In theory, a runner who had access to all the proper materials (casing, gunpowder, bullet, and primer) could make his own bullets. Why would you want to do this?

The simple answer would be to eliminate muzzle flash.

Muzzle flash occurs because there is still unburned gunpowder when a bullet leaves the barrel. Since ammunition isn't tailored to the specific weapon, the will almost always be gunpowder left over to burn. With the proper knowledge and tools, one could conceivably measure the amount of gunpowder necessary to burn all gunpowder before the bullet leave the barrel, thus creating 0 muzzle flash.

Has anyone had players seek to make their own ammunition? How would you rule on someone wanting to make their own ammunition?

Don't know about SR4/SR4A since I still play SR3, but Cannon Companion has pretty extensive rules for Build/Repair as applied to ammunition.

If Arsenal doesn't contain those, the CC one's can probably be adapted.

I would allow it as flavor only, to much hassle to figure out special effects plus I'm not sure that you could realibly measure the gunpowder to eliminate muzzle flash anyways without reducing the DV.

I'd probably give them a break on costs though...

And you could also let them build special ammo, for a very specific cause. Or when some guy has some distinct style he could shoot people with silver bullets (wait... you can buy those normaly??? dammit) umm i mean Molybdenum or something. Or maybe create a bullet specially designed to go through an specific armor for an assassination. Or you could fill capsule-ammo with custom chemicals, not kiddy stuff like Neurostun *g*.

Also it helps the character identifying with his work and his eqipment. (It is always more awesome to use YOUR modded weapon and shoot YOUR ammo).

I can see a lot of use for capsule-ammo filled with insectisides. And so can everyone else that survived Bug City.

I've often toyed with the idea of giving firearms an accuracy rating. This number would either limit the number of dice provided by the character's skill, or provide a cap on the number of hits like force does for magic. Probably the former, even though nothing else in the system works that way.

The point of this would be that a shooter is held back by his weapon, but a good weapon-smith can improve accuracy. Now, this kind of rule is only worthwhile if your group has gun nuts in it, who enjoy this sort of thing, so I've never had need of it.

That said, custom loaded ammunition can be tailored to a specific firearm, the perfect grain count being different for any giving weapon, even of the same model. Using custom ammunition would, in that regard, improve the weapons accuracy.

Just as an aside, my character plus a character from another player (who is a role playing and GMing god) managed to completely weird out and sicken a character who'd survived Bug City (and nuked it).

Took us two sessions.

(Not squick the player, squick the character--we were just that violent and crazy, I'm sure everyone's heard the story of the mage we interrogated using only a hammer, a tent stake, and a blow torch)

The only thing this is usefull for is getting specialty ammo.
Capsule-Amo with HMHVV in them. Or APDS Ammo.
Or something else like that. For everything else where you do NOT need special Ammo?
Just go out and buy the stuff.

I was impressed until you mentioned the blowtorch. C'mon, who can't intimidate someone with a blowtorch? Heck, give me any 1 of the items from that list and I can do a credible job. It works better when you say things like "We interrogated the mage using some jellybeans, a bobblehead, and last week's tv guide..."

Hm... my old gang used a broken broomstick. Let's just say i as a GM was sickened, disgusted and was pleading for his life (It was a Johnson, who did not told them everything and did not pay because they scewed up... i mean... he had a FAMILY for gods sake and just began his carrer as a Johnson, fresh and nice)

But back on topic:

If you have a sniper-job for example and you know that the Target will be 350 meters away, it will be windy and he will wear armored clothing of the "Eversafe tm"-line. You could compute the best form, powder load and material for the job and press it yourself. All you need is a good ballistic engineering program and your armorer shop. I as a GM would easily allow that bullet to give a slight bonus when fired under the exact specified conditions. (So it could be a APDS round which also gives +1 to damage, because you knew exactly when the armor will be penetrated and how much energy you need to use for that)

Or if you have a high-caliber weapon you could always try to make a armor breaking bullet, with an explosive core, with a complex mechanism for a trigger. This bullet would be too expensive to really sell to normal people and has no other applcation then to kill heavy armored soft targets - so they would be insanely illegal, but of much use for shadowrunners.

In Real Life, shooters hand-load for several reasons.
One, as mentioned, custom, high-quality loads that increase the effective range-- lower quality loads (mainly, the bullet itself) tend to tumble and become less effective, and go off-target sooner. So I could see high-quality custom loads nudging the range up just a little.

Another major reason is cost. It costs less to hand-load your cartridges. Again, in real life, shooters will clean up any center-fire brass at a range so that they might not have to purchase that expensive metal over again, or sell it to someone who does do reloads. Its like the recycling deposit for soda bottles, but more of a voluntary enlightened self-interest reasoning. So, for standard rounds of ammunition, hand-loading should reduce the cost of each by at least 10% perhaps as much as 25%, keeping in mind the reloader has to purchase replacement primers, powder, and bullets. Now, to get that discount, the shooter (and his or her chummers) need to scavenge spent brass from their shooting sites. While in some places, that is something a group should do anyway as site cleanup. This is rather hard to do on a street battle, though, when the characters need to leave ten minutes ago, and Star, Corp Security, Gangers, or all three are on their tail.

A convenient device to make this easier is a brass-catcher. A (usually smallish) container that attaches to the ejection port of the firearm contains the spent brass, preventing it from being lost (or found by the wrong people). It should take at least a complex action to attach/remove to a firearm, and likely impose a slight penalty to shooting after a couple magazines or so. Revolvers, of course, cannot have this addition; on the other hand, one can fairly easily catch the ejected brass from the cylinder and stuff it in one's pocket. Also note that brass catchers will make it difficult or impossible to hide firearms, look outright ridiculous on smaller pistols, and prevent the use of holsters, especially concealed ones.

Hope these rambling thoughts help!

I forgot to mention (this time) that the only thing Stray (the character) did was pound the tent stake into the floor. The blowtorch was there, visibly, for "things I can escalate to." The mage committed suicide (cranial bomb with the trigger in a fake tooth) before Stray got very far. IIRC, we did get some useful info out of the guy, just not as much as we wanted.

I've always thought that someone with a credible amount of equipment (probably at least a shop) should be able to make homemade APDS ammo. Other than that, and the aforementioned custom chemicals in capsule bullets, I don't think there'd be a whole lot of reasons why making custom ammo would be beneficial in Shadowrun.

OP has it right and wrong... yes reason you get flash is unburnt powder when the round leaves the barrel.

But that extra energy is being used the entire length of the barrel. If you stop early... your bullet isn't getting as much of a push early or near the end. If the barrel is too long, it starts to slow the bullet back down by friction before it leaves the barrel. (this is a problem w/ pistols w/ fast burn type powders and long barrels).


In much the same way as subsonic loads give DV-1....
I'd give flash-reduced loads an AP+1 penalty.


It's a house rule in the first part to eliminate the flash.
IMO: there's other significant benefits already... trouble tracing the rounds when police/corpsec come to investigate the scene. Lower ammo costs (I'd probably half the price of handloads). I'd also increase the 'bad stuff' which happens on glitches though. (refired brass is more likely to bust open, jam, or otherwise damage you or the gun).

Speaking of glitches, you could have the GM roll dice based on how many successes you got on making the ammo to determine if a glitch happened. You got 5 hits on your re-casing roll? GM rolls 5 dice every time you fire, if he gets 3 1's you glitched the attack and something bad happens.

Admittedly it adds more dice to the table, but it would be mechanically appropriate.

Why would you make faulty ammo, and then not realize that and use it? If you see you cannot recycle it properly... wouldn't you discard it and buy new ones? Just let him recyle X% of the crap and done, no need to roll tons of dice. (But yes, of course he could make crap, even from exquisit materials and not know it) But that's why you have armorer and logic high, or not? *g*)

And most of the time you'll be getting enough hits on your rolls that the probability that one of the shots is bad is exceedingly low.

Disfunctional ammo is given to those you owe debt to, or if you've just really cheezed off the Fixer, or you're doing it wholesale for a Corporation's Stockpile.

I can see a Shadowrun where you'd have to replace "MegaBlaster Ammo" from Ares with a low-power alternative that causes the bullet to jam in the barrel almost every time.

