Ok. When you shoot at a wall, and deal enough damage to "meet" its structure rating, you do a meter square hole.
Simple enough, right?

What happens if I shoot at it, and deal like, half the structure rating in damage? Do I still punch a hole, if smaller?

Most importantly, how does shooting a chain would work? My GM said I had to deplete its structure rating, despite meaning that I would have made a one meter square "hole" in the chain link. I claimed that since the chain was much smaller, much less damage was needed to break it.

How would you guys handle a gunner shooting a chain?

PS: you get one cool point if you guess the gun that was used for that.

Whatever your GM said was right.

As you said, the barrier rules are intended for makign holes in walls and whatnot, not shooting chains in two. Thus it is a GM call. If you think it unreasonable, ask the GM what kind a gun would be necessary to shoot such a chain in twain, and how hard it would be to hit it correctly. If he think it can't really be shot apart with a heavy pistol, get a monochainsaw or miniwelder. Something has to work.

If you just continue arguing you're just gonna piss off the GM anyway, and probably the other players as well. Let him make the decision.

I haven't read the rules for barriers for a while, but I believe the Structure Rating for materials is per 10 cm thickness. If your chain is 10 cm thick, you need to do that many boxes of damage to make a hole. A chain would be maybe 1/5 that amount, I think.

That said, LurkerOutThere has it right.

I don't use the barrier rules for shooting chains or locks. I use this: a handgun won't work (it could work if loaded with APDS), a shotgun will, an assault rifle will cut a hole.

As for damaging half the structure rating, for me, it depends on the material: a bulletproof glass will be dented yet not breached while a concrete wall will have a hole (and probably a few cracks too).

I think that depends on what you are attempting from the start. If you are attempting to make a 1m hole and only do half the damage, then you'll have a weakened wall. If you're only attempting a .5m hole and do half the damage for a 1m hole, then you have a .5m hole.



Personally I'd be inclined to say you just need to beat the barrier rating for the chain to be able to break it, and here is why. When firing through a material to hit someone on the other side, you only have to break through the barrier rating to make the bullet pass through and hit the person. You don't have to do any structural damage at all. This indicates that beating barrier rating is enough to put a (bullet sized) hole through something. So unless the chain you're dealing with could still operate with a bullet sized hole in it, just beating the barrier rating should work. If you're talking some massive industrial type chain that is 6 inches thick or something, then yeah, I could understand calling for the '1m hole'.

Chain?
Chain-Link-Fence?
Be smart, don't care about the Fence itself, destroy the things holding up the fence.
Simple enough. Take out one or two of the posts, you can simply walk over 2 to 3m of chain link fence which is now more or less on the ground.

I would still require the Structure Rating to be exceeded, but I might lower it and the Armor rating based on the fact that a chain is not a solid object.

A similar thing came up in my group (when I actually got to be a player!) and we were investigating catacombs. I had to cut through a portcullis, which like a chain isn't a solid surface, but rather a bunch of little surfaces. He hadn't expected us to cut through it, so we discussed it. The answer we came up with was that the Armor Rating stayed the same, and he halved the Structure Rating.

So let's build a scenario:
--Let's pretend your solid chain (Industrial, not a little bike chain) is treated as Reinforced Material. Armor Rating 8, Structure Rating 9. Due to the gauge of the chain, we say it actually only has 2 points of Structure Rating.
--Our shooter has a Skill of 5, Agility of 5, and all the modifiers (Smart link, wounds, lighting, cover, taking aim) give us a net of +2. (12 Dice)

The Shooter rolls 12 dice and gets 5 hits. Those 5 Hits add to the base DV for bullets against barriers of 2 (SR4A, p. 166) giving us a DV of 7. The Chain rolls Armor + Armor (16 Dice) to resist the damage and gets 4 hits. The 3 points of damage are enough to snap the chain. If the Chain had rolled 6 hits, the chain would take 1 box of damage but not snap -- providing the cinematic chain link which is broken and stretching but hasn't given out yet.

Well, I should read the book more often.

A quick reading told me the following:
A chain link is suggested to be armor 6 and structure 7.

If I read the book right, I have to deal 7 damage to break a chain link.

Oh, and for those that think that APDS works better, it doesn't. Barrier's armor ignore armor penetration when you shoot to destroy it.

Evilness - The stats you grabbed are for a Chain Link fence. Depending on the type of chain, the Armor and Structure may change (an Oil Tanker's anchor chain would be massive). Hope it helps!

Of course, these stats are only suggestions.

Hammerli 620S.