According to SR3, clips cost 5 . They don't vary by capacity or calibre. So then could I purchase a larger clip for around double the capacity? For instance, the Savalette, keep that 15 shot clip for everyday use and the 5 Conceal it provides but on a heavy run (full armor, SMGs, what have you, even if you're sneaking in) where its your backup, why not have 30 rounds if you don't car about the Conceal. Like the Glock MP or the HK USP/MP.

Better yet, a SMG or AR thats drum-fed. I don't know what kind of effects that has on aim/balance/etc. I've just been seeing them an awful lot in movies/TV/etc. In my defense, I tend to think of SR like that. It can be an over the top action or a suspenseful mystery but it all still reminds me of a TV show or a movie.

Same thing for the Opposite. I'm a big fan of the M20T Smartgun. Its probably the most cost effective gun out there. But I don't like the Conceal rating at 5. Don't get me wrong, like it, but i guess I don't agree w/ it. So why not have a 15 shot clip, kinda like they do in RL, if I'm not mistaken. That way I can have it in a quick release sling (barrel pointed down) and not have to worry about the clip sicking out in the back (-2 to Con). Or, if you like the Conceal rating where it is, just give a bonus. +1 or +2 should be more than enough.

Thoughts?

First of all, the price of 5 ¥ per clip (detachable box magazine) is pretty rediculous for a brand new magazine for just about any firearm. Even though they usually are only pieces of formed, heat-treated sheet steel or molded plastic and springs, they tend to cost more than five bucks to produce, let alone distribute. I say magazines cost 15 ¥ per mag at the very least, with most being 25 ¥. Still nominal, but not quite so silly. Depending upon how heavily restricted firearms are in a particular region (if you bother with that sort of thing), you might bump costs up with a Street Index of at least 2. Of course, used magazines are generally cheaper.

As for higher-capacity magazines being available, they certainly should be for most auto/semi-auto firearms. Reduced capacity magazines should be available as well. For instance, AK-based rifles normally use a 30-round magazine. There are 5, 10, 20, 40, and 55 round magazines commonly available for 7.62x39mm AK rifles. These magazines, especially the 30-40 rounders, seem to be coming out of people's ears these days, but you're still unlikely to find a new one for less than ten bucks.

As a general rule, I would say that extended magazines are available at +35% capacity (round down) for +50% cost at no loss to concealability. So you could get a 16-round extended magazine for your Savalette Guardian for 22.50 ¥ (45 ¥ in the more restricted regions). Beyond that capacity, I would start chopping off conceal points.

Reduced capacity magazines won't make any difference in concealability for pistols, but for some SMGs, assault rifles and battle rifles, it might be more logical to knock off a point. For most, it shouldn't make any difference. But for some, like the Ingram 20t and other smallish, through-grip magazine SMGs, it should. I don't allow the 5 Conceal Rating for the Ingram unless it is using 15-20 round magazines, and I consider the "normal" 32 round magazine to be extended, with a -1 conceal. Using an even higher capacity magazine (43 rounds using the rules above) might call for an additional -1 conceal. Just a judgement call there.

C-Mags, very high capacity (100 rounds), dual-drum magazines, are available for most assault/battle rifles and some SMGs in my games. 200 ¥, -2 Conceal, +2 kg (SMG/AR), +3 kg (BR). After hearing numerous tales of misfeeding/jamming problems with C-Mags in Afghanistan and Iraq, I tend to give players trouble if they go crazy with them. But that's up to you.

Actually, I've heard so much bad info about the c-mags, I'm suprised anyone still uses them.

So, generally speaking, in common assault rifle calibers, what is the largest magazine that's also consistant and reliable?

Raygun is on the money for real life and gives good advice on how the rules should work.

...But as far as the rules as written are concerned, you can't buy an 'extended clip'. Instead, you can modify your gun to take extended clips, costing 10 nuyen per extra bullet. To add insult to injury, you need a SHOP to do this, not a kit. Cannon Companion, pg 81. Amusingly enough, this doesn't alter concealability OR weight a bit and there's a flat limit of 50 shots in a clip. Once you've got some spare cash, take your Morrissey Elite to your favorite gun smith and have him multiply that 5 shot clip by 10. For more fun, you may want to take a holdout pistol with a clip to your gun smith and get it a mega clip too.

Note that this will only fly if your GM is psychotic about sticking to canon and/or you drug him first.

For my rifle I've found 20 rounders to be the most reliable. I own several 30s and 50s but they tend to not feed toward the last 5 rounds. This is due to spring fatigue and I can assure you the springs in the 50 rounders fatigue very quickly. I would stick with 20-30 rounders. Oh and don't store them loaded if you dont have a good reason..this accelerates spring fatigue.

Look at the Sav. Guardian (my personal fav) or the Ruger Thunderbolt.

Heavy Pistols capable of burst fire.

I've seen video of a conversion kit for Glocks to be modified to full-auto, so if you wish to modify your house rules to reflect that, more power to you.

Most people on here would scream game balance and say nay. I have a hard enough time getting my GM to let me play with the Sav.

-Siege

almost any SA firearm can be modified for FA. BF is a different animal though.

Fair enough.

*glances at half empty bag of Doritos*

Damn your fuzzy logic...

Aren't Doritos made of corn?

Corn chip, potato chip. It's all the same idea!

But can you buy them in an extended chip size? Wasn't that the question of the thread?








*smacks self* No more puns!

Hey now, no stereotypical Trolls or I'll report you to MOM!

Et tu, Bruti? Er, Et tu tanka? Now you want me to Edit....fine.

Well, crap. I never thought of it like that...I guess he does sort of resemble a stereotypical Troll. 9 or 10 feet tall, super human strength and resilience, green skin, hmmm...no horns though.

You forgot the "no people skills" and "highly unintelligent" bits too.

Or maybe he just has a Pain Editor active when he's mad?

Yeah, I ment to add "angers easily" and "is extremely violent when angry" but it slipped my mind as I raced off to edit my last post.

So what you're saying is, "Once he pops, he can't stop." ?

Dangit, there it goes again.

Cool. Thanks CB. I was sorta right, my explaination wasn't too accurate but I was on the right track.

I'd also like to thank you for getting my thread back on track.

Humorous aside: most mags for my handgun are a bloody sight more than $5.

This suggests so many guns exist that magazines are mass-produced to the point they can be amazingly cheap.

-Siege

You can sometimes get POS, bent during manufacture, , , , magazines for about 5 buck a pop. Or you could get some that work just fine. A better cost for magazines would be in the 20-40 range. I will assume that a lot of the minor reliability issuses with large mags will have been worked out by then. A M-23 with a C-mag can make a quick SAW when you can't get anything better.

The standard issue magazines we were distributed were sometimes upwards of 15 years old, and the springs still flew a nice 15 meters when you released the lock on the bottom plate... They weren't being kept loaded for more than ~4 days at a time, and probably not more than ~30 days per year average. Still, there was never any problem whatsoever with the magazines.

The few reviews I've seen and the few comments I've heard about the 75- and 100-round drums for AKs have given me the impression that they do not suffer from a significant lack of reliability compared to 30-round box-magazines. That is: An AK loaded with a 100-round drum will feed more reliably than an M16A2 with a 30-round box that is only loaded with 28 rounds.

Also found this from a site on AK mags: "Both [75- and 100-round drums] can be long-term stored with cartridges, as the magazine spring is not wound up while filling, but later when preparing to use it." So spring degradation has been taken into consideration in the design, but it seems it doesn't happen in a significant degree in the actual AK mags.

I allow extended mags (and drums) for most weapons in my games. I never made a solid ruling on them, but I'll probably adopt the "+1/4 capacity, +½ price" ratio mentioned by Raygun. I'll decide on the impact on Concealability one weapon and magazine at a time. I will remind them about the possible reliability issues, and will simply say "No" if the modification would be really bad for weapon balance -- I might even say "No" to the 100-round curved box magazine for AKs.

Is mine too?

I'd like to point out that the canon 5¥ mags are nowhere stated to be interchangable between guns. You don't even know if pistol mags are interchangable, and you certainly shouldn't be able to slap them into LMGs without any problems. Canon may be often stupid for reasons passing understanding, but I'd give it that much credit.

Anyway, 5¥ a piece is pretty dumb, but I think it was mainly done to foster action movie style slap-the-mag-release-and-toss-in-a-new-mag reloading. Same goes for Smartlink and its free action mag release, which, again, makes little to no fucking sense if you want to play realistically.

Hmm. I always read it that ammo was interchangeable by weapon type (Light Pistol, SMG, whatever), but that clips were weapon specific (Predactor, Lightfire, SCK Model 100). Just kind of seemed to make sense.

Well yeah, that'd make sense certainly. But that doesn't mean that's how the game designers meant it to work... If that happens to matter to you. You might want to allow interchangeable magazines when the weapon type, magazine capacity and maker are the same (All Ares Predators, Browning Max+Ultra, Colt Cobras, HK227s, the AKs, Mossberg CMDTs, and of course the AUG/CSL and G38).

That distinction doesn't matter much with the canon weapons, however, since there doesn't seem to be any weapons made by the same firm that are of the same type and have the same mag cap but aren't just slightly different models of the same gun.

Actually, no. It's very silly (if not outright stupid) that, for the most part, that's what people think. A few players I ran with tried that stunt because they were out of ammo, so they thought that, since both guns used clips, they could interchange them with no forethought about clip sizes.

Why is "magazine" a harder word for people to understand than "clip"? "Box magazine" wouldn't be required, I only added "box" so the people who've gotten their firearms-knowledge from SR wouldn't confuse it with an "internal magazine". A "clip" could simply be renamed "magazine" and an "internal magazine" could be renamed just "internal". No problems.

Not everybody is supremely intelligent. Some people, yes. As a general consensus, RPers are mainly average to above average. However, there are those that aren't as intelligent and may not get what the difference is unless there was a difference in words.

And as I said, it looks like an "ease of use" issue because people are used to a box magazine being referred to as a clip due to media.

I'm not willing to believe that people in general are so fucking moronic that they can't tell the difference between a "Removable Box Magazine" and an "Internal Magazine", especially when former would be referred to as "magazine" and the latter as "internal".

Although this seems a lost battle, since even Merriam-Webster now says under clip (noun):
2 : a device to hold cartridges for charging the magazines of some rifles;
also : a magazine from which ammunition is fed into the chamber of a firearm

Like I said: media inspired terminology. It's about a fruitless a battle as trying to tell PETA activists that animals do not, in fact, have rights.