I never groked how exactly flechette ammo works.

I mean, does a flechette round fragments the moment it is fired ? Or does it just fragments the moment it contacts the target?

In this fig. it seems to fragment upon approaching the target, but I dont think its the case in SR.

Flechettes don't fragment at all. A flechette round is a round where, instead of having a single bullet on top of a propellant charge, you have a cluster of metal needles on top of a propellant charge. It's basically a small shotgun shell, only with needles instead of pellets. It turns flesh into a bloody mess, but has less penetrative effect against body armor than normal ammo.

i think they're small fin-stabilized darts. either way, though, as tanegar said, they act in the same way as a shotgun

While we're on the subject, could somebody sell me on the little buggers?

Mechanically, they're gel rounds that do Physical damage instead, but cost over thrice as much. They cost as much as ex-EX rounds, but they're vastly inferior in all respects save availability and legality.

Something I'm missing here?

When you find the one person on the planet who doesn't wear armor, you'll kill the crap out of them. When you're fighting critters, who also don't wear armor, you kill the crap out of them. When you're fighting someone you can throw away 8 or more dice on called shots to bypass armor and still hit reliably, you'll kill the crap out of them.

I think that I see a pattern developing...

There is no possibility of flechette blowing up in your gun like Ex-Ex.

Joking aside, remember that they are resisted with Impact armor not Ballistic. Most people have lower Impact armor, and its therefore easier to get past via a called shot.

Assuming the character is capable of that called shot... which is usually not all that hard against the Impact rating, admittedly...
I withdraw my caveat...

Flichette is +2 DV, +5 AP (Impact).

Typically, Impact is 2 points lower than Ballistic, so the actual stats in most circumstances would be akin to +2 DV, +3 AP.

With average rolls, this basically comes out to +1 DV (post resistance).


With Ex-Ex, you have +1 DV, -1 AP.

With average rolls, this basically comes out to +1.33 DV (post resistance).


While there are no mechanics for it, Ex-Ex are loud. In addition, Ex-Ex can destroy your weapon & injure you on a critical glitch - flichette will just disable the weapon (or similar).


Against unarmored opponents, the +5 AP does absolutely nothing, & flechette are vastly superior.

I would also like to point out that as of SR4A, Gel Rounds are -1 DV, not +2.

Let me get this strait
- 1 little metal dart = -4 AP
- many little metal darts = +5 AP

You have now mastered how to write combat rules just like an SR Dev.

Its like the difference between a pick and a tenderizer. The tenderizer has a bunch of sharp points but that pick has one sharp point thats focused hence doing more damage on one spot instead of spread out and not as good.

Take a board, hammer a bunch of nails through it, and go lie down on the points.

Now take another board and put a single nail through it, turn it over so that it's point up, and go lie on that.



-karma

It's not an issue of pressure. It's an issue of velocity. Put all the energy of the round behind a single metal dart, and the muzzle velocity is quite high. Put it behind 50 darts, and the muzzle velocity of each dart is going to be a lot lower. That lower velocity for each dart means each dart carries less kenetic energy, which means the armor has an easier time dissipating the energy of each individual dart's impact. Admittedly, the strain placed on the armor by the large number of impacts is going to serve to weaken the armor, but compared to how effectively the single projectile will defeat it, the effect is minimal.

Comparing real world weapons to SR weapons is pretty pointless. That said, I'll go ahead and do it.

Real world flechettes don't work that well, US military went back to buckshot for 40mm canister rounds after some combat use of flechettes. They should have pretty good penetration of soft armor, but data is kind of lacking.

Weapons firing single flechettes are apparently pretty much totally useless, they apparently have no stopping power at all.

Flechettes in artillery shells or rockets are a whole other matter. They are pretty damn lethal, Though the current 120mm canister is essentially tungsten buckshot and I'd assume they tried out flechettes before going with shot.

I have another reason to use flechettes...style. I mean flechettes are cool. And they do have a slight advantage over FMJ rounds, so why not use 'em?

The way I read SR4 (and SR4A), flechettes is GENERIC term for "lots of tiny projectiles". They can be of any shape, such as mini darts for a slivergun, or buckshot such as a shotgun, or "pineapple chunks" from a grenade. The devs did not differentiate between any of those different types (which in the real world behave VERY differently), but instead went with a more simplified model. I can live with that!

Just a fun piece of information RL.

I subscribe to a catalog called, Cheaper Than Dirt. They sell wholesale ammunition and every accesory for firearms ever made, Black guns like AR's and the like. Guess what's on sale per the pound on the front cover this month. Here's how the add as it reads.

Originally military flechettes that were so deadly the U.S thought they would be against the Geneva Convention! In the 1960's the U.S army began early development work on Flechette weapons. The thought was to fire these wicked steel darts and cause massive causalities among the enemy. Flechettes are 1" long hardened steel nails with fins and number approximately 950 darts per pound. These were experimental for the m203 grenade launcher and 12ga shotgun. These rounds had tremendous military advantages as they were lighter than standard rounds, had much lower recoil and could penetrate body armor. We are not recommending that you load these or try to weaponize them. They represent the ultimate military weapon and a unique historical item. Great conversation piece and sold by the pound. 29.97 per pound.

LMAO now that is a class salesmanship hope you guys get a kick out of this i did.

unfortunately the army no longer uses the buckshot rounds for the 40mm M203. all you see anymore these days are TP blue-tipped orange-paint training rounds, HEDP (high explosive dual purpose) and illum rounds of varying kinds. (lemme check my wall locker for a couple examples) looks like some star parachutes and you can get em in white, red, green, purple, or yellow.
more often, when it comes to buckshot in calibers of 40mm or nearer you find the civilian 37mm rubber buckshot and slug rounds, more commonly seen in the armories of prison control and other law enforcement (particularly used in riots, such as the WTO riots in seattle around 7 or 8 years ago).

flechettes always get points for style, though. thats why i always end up with a rem. roomsweeper somewhere in my arsenal
actually, there is a relatively new weapon out on the market quite similar. a pistol that shoots shotgun rounds- though this one is a revolver. this actually fires true shotgun ammunitions although i have always loaded the first two rounds in my taurus M85 with snakeshot which achieves a similar effect though much weaker.

http://www.taurususa.com/whatsnew/revolvers.cfm

interestingly, this bypasses the laws surrounding the minimum length of shotgun barrels due to the fact that, unlike most shotguns, it has a rifled barrel, while the law covers smooth-bore scatterguns only.

(btw being new, could someone send me a PM telling me how to include a link without having to post the ugly hyper text addy?)

its cuz of the Hague Convention we can't use em, thank you very much! same reason we can't use hollowpoints, flamethrowers and hyperbaric weapons (even though we still have em and use em when no one's lookin)
NATO, and by extension, the US military is only allowed to use ball ammo. all the other cool drek we get has to be used on equipment which is why we always say,
"what? i was aiming for the radio on his back!"
"but he was facing you..."
"well i still hit the radio, didnt i?"

What about aircraft carriers they are out right baned so they call them some silly name to bypass that. Forgot the name though.

also, after the Status Of Forces Agreement we aren't allowed to run combat operations without hauling some iraqi army unit(s) along with us to put an iraqi face on the op so we simply changed the names of our ops to get around it. (ie a combat logistics patrol is now a convoy logistics patrol, a combat patrol is now a presence patrol)
pentagon spin doctors, gotta love em

Hey, they gotta keep their jobs somehow...

Now THAT is funny.

I can understand using flechette with shotguns but using them with handguns and rifles would require using very thin needles wich would have very low mass and so very low inertia, resulting in being easily deflected away from the intended path (fogliage maybe even raindrops, or bouncing on walls) causing the affected area being unpredictable and potentialy to be source of collateral damage; probably hollowpoints are the only realitical way to go.

you know, i could go on for hours about this drek

Isn't the SciFi fletchette gun basically what is sometimes called a railgun or coilgun or gaussgun - firing slivers of metal in the form of a needle [or similar] using a magnetic pulse to accelerate the bullet ??

not particularly. though a man-portal railgun is indeed the purview of SciFi, as far as SR is concerned flechette refers to fin-stabilized darts and a propellant charge.

Acutally the Sci-Fi flechette gun is more akin to a needler. It fires a stream of tiny slivers of metal to literally shred a target. They usually have an extremely high rate of fire. Gauss weaponry, on the other hand, is usually depicted to fire large projectiles at an extreme velocity but low cyclic rate. The exact mechanism for propelling the flechettes in Needlers is usually not explicitly stated. Thus it is possible that they use Gauss fields to accelerate the projectiles, however in my opinion they probably utilize chemical propellant.

The real reason to use Flechette ammo isn't for the round itself. No, the real reason is for the delivery system.

The Ares Viper Slivergun has the damage of a heavy pistol (though not the AP), Burst fire(!!), and a built-in sound supressor. All this for an availability code of 5R. Note the R. A silenced burstfire weapon that you can get a license for. (fake or not...) Every infiltrator/face should own one as their "obvious" gun.

it is. until you're on the receiving end of Willie Pete that was "targeting your equipment". it's all fun and games until someone gets 90% of their skin burned off.



the exact function of needlers has always been one of those things that puts the "fiction" in "Science Fiction". electrostatic or electromagnetic would probably be the most likely in order to fit the description.

Or. An air canister.

Actually, with WP the line is 'We were just using it for its obfuscatory effects not its incendiary effects, and we greatly regret firing several dozen rounds of it at that city."

Equally, your not allowed to drop Cluster Munitions on population centres. There is also a persistent rumour that your not allowed to fire .50 cal rounds at people (which is why .50 cal military sniper rifles are listed as 'Anti-Material Rifles'). However, these weapons are not banned by the Hague Conventions (of 1899 and 1907) because they hadn't been developed at the time. Instead their status under international law has been established through subsequent treaties (in much the same way as the use of mines has been restricted). Unfortunately, since there is no central document saying what is/is not legal this results in a lot of amateur speculation and rumour about the exact reasons for different weapon systems being employed in particular ways or not.

WRT Flechette weapons, my understanding is that they were initially designed as a direct fire artillery round for use against troops in the open. Essentially, they replace the HE effect of the round with a directed blast of small metal penetrators. They would have to be designed to explode prior to impact with the ground otherwise you'd risk the ground absorbing most of the force (which is less of an issue when firing HE against entrenched troops).

During the Vietnam War, Australian artillery batteries (105mm) were issued flechette rounds and used them against the NVA/VC. They were time delay fuzed. This delay could be adjusted as required. During the Battle of Coral when ANZAC artillery pieces were being over-run, they were fired point blank into the attacking forces. Apparently, its not pretty.

What's important WRT SR from the above is that the artillery rounds are designed as a single shell when loaded and explode after leaving the barrel (exploding things other than propelling charges inside weapons is generally considered a bad idea) producing a cone of small (relative to the round) metal penetrators.

I'd assume that this would be different to the way a shotgun flechette round would work. In a shotgun I'd imagine either the flechettes would replace the shot of a regular round.
Wikipedia has a good image to explain. Or, a single or only a few large solid penetrators would be used. The first example would generate results similar to the flechette rules of SR whilst the second would probably be better represented as AFDS.

Imp

This is actually quite funny how the SR dev team have ignored the weapons history and actual statline from SR1 to SR4.

SR2: Light pistol using heavy pistol ranges (6L (9M BF))
SR3: Heavy pistol (9M / 11S BF))
SR4: Heavy Pistol 8P(F)

If we should take the correct statline for the gun from SR1 and make it into SR4 stats we would get the following.

Pistol Type: Light
Damage: 6P (F) (SA/BF)
Range: As Heavy pistol

I've upped the damage by from regular light pistol to take into the effect the Flechette ammo.

The AVS has a base damage of 6 / +0 (before flechette mods) rather than the 5 / -1 of all the other semiauto heavy pistols for no apparent reason. If I'm ever a DM it's getting knocked back to 5P (7P/F)

Why that would just make the 8(f) hold out even more silly.

You realize of course, that the 6P under the gun listing already includes the flechette ammunition damage "bonus" right? Using flechettes instead of regular ammunition in other guns changes the damage code, but as it's the standard ammo for that gun, the damage doesn't change.

It'd be like putting Stick and Shock ammo into a tazer.

No, it doesn't. The Slivergun is listed as 8P(f) with an AP of +5, giving it a base damage of 6P and a base AP of 0 before the flechette modifier.

very nice post back there imp. you even cite works that im too lazy to specifically look up

propa

Re: the difference of stats in a Slivergun firing flechette and a regular Heavy Pistol firing flechette. Ignoring for an instant the oppurtunity for arguing and saying 'the Devs is wrong' that it may or may not provide. Why not simply think about it differently: a Slivergun is a dedicated flechette firing weapon, not a one-size fits all solution as is flechette ammo. As a result of this fact it fires a more destructive round. The downside is you can't ever use any alternative ammunition types in it. Which means your always going to fire flechette rounds costing 10Y a pop. Voila, RAW makes sense (actually that is more than logical, given the difficulties developing flechette firing weapons (Wikipedia refers).

For those interested, why not the same for Shotguns? Well, because when their firing flechette it costs them 2Y/round exactly the same as standard ammo and they have the ability to use a large array of different ammo. No downside means no bonus.

So yep, if I was giving my old lady a pistol to defend herself with from thugs I'd seriously consider this piece of gear (she won't fire it often enough to notice the expense of ammunition or need the variety of ammo types).

And cheers Blindfox, but its an occupational/educational hazard - I knew most of that stuff off the top of my head. You'll particularly appreciate Wikipedia's position on WP use in the US Military - see if it tallies up with what you know on the ground. If your interested and you ever see a copy look up Les McCauly's The Battle of Coral, it includes a very vivid description of close quarters artillery action. It also points out another use for flechette rounds, they were used by the Centurions in action after the initial battle to clear foliage and return fire against enemies ambushing with RPGs at very close range (situations where a HE / HEAT round would be dangerous their own troops or would suffer from issues of depression). Perhaps this would be of use for SR tanks which are primarily used in a fire support (rather than AT) role.

Imp

imp, if you dont mind my asking, what is your profession?

actually, during my last tour we did use willy pete from grenade launchers on our strykers for smoke screen. i might even be able to find the vid nestled somewhere amongst my collection, upload it to flickr and paste a link here if yer interested

Naval Officer with training in Military History. And a Wikipedia Spec for my Data Search skill.

Imp

105mm APERS come out of the fiber with a fuze set for muzzle burst on charge 7. You just slam it into the breech and pull the lanyard. If you want to do clever things with it you can adjust the charge and fuze setting, but it's set for emergency use when you open it up. It has about 8000 flechettes.

that could be made to be one seriously bad-ass IED

Is there a 40lb IED that isn't badass?

Come to think of it, I don't think a canister round would be a very good IED at all. The only real explosive is the bursting charge. If you have propellant charge at all, it just burns unless it is contained, like in a gun barrel.

Umm, no.
I wouldn't even think about taking a hacksaw to your slug barrel unless you want the BATF to pay you a visit.

The reason the gun is legal and doesn't count as a sawed off shotgun, is because it's a freak accident.

The .45 long colt chamber just happens to be the right size to fit a shotgun shell.

Technically, they're selling a .45 long colt revolver.

The round itself is designed to explode outside the barrel, so if you could get the bursting charge to initiate then you'd have 8000 flechettes being fired. But that raises the question of whether the flechettes get their force from the bursting charge or from the propelling round. That is, is the momentum of the flechettes a result of firing the round in the first place?

I'd tend to say yes, the force of the flechette is provided by firing the round from the barrel. This means as an IED it'd be virtually useless because the LE bursting charge would, probably, not provide enough force to drive those flechettes at lethal velocity. Rather, it'd just provide enough force to split open the round and provide some dispersion to the flechettes.

So, basically, after taking time to think about it in writing; I'd agree with you Ed.

Also, Kzt, a question. When you say muzzle burst, do you mean the bursting charge initiates inside the barrel or just after exiting? Because if its the former then wouldn't that put additional stress on the barrels?

Imp

Pretty much. IIRC, the shell is just an ballistic shape to keep down drag and hold everything together. I think it's just a light aluminum casing.


It is designed to burst the round after exits the muzzle, but very close to the gun. Not sure exactly how far out "muzzle burst" is, but they normally take great pains to avoid in-bore function of fuzes. We never got any APERS to play with, just saw them in the gunnery dept at Ft. Sill.

im not going into how i would create it into an IED but i will say its possible and the little wily bastards can get pretty creative. ive seen far less aerodynamic chunks of metal cut right through our up-armored vehicles and i'd hate to see red-hot fin-stabilized nails going in all directions