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Janice
According to the build/repair table (page 125, Shadowrun 4th Edition) what difficulty would it be to craft an APDS round?
WearzManySkins
IMHO one would need a Armor Facility to make such from scratch. I do not recall any OEM IRL that sell anything near that as something that can be reloaded.

Target Number same as availability number, use the rules out of Arsenal

WMS
Janice
http://www.maadigriffin.com/sabot30.gif This is the same APDS we're thinking about right? You could make it with reloading press if you could get your hands on the sabot.

Edit: it would seem the imagelinking methods I'm used to don't work here.
Werewindlefr
QUOTE (Janice @ Apr 6 2008, 01:45 AM) *
http://www.maadigriffin.com/sabot30.gif This is the same APDS we're thinking about right? You could make it with reloading press if you could get your hands on the sabot.

Looks like non-discarding sabot. Are you sure it's APDS?
Crusher Bob
Discarding sabot for small arms is generally ineffective, but you'd still need to get your hands on an AP projectile to fire. Assuming that APDS is supposed to model the generally best produced small arms AP ammunition, you are probably wanting a composite projectile with a tungsten carbide penetrator, brass jacket, and some lead to add weight to the projectile. You can, of course, make something that works almost as well using a steel core rather than a tungsten one.
Janice
QUOTE (Werewindlefr @ Apr 5 2008, 11:50 PM) *
Looks like non-discarding sabot. Are you sure it's APDS?

Good question.
Crusher Bob
Yes, those sabot are discarding.

Looks like you can buy SS109 5.56mm (AP) ammo for around 500 USD per 1000 rounds (plus shipping) and the SS109 bullets alone for around 110 USD per 1000 bullets.

So you could mate up the sabots for .30->.22 with the SS109 projectiles and have AP(DS) ammo, for around .50 USD a round.
kzt
The picture looks like a remington accelerator round. Which you once could buy for rifles but now can't as it just was a commercial failure. There are components out there for reloaders, but making these work well is apparently hard. Nobody has described the accuracy, particularly of reloads, as better than "Ok for 200 yards or less". I did see an interesting note that firing a saboted round in a gun with a muzzle brake could result in a kaboom.

In RL, pistols don't shoot APDS or any saboted round. I don't even know of any attempts to do it. For one thing, the critical velocity you need to get reliable sabot separation would be hard to reach. Attempts to get APDS working in 7.62 MMGs resulted in occasional minor problems like the AP core exiting the side of the barrel, so they were abandoned after quite a lot of work and money.

What pistol AP rounds exist are just solids. KTW used Brass, which was coated with teflon to keep the barrel from getting destroyed. It proved more effective in penetrating things like trash dumpsters than regular bullets but isn't really very effective in defeating armor. Handgun rounds just are not going to be effective in that. Rifle rounds are much more effective, as they are typically going at least 2-3 times faster and 50% heavier.
Crusher Bob
Heh, you you want excellent penetration out of a pistol, get an M1 Carbine; plenty of people describe it as 'one of the best pistols ever made'.

And yes, the 30-06 accelerators were pretty crappy. Sure you could fire a 55 grain bullet at around 4000 fps, but they left gunk all over the barrel, they were horribly inaccurate, the sabots were a range hazard due to their unpredictable flight path, and they tended to produce those messy accidents that make great stories for ER docs (like trying to fire one out of a rifle with a muzzle brake).
krakjen
QUOTE (Crusher Bob @ Apr 6 2008, 09:45 AM) *
Heh, you you want excellent penetration out of a pistol, get an M1 Carbine; plenty of people describe it as 'one of the best pistols ever made'.


That would be a Troll pistol then...
MaxHunter
Well, it's 2070 technology, we can imagine the problems for pistol borne apds have been solved. I would rule it half cost and a threshold = availability (16, 8 hours), needing a shop or less, plus some difficulties (i.e. acquisition rolls) to get the materials for the core.

Cheers!

Max
crizh
I imagine it might actually be easier to make straight AV rounds. The materials might be easier to find and/or machine.

