That is the most recent released information. Shadows of Latin America has a whole chapter on the Carib League (I wrote it), but that's still in limbo. >_<

I can tell you a bit about the Aztech corporate presence in the Carib League, though. In most of the Caribbean League, Aztechnology's presence is fairly subdued and hidden behind shell companies. However, they are a huge presence in Borinquen, aka Puerto Rico. Borinquen is the global center of Aztechnology's mycoprotein farming for all its wonderful artificial fungifoods.

Heh, the majority of this is addressed above...

The guy is packing a high-end SMG and a bit more compact than the MP-7 in the B&T MP-9 (basically a Steyr TMP), although I forgot to mention the silencer.

As for the bodyguard, well, that's the beauty of it. They had a job to do (extraction of a new PC) and the Veep's ride was the first one going in they could get to. So they dressed up in their camoflaged assault gear, waltzed up to security and then one of the magic users used his influence spell to walk past the security detail at the gate. They passed themselves off as Jaguars! Since the sentry commander glitched his resistance roll, I had them "expected". They got to the plane and when they were lifting off the real Jaguars showed up.

Regarding the selection of equipment for E&E the goal of the pilot is to survive long enough to be recovered by friendly forces. In order to do this they have issued to them a defensive weapon and two to four spare magazines. Some aircrews are getting the MP5-SDW, but right now I believe it is still reserved for Special Forces aircrews.

Ya, well I was just trying to organize my thoughts before talking to you.

Why would he carry clips?

Magazines are so much handier and they are much better at protecting the ammunition from the environment.



Don't worry Brahm, its sorted.

All you had to do was ask.

Oh, absolutely. I was just saying that having a sound supressor handy would be nice for such a situation.

Gel rounds?

The pilot's job is to fly the aircraft. The firearm won't be brought into play then.

The pilot will only produce and use a firearm in earnest when there is no longer a plane to be flown.

Not to mention that it is likely safer to risk popping a little hole rather than risk jolting the electrical system. Besides if the aircraft is at a high enough altitude where cabin pressurizing is an issue then why the hell isn't the pilot in his air supply harness?

These are all little details though. Eddie, I'll email you the larger part of my idea along with some numbers I came up with. I didn't know how much of the NPC pilot you had fleshed out besides a condensed stat block. Basically I drafted up a lightly implanted military rigger that had since had his technomancer abilities manifest. His BP total puts him a bit above the current rest of the party, but that's primarily because technomancers are such brutal BP & karma sinks. Especially if they have any implants, which really weaken them. Mostly the sidearm question was about determining if a strong focus on the Automatics skill would make sense, though fly gear is always something us munchkins have an eye out for.

As for thoughts on ammunition numbers I've already posted most of mine some time back. Check the end of this post. A dash of realism, in the eye of someone with little learning, coupled with a heavy emphasis towards game play.

Oh, and any small caliber automatic weapon with a silencer firing AP rounds can damn well have a "clip". I purposefully avoided mixing in a sound suppressor with the AP concept. Admittedly a sound suppressed weapon makes a lot more sense in the application where you'll want to keep as low a profile as possible, so I should have gone that way instead.

Man, just another reason to want SoLA to finally come out. I've not heard of a single peep coming from Holostreets in months now.

Thanks for the info though.

This may be true, but their performance compared to other rounds fired from weapons of similar types (pistols and SMGs) when you're hitting an armored target was the point of developing the rounds in the first place. Very few handguns pack a round capable of going through serious body armor.

If a plane gets shot down by soldiers, it's likely soldiers are going to be sent out to recover it. Issuing your pilots a weapon that lets them hurt people equipped as soldiers (including body armor) would generally be a good idea, if this is something you fear.

What makes you think gel rounds are going to jolt the electrical system? (or is that not what you're saying?)

I know this has already been resolved, but I figured I'd like to impart an anecdote in support of pilots knowing the automatics skill.

My grandfather was a C-47 pilot in Korea. They would often land their plane in the middle of a firefight in order to drop off supplies and then evacuate wounded. From what I'm told, it was *extremely* common for him and his crew to be hanging out the side of the plane whilst loading/unloading was going on (and even occasionally during takeoff and landing), firing SMGs to provide some cover.

Also, keep in mind that the early AF gunships were converted C-47s; heck, the AF's big time modern gunship is the AC-130, which is a C-130 with big ol' automatics on them.

So, there are at least some pilots that I know of who made heavy use of automatics; it would really just depend on what their typical sortie is likely to be.