Just watch that on a full-auto weapon! Oooooooooooooooo... Blown up Ares Alpha, nasty!

That all looses relevance if you're talking about caseless ammo. I'm sure those are harder to make, but all you'd need is a good mold (one that hold the desired bullet while forming the propelant block on the end) and the raw materials. Rapid prototyping takes care of the mold pretty easily...
Once the technology was embraced by handloaders (which I'd expect it would be) it seems like it would open the door for all kinds of crazy wildcat rounds, since there would be no need to collect, cut, and shape any brass. That being the case, its likely any gun that uses a really odd caliber / shell size combo (as you'd expect with certain custom guns) would be caseless.



If you screw up your skill roll bad enough, its an indication you missed the flaws in the material / made mistakes you didn't notice. Ask any mechanic, they can tell you what happens when they pull a brain fart (or when somebody unskilled tried the job); lots of times its the sort of problem you don't notice until it causes real trouble in use.

Unburned powder (AKA Muzzle flash) contributes nothing to the velocity of the bullet. It is wasted energy.

Internal ballistics is a fascinating subject.

It's like backfires in (on?) cars. Unburned fuel exiting the muffle suddenly igniting. Better measuring in the fuel injection system means it doesn't happen.

In order to prevent things like Muzzle Flare, you'd have to know the gun being used perfectly!

Tightness of breech, length of barrel, and a few other lovelies that I don't know because I never took ballistics and failed physics.

So, maybe I'm entirely wrong as well. Why do I even post?

Well... Um...

GO BLACK DEVILS!

That's why he was talking about a shadowrunner making his own ammo. If anyone's going to know his weapon down to the fifth decimal place, it's going to be someone whose life and livelihood depend on exactly that level of knowledge and familiarity with weapons.

You are correct, but the reason for muzzle flash is due to the fact that it's one size fits all ammunition. Since manufacturers of ammunition make rounds to fit multiple weapons, it is impossible for the manufacturer to prevent muzzle flash. Basically, in order to make sure the bullet leaves the barrel at maximum velocity on all weapons, they make sure there's more than enough powder in the casing to do that. You don't have that issue if you're hand-loading because you know precisely what weapon will be using that round, so you can tailor the round to that weapon.

There's two ways to increase the exit velocity of a bullet. The first is by increasing the time which the bullet is under the pressure generated by the burning powder. Basically increasing barrel length. This generally causes a linear growth in velocity, so there is a limit to how much you can increase velocity this way. You can see the increase in velocity by just looking at the barrel length modification in Arsenal, increasing the barrel length increases range increments. I think they may have their numbers off a bit on the modification, but since it gives a 10% range increase, that would mean that the barrel length increases by ~10%, which also leads me to believe that the concealment penalty might also be inappropriate as well. The second way to increase the exit velocity of the bullet is to increase the diameter of the bullet, but those bullets also have more drag from air resistance.

You can see how these two have an effect on muzzle velocity, compare the M82 Barrett Rifle (29" barrel, 12.5mm round) with the M2 (Ma Deuce) Machine Gun (45" barrel, 12.5mm round). The M82 has a muzzle velocity of 853m/s and the M2 has a muzzle velocity of 887.1m/s, an increase of about 34m/s. As I said, increasing the barrel length only gives a linear increase in muzzle velocity, which isn't much in this case. If I remember my rounds correctly, the M82 and the M2 can fire the exact same rounds, I don't think you need to alter the round at all. If the round is manufactured to burn all power on the M82, the bullet will not reach maximum velocity in the M2, and in fact will take more drag in the barrel, lowering the velocity overall. On the other hand, if the rounds were manufactured so the M2 did not have muzzle flash, then the M82 would always produce a muzzle flash.

Now if we compare the M82 to the M40 Sniper rifle (24" barrel, 7.62mm round), you have a muzzle velocity of 853m/s on the M82, while the M40 only has a muzzle velocity of 777m/s, an increase of nearly 76m/s. While the barrel lengths on the M82 and M40 aren't identical, 5" difference, it's no where near the difference of the M82 and M2 which was 16" that produced a 34m/s increase. Because barrel length is a linear increase in muzzle velocity, we could offhand say that the velocity increase of the M82 over the M40 is about 11m/s, leaving a 65m/s increase in velocity just by increasing round size by 4.88mm. I know the numbers aren't accurate, but it's pretty easy to tell that increase the bullet diameter has a much bigger impact on muzzle velocity than barrel length.

As an aside, the 16"/50s on the Iowa battleships had 410mm shells and the barrel was 20m long. It had a muzzle velocity of about 762m/s (less than the M2, M82, and the M40), but it had a range of 38km, give or take a few meters due the sheer momentum, while the M82 only has a maximum range of about 3.5km.

Sure, creating the sabot is going to be easy, but working with the kinds of materials that usually go into the penetrator of DS ammo are not the easiest things to work in the world. We're talking about extremely dens and very hard materials. I don't know that it would be worth the time. If I WAS tempted to go that far, why not design APFSDS ammunition? All you would need to do, since you're doing some extremly difficult small scale forging and milling anyhow, is add a precisely engineered slip ring to allow the sabot to travel down the barrel without engagin the rifling. The British did it with their 120mm tank cannon on the Challenger II, going with rifling in the barrel itself but choosingthe superior capabilities of a fin-stabilized penetrator.

Oh, and if you think most penetrators are DU (Depleted Uranium) silver bullets, think again. Try Tungsten Carbide and other similar alloys. Now if you COULD get your hands on DU, and you took the simple but highly necessary precautions needed to work with the stuff, then you could make your own AV rounds, I would say. (DU against wearable soft armors is a waste, just like with AV ammo.)


It is. But if you're concerned about muzzle flash, do what assassins the world over have done for years: get a good silencer. Even if you don't intentionally go with subsonic ammunition, you've reduced both your aural and visual signature.

Or you could just experiment. A dozen bullets with properly scaled powder quantity should tell you all you need to know about the gun.

Or jam up your gun nicely with a bullet stuck in the barrel.

Measure twice, shoot once. Just like my shop teacher taught me.

...

No, that was the Gunsmith friend of my Father, sorry.

Ok, true story here:

During the First Great Depression, a Pole was visiting their family in the United States and working as a laborer to make money to take home in Brooklyn NY. His name was ... let's call him Victor. He was working for a moderately well-to-do woman (especially for the late 30s) named Helen. He was doing some carpentry and he came into the house very dejected with his shoulders slumped and said (in Polish of course):

"Helen, already twice I've cut the board, and still it's too short."

To which Helen, knowing Victor wasn't the sharpest stylus in the box, replied in Polish:

"Wonderful, Victor! Now why don't you cut it a THIRD time and shove it up yout ***!"

Now, of course, Victor MEANT he had cut two SEPARATE boards too short, but that's not what he said...

Actually I have found making my own ammunition very useful. Its not the armorer skill on its own, its mixing that with other skills. I have higher logic then even the hacker because more of my skills need it. Armorer, Chemistry, Demolitions, hardware, biotech group, there is quite a bit. So when I started getting more cash to invest in my armory business with our smuggler face acting as delivery boy/negotiator one of the first things I thought was "how can I combine these skills". The first type of ammunition I made was with the chemistry skill by creating cryo rounds. Basically they were the capsule rounds but customized to hold less while doing more damage and having a special casing to protect the quick freezing chemical inside. Not many people have armor designed to withstand cold damage and it actually sold pretty well (dice roll by gm +/- modifiers) because of a recent spike in hell hound attacks (which was somewhat caused by us to boost sales). Second were of course incendiary rounds which my group used more because catching someone on fire tends to take them out of the fight for at least one round as they run around trying to put themselves out. The screamers were a personal favorite. Ammunition customized with a terrible noise generator that activated after it stuck to something. Like stick n shocks but with sound and an AoE. Put a few of those down field and without a lot of sound protection was a good non lethal way and was pretty cheap since it tended to only take a burst or 3 to put down a good area of guards. The smaller ones meant for normal guns were kind of limited which is why I later made larger ones for grenade launchers. My GM still hates those because there aren't many ways to defend against sound and even with a good sustained silence spell our Astral Hazing street sam would clear the way for me. He still found ways to challenge us, he just had to be a lot more creative about it.