I always felt that making bullets in a shop was a given. Really a facility is massive overkill for that sort of thing. Heck if you had the plans you could make a Gauss Rifle in a facility....
Janice
I'm not trying to be munchkinesque here, but 16 dice seems a bit excessive, considering a person with 7 armorer and 7 logic couldn't make that round. If I may be so bold: perhaps the 16 dice availability isn't so much difficulty in making as the fact that anything AP is gonna be labeled "cop killer" and the ban happy crowd is gonna jump on it.
Heath Robinson
QUOTE (Janice @ Apr 6 2008, 11:27 AM) *
I'm not trying to be munchkinesque here, but 16 dice seems a bit excessive, considering a person with 7 armorer and 7 logic couldn't make that round.


I was under the impression that fabricating things was an extended test; you're going to get it finished eventually but you might be on a time limit. With APDS I assume that test will be for 10 rounds.

CODE
18 / ( [7 + 7] / 3) = (18 * 3) / (7 + 7) = 54 / 14 = 3.85


You 7 Logic 7 Armourer will take, on average, 32 hours of pure work to make 10 rounds of APDS in a shop. If you buy successes instead, it'll take 48 hours of work. For someone without ridiculous skills and stats it takes a lot longer.

Hmm, maybe the threshold should be a bit lower so it doesn't take weeks upon weeks of work for an exceptionally talented armourer to produce even a single magazine of the stuff.
crizh
Or you could make the interval shorter...
Janice
I forgot about extended tests. I'm still a touch new to the game and still finding my feet so to speak.
MaxHunter
Yep, I always meant an extended test. maybe the interval or the test should be shorter (like, one hour) or the threshold significantly lower (8 sounds nice). Even both would not make it gamebreaking, and if you want to control it a little bit remember you need some special materials to begin with (mmm, maybe availability 10 )

Also, remember I never said how many rounds would be produced in one such test. 10?, 50?, 100?

So, after some thought...

CODE
Making APDS ammo
Cost 50y per 10 shots (availability 10R), needs: armorer shop.
Test: Armorer  (8, 1 hour) secondary skills required (ballistics -knowledge or knowsoft-) or plans.


Just me working from memory, does it look better now?

Cheers,

Max
Backgammon
An item's availability reflects how difficult an item is to acquire on the black market. If it were easy to manufacture APDS yourself, the item's availability would be lower as it would take that into consideration (as syndicates would be churning them out). So RL rationalisation aside, APDS should be very hard to make yourself.
Pendaric
And/or quickly stopped by cops or corps or syndicates.
WearzManySkins
Are not most firearms in SR4 caseless? if so building the block of explosives would require skill in chemistry aka out of Arsenal and the chemistry tool kits.

Also in Arsenal they use a system that takes the availability of the item as the threshold number.

WMS
Cabral
Alright, I have Background Knowledge: Firearms 0 so I'm defaulting to BK: Depiction of Firearms in RPGs 4. I hope I don't glitch.

I would classify assembly of 10 rounds APDS ammo from its component parts an Armor+Logic (8, 30 mins) due to its complex nature.

Now, creation of the Gunpowder (Chemistry?) and other components (Armorer?) from scratch would be different. Yeah, it should take a skilled professional quite a bit of time to create some rounds from scratch. Now, a professional may seem to take less time because when you place your order, he's may already have a lot of prefab 9mm casings with powder charge ready.
kzt
It's not difficult the load the bullets in the cases. Doing the testing to find a good load often takes days to weeks (mostly as you have to load the stuff, then go somewhere and shoot it, modify the load and repeat) to get good. If you follow a recipe it's a lot easier.

You need loading tools, but once you get going you can load more than one a minute. Basically you are just moving a lever.

Machining the bullet requires more tools and heavy equipment, though you could cast some metals (though not the really good penetrators). Again, if you are following a plan it's a lot easier than if you are developing the stuff from first principles.

It would seem really hard to be home brewing caseless ammo. Caseless is essentially a block of denatured HE molded around the bullet. This implies that you are cooking up a complex HE, then mixing it with chemicals to change it's properties, then casting it around bullets that have to be precisely located in 3d space for the gun to work.

People do blow up their guns with reloads on a fairly regular basis, but I got to think that someone trying to cook up caseless has a much higher chance of a disastrous oopsie. I'd certainly suggest that accuracy would tend to suck, and get much worse as the range increased.
Larme
QUOTE (kzt @ Apr 6 2008, 03:26 PM) *
I'd certainly suggest that accuracy would tend to suck, and get much worse as the range increased.


I think that's what the dice system is for. Of course accuracy would suck if you didn't roll well enough, but if you did, I can't see why accuracy would suffer. If it's really really difficult to home-make professional quality ammo, then it should be a really really difficult dice roll. But I'm not going to let a GM tell me, "Ok, you succeeded on the roll, but you still failed." nyahnyah.gif
kzt
DS rounds ARE really hard to make well. The interaction of the sabot separation, etc makes for some ugly exterior ballistics. That's why you can't go out and buy some for your rifle, because commercial attempts have failed to produce bullets that people will pay for. It's not easier to do it without the half dozen experts in ballistics and the dozens guys with 20 years of experience in designing specialized loads and machinery that a commercial vendor has.

Really good hand-loaded conventional ammo is a whole other issue. If you actually know what you are doing you can produce rounds that are as good as or better then the best commercial ammo and are suited to the particular use you have in mind better than any commercial round. You can also blow your rifle up with a little failure to pay attention for a few moments...
Werewindlefr
QUOTE (kzt @ Apr 6 2008, 04:29 PM) *
DS rounds ARE really hard to make well. The interaction of the sabot separation, etc makes for some ugly exterior ballistics. That's why you can't go out and buy some for your rifle, because commercial attempts have failed to produce bullets that people will pay for.

I'd pay for a -4 armor. Somehow, they've managed to make cheap, tremendously efficient APDS.
kzt
And pistols that are just about as good as rifles.... ohplease.gif
Janice
Just about as good? The only weapons that compare to the Ruger Super Warhawk are MMGs.
Werewindlefr
QUOTE (Janice @ Apr 6 2008, 06:36 PM) *
Just about as good? The only weapons that compare to the Ruger Super Warhawk are MMGs.

The sport rifles. Also, we're talking about a weapon so optimized for damage that it fires in single shot and only has 6 ammo. It's a mini-Panther XXL.
Shadowrun scale isn't linear, so it doesn't really bother me that AR only have 1 more power than standard heavy pistols, and rifles 2. 1 power is the difference between normal ammo and explosive ammo, so I'm okay with it.

As for APDS, it has fried my brain so much by not making sense that I've just decided to say it just doesn't exist. I don't think real ammo can do that, at least NIJ says it can't. When people want armor piercing, they go for explosive or EX.
Janice
QUOTE (Werewindlefr @ Apr 6 2008, 03:50 PM) *
The sport rifles. Also, we're talking about a weapon so optimized for damage that it fires in single shot and only has 6 ammo. It's a mini-Panther XXL.
Shadowrun scale isn't linear, so it doesn't really bother me that AR only have 1 more power than standard heavy pistols, and rifles 2. 1 power is the difference between normal ammo and explosive ammo, so I'm okay with it.

As for APDS, it has fried my brain so much by not making sense that I've just decided to say it just doesn't exist. I don't think real ammo can do that, at least NIJ says it can't. When people want armor piercing, they go for explosive or EX.
What's wrong with regular steel or tungsten core AP?
Werewindlefr
QUOTE (Janice @ Apr 6 2008, 07:06 PM) *
What's wrong with regular steel or tungsten core AP?

Nothing. That's got nothing to do with APDS though. That would be, like, -1 AP, which is good. But you can go for explosive and get +1 DV, which is even better, so I guess that when corp want AP, they go for explosive, and when they strong AP that can take down armored streetsams, they go for EX.
As for grenades, well, maybe the grenades used in underbarel launchers are smaller than the RL ones; and to avoid frying your own brain, say they've got -2 DV. That's what I'm going to houserule aswell.
Larme
QUOTE (Werewindlefr @ Apr 6 2008, 06:50 PM) *
As for APDS, it has fried my brain so much by not making sense that I've just decided to say it just doesn't exist. I don't think real ammo can do that, at least NIJ says it can't. When people want armor piercing, they go for explosive or EX.


Wait, are we saying "they don't have APDS this good today, so they can't have it in only 62 years from now?" Failure to understand how super cool future tech would work is not grounds for saying it's impossible... It's the frickin' future! And in an alternate universe no less. Why not just let it go?
b1ffov3rfl0w
Exactly. We also can't, as an outpatient procedure, interface a frickin computer into your frickin brain using frickin nanites, but nobody has a problem with datajacks or implanted commlinks. I guess it's that SR seems to be a gun enthusiast magnet for some reason.
Janice
It's worth noting that explosive rounds actually make less sense. The amount of explosive you could cram into an assault rifle round is so minuscule as to not accomplish anything that a 5.56mm NATO round couldn't accomplish from a proper length barrel (which is to say, fragmenting like hell in the human body).
Janice
QUOTE (b1ffov3rfl0w @ Apr 6 2008, 04:31 PM) *
I guess it's that SR seems to be a gun enthusiast magnet for some reason.

Semi realistic combat that doesn't give itself easily to action movie style stunts.
Werewindlefr
QUOTE (Larme @ Apr 6 2008, 07:27 PM) *
Wait, are we saying "they don't have APDS this good today, so they can't have it in only 62 years from now?" Failure to understand how super cool future tech would work is not grounds for saying it's impossible... It's the frickin' future! And in an alternate universe no less. Why not just let it go?

Because -4 armor is a killer. MCT has a zero-zone policy, that would mean they'd only use that stuff, for instance. If something is much better than the rest of the stuff for a very small price (a full auto of APDS is much cheaper than paying the guy using it, and with that you can kill a max-armored streetsam) then it becomes standard (that's exactly what happened with Dikote).
Stunning a runner in a group of 4 does nothing: The others will wake him up ASAP and they'll continue doing their jobs at full strength. But each runner killed is down for good, and some corporations want to make sure runner die, at least when it stays reasonably priced.
And I don't find APDS or antivehicle stuff supercool. I find EX supercool, but that's another thing entirely. I think APDS is cool the same way that Dikote was cool.

(Also: yeah, this stuff has evolved, but so have normal rounds and armor. a -4 difference is the difference between an armor vest and an FBA, or an armor jacket and military armor. It's huge.)
QUOTE
Exactly. We also can't, as an outpatient procedure, interface a frickin computer into your frickin brain using frickin nanites, but nobody has a problem with datajacks or implanted commlinks

It's less a matter "what technology can do" than a matter of world consistency. If APDS was 200 nuyens per round, I would use that stuff in my campaign. If AV rounds were 500-1000 nuyens per ammo, same thing. Nowaday's AP ammo is cheap, but it's a bad reference because it's not APDS, and it seems to be closer to -1 AP than -4. But with APDS costing 7 nuyens per ammo, even corp/lone star mooks have several clips of it, since they're not concerned by the only limitating factor: availability.

I mean, come on: if your runner could by APDS at creation, and availability wasn;t an issue: would you even consider buying normal ammo?
Larme
QUOTE (Werewindlefr @ Apr 6 2008, 07:51 PM) *
Because -4 armor is a killer.


rotfl.gif rotfl.gif rotfl.gif

I hope you realize the irony that we have this thread about -4AP being way too good, at the same time another thread is complaining that there is way too much armor stacking, and people are totally invulnerable thanks to FFBA. Don't get me wrong, I agree with you. But the question is far from settled.

QUOTE
Stunning a runner in a group of 4 does nothing: The others will wake him up ASAP and they'll continue doing their jobs at full strength. But each runner killed is down for good, and some corporations want to make sure runner die, at least when it stays reasonably priced.
And I don't find APDS or antivehicle stuff supercool. I find EX supercool, but that's another thing entirely. I think APDS is cool the same way that Dikote was cool.


Dikote was hands down better than not dikote. The only difference between ExEx and APDS is the likelihood it will do physical vs stun damage. I don't think that's a big enough distinction to bother with, especially considering APDS' availability. And for corps, I don't think they want to kill runners; they're not going to pull punches, but if they can capture you that's great -- first they'll find out who hit them and why, and then they'll either dump your body, or implant a cranial bomb and make you work for them, or something like that.

Also, against many runners, doing physical damage is actually worse. If you're talking about a mega troll, failing to pierce his armor is a good thing, since he has way less stun boxes than physical. All in all, I can't agree that APDS is better than ExEx. ExEx is more available, and more likely to do stun damage, which can be either good or bad. APDS is much better against hardened armor, and more likely to do physical than stun damage, which again can be either good or bad.

QUOTE
I mean, come on: if your runner could by APDS at creation, and availability wasn;t an issue: would you even consider buying normal ammo?


Yep. At 2 yen per bullet, regular ammo is good to have in plenty. If I made a heavy weapons character, I'd make sure to have a few thousand rounds hanging around in case I ever had to sustain machinegun fire for 20 minutes in a really big firefight nyahnyah.gif

There are also quite a few choices outside of APDS to consider. ExEx is just as good or better in most cases. Stick-n-shock is worth its weight in nuyen. Subsonic rounds are sweet.

I think your complaint is that you prefer APDS over everything, and thus it seems to good. But objectively, I don't think it's the only choice. No-brainers are bad, but APDS is far outside of a no-brainer. It's great, but it's not the only thing that's great.
Werewindlefr
QUOTE
I hope you realize the irony that we have this thread about -4AP being way too good, at the same time another thread is complaining that there is way too much armor stacking, and people are totally invulnerable thanks to FFBA. Don't get me wrong, I agree with you. But the question is far from settled.
Well, I do want to run tough and deadly games, but -4 AP is a bit too much for me. I want it to be deadly without going for high-powered stuff.

The problem is that APDS has two aspects:

I agree that in normal circumstances, APDS and ExEx are just as good, and that it those circumstances APDS is not overpowered; the cost of such things is high enough to at least not use them systematically. But ADPS does something that bothers me, and that's bypassing high-end armor. In that regards, yes, all corpsec mooks would have 2 clips of APDS, because they don't know what they'll be up against. Better to be almost sure that they can deal physical to 90% of what will get inside the building.In that regards, it totally outclasses standard ammo for a very small price, and I guess I don't like that at all.

(Also, my corps shoot to kill. At most, they keep the last one alive if they can, but that's all. They don't want to risk losing whatever it was that shadowrunners came searching for.)

I guess we all have our own houserules and way to see things, and we probably can't really agree on what's overpowered or not. Take 3 GM, and you'll have 5 ways to see the game nyahnyah.gif.

Edit: the more I think of it, the more I think you're right; it is a matter of personal preference than actual rational arguments from my part. So my attempts at rationalizing it are completely useless. It's not that I don't have a point, but more than whether my point is relevant or not depends on the game style nyahnyah.gif
nathanross
QUOTE (Larme @ Apr 6 2008, 07:40 PM) *
I hope you realize the irony that we have this thread about -4AP being way too good, at the same time another thread is complaining that there is way too much armor stacking, and people are totally invulnerable thanks to FFBA. Don't get me wrong, I agree with you. But the question is far from settled.

There is a point where there is just too much armor. I am still out on whether this is good or bad. All I know is that there is an adept in my group that is completely invulnerable to heavy pistols, and so good at dodging that burst fire doesn't hit. The player is not at fault, he merely has made a character that is good at dodging and avoiding damage.

I must say that form fit doesn't exactly help the matter. -4AP rocks with the armor from the base book and is still good going up the line. However, as armor stacks and stacks and stacks some more. It does eventually get to the point where there is just too much. I sometimes wonder if APDS should not just halve Ballistic armor.
kzt
QUOTE (Werewindlefr @ Apr 6 2008, 04:50 PM) *
As for APDS, it has fried my brain so much by not making sense that I've just decided to say it just doesn't exist. I don't think real ammo can do that, at least NIJ says it can't. When people want armor piercing, they go for explosive or EX.

You can't get that either.

An explosive blowing up on impact doesn't help penetrate armor. It might do more damage IF it penetrates armor, but I have no idea why they decided that it will mysteriously teleport through the armor. It makes even less sense than their APDS. You just can't fit the enough explosive (and fuze and still have a structurally sound bullet) in a 5-7mm round that it will matter.
Larme
QUOTE (nathanross @ Apr 6 2008, 10:19 PM) *
There is a point where there is just too much armor. I am still out on whether this is good or bad. All I know is that there is an adept in my group that is completely invulnerable to heavy pistols, and so good at dodging that burst fire doesn't hit. The player is not at fault, he merely has made a character that is good at dodging and avoiding damage.

I must say that form fit doesn't exactly help the matter. -4AP rocks with the armor from the base book and is still good going up the line. However, as armor stacks and stacks and stacks some more. It does eventually get to the point where there is just too much. I sometimes wonder if APDS should not just halve Ballistic armor.


Lollers! Posters start saying "man, AP is too good," then here comes someone saying "man, we need to make it into instant death kill!"

I don't think the -half for AP made sense in SR3, and I don't think it makes sense now. Why would ammo pierce only half of your armor, no matter how much or little? Are we going to say it can pierce only halfway through a leather jacket, but also halfway through a reinforced wall? No thanks. The only thing that does -half armor in SR4 is elemental damage. I'm not sure if that makes sense either, but at least it's balanced because you can load up on mods that make it ineffective.

I think APDS is good and balanced. It's about as good as ExEx, just better in a few situations. I think armor is good and balanced. It lets players take stun damage more often, so you won't have as many player deaths, which I regard as positive in a story based game. But it doesn't make anyone superman. Being immune to heavy pistols is fine, because heavy pistols are pretty low on the damage scale. When someone starts being immune to sniper rifles, then we can talk about tweaking game balance... And I should point out that in this very thread, people have been complaining about how heavy pistols are too good. And you want to make them better? I think the game, while not 100% deadly, is pretty biased against defense, at least once you actually get hit. The whole 1 DV = 3 dice needed to resist means you need ridiculous soak pools most of the time to be immune to an attack. If you tweak the game more in favor of offense, you probably won't have runners living more than one or two game sessions.
nathanross
The only thing is, my player's adept has more Armor than a reinforced wall. I was also just throwing out the idea. In the BBB, max armor was not too high (in fact it may even have been a bit low). However, with the 20+ armor now available in Arsenal, I just wonder how valuable APDS is. The adept in Question is not even maxed for what she could be (16/14).

I am not trying to kill the characters, in fact I do everything in my power to keep them alive. I just don't want things to be too easy. Veteran players have been whipped so many times they know how to secure their character's "fort" (if you will). The game is just really boring if you always know you are going to win.
Kremlin KOA
QUOTE (Backgammon @ Apr 7 2008, 01:07 AM) *
An item's availability reflects how difficult an item is to acquire on the black market. If it were easy to manufacture APDS yourself, the item's availability would be lower as it would take that into consideration (as syndicates would be churning them out). So RL rationalisation aside, APDS should be very hard to make yourself.


right so thermite's availability reflects the extreme difficulty of grinding rust and aluminium into powder?
Cabral
I always thought of explosive ammo as frangible ammo, but I guess that would be better represented as something like +2 AP and +2 DV if it deals physical damage.
Ed_209a
Engineering will change in the next 60 years, physics won't. True APDS just isn't practical at that scale.

True APDS today, is something like a 25mm round firing a 10mm penetrator, or a 105/120mm round firing a 30mm penetrator.

If you scale that down, you have an Alpha firing something like a 6mm round with 2mm penetrator.

My personal opinion is that APDS is a marketing scam. Some corp took plane-jane AP rounds, melted off the copper jacket, and put on a plastic collar that falls off after a few meters. Add a scoop-full of advertising awesomeness, and you have APDS.

The fact that it performs exactly like AP would be kept very quiet.
kzt
I kind of like the idea that players can be taken in be the "Blended Metal" type scams as much as people on gun boards....
ornot
QUOTE (Larme @ Apr 7 2008, 01:56 AM) *
/snip If you tweak the game more in favor of offense, you probably won't have runners living more than one or two game sessions.


Sounds fine to me. Shadowrunning should be dangerous. That being said, usually it's the runners being offensive, and the guards and random passers by being turned into a fine red mist!

I rewarded a street sam with two magazines of heavy pistol APDS, which caused him endless agonies of indecision as to whether this or that situation was worthy of using his hard earned stash. Very amusing!
nathanross
QUOTE (ornot @ Apr 7 2008, 11:38 AM) *
I rewarded a street sam with two magazines of heavy pistol APDS, which caused him endless agonies of indecision as to whether this or that situation was worthy of using his hard earned stash. Very amusing!

That's almost kind of sad, though I totally am going to do the same. I let a player have a Great Dragon without having to look for it, and 2 LAWs. He wasted no time in using them biggrin.gif

Also, where is the face in your group? That is the face's job from Run #3, "Buy APDS for the gun bunnies". I always find some room to skim off the top.
ornot
QUOTE (nathanross @ Apr 7 2008, 04:31 PM) *
That's almost kind of sad, though I totally am going to do the same. I let a player have a Great Dragon without having to look for it, and 2 LAWs. He wasted no time in using them biggrin.gif

Also, where is the face in your group? That is the face's job from Run #3, "Buy APDS for the gun bunnies". I always find some room to skim off the top.


My players are consummate hoarders. I'd have to give them free access to endless supplies of APDS or even ex-EX for them to use it on a regular basis.

At the time of the APDS event my group was without a proper Face... which made legwork a pain in the arse. Now I have a player willing to play a quasiface, and the player likes to hear himself talk, so I'm confident that I won't have to repeatedly throw them a bone.
Shiloh
QUOTE (Ed_209a @ Apr 7 2008, 02:44 PM) *
Engineering will change in the next 60 years, physics won't. True APDS just isn't practical at that scale.

True APDS today, is something like a 25mm round firing a 10mm penetrator, or a 105/120mm round firing a 30mm penetrator.

If you scale that down, you have an Alpha firing something like a 6mm round with 2mm penetrator.


And a 2mm high velocity penetrator is going to have the stopping power of a candy cane. Your 200kilo cybertroll probably isn't even going to notice it unless it gets lucky and perforates the heart or major thoracic/abdominal blood vessels or the CNS.

QUOTE
My personal opinion is that APDS is a marketing scam. Some corp took plane-jane AP rounds, melted off the copper jacket, and put on a plastic collar that falls off after a few meters. Add a scoop-full of advertising awesomeness, and you have APDS.

The fact that it performs exactly like AP would be kept very quiet.


I like this idea. I don't think the ballistics performance would be kept hush-hush in Runner circles for very long, though, and would prefer if the rounds were just labelled "AP". No need for magic sabots.
Larme
QUOTE (nathanross @ Apr 7 2008, 02:21 AM) *
The only thing is, my player's adept has more Armor than a reinforced wall. I was also just throwing out the idea. In the BBB, max armor was not too high (in fact it may even have been a bit low). However, with the 20+ armor now available in Arsenal, I just wonder how valuable APDS is. The adept in Question is not even maxed for what she could be (16/14).

I am not trying to kill the characters, in fact I do everything in my power to keep them alive. I just don't want things to be too easy. Veteran players have been whipped so many times they know how to secure their character's "fort" (if you will). The game is just really boring if you always know you are going to win.


You shouldn't use barrier ratings to compare with player armor. Barriers might have less armor than some players, but barriers are special. If you don't bust through a player's armor, they still take stun. But if you don't beat a barrier's armor, nothing happens to it. If players had the same damage rules as barriers, then you could complain about them being stronger than reinforced walls; the fact is, however, even though they have a higher armor rating, they're a whole lot easier to kill.

You could improve ADPS, and that would make it really helpful for weak guns like pistols, which can't use APDS to all that much effect. But you'd have the unintended consequence of making it horrible, uber instant death for weapons with high AP already. Sniper rifles with APDS have -7 AP, which is pretty nuts. If you improve APDS, it will be more than nuts. And your players will all start using APDS sniper rifles, and it will break your game nyahnyah.gif
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