Weight issues asside, carrying extra magazines is usually preferable to carrying extra ammo in clips due to the extra time it takes to reload. You'd have to remove the magazine, insert the new ammo into the magazine, remove the clip, and insert the magazine back into the weapon. The exception is in weapons that have internal magazines. For such weapons a clip should be the fastest solution.

That little exchange was about Eddie razzing me for a terminology slip on my part, using SR terminology where a detachable box magazine is called a "clip".

I was refering to the suggestion of using a taser. A crossbow would be unwieldy. Gel rounds, versus armor? See the discussion about what'll likely be sent to the site of a downed aircraft. Well maybe they'd be sort of ok with utterly wacked canon ammo rules, but it seems an unlikely idea. If the plane really is in that much danger from a couple of, effectively, pistol rounds then it isn't much of a military plane. Are you going to pass out gel rounds to everyone that steps on the plane? Because as Eddie points out they are more likely to be shooting long before the pilot does.

Speaking of which, Shrike30, Eddie is definately of the old school mindset when it comes to ammo. I'm certain he is fully aware of the arguments for/against those "next generation" ammunitions. While I don't nessasarily fully buy into his position, there is certainly a lot of debate and uncertainty around the subject of their field effectiveness to inflict required damage given their relatively limited use so far in real combat situations.

EDIT: They don't nessasarily do normal "pistol" damage either. Because their armor piercing slugs don't deform or fragment they rely solely on flipping to increase cavitation slightly. They also, because of their relatively low mass, apparently have penetration that is borderline. That would be a real issue when you started going up against orks and trolls.

If an aircrew ends up on the ground, they run. A pilot or two v. a trained infantry unit is a no contest. The pilots would die. However the pilots can and do get training on how to use the weapon to create enough confusion to make the troops keep thier heads down and play it slow and safe. This gives the pilot some time to get his recovery team on the horn and arrange for a pickup. After that it is all about SERE until they can be extracted.

Pilots are trained to protect the most valuable asset in the airforce, themselves. Going toe to toe with an infantry company is not how you do that. If you stay and try to engage in a protracted firefight, you die.

Also, the small calibre high velocity & penetration arms were designed to replace support troops' assault rifles. It was determined that what they needed was a relatively compact weapon that could basically keep the enemy's head down long enough for...

1). them to get the hell outta dodge.

2). them to get the heavy hitters on their side a chance to address the issue (a rare event)

without the firearm getting in the way of their primary job. Ever tried to bail out of an ambushed Defender 110 with an assault rifle in hand? I have, its not fun.

Well, Brahm... I'm not really old skool, I just like stuff that works. As much as I know the 5.56N and 7.62N rounds work pretty well (I still miss my Blunderbuss though!) <- Those know what that means, know. The newer rounds and even from time to time the 5.56N rounds just don't seem to be stopping the bad guys quick enough. I was trained to place rounds into the enemy until he stopped trying to fight. With the 'bess it was usually a single shot to centre of mass. With the SA80s and M16s it was mostly a matter of one shot, but often a double tap. You see, you want to keep the other guy from shooting back. If that means killing him, well, you gotta do what ya gotta do. The lighter rounds ( and consequently the weapons that fire them) have not seen extensive combat service yet and until then, I say let the other guy be the "gunea" pig! So while the jury really is still out on these rounds, I do see an application. It's just I call 'em how I see 'em.

Also, this is not anything about the stopping power issue, but putting the brakes on the other guy before he can do onto me.

I would point out to you that while it may be the "old school" way of thinking, by 2070 those rounds would have been around for the better part of a century. Surely, by then, there would be some decisions made about their effectiveness.

The only counter I have to the lack of fragmentation would be that these weapons have a remarkably low recoil impulse, which would allow you to hit the target with bursts relatively easily (if you could hit it at all). Hence my suggestion that the profile for the weapon be something like a machine pistol firing APDS... your damage is nothing to write home about, but with some recoil compensation on the weapon you ought to be able to use burst fire to get the damage code into a lethal range.

....

Actually, hang on a sec... can you explain to me how a high-velocity AP round that apparently stops quite quickly (if your statement about problems with penetration inside a target is accurate) manages to dump all that energy in that very short distance without producing a fairly impressive wound cavity? What's slowing it down?

That's the problem, there isn't a whole lot of energy in them relatively speaking. They are small and light. They penetrate personal armor because they have a small cross section, and don't deform significantly, so their velocity allows them to punch through.

On the flipside the slugs for the Grendel 6.5 and the 6.8 SPC that he mentioned, at 100+ grains, are in the neighborhood of twice the weight and move at nearly the same muzzle velocity as the 5.56 NATO slug. Also because of this they have a flatter tragectory and are effective out to a further distance. It is claimed something over a 1000 yards in the case of the Grendel 6.5.

Those rounds also, at least the 6.8 SPC, have been seeing action in Iraq in the form of a modified M16 that has had it's bolt (techincally upper reciever), barrel, and maganize replaced with ones that are built to hold the larger diameter casing and slug. The round itself is overall basically the same length as the 5.56 NATO allowing the magazine to have the same outer dimensions and keep the rest of the weapon the same.

EDIT: Note that because the magazine has the same outer dimensions, and the rounds are fatter, the magazines fit in a few less rounds. However it should be a more reliable 1 hit per target.

For the first part of your post that is basically the crux of the theoretical arguments.

I don't see what 5.56mm 6.5mm, or 6.8mm have to do with this at all. I'm aware of their ballistic capabilities, and also of the platforms they're being fired from. If the pilot has the option to carry and use an assault rifle (regardless of exact caliber) there's no way in hell he should be using anything smaller. I'm not going to argue the superiority of a PDW (an MP-7/P-90 type weapon) over an assault rifle in a field fight, because they're inferior weapons. The caliber is smaller, the slug is lighter, the velocity is lower, and the accurate range of the weapon is shorter.

The scenario we were given was a sidearm issued to a pilot. PDWs like the MP-7, or compact SMGs like the mini-Uzi, MAC-10, MP5-K or Ruger MP-9 are all weapons that are laid out in such a way that they take up only a little more space than a really large handgun. They'd be easy to climb in and out of a wreck with, you might even be able to put them in a holster on the pilot, if he didn't mind walking around with 5+ pounds of gun and ammo stuffed in his armpits or strapped to his chest. My thinking behind proposing a PDW over a SMG or handgun was the superior penetration of the rounds that are fired from it, working on the assumption that the enemies that go after a downed aircraft in a 2070 war zone are probably going to be wearing body armor, in which case getting through the armor in the first place is a primary concern. Sure, you could issue the pilot a 9mm/.40/.45/357 SIG/10mm weapon, but none of those will penetrate decent body armor with conventional ammunition, so I felt the suggestion of a large-handgun-sized, autofire-capable weapon that can go through armor and has a decent range for a weapon it's size was appropriate.

If giving the pilot a 6.5mm assault rifle is an option, and concerns like stowage and being able to get out of the aircraft with the weapon have magically disappeared, go for it... but it's not the answer to the original question. Meter-long carbines do not, in my mind, qualify as "sidearms."

You need to stop and go back and reread his posts. It should clear this up without any more posts from me, or him. What you think he said and what he actually typed in are two different things.

The AR ammunition came up because that is something new that he has adopted. Also I think he was talking about the use for the weapon. What the pilot will be doing differently than the vehicle operator after bailing out. I plan to ask him, if he doesn't post here, if the talk about the pilot disrupting means actually covertly attacking enemy operations to screw up and confuse the whole area.

I don't think it is. That's why I had the boxes of damage code turned down on the P90 (which roughly the equivalent to the MP-7) from the SMGs.

I don't think he mentioned APDS either. I think you are just talking cross to the discussion here. Die thread, die.

... I'll try and remember it has nothing to do with the discussion.

It's an SMG, not an MP... my mistake.

It achieves this amazing feat like so. The temporary wound cavity can be quite large, compared to what you get with many combat handgun cartridges. The permanent wound cavity doesn't bother itself with things like "kinetic energy dumping", though. It only really cares about the fact that there's a very small, extremely light, very pointy bullet traveling through a stretchy tissue. Hence what you get is (according to the FBI combat handgun prerequisites) insufficient penetration along with a small permanent wound cavity. Kinda like this, with one yaw, and in 1:2 miniature scale.

According to some experts, the 4-layer heavy denim test gives results that correspond much better to the what you actually see with bullets impacting with human bodies than naked gelatin. The bullet hitting a bone early on, especially at an angle, causes problems that are much more difficult to simulate, though.

Well, big permanent wound cavities are great too, obviously, but they're of little use if you cannot reliably get to the vitals through a bent arm and half the torso -- which is, I would imagine, a more likely scenario than a direct frontal hit to the center of the chest with no obstructions.

The 4-layer denim tests are the ones where the older and cheaper JHP types go right through 24+ inches of gelatin with zero deformation. They're pretty easy to spot with a quick glance.