It does simplify things, but that like using horse-power and torque to determine how likely a vehicle is to win a race. Semi's don't often beat racing motorcycles despite the power advantage.

...which is a really interesting place to Shadowrun. The start of my Rhapsody in Shadow campaign was set in London. The weapons specialist was looking for a gun show....

...yeah...right mate...

...and here's the taxi that'll take you there. Don't you mind that it has blue lights on it and says National Police on the side. Just a recruiting advert it is, right.

Vehicles versus infantry has always been pretty broken in Shadowrun. Beyond treating vehicles just as really tough people with hardened armor for the purposes of shooting there's a lot of issues that come up if you try to have vehicles and people fight each other. For example, what if I'm in a sedan and I try to run over a shadowrunner? There aren't really very good rules to model my attempts to run him over and his attempts to not be run over by dodging.

I'll steal McPherson's work here: (for solid, non-expanding bullets)

Assume that:
1. Psychological incapacitation doesn't occur (the guy shot gives up)
2. Bullet placement isn't ideal and you are assuming you don't get a CNS or vital blood vessel. (CNS shots with ANY bullet are devastating, and puncturing the aorta with anything works pretty good.)
3. You ignore the issues with actually trying to shoot some monster bullet in combat

Then the factors are:
1) You have to penetrate deep enough to reach vital targets, which the FBI rates as 12 inches after barriers. This is kind of arbitrary, as 11.9 or 10 inches is usually enough, but they had to set the number somewhere and 12 inches was the consensus answer from the medical community.

2) The amount of tissue actually crushed determines how effective (damage value) of the bullet.

2a) There is no measurable effect from "hydrostatic shock" on humans from handgun bullets. So faster bullets don't get any extra effect.

2b) Tissue damage for non-expanding bullets (in typical pistol calibers) is determined by bullet shape more than bullet diameter.

2c) Bigger bullets crush more tissue, all other things being equal. (wound track is propotional to the square of the bullet diameter)

2d) All common weights and velocities of non-expanding handgun bullets will penetrate deep enough to be effective, and there is no particular effect of bullet velocity or weight on damage.

3) At some point the average person shot with average bullets will take enough tissue damage that they are incapacitated, This was estimated at 40 grams based on Thompson-Legarde. (This might not hold true if someone is effectively motivated, but it's an average, and it's a SWAG at best anyhow.)

A .45 full wadcutter will do almost 40 grams of damage, while a 9mm does 24 and a .40/10mm does 30. Other bullet shapes do 26 gm in .45, 16 in 9mm and 20 in .40/10mm. So expect to need to shoot people at least twice to make them fall down with any pistol.


The other element to be considered is that bullets that do lots of tissue damage are pretty crappy at penetrating armor. Wadcutters will go though typical tested obstacles like drywall, windshields, etc, but more commonly not things like dumpsters, while shapes that do less tissue damage will tend to go through dumpsters and other similar moderate steel obstacles.

Only the awesome females do. There are many un-awesome females. A couple weeks ago I was telling some females about how I wanted a historical 1911. One of the females told me that she thought this was a uniquely male and deplorable fact since it inevitably must revolve around the acquisition of power over the people around you.

Another approach is to abandon the sillyness where SR assumes that EVERY vehicle is armored. Armor is heavy, it's expensive and and it reduces payload, milage and handling. At the same time, fix the mechanics such that pistols typically just don't do anything to vehicles, other than punching holes in the bodywork. Cars and trucks really don't offer any significant defense to soemone inside them against gun fire, but it's likely that after you wash the former occupants blood out the car will start up and drive just fine.

This is related to the absurdity of the barrier rules, where you can trivially blow a man sized hole in a door with a pistol in two shots, as the example on page 158 shows. It's either the best example of "everything I ever needed to learn about guns I learned from reading comic books" or someone was on drugs when they wrote that section of the rules.

The idea is that as well as having a list of standard calibers for people to use, the mechanic will be there for them to input any round desired - Reading the additions to this post, I just need a decent way to use damage. Working off the square of the diameter of the round may work.

The headache then is how to include the potential for expansion, as that is where a lot of damage come from.

Shadowrun's standard ammo seems to be FMJ, but there are a whole lot of specialist ammo types out there (and that's just in Pistols, and not including the weird shit you can get for shotguns).

But at the same time as doing thing, I don't want it to have much effect on the front end of the system. You end up with the same stats at the end to keep simplicity and speed.

For vehicles and barriers, you just adjust the size of the hole to twice the diameter of the round, and rather than punching a man sized hole (unless your using explosives) and just leaving you with a series of small hole.

When I get all these mods done, I may start a page with them on so that people can have easy access to them.

It's not a little more, it's a LOT more. It costs much more more than a typical production sedan or SUV costs to armor it. And when you double the weight other interesting bad things happen. And if this is what is supposed to be going on in SR, why don't they include Run-Flat tires? How many average drivers can make a driving roll at -8 dice, much less a crash test?

Interestingly, I did some research on high end limos a while back, and the _only_ way I got the RL costs to line up with SR3 costs was if you factor in armoring.

what is this? Google gave me many pages of places to get a drink and people preventing other people from doing things.

I see this un-awesome female, shoo her away, and offer one to you, a friend of mine from Siberia.
Take 1 Russian from Siberia. Add 1 10 gauge shotgun, several assorted pistols, one SKS battle rifle, and one 30-06. Mix the two liberally while garnishing with tank top and sunglasses.

At one point I had to just stop, point at her, and shout, "Dude, did you just do that cheesecake pose on PURPOSE?"
The answer?
"You're damn right!"

That's a pretty good definition of awesome, in my book.

Oh, and G.NOME? SR's ammo fundamentally cannot be exactly the same as today's, given that it's all caseless as standard. I can't speak to calibers of it, but the rounds themselves are different.

...yes, there are two known models: the Nagant 1895 (Belgium) and the OTs-38 (Soviet Union/Russia).

Both weapons require specially designed ammo.

Yes but the final layer of skin apparently acts as about 4 inches. Depth is a factor because most rounds don't hit straight but not a huge one, the hole left behind is a bigger factor.

There is a wealth of different information out there, some of it quite contradictory. So the research I am choosing to use is the FBI's, for starters as it doesn't utilize temporary wound cavity's it's simpler (let's face it this is being done for an abstract damage system, so it will never be super accurate to real life)

I will have a look at the new links though, Knowledge is never a bad thing