Exactly Supressive fire is the best way. As you ignore all modifiers Seeing as Surpressive fire is widely used in real life combat I dont see why in SR itwouldn't be used as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQYp9fOJ9VI explosive ammo in use. Granted that is a drum weapon, not an assault rifle, but you get the point.

Since th OP so foundly remembers his army days, heres: http://www.army.mil/-news/2009/11/10/30147...n-for-soldiers/

Also I was in the army myself. And when I was in training at Ft. Benning, GA we used the M16-A2. A great all around ass kicking weapon. Using standard ammo we were on the firing range when all of a sudden the gunnery instructors were yelling cease fire and a dude 2 foxholes down was screaming. We were doing 3 round bursts and his 1st round jammed. The 2nd round attempted to load and fire resulting in both bullets detonating in the chamber. He had the casing from one of the cartridges stuck in the jaw strap of his kevlar where it burned into his cheek. No ammo fired from any weapon is 100% safe. After he was carted off we reloaded and resumed the excercise. Shit happens. He crit glitched.

Ok, so you've been in the army and seen that happen once. I never saw anything like it. Bottom line is, it happens VERY rarely.

With SR exploding ammo, with 2 dice it happens 20% of the time, with 4 dice 5% of the time, with 6 dice 1.5% of the time.

Even with the Anniversary rules where target cover goes to the defender's roll, you're still going to be seeing those dice pools often.

Someone with agi 4, skill 5, a smartlink and 4 points of RC, that's a very skilled operater with good equipment. Firing short bursts from cover at long range, he's looking at a 6 dice and a 4 dice roll on each pass. Even under these very good circumstances, he's looking at a round blowing up in his face roughly every 90 rounds. And these are pretty much firing range conditions, no visibility or wound modifiers.

So, tell me, if your firing instructor had that accident happen every 3rd clip, how quickly do you think he would drop the explosive ammo? And if the people he was instructing had a dice pool just 2 lower than him, they'd have misfires every 8th burst, that's more than each clip.

How do those statistics compare to your army experience? Is explosive ammo perhaps a tad more volatile than regular ammo?


And I'd still like to know how a user can experience an explosive misfire that causes the same damage as a direct hit from the weapon, without the weapon breaking. The idea that the weapon could go unscathed through it is as far fetched as saying that the rules doesn't say anything about a grenade getting used up when you throw it, so you can reuse it like a throwing knife.

According to you, it should be happening every waking moment. Critical glitches being, you know, SO common.


How exactly does exploding ammo critically glitch more than any other ammo?


See above.


....and again.

..well Hell, Slot shooting when you've only got two dice to try to hit. Why would you do that?

And people do indeed find a lot of very interesting things to be of acceptable risk for the benefits provided that other folks wouldn't. If Runners weren't the kind of people who took to high risk for better benefit things, they wouldn't be running.

Some gunbunny with a 16 dice pool will only very rarely see a crit glitch, sure. But mere professionals will see them regularly.



Exploding ammo blows up when you crit glitch, unlike normal ammo.

If you're in combat, not shooting generally isn't a very good option...

And as I said in the OP, some types might not care about the risk or even think it was somehow cool, but you'd never see any sort of professional organization use something like it, and neither would people shooting for recreative purposes, so no real market for the ammo would exist, even if liability issues wouldn't keep anyone from producing and selling it. It seems to be a home made or underground produced ammo type used by psychos - which leaves room for some runners using it.

And yet, still, exploding ammo doesn't glitch any more than any other ammunition, weapon, or roll does. Go figure.


I'm guessing you never bothered to read the actual rules about critical glitches. Exploding ammunition just has a predetermined effect when it occurs. All critical glitches can cause injury or threaten your life. "Critical glitches are far worse than regular glitches — they may cause serious injury or even threaten the character’s life. The gamemaster decides the nature of the glitch based on dramatic effect. Perhaps the character’s gun misfired or she hit a comrade with friendly fire, or her spell backfired."

It says critical glitches may cause serious injury - explosive ammo always does.

The examples even quote a misfire, which just means you shouldn't shoot for a short while (and if you disregard procedure and will risk the ejected round cooking off, it is as simple as just having to operate the charging handle before you can resume shooting), and someone climbing a fence getting entangled on top.

If you're throwing 2 dice and have rare, forbidden ammo in your piece, you must be just completing a massive sequence of horrible decisions.

Seriously, you have earned that kaboom.

Exactly. And if we assume that military, law enforcement and corpsec don't purchase ammo as the result of a massive sequence of horrible decisions, the result is that their troops don't have explosive ammo.

Not for their grunts as standard issue, hell no. In drones/vehicle weapons and in the hands of marksmen, yeah, they'd have access. In fact, I generally don't see runners using Ex-Ex except in special roles, like snipers. It's too expensive to just piss away on full-auto.

After all, a marksman knows what he's doing, and a drone is disposable. As for vehicles, like fighter jets, they need all the HEIAP-related goodness they can get to make every hit count.

In RL, I've seen two fifty cals. explode. One in Korea where the feed tray cover blew off, hit the firer in the helmet, and flew about 20 yards downrange. The other in Germany where it basically the same thing happened but it missed the firer and flew back at the tower. It happens, but it's rare.

In game, I've seen about that many critical gliches and I've been gaming far longer than I've been in the Army.

To answer one of the OP's questions I would definately use it. If it takes people down better than what I'm using I don't care if it shoots the charging handle back into my face with every round, I want my opponent down asap. Hell if it does the charging handle thing I'd just wear a facemask ala Army of Two.

Which means you'll never be responsible for purchases anywhere, don't you think.

In the swiss army we were drilled to operate the charging handle in case of a misfire as the first response. What's the procedure you were taught?

What exactly is your point here? That because Explosive ammo has an inherent danger (Which they do, even though the chance is small) that organizations that use large amounts of ammo will not use it? I suppose their is some logic in that, but I am not certain how it is relevant to the existence of Explosive ammo. There are a lot of different types of ammo available that the military (etc) does not regularly use.

See you have yet to prove (or even evidence) your basic premise. First of all a 6th world military might use explosive ammo even though a real world one might not. Why? Because the megacorps have a different value of human life than what you are assuming exists in the real world. But even this is irrelevant to your argument, because no where is it mentioned that a 6th world military IS using explosive ammo or ever has. That is an assumption that YOU have made. So if you wish to convince me that you have any point whatsoever please offer some evidence that your premise has any bearing.


As to your original questions:

Who would you explosive ammo? Well the obvious answer is Shadowrunners. Please note the name of the game.

Who would make it? Anyone trying to make some Nuyen. Please note that BTL's are far more dangerous, just as illegal and they are still made is mass quantities. Heck there are even a number of in-game indications that several megacorps produce and sell BTL's, so why not explosive ammo?

To backtrack a bit, you have about a 16% chance of rolling a 1 with only one die, meaing you have a 16% at a critical glitch with a single die. But you're saying that your odds of getting a critical glitch increase with two dice? Even though 33% of the time you do roll a 1 on one die (16%) you still score a hit with the other, negating it as a critical glitch? I'm not a math wiz by any measure of the term, but I don't think that's a 20% chance of happening. Closer to 10%, I'd wager.

Also, even though you continue to ignore it (which isn't a surprise), Exploding and EX-Explosive Rounds do not have any kind of increased chance of critical glitching. At all. The only thing they have is a predetermined effect when a critical glitch occurs; an effect that can occur with any other type of ammunition, weapon, or action in the game. The only difference is that the GM doesn't have to determine what that effect is when dealing with Explosive Rounds.

What's more, the effect isn't life threatening in the least. Say you're using Explosive Rounds in your HK-227. If, on the very rare chance, you do manage to critical glitch and you have already used up all your Edge, you roll a Damage Resistance Tests against 5P. You get all your armor to boot. So let's say you are just a regular military grunt. You have a Body or 4-5 (since you're not average Joe Blow courtesy of basic training) and are wearing Camouflage Suit (Ballistic 8). That means you're rolling 12-13 dice, averaging about 4 hits. So oh no, you just took one or maybe two (if using an assault rifle instead) boxes of damage with a very real chance of ignoring it completely.

Which happens maybe 10% of the time if, for some ridiculous reason, you're still squeezing off impossible shots despite how clearly your chances of success are. "Be sure to waste your ammo at every conceivable moment. No matter how much of a longshot you have, just keep squeezing that trigger." That's the first thing you learn in the military, yes?

I'm not going to be making mass purchases because I'm a grunt not an officer, not because of my choice in ammo. What I was stating was my personal opinion and I stand by it. I don't care if my weapon has a chance of falling apart or critically failing (it already has said chance), if the ammo is almost always going to reduce the enemy into a fine red mist, I'll use it. You know why? A dead opponent can't shoot me and that's what matters to me.

I believe that'll be the same line you get from people who have access to that kind of ammo. It get's the job done and that's the most important thing.

This question seems very well resolved by the facts we've accumulated:

Critical glitches are rare, period.
*All* ammo is dangerous on a critical glitch.
EX-Ex's critical glitch is not fatally dangerous.
Cover is not a factor.
Smart characters in the game wouldn't take impossible shots all the time.
Edge is available when they do.
Suppressive Fire is the safe, effective alternative.

Apparently in the Army, that is how things are done... at least according to Smokeskin anyways...
In the Marine Corps, you are taught to not just throw rounds down range willy nilly... you do not have an infinite supply of ammunition after all...

Keep the Faith

I can't remember how we did it in the army, it has been 12 years since I left. I only remember how to handle malfunctions. But a misfire is something different, the round is chambered correctly and struck but the weapon doesn't fire. You might have a partial discharge with the bullet lodged in the barrel, and operating the charging handle and firing you'll have your weapon blow up, so I highly doubt you've been taught to just operate the charging handle (at least not without inspecting the ejected round). You might also have a delayed firing, which means if you just eject the round it'll go off outside the weapon and could injure someone.

If I had a misfire, I'd point the weapon somewhere safe for a while in case there's a delayed firing, then eject and inspect the round (and the barrel unless I saw a bullet still in the ejected round). But if this comes from the army or hunting, I honestly can't remember.

I wish this board had points to give out. This Sir is a great post. Clean, concise and succinct.

A++ would read again.

BlueMax

The simplest way to convince yourself of this is to draw out a 6x6 grid with the possible roll combinations. These 7 rolls are critical glitches:

1,1 2,1 3,1 4,1
1,2
1,3
1,4

7/36 is roughly 20%.





Yeah. You're supposed to return fire. Even if you don't hit, you're keeping their heads down. Besides, at 2 dice you have 55.5% chance of getting at least 1 hit, and a defender with rea 4 has 20% chance of getting no hits. That's better than 10% chance of hitting, that's good enough odds in combat.

And at 4 and even at 6 dice, you're going the see crit glitches regularly.

Yes. It is. It would be the smart option when you don't have a chance in hell of hitting and all you would be doing is pissing away your ammo. You are on a -team- I am -quite- certain someone will have something with splash damage, or a spirit, or a -drone- that can get a -much- better shot than the one you're talking about. No one in their right mind would take this shot.

Secondly, you are severely under estimating the amount of people who are willing to risk a very minor chance that something might go wrong for much more effective ammunition. We are -not- talking about a fringe group, and we -are- talking about professionals, and people who shoot for recreation. Go look at some of the warning labels on your medications and electronics around the house. Even just over the counter pain killers. Here, I'll help:

Aspirin:
. Check with your doctor if any of these most COMMON side effects persist or become bothersome when using Aspirin:

Heartburn; nausea; upset stomach.

Seek medical attention right away if any of these SEVERE side effects occur when using Aspirin:

Severe allergic reactions (rash; hives; itching; difficulty breathing; tightness in the chest; swelling of the mouth, face, lips, or tongue); black or bloody stools; confusion; diarrhea; dizziness; drowsiness; hearing loss; ringing in the ears; severe or persistent stomach pain; unusual bruising; vomiting.


(Whