Note: do not take this topic seriously, this is more of a mental exercise than attempting to actually do this.

Video of Metal Storm here

The current rules for throwing more bullets at things falls apart at firing rates far below what Metal Storm is capable of, so how might one incorporate these guns so that they don't just FLRM* people in a simple action?

*Fine Lingering Red Mist

*points at Sakura Fubuki*

Well you could start by looking at the rules for Sakura Fubuki, as that is a metalstorm weapon.

There's not a huge value for metalstorm FLRM weapons. Recoil is recoil so the total impulse is just as limited as before. You can either fire a dozen .22 rounds in a microsecond to pulp somebody or get the same effects and value from an autoshotgun without the hassle of wrapping your spare ammo in a steel sleeve.

Metalstorm's great for stuff like close anti-missile defense where you really need to saturate the air with lead. I also see the value in using the barrel-magazine concept to give single-shot weapons like grenade launchers an actual reserve. Otherwise it's a novelty idea with little actual value over standard weapon systems.

Consider a Troll dual-wielding 40 barrel .50BMG metalstorm pistols firing 120 round narrow bursts as a simple action.

The Sakura Fubuki made it into SR4 because the devs had room for an "ooh neat" firearm.

Metal Storm has two things going for it. Super-high ROF for area saturation, and solid state reliability.

The high ROF would make it good for an anti-aircraft/missile weapon. The reliability would make it good for unmanned sentry turrets, or drone weapons.

The only place I see Metal Storm technology impacting the small arms market is in the law enforcement market. Metal Storm made a prototype 4-barrel pistol, the O'Dwyer VLe, that had two small (9mm?) barrels, and then two larger (15mm?) barrels. The weapon would carry 20 or so regular rounds, but also 10 or so less-lethal rounds. That makes sense for a weapon that may only be used in service a handful of times in an entire career.

By the way, the O'Dwyer VLe pistol was designed a LOT more practically than the Sakura.

Yeah, but practical is boring's retarded brother.

I wouldn't give a metalstorm weapon many rules: roll to hit... if you get a single success or more, target dies.

Then get out your wallet and buy more ammo. I wonder how much nuyen you would burn through at 1-million-rounds-per-minute?

(Yes. MetalStorm has a gun that can do that. It just can't be mounted on any vehicle...yet)

I could see it being very effective in a drive by shooting application. Open the van door, unload with a couple thousand rounds and drive off in less then a minute. The grenade launcher, utilized in a similar fashion, would also be devastating.

Edit: Video with lots of info and metalstorm being used on aircraft. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX6YvWxtrxw

I can only really recommend Metalstorm type guns because of the coolness factor. I mean lets face it, they are really cool. I have alot of doubts on the practicality side but they are cool. Since my games are in the Lethal Weapon/The A-Team/Shoot-em-up vein as opposed to the grim, gritty, street-level, hopeless despair genre, they do have a place. They reside next to Dirty Harry's magnum and B. A.'s van.

Metal storm type guns are useful in more than just straight ballistic rounds and numbers.

Multi shot underbarrel shotgun? Metalstorm lets you keep 8 rounds inline, compared to 1 or 2.
Multi shot grenade launchers? Metalstorm allows 3 rounds kept in a package the same size as the M203

High ROF bursts in a slow feed mechanism? Swap a normal belt/mag feed to feeding a composite 3 round metalstorm caseless round, and each action cycle loads 3 rounds into the chamber. If all 3 rounds can fire out before the bolt recoils the full distance, the impulses will be spread out over that distance, making recoil less apparent.
e.g.
MG 3 fires at around 1200 rounds a minute. What if each round was actually a 3 round burst at 3600 rounds a minute?
(Yes, you would lose punch from each individual round if you didn't modify bolt and receiver to handle longer cartridges.)

Or.
Revolver that fires bursts of 3 rounds each. Each chamber in the cylinder holds 3 rounds. pull the trigger once, have 3 rounds come out at some high ROF. Some of the larger rifle chambered revolvers of today would be suitable for this kind of modification. the burst should be fast enough to give a spread grouping, but not enough to throw your aim off too much.

Rules depend on application.

Battleships would be prime candidate for that one . .
either as air defense or as steel rain artillery . .

When I first learned about metal storm weapons, they were talking about using it for CIWS. Seems pretty excessive to me, but CIWS tends to be like that.

Speaking of the fubuki, what about a metal storm pistol, similar to that, except the barrels are angled slightly outward to achieve a shotgun-like cone effect. The cone would be narrower than narrow-burst shotguns, and the gun would use bullets instead of buckshot. I can see a use for that, either with four barrels like the fubuki, or seven barrels, with one in the middle and six in a hexagon around it.

That reminds me of the Duckfoot gun.

Or a blunderbuss.

The cool thing about this is that it is electronic firing, caseless ammo. It can fire as much or as little as you want. Reloading would be a problem though once your bullets are gone.

ROF in shadowrun is inentionally below the max that could be done in RL. I'd make it an HVAR weapon at the bare minimum, but beyond that there is no need, except as a CIWS for anti missle/artillery/mortar duty (yes you can shoot down artillery shells, it is just tricky).

Read some of the metal storm press stuff. 2 rounds at 500,000rpm basically "pushes" the first round, giving you around a 56% (their figure) increase in the 1st round's energy.

A 3 round burst at 60,000rpm? pretty tight groupings on that.

They are looking at it for AICWs now, as it allows multiple grenades to be stacked on top of a standard rifle.