So i got bored again and . . COME BACK YOU COWARDS!

OK, where was i? Ah, yes, i was bored.
So i started thinking after having had a bit too much caffeine i think . . If you run away again, i will frigging tie you down and make you listen <.< . .
Generally speaking, thinking is not a bad thing. But in the Hands of an unskilled user, that ability becomes dangerous . . don't you dare say anything about me being a dumb troll . .
Me being me, my thoughts sooner or later come back to Violence. How to avoid it is in there too, but how to cause it and be effective while at it is about 90% of it i am afraid.
As probably are most of the people that know me . . weak squishies the lot of them . .

OK, enough introduction, let's get down to business about how to hurt people and what posibilities/options you have to do it.
This is not bound to SR3 or 4, but i know my way around 3 a bit better than 4, so my examples will probably stem from there too.

As you probably all know . . Well, maybe not the magophile kind that shuns Cyber as if it were Vitas 4 . . there are Cyber-Implant-Weapons.
Close Combat, meaning fine Cutlery for most of us and the fun stuff that makes Holes in things from a Distance. Let's ignore Cutlery for now.

I was tinkering around in the NSRCG again with a new Character, because i somehow remembered OMAC(One Man Army Corp). and other such Stuff.
So i take a look at the implantable Guns. Because, let's face it, Having a Gun at Hand even if your Hands are full is quite Handy(excuse the pun, i could not help myself ^^)
There's implantable Tasers, Dart-Guns, Squirt-Guns, Hold Out Pistols, Light-Pistols, Machine-Pistols, Heavy Pistols, SMG's and Short-Motherfragging-Guns.
I am in heaven, or so i think. and then i notice one little thing:
There's only that STANDARD-Stuff in there. No Variety like . . AT ALL!

Now on the extern part, there's different Guns for different Tastes . . There's litterally more or less a Gun for EVERY Taste. And i should know, i think i have most of them lyring around one of my Hidey Holes somewhere. And if i can't remember if i do have a specific gun yet, i will probably try to aquire one, just to have it.

But IMPLANTABLE? Nope, no Dice.
There's ONE Heavy Pistol, there's ONE SMG, there's ONE Shortgun.
But why? I want more Dakka! It has to be more Shooty! Or i will be more Stompy.
Why can i not, for example, instead of the implantable Version of a Remington 990 (8S Damage, so my best guess) get an implantable Version of the Defiance T-250(10S Damage) for a Change?
Or a CMDT with Burst-Fire? Heck, if i wanted to be more silly than i am right now, i would ask for an Implant-Version of the Enfield AS-7 modded for fully automatic fire. What is there, from a RULES Point of View to hinder me in this? I can nowhere find anything in this regard somehow.
Same for the Heavy Pistol. The SR3 Implant Heavy Pistol deals 9M Damage. So i guess it's an Implant of the Predator, which is, in itself, cool enough.
But why can i not get . . say . . the Ruger Super Warhawk? Or the Thunderbolt? Or the Savalette Guardian? Or the Viper Slivergun?
If you get the Cyber-Implant-Version of one of those Gyrojet Pistol thingies, you can have your very own implanted miniature rocket launcher!

And then there's the Stuff that is a bit more exotic, but also a bit more shiney so to me it'd probably be worth it.
Lasers. Nuff Said i think . . No?
OK, let me elaborate. Why is there NO Cyber-Implant-Ares-Redline? CAN i do it? If i indeed CAN do it, then HOW am i supposed to do it?
If someone asks, i will simply tell them that it's just a work/cutting laser. And if i can control the power-output, i can use it as such too.
And what about the Ares Screech or however that Sonic-rifle is called? THAT one could be disguised as HEAVY Voice-Work-Hardware.
But i would not want that implanted without a full Ear-Setup to protect myself from that thing either. Still, it sounds nifty enough to consider.

And i we wanna be just a BIT more silly right now, think about Trolls and their Meta-Variants. Or those Horse-People that i can never remember the Name of. Ah, now i remember, Centaurs.
Or Drakes. Or other such big . . do i want to say People? Does that even fit? Do i insult something if i do? Ah frag it. Back to Gun-Nut-Talk ^^
Why not have an Implant-Version of an Assault-Rifle?
Why stop there? There's LMG's. Panther-Cannons. Gauss-Rifles and MINIGUNS . . *wipes drool away*

Now, i know you lot. You're my kind of crazy.
So do go crazy. Answer me.
Constructive Criticism. Or Silly ideas.
I don't mind a bit off topic, i don't mind a bit silly.
But please, be creative and play nice okay? ^^

OK, I don't see why you couldn't go with variants of your own. Especially in 4th Ed where all the weapons are nigh identical anyhow... but that's another thread.

