A call to all the weapon enthusiasts out there: what do you think would be a good cost/availability/threshold for altering an assault rifle to use a belt feed mechanism? Say, for instance, I want to run an assault rifle out of an ammo bin on a drone; would that be possible? A good idea?

Yeesh, the 100 ammo drum modification isn't doing it for ya? I guess I can't blame you since a weapon mount lets a belt-fed weapon be loaded up with 250 rounds.

[EDIT] N/M. I forgot how stupidly expensive the drum mod is, not to mention the availability.

For what it's worth, I can only think of like 2 weapons off the top of my head that have interchangeable belt-magazine feed systems. Otherwise I think it's usually a mutually exclusive kind of deal. Considering the cost of the drum feed modification which amounts to roughly the same upgrade when used outside of a vehicle mount, I'm guessing it won't be in the price/availability range you're hoping for, since it would basically be the same as a drum system, but better.

availability's only 6F, that's not a problem (it's what I have penciled in now, in fact). The problem is that the drum requires a gun facility, and that' shard to justify having access to at chargen. It'd basically be a ground-up custom build; not sure I like that much.

'course, finding belt-fed AR rounds would probably be another challenge; it seems likely they'd be rare at best. And now that I think some more, seems that a belt feed would be just as crazy, if not moreso, than the drum.

Well the drum mod is 2 slots, threshold 16, requires a facility, costs 1,000 , and is availability 6R.

So say fitting one up for a belt feed. Just off the top of my head. Say 3 slots, threshold 30, would require a facility, costs 3,000 , and availability 12F.

i still want that belt fed Heavy Pistol from the Beginning of the SR3 Core Book *g*

Can someone give me a reasonable reason why it takes machining and gunsmithing skill to go to the store and buy an extended magazine for a weapon? I could understand if Arsenal specified that the extended clip mod is only for weapons with _internal_ magazines, like most shotguns, but RAW, it also includes clip-fed weapons.

BTW, you can buy a 100-round ammo drum for many popular assault rifles today. They are very expensive today, but should be cheap in 2070.

Beta_C-Mag on Wikipedia

Betaco website

As for a true belt-feed, yeah, you will have to machine a new receiver for your weapon.

Nope, I can't.

Clearly the magazine receivers in 2070 ARs do not have the requisite strength to hold a drum clip in (see reports on Thomsons with drum clips from WW2) and modding in these parts is pretty difficult to do due to the high rates of fire that have been achieved, wear and tear on parts must be pretty annoying.

Also note the issues with Beta Cs as well, we've not yet solved the problem.

I've tried to remake a few modern rifles into belt fed beasts, but it requires you to redesign then entire feed mechanism, the action, everything but the barrel. In other words, as soon as it becomes belt fed, it usually becomes an entirely separate weapon. I've designed a few belt fed weapons (even tested one of them), and they are a world apart from normal full auto/semiautos in how they work

There are a few examples of this sort of thing (M4 platform used to build the Shrike, for one). I suppose I'd set availability at "Engineering Degree". Why SR4 makes drum mags some kind of difficult modification is beyond me, but it's nice to see SR4 still brings the same nonsense that SR3 did in new and festive ways.

One note a large desktop forge is the size of a shop but counts as a Facility, yes a tad expensive but doable.

WMS

The Ares Shrike on wikipedia. I had to laugh when I saw the name, and who was making it.

These things have an MSRP around 2500, with incredibly limited availability (secondhand ones sell for 8-10k, just to give some idea how hard they are to come by). With your baseline AR-15 running 700-1000, that's a pretty expensive mod.

Not to mention that an AR is just not designed for protracted, belt-fed fire.

Hell, even belt-fed weapons aren't really designed for protracted fire.

While on a qualification range, my buddy decided to burn through some ammo - using burst and rapid semi-auto for the sole purpose of firing ammo, the barrel heated up so much that it
1) was hot to the touch, even through gloves and handgrips
2) the barrel melted the plastic sandbag nearby when he put the weapon down.

This was an M16A2 blowing through 3-4 mags in under a minute, give or take.

Protracted fire heats the barrel very quickly and you run a very large risk of warping the barrel.

The 249 SAW feeds from either a belt or an M16 magazine - but even so, you're only supposed to fire the weapon in bursts because of the same issues I listed above. Now, you can clamp down on the trigger and burn through an entire 100-round belt. And it'll stand up to the stress better than the AR, but you will seriously chew up the functional life of your weapon.

As for the question regarding availability of extended magazines - your local gun shop may not carry them because they are a business and if customers don't ask for the merchandise, they're not going to stock it. By the same token, manufacturers won't produce product they don't see a market for.

Which means you'd need to commission the work from a "mom and pop" weapon shop - and if you thumb through just about any gun magazine (no pun intended), you'll see ads for small shops producing either commission work or a range of after-market mods. Especially with the current US deployments. That said, it should still be a matter of: "hey, this is what I want. Can you build it and how much will it cost?" Which then becomes bartering, not gunsmithing and engineering.

As for a 100-round drum on my M16 - I'd be afraid to without some serious upgrades. Two things hold a magazine in place: the relatively tight fit of the magazine into the magazine well and a little metal clip that slips into a groove on the magazine itself. Frag, I wouldn't even double-stack magazines at this point, but that's just me.

Reality aside, this is 2070 - if you really want a belt-fed AR, wiggle your fingers and it happens. Modern (futuristic) technology has evolved to the point of making it feasible.

-Siege

Rapid fire can really screw up your barrel. For most air cooled weapons, around 100-200 rounds of continuous fire (holding the trigger down) will degrade the immediate accuracy of the weapon and shorten long term life of the barrel (barrels under 'gentle' conditions tend to be good for between 5000 to 30,000 rounds, depending on the construction of the barrel and the cartridge you fire through it). ~800 rounds of continuous fire tends to ruin a barrel as the barrel will get hot and ruin the temper of the metal.

Note that fix that cools that barrel off (water cooled, magic, whatever) basically gets around this problem. For example, the water cooled vickers can basically fire continuously all day, as long as you keep the radiator topped up and keep lugging up the ammo.

Ooooh - you can't have a "magical gun" per se...but what about spells designed to positively effect weapons systems?

"Cool weapon barrel" or "steady jumping muzzle"...now gun crews have loaders and wizworms...

-Siege

I could see a sustained spell that kept an object at a certain temperature. Possibly one that gave you a buffer. Where say you got an extra 10 degress per hit up to Force. So at Force 5 it would cool by 50 degrees. So where your barrel might heat up to 300 it now only heats up to 250. However not like you would see mages in with every gunner crew. Nobody is going to spend that kind of money to save the barrel on a machine gun.

Now I could see it for some super heavy long range zomgwtfbbqsauce laser getting a mage to keep it cooled down to allow for long duration beams being fired.

Hmmm, a recoil-dampening telekinetic manipulation spell. Interesting.

magi-tech allways SOUNDS interesting . . and then comes the fluff/crunch that tells you nobody is using it despite how much sense it would actually make and you're right back at the point where something like that is basically like the eternal laser light on the diana in parder primus but does point right at you from orbit straight down . .

What a good idea. I know just the name for it too. We could call it Enhanced Aim.

-Siege

The names of the spells are utilitarian because it's pretty much expected for them to be shared between traditions and duplicated many times over with different naming schemes. Steady Weapon is therefore a good utilitarian name that explains what it does, it certainly isn't misleading.

That was sort of the whole point behind my post. I was pointing out that a spell of this nature already exists in the game. It is immaterial what the spell is called, or even how it actually achieves its effect (outside of spell category).

Curses, I've no real knowledge of magic so I missed it completely and utterly. I'm actually quite new to SR4 and haven't touched pure mages at all.

Magic can be quite a handful.

We all have our specialties. I have been playing forever, and I still suck badly with the Matrix rules.

Heh, back in SR3, when low force spells were economical to learn, you could make the magical air conditioner: use a variant of ice sheet to freeze a tank full of water, can run some fans over the ice block to cool your house. When all the ice has melted, just magically re-freeze it. Get a companion spell that heats the tank of water, and your winter heating is taken care of too.

You can even put a clear water-filled jacket around the barrel of your favourite firearm and use your air-conditioning spell to keep the barrel cool by freezing the water at regular intervals. Of course, this presents a bit more of an engineering challenge that a bathtub full of water and an electric fan.

I don't think that swamp cooler trick works so well in the winter. You'll just get a soggy, steamy house.

So if any of you kids try this at home...

I suppose it rather depends on how hot the water is. I mean, they used piped steam to heat lots of places back before electricity became popular.

Steam and hot water in pipes are enclosed. Very different.