is called "abstraction."
2. Given the ablities of computers in the SR world, you can assume that there are multiple firearm design expert systems hanging around somewhere deep in the weapon manufacturer's facilities. Give it the general design specs for a weapon and task it to come up with a cased and caseless version. Also, with the wide availability of independent drones, and somewhat less widely available robot brains (but still not hard for megacorps like Ares to come by), and various nanotechnologies, retooling production lines should not be the expensive process it is today.

Yeah. It's a rule of simplicity that is pretty impractical to implement in reality. The only way to make it work is to suck it up and suspend a nice chunk of disbelief.

I'd think that if they were that insane, they'd rather their money be spent on devising a way to turn the sky pink.

But maybe a CEO of some corporate security firm/PMC who can shell out for a big contract thinks that it's the only way to go and isn't real concerned about the ROF issue with caseless. It's silly and anybody with half a brain would talk him out of it before the company dumped money down that hole, but I guess it's the most realistic way of explaining that at least one weapon could be capable of it (and would explain my previous "niche market" comment).

In my games, caseless ammunition is only available for those who have Armsdealer contacts or can make it themselves. We treat it as a specialty item otherwise everyone has caseless ammo except guards and the like, especially since there's no price difference. After all, every player should be concerned about evidence and as a GM it's my role to make that harder.

Actually, I've seen a couple of blacksmith friends of mine make quite nice usable combat-ready swords out of leaf springs from pickup trucks.

Modern alloys do have a few things going for them.


-karma

That's true, but a few of them have legal weapons on their sins with permits (they're trying to live a double life and don't want to get caught with a weapon without a permit).

If they are going on runs with their "legit personality" weapons they get what they deserve. Just like if they go on a run with their own legit car and it gets ID'd. Annonynimity(SP) is one of a runners best friend, if not intimate lover, and when they start to forget or disregard that fact that is when they start floating in the river. Or wind up as food for someones Barghest.

I agree. It's definitely being overstated in this thread. While the less evidence there is, the better, cases themselves don't provide much useful information anyway (they can confirm which gun was used at which position if there were multiples, and roughly how far away it was from the target, manufacturing info about the ammo, possibly a lot number of where it was sold to (legally)...); it's the bullet in the dead guy and the rifling marks on it that seal the deal.

Speaking of that, what's the deal with polygonal rifling? Is there any validity to the rumors that polygonal rifling is impossible to trace, ballistically? I've heard this "fact" bandied about a lot, but with USPs quite popular and Glocks prolific and completely ubiquitous (notably as department issue sidearms), this strikes me as incredibly improbable. I can't imagine a police department wanting a weapon that can't identify the shooter (especially considering how explosive misconduct cases can get), especially when they are known to get quite picky over far less significant issues (drop safety 1911s and 92s v. PT92s, etc).

It's bullshit. They can ID a gun/bullet with polygonal rifling just as easily as land and groove. It's not really the definition between the grooves that they use to identify so much, rather the individual striations that are etched into the bullet jacket from the lands of the rifling (or "hills" in polygonal rifling).

firearmsid.com has a lot of good info regarding ballistic forensics.

I have a street mane to be stylish.

Rawr.

Oh, and to avoid rifling marks on the bullet, use APDS/SLAP ammo. =)



-karma