The way I see it, they're describing a bare-bones weapon; that means the rules from Arsenal come into play. A couple of the modifications wind up modifying the "concealability" of the weapon. Neat trick here, now: each category of weapon is 2 higher than the last. So, if you apply dual-clip to a light pistol, it goes up to heavy pistol size - so adjust the cpacity accordingly relative to the space needed in the cyberarm. You can still have a finite number of mods per weapon, but I don't see why you couldn't put a shortened barrel on, silence it, add a dual clip system, smartgun it, and add electronic firing for example. Put simply: every two FULL points of change in "concealability", treat the weapon (for capacity ONLY) as one size larger or smaller as apropriate. That shoud be about as much flexibility as you need for most things. The hard thing is going to be for things like a Warhawk. I think that to balance it, I would decrease the ammunition by a certain amount to go up. Again, I think that the damage on things like the P93 Praetor should 4P/-2AP as opposed to the usual SMG 5P/-, and it would also go up in capacity - those rounds are SMALL. The Guardian is just essentially a major ROF modification. Slivergun could be ammunition.

Oh: Gyrojets. Bad idea. Every design I have seen has a ported barrel to bleed out the round's exhaust. Not something I see being compatible with being inside a cyberlimb, unfrtunately. And they may be rocket projectiles, but their diameter isn't much more than heavy pistol rounds; After the US Army demonstrated the viability of the Excaliber GPS-guided 155mm artillery round, the guidance package can go into a normal bullet if you can make it small enough, deleting one of the theoretical advantages of the Gyrojet, saying nothing of their minimum range problem. Just not worth it for the limited pay-back.

Auto-shotguns have a much more complicated loading mechanism, but that could be addressed with the normal weapon mods; the AS-7 is a good bit bulkier than a Mosberg. That doesn't matter in an external weapon, but internal it would, so you'd have to modify those base-line tubes and breeches the rules basically describe.

Make sense?

OK, unfortunately, lasers are going to be a no-go right off. Even in 4th ed, the weapons are depicted as being about the size of a bullpup assault rifle, and that's just too big to shoehorn into a cyberlimb. Keep in mind, a large part of what makes it possible to stuff in a cybergun in the first place is that you can COMPLETELY dispense with the external control hardware, stock, sights, all of it. Look at any individual firearm, and you will find an awful lot of space that has nothing to do with actually putting rounds downrange or reloading - either empty space or bulk to make the thing managable. A laser has to have most of the available space taken up with all kinds of things in order to be small enough to be man-portable. You need circuitry, the lasing chamber, optics, heat transfer and disposal (read: heatsinks), power conditioning, probably an on-board capacitor bank, charge controler, and so forth. All of that takes up SPACE. And even at that, the smallest of the laser weapons in 4th Ed only get ten shots on a fairly big power pack. The larger "support" weapon is getting to LMG proportions. So, how do you manage all that heat inside a cyberlimb? Individual bullets are pretty small for pistol (and smg) calibers, but that powerpack has to have a rather large minimum size on the power pack or it's going to be a single shot item. You probably COULD shoehorn all that stuff into a cyberleg, but... I don't think it's going to be at ALL concealable. Keep in mind, a cybergun can have caseless ammo, removing the need for a telltale ejection port, and a long metal tube isn't too out-of-place in a cyberarm for example. Sorry, I just say it can't be done. Now, by 2080 when they probably introduce a laser PISTOL (given how their miniturization an price reductions have kept pace since 1st ed) then I would say they have all the primary hurdles overcome to get one in, but in 4th Ed? No way. And 3rd Ed is even worse.


A troll is big, true, but a troll-scale cyberlimb is going to have to include more massive/powerful joints, structure, myomer, power supplies and so forth, so a lot of the extra space you might expect isn't really available. Also, the rounds themselves are bigger - a LOT bigger. Keep in mind the capacity requirements for that sawed off shotgun. The shortest (production) assault rifles I have seen have at LEAST a 14.5" / 37cm barrel; that doesn't include the receiver and bolt assemblies, nor any recoil distances required for operation. SMG's can get away with a 10" / 25cm barrel; 4.5" / 11.5cm may not seem like much, but comparing that to a forearm... you get the idea. I personally disagree with a shotgun managing to shoehorn in 10 internal rounds, but if it's a tube up the arm... no I still don' buy it. 12 guage shells are at least 2.75" / 7cm long; that would make 10 in the tube 27.5" / 70 cm long. That's not going to go. Three shots + one up the spout, sure. 10? Nuh uh. (Didn't it used to be a lot less in 1st/2nd ed?) Anyhow, I just don't see it happening, even for a troll, though there MIGHT be the length in a forearm to pull it off... but that's an awful lot of bits, Stahl.

As to drakes: sorry.

Runner's Companion, P. 75: Drakes, Augmentation

Drakes can accept any augmentation, but only in their human form. These implants do not carry over to their dracoform, but aren’t expelled by the body��"they simply disappear and their bonuses are not available while the character is in dracoform. There is no known augmentation currently available for dracoforms.

It's been forever since I had a character that actually packed a cybergun, but thanks for the ideas, because now I'm actually thinking about it.

That what you were hoping for?

This isn't strictly on-topic, but the best reason I can think of to have a cyberweapon is concealability. Now I know that it's possible to get a holdout pistol down to -19424 concealability, but there's one very frustrating problem with this; any millimeter wave detection system (cyberware scanner) needs only one hit to detect your weapon! Now, I suspect you could circumvent this with the weapons that turn into toiletry items, but A. why are you bringing your toiletries to work, wageslave 50046467? And B. you then need to unpack your toiletries and assemble your gun before any bang-bang. Now, on the other cyberhand, a deltaware implanted gun (or, I'd imagine, a gun implanted into a deltaware cyberlimb) requires 4 hits from a scanner the maximum rating of which is normally 6. Further, it's undetectable to a pat-down (I presume), and you can use ceramic-plasteel components (not that you'd even need to), and I'd imagine it's not hard to hermetically seal the ammo inside your arm, so deltaware implanted heavy pistol or even perhaps something bigger can be virtually indetectable and instantly available.

Thoughts?

Unfortunately, yes ._. You raise a few good points there . . which sadly pretty much take these ideas straight out of my hands <.<

Yep, good reason for cyberimplant-guns. Also, nice pun there ^^

What exactly you think that Ares Redline laser pistol is.

OK, i'll admit, i did overread that . .
Ares Redline is in HeavyPistol/SMG Size.
Then there's the Ares MP Laser, which i would put at Assault Rifle/LMG Size.
And the King of them all, the Ares Heavy MP Laser, which i would place at HMG/PAC/Gauss/Minigun Size.
Sadly, no such Sizes are really given anywhere, as far as i can tell from a quick skim over my copy of Arsenal.
In SR3, there were Pictures of these, but it seems they did not make it into SR4 for some reason.

Redline is mentioned to be a lightly larger then a standart heavy pistol in Cannon Companion.
MP Laser 3 is mentioned to be about size of a large assault rifle in Arsenal.

If someone has cyberspurs, what stops them from being arrested if they walk through an airport?

I presume (and this is unlikely by RAW) is that you'd need fake permits (for a Forbidden weapon mind you). The only way I could see that fly is if you SOMEHOW had a fake megacorporate SIN - i.e. for an extraterritorial entity - that permitted the use of such weapons for their (security?) staff.

- J.

1. Go to Lagos
2. ???
3. PROFIT!

Also, i mentioned disguising it as some kind of working laser did i not? O.o
You agree to NOT carry Batteries for that Thing with you on the plane.
Why should they bother you then? Why would anybody bother you, if you carry a gun on a plane if you can prove that there is no ammo to shoot out of it?
Also, the Screech thingie does not even deal real damage, if i remember correctly. so THAT is much more likely to be esxplainable.
But that one, i would not use in an Arm, that one i would disguise as serious voice cyber.
Also: Exchangeable Limbs ftw!

Great idea! Tell you what, just give me your account number and I'll split the proceeds with you 50/50.


Would you let someone on a plane with a welding torch?


Situation: you're on a plane, someone pulls out a gun. Do you:
A) Closely examine the firearm to determine if it is loaded, or
B) Panic?


"Well, officer, I need this riot-control weapon implanted in my throat because I live in a really rough neighborhood and sometimes I have to hold off a dozen gang-bangers with nothing more than my own chutzpah."


NOW you've finally got the right idea. If you're going to have horrifyingly illegal stuff in your cyberlimbs, and you want to be able to get into horrifyingly high-security areas, you pretty much need a modular limb so you can switch in a "clean" arm when need be. Remember that attribute enhancements are all perfectly legal, including optimization and even armor, so you can replace that cybergun with a nice +6 strength if you still need an ace in the hole (melee is better for sneaky jobs anyway, unarmed combat has a concealability of -infinity).

Hmm, the last time I recall seeing the weapon pictured, it was still very bulky; Yes, it may be capable of 1-hand firing, but it still was into the SMG "concealability" range because of overall size/shape. Now if there's a more recent picture (and I don't have a copy of CC handy to go back to) that shows it's gotten to REALLY heavy pistol size, about half of my objection will vanish. On the other hand, I stand by my comment about a power pack (What are you going to call that on the security scan, anyhow?) and more importantly, heat dissipation.

Now, if somebody like Ancient History who knows somebody that is Somebody or knows Somebody directy wants to pipe in and tell me the INTENTION was to have a Heavy Pistol class weapon in all respects, or maybe a smallish Machine Pistol, I will happily reconsider my objections (and probably buy one for my character - no ballistic evidence, don'cha know?), since to get that small, heat dissipation would HAVE to have been overcome (the lasing process and optics would have to generate less heat through MUCH greater efficiency) or you'd wind up burning the hand that wields it. Or did you WANT steam coming out of your cyberarm?

Yeah, that's pretty much it for all "F" items, the way I (and our table) read it. Basically, "F" means no PRIVATE "citizen" has legitimate need for the item under any circumstances... so the trick is to not be private.

Do I want to vent steam from my cyberarm after every shot? Hell yes I do!

If I wanted to be even more of a badass (and assuming I turned off sensation in the limb), could I press the superheated barrel/heat sink (whichever) into my opponents face, and give him a neat scar?

Where was that, i haven't been aple to find a picture of Redline from anywhere. I would say that a description of lightly larger then a standart heavy pistol means that it's not that big.

Yeah better have your SIN say that your a recistered bodyquard or something similar.

The problem with the "tool" explantion is that you'd just have an external power port, not a high-density PEAK-DISCHARGE capacitor pack. There's a WORLD of difference between a tool laser for cutting and welding and a weapon laser, James Bond to the contrary. To count as a cybergun, it's got to be able to fire from internal ammuniton like all the others. Hell, the eye tool laser from Augmented is enough to bring down an airliner if you're unsupervised and have a little time. And remember the power packs are pretty restricted (14F), too, so just bringing in the weapon without power is pretty pointless. In fact, if you're willing to try smuggling the power in separately, just go with a break-down version stowed in the RF-Shielded smuggling compartments of your troll-size cyberlegs.

Addressing something in another response: Bigger than normal heavy pistol roughly equals machine pistol, so if there is note of being HP/SMG size, that tells me it's usable one-hand due to balance, weight and so forth, but it's bulky enough to lose another two points of concealability. And if everybody agrees (as they seem to) that a LMG is roughly equivalent to a Squad Automatic Weapon in the US Army, then a "large assault rifle" is goint to be approaching the size of an LMG like I said.

The pain inducer is a fairly large weapon in the picture, about bulpup assault rifle class, and it has an internal power supply, not a replacable clip if you look it up in 4A. I would say that you couldn't use it as voice-ware unless you were willing to a) give up "normal" speech entirely, b) get a cybertorso and cyberskull and c) take your meals through a tube. It's not a big speaker, except in the crudest sense. Remember that your "voice" starts in your chest, and the vocal chords are what actually generate the vibrations we hear as your voice. From what I have seen, the technology for LRADs (Long Range Audio Device) are all based on fairly hefty (and LARGE) sound generators;In order to get it from crew-served (think 81mm mortar baseplate for size and weight) to rifle would require some serious advancements in several categories of materials science, but this is the 6^th World, so let's let that one go. MY problem is that even in the future, sound is sound, and if you generate it as something you can pass off as "voice 'ware", you're going to have to start with the "beam" firing vertically towards your skull though your windpipe, then wave-guide it through ninety degrees inside your mouth. Things like a tongue, teeth, and all those other pesky "eating" bits would REALLY get in the way. Now, if they got the thing down to say... Hold-out Pistol size, I would say you could get all the needed parts in the skull and fire from the back of the throat PAST the teeth and tongue, but then it's not really passing for "voice 'ware" any more.

On exchangable limbs, if you want something so large and exotic as some of the things I have wagged my finger at, it's absolutely, but now you're up to cyber-MOUNT weapons, and they're effectively external - think like (I can't believe I'm actually using this as a reference) RoboCop's machine-gun hand replacement with the stupid clip sticking out the side.

Anything I miss?

Oh, and you didn't comment at all on my suggested modification rules, Stahl.

OK, seriously? I recommend the internal SMG with the extended/dual clip option(s) and Hypervelocity. That way you can jack a pair of external 36-round clips into the thing, saw the joker in half and then press the white-hot barrel into the largest remaing piece and leave convincing evidence of your presence for the clean-up crew on aisle six. Why not have your initials put into the edge of the barrel as a raised detail to make CERTAIN they know who butchered the corpse?

Oh, wait... hypervelocity is AR and higher only. Oh, well, it was a neat idea.

(That's exasperated sarcasm, by the way, not nasty sarcasm. I thought your response was ammusing, and pretty in-line with Stahl's OP and usual commentary track.)

Was it just my imagination, or didn't they have all kinds of neat gadgets to disable cyberware, in the future? If your paperwork is in order, I don't see why you couldn't fly with your ware.

"Sir, I'm gonna have to ask you wear this bracelet for the duration of the flight to disable your implanted weaponry."
*click*
"Move along."

Gotta ask-- has anyone ever done Raptor Legs without some kind of blade or spur?

Second on the modular limbs advice; I envision someone keeping a couple duffels in the back of the Team Van with 'spares'.

As far as implanted firearms-- why not have a specific model of a type of one's choice adapted for a cyberlimb? A 'cyber pistol' doesn't sound nearly as cool as a 'H&K 9mm custom-modded to slot right into my forearm.'

OK, THAT i just forgot. Because, really, there wasn't much to comment . .
That's the case with most of your postings for me actually. I read them, then i RE-Read them and try to understand them.
And then i think about it, nod and think:"yeah, sounds about right . . should have thought about that myself"



There was something SIMILAR to this in SR3 at least . . but those very horribly expansive, restrictive and not very effective.



Do Climbing Claws fall in this category?

Also, if i wanted external mounts, i would SO go with Cyber-Legs. The only other Idea i had for Guns in Legs was a Shotgun in the Lower Leg so the Weapon can be fired out of the knee.
Would make for interesting Moments with japanese-Style sitting. Or with kicking someone with the knee. Or having someone on your lap

See, I was thinking that way, too, until Stahl actually made the OP, and I stopped to think about it. Even with gerer-o-weapons in 4th Ed, there's still a lot of detail variability. So why did they get so vague on implant weapons?

That's when it occured to me that an implant weapon, if you're allowing for the modifications rules from Arsenal, represent just the absolute bare-bones minimum parts necessary to make things work. For all intents and purposes, the core functional bits of most guns in any category are basically the same, and if you add the caveat that it has to be able to hide relatively well inside a (meta)human cyberlimb and still function. If you stop and think about it, most of the differences we all talk about between Gun A and Gun B are in the ancillary bits: magazine capacity, grip style, balance, sights, trigger feel, control ergonomics and so forth. NONE of those has a single thing to do with the CORE functionality of the weapon: putting rounds downrange. The only CORE diferences are going to be things like recoil compensation methods (the Browning action is going to be problematic inside a cyberlimb for example) and possible ammunition feed. From a GAME perspective, neither of those is especially important.

What it all boils down to is that in each rough "class" of weapon, there certain limitations on design from an engineering perspective that would constrain you to a maximum number of internal rounds for example, or barrel length and so on. If the ancilliary details don't matter for an internal gun, you don't need alternate stats. Then you mod it to mimic other weapons if you please. The exception, as I noted, would be alternate ammunition types, but that would have to either be a single table somewhere somebody came up with (I'd be willing, if people really want my take and ideas on the Crunchy Bits^TM) or you'd have to eyeball it one at a time as GM. Like I said: I have a problem with exactly how generic things have gotten in 4th Ed, and have been toying with the idea of working up tables for the individual weapons based on earlier printings (things like extra-compact light pistols or the P93 like I mentioned based on the IRL 5.7x28mm round which doesn't have the raw stopping power of a .40 S&W or .45 ACP against an unarmored target, but can penetrate a class III vest at 200 meters) but again, that's my own personal tastes.

Does that make sense?

Probably if one knows a bit about that stuff. I don't, so to me, it doesn't.
But don't let that stop you. You seem to know your stuff, i think you will be able to translate it to SR4 just fine.


Over in the german official Shadowrun Board Rasumichin suggested what we seem to be closing in on here too.
Make it a weapons modification.
he/she/it gave these stats for his/her/it's idea:

As far as implanting laser weapons goes, you could strip out the cooling and attempt to use the subject's own blood as a heatsink. Every shot fired would be one point of physical damage, unresisted. It would make an interesting choice - do you take the damage in exchange for possibly ruining someone else's day with a surprise shot from a chest mounted laser weapon?

Another option would be decorative cyber-fins on the back, that are actually used to radiate the excess heat. And make you an awesome target for people with thermal vision.

Um, no, actually that's the polar OPPOSITE of what I was suggesting. I was suggesting you add NORMAL weapon mods to the BASE cybergun to customize it, since the base listing is what all cyberguns of the "class" essentially have to be in order to work from the confines of a cyberlimb at all. Remember, the system is abstract enough that certain details that would make for different "models" on the market would be functionally identical in the game system. Modding the base gun isn't going to work because it's not formatted from the beginning to fit entirely inside a cyberlimb - period.

Put simply: use the cybergun listing as the base firearm and modify it to your heart's content or 6 slots, whichever comes first.

Incidentally I figured out how a shotgun could work for a 10-shot ammo feed, but it has to go THROUGH the elbow from the upper arm - that's a nightmare and I'm glad I don't have to engineer it, but it's possible it COULD work. On the other hand, look at the capacity requirements.


*shudders* OK, you're pulling my leg now, just to see if it comes off, right? I promise you, it doesn't. Do you have ANY idea just how damaging playing with blood temperature in spikes like that would be?! Forget "boxes of damage", raise blood temperature in a spike by say, three degrees celcius and it's "roll body against threshold 4 or die!" I can see where it's an interesting CONCEPT but it's a non-starter... though the fins could be added to the cyberlimb itself easily enough... but then why not just go external in the first place? You've eliminated the main point of a cybergun - concealability.

I cannot ever see an airline allowing weapons of any kind aboard a plane, unless it was carried by airline security (aka Air Marshal).

Extraterritoriality shouldn't matter, nor megacorp status of a passenger. Even if the airline is owned by a megacorp - you let one corp have weapons on a plane, and you start getting MAJOR pressure from the other megas to allow THEIR guards to have weapons, and it snowballs.

Not to say it'd be impossible to get one aboard either by sneaking it or paying off the right people, but I cannot see the public policy to ever, EVER, allow weapons aboard.

As registered, secured, locked cargo, sure. In the passenger compartment? Not happening.



Could go with a helical magazine. A tube mag would be too long, with 10 shells.


-karma

How big are YOUR forearms/bicepts? A shotgun shell is at LEAST 2.75" / 7cm long, so that means a helical magazine would have a diameter of at LEAST 6" / 15.25cm. Some shot shells are up to .75" longer than that, so add another 1.5" / 3.75cm to that unless you want them to be LIMITED to the short shells. And you still need to allow space in the arm for structure and synthetic musculature, meaning a helical magazine for shot shells is out anywhere but MAYBE a thigh... unless you want to allow an over-muscled troll to have a coffee can in their bicept, but then that's a HECK of a lot more than 10 shells, right? I'm mostly ok with the capacities given for everything there except the light pistol, which could be a couple higher perhaps, but the shotgun is way high IMHO. IIRC, it used to get like 2 shots or something equally reasonable (short tube in the forearm + 1 in the pipe) in older editions, if somebody (Chibu, I'm talking to you) has 2nd Ed handy.

In 3nd ed it's 10 shots, can't find cyber shotguns in any of the 1nd/2nd ed books, nor any other cyber guns for that matter(except cyber squirt).

Cyberguns appeared in the Street Samurai Catalog IIRC, but became "core" afterwards.

Hrm, ok, then i think i misread that somehow . .

I'd allow the blood thing in my game simply because it adds an interesting plot device.

The human body contains about 5.6 liters of blood. Raising blood temperature one degree C would take 23,430 joules of energy, which translates to a 23 kilowatt/second power use. Take some physical in exchange for lasing some guy on a last ditch effort? I'd allow it.

OK, seems like i will have to dig through my SR3 Books again.
Someone mentioned some obscure little rule that seemingly allowed to get any kind of equipment in a Form that can be built into cyberlimbs for 4x the original Price . .

Thanks i found it, 4 shots for shotgun in that.

THAT I can get behind: 1 in the tube and three in the tube, 9" will fit in a cyber-forearm. Thanks!

Not a drum magazine, a helical magazine.

Cartridges are arraigned in a spiral, allowing for extremely compact arrangement.

The Calico series is probably the best known real world example of a gun using helical mags.

Take a 12 ga shell, which is roughly .72" diameter. Even if we account for the internal spring winding mechanism, it's probably a cylinder no bigger than 10-11 inches in length, and a 2-3 inches in diameter.

Still bulky, but a little more manageable.

OK, I see what you're getting at now (thanks for the links). Based on the cutaway though, the magazine is almost six "diameters" in width, so call that 4.25" / 10.75cm in diameter... That looks like it would actually work, but it's still WAY too much for a lower arm, especially including feed, breech, bolt and barrel. In the upper arm (of a troll or really big orc) I can see it, but then you need to get the rounds through the elbow. OK, so not ENTIRELY undoable but still a nightmare. That's why I always think of the old 1st/2nd Ed magazine because it's simple enough to shoehorn in alongside the barrel.

In the street samurai catalog we have 12 shots for hold-outs, 10 for light pistols and machine-pistols, 8 for smg's, 6 for heavy pistols and 4 for shotguns (internal ammo for all).

In the 4th edition we have 2 shots for hold-outs, 12 for light pistols, machine-pistols and smg's, 10 for heavy pistols and 10 for shotguns.

Seems like technology really improved for the bigger weapons and unevolved for hold-outs, right?

THIS is why i would go with External-Weapon-Mounts for Legs ^^

Maybe make it a Trollarina with really beautifull cyber legs. Long or Mini-Skirts.
Working one of those Retro-Stuffer-Shacks serving customers in their cars.(get your mind out of the gutter)
With built in Roller-Skates or Hover-Discs under the feet.

(Thanks for the complete downloads, for those of us whose old books are in storage 4+ hours away)

My point exactly.

Might be caseless shells. Actually for an internal weapon I would bet that they all are designed for caseless ammo. That would make it a little easier since caseless is more compact.

Oh, and have a look at CP2020 and their Chrome Book series. You'll find all kinds of interesting cyber guns and weapons.

Boo! Half the fun of putting a stubber in your arm is watching shell casings coming out of your wrist. Bonus points for scorch marks around the spare orifice.

I was assuming caseless... caseless doesn't save so much space as some people seem to think. Shotgun shells are only a small amount (height wise) of powder/brass. Unless you were going to limit the thing to slugs only, you still have to come up with some kind of shround to keep the pellets together until they leave the barrel. That all takes space.

There are a couple major advantages to implanting a laser weapon, even if the base weapon is bulkier.

• A regular firearm has moving parts (heavy, high velocity moving parts), and so while you can dispense with the portions of the weapons that are there for ergonomics, the portions that are there to guide and restrain the moving parts must remain. A laser weapon doesn't have any moving parts, so it's parts can be attached directly to the structural members of the forearm.
• In a firearm, the shape of parts, and their relation to each other is fixed (or nearly). In a laser weapon they are not. Emitter placement is fixed, but everything else can be moved around for the best fit to the space. Parts can even be moved to the upper arm, which would be about impossible for a firearm. Even placing ammo there would be 'interesting' engineering, and conspicuous, and unreliable. Parts can also be replaced by ones with the same function, but a different shape (a long skinny circuit board instead of a fat one, 2 smaller capacitors replacing a larger one...).

This doesn't help with heat, but would help a great deal with bulk.

OK, from a purely structural engineering standpoint, you're completey correct that a laser system (with the exception of the terminal lasing and focusing components) can be completely dissociated with each other in terms of arangement.


OK, problem is - I touched this earlier - is that while a lot of the available space in a conventionl firearm is void or solid mass that serves secondary purposes, a laser weapon, in LARGE part due to your completely accurate observation above - is packed to the gills in every nook and cranny with something vital to the "core" operation: firing a weapon-grade laser. Changing the shape of a circuitboard isn't always a practical - or possible - option, depending on details of the engineering, unless you're willing/able to sacrifice some performance somewhere. Two smaller capacitors means you have to add MORE hardware to deal with load balancing. Everything's a tradeoff when you get into an operation like this.


Unless the Devs would be so kind as to toss up a scale picture of the laser "pistol" with something like a Manhunter for comparison, heat aside, I still believe that the total bulk of "core" components in a laser is going to functionally exceed the available capacity in a cyberlimb less than troll-scale, where even then I'd say it's a stretch. Now, there was a post a ways up now that talked about exactly how much heat you'd need to dump and the effects on the (meta)human body, but the total scale of heat buildup is going to be entirely based on the conversion efficiency of the lasing medium. Modern high-power lasers aren't actually that efficient, though that is changing. My problem is, despite twenty years of progress, Ares really hasn't progressed far enough to convince me they hit the Holy Grail.

My reasoning goes something like this: 2070's heavy ground warfare is probably going to be done by "heavy infantry" - troopers in powered compbat armor. Now, I'm not talking baby mecha or anything so rediculous, just advanced versions of what is described in Arsenal: Heavy military-grade full-body armor with powered assist to AGIlity and STRength. Those muscles take power. The sealed life-support system takes power. Sensors and on-board computers take power. Same for communications, jammers, and all the other things that would get shoehored into a suit of high-end military PCA. But in 2070, let's face it: power's easy. Sure, you may have a pretty short total duration in the field, say 24 hours in combat conditions, but you're going to run out of ammunition WAY faster than that. Ammunition is dangerous to transport, especially with a front-line resupply mission. But if you put the equivalent weight of ammunition as super-high-density peak-discharge capacitors in an armored box on the back where the chain gun's ammo canister was, you now have a tremendously large basic operating budget for power, and you could have a recoilless point-and-shoot light-speed weapon system whose only limit is how quickly you can resupply the troops with power. And power's easy, relatively speaking; think of a couple ammunition hauling grunts in special custom PCAs set up as giant copper-tops on legs. They're as mobile as the troops they're supporting, can reload with a single connection rather than havig to move containers both in the field and at the resupply point.

But with that being said, none of that has hit the field. That tells me Ares is still short of the point where a "laser rifle" is standard military issue. If ammunition based weapons are still the best possible choice, there's work to be done. Now, I WILL conceed that the technology has made some big strides since the 2050 Street Samurai Catalog, but they aren't there, yet. My bet is that the efficiency still isn't there yet on the primary lasing, and that heat remains a problem.

Anybody and everybody is free to disagree, of course, but that's my take on it. Should we see a new Redline Laser Pistol 2074! that will fit in a conventional holster, then I'll happily revisit the issue and sample a little rook with my hat... and take the MAGic hit and get a partial cyberlimb with one mounted inside.

Concerning heat, i got a little question:
How hot does a Heavy Pistol get when shot multiple times in fast succession?
How about an SMG? Or a Shotgun?

It's a valid question. Thirty rounds out of my personal Glock 22 in as many seconds and the slide is still touchable. An SMG is even hotter, presumably. But one of the biggest determinants of heat in automatic weapons is the method of operation. Direct gas impingement recoil operation (AR-15 family as a common example) actually taps gas from the outbound shot to work the action, putting the hottest gas back where you started. That makes things hot in a hurry, as in 212F+ with a single clip on full auto. Switching to a piston system leaves the breech and barrel cool enough to handle after several clips. Presumably, for an internal weapon, you're going to go with the most reliable (jams are going to SUCK inside a cyberlimb) and coolest. Oh, incidentally, direct impingement also fouls the breech faster.

*empty look* uhu @.@

Don't look at me in that tone of voice, you silly troll!

Short version: some guns get really hot while others stay cool for a long time, depending on how they reload themselves.

Oh, and thank you for the pics of the lasers. Having seen the pics from SR3, I now FIRMLY stand behind my earlier statements on lasers. The image of the Redline Pistol shows a weapon with about the same bulk as a good sized SMG just in a side view, but certain details suggest it's actually wider as well... think Super Soaker with the tank. That's not going to fit well in a limb at all. And the power pack's even larger than a standard clip, though it's possibly shorter in height, it's a lot wider, almost short Assault Rifle size (think 20-round M-16 from 'Nam). Sorry, folks, until the next gen of lasers shows up, I have to say they're not usable in a limb... yet. But they're definitely getting a lot closer.

See? that's how you have to talk to me about this kind of thing. THAT i actually understood ^^
So, basically, an internal gun had better be Caseless and pass Gas out the Front of the barrel for a nice big muzzle flash?
I can live with that. Style is important after all ^^
Also, if the Ares Redline is about SMG Size and i can get an SMG implanted, then why NOT the Redline?
External clip port would not have to accomodate the complete flash pack, only a cable that can lead the power into the weapon from outside.
Granted, you lose the biggest advantage of built in guns, the concealability, with that, but you gain a bit more practicality.
further more, i'd say that the internal reservoir of a Laser-Gun does not have to fit as many loads as the usual Power Pack.
After the first shot, the disguise/shock/surprise moment is usually over anyway . . hmm, now i imagine a runner running around with a kind of adapter.
Put one end into the Arm, put one end into a wall power outlet and shoot people dead *snickers* Yes, i know, Wall-Socket-Current ain't gonna cut it.
But it's a funny thought ^^

Problem is, the external packs are as forbidden as the weapons themselves. And sure, you could go with a two or three shot internal capacitor to save room, but that was a condition I stipulated back when lasers first came up way up the thread. On the other hand, you COULD put a bigish pack in an upper arm to feed the lower... but keep in mind: when they say "implanted SMG" they're deleting all stock, all casing worth mentioning, everything but the barrel, breech, bolt and whatever's handling ammunition feed and storage. That means that a weapon the SIZE of an SMG that's packed solid with light-weight but bulky bits is going to take up FAR more room in a cyberlimb, even allowing for the distribution of parts all over creation.
Caseless has nothing to do with if the weapon heats up or not, actually. The advantages are basically two: you can get more ammunition into the same relative space in the magazine. How much more? That's an interesting question. If we're talking a bullet with lots of lead and not so much brass by comparison (Say, .45 ACP), then going caseless is going to have a LOT less impact than on an assault rifle round where most of the length/width is actually brass. The second advantage, and it's a big one from an engineering and reliability standpoint, is that you don't need to worry about dealing with a spent casing in ANY way and can afford to eliminate an ejection port AND could in theory make the breech backwards air/watertight. That helps tremendously with things like sand, mud and other environmental contaminants. You'd want to go with a recoil system that has NO additional breech fouling (Electronic Firing as described, whatever the actual methods used to achieve the effect comes to mind especially strongly). Make sense?

enough for me, thank you, again ^^

So, I was thinking, without turning yourself into a cyber-zombie, I believe that you could work out with your GM having a laser pistol in you cyber-arm if you also had a cyber-torso which would handle all the dissipating heat. (perhaps having a small built-in refrigerator like the ones used to coll beer).
Just a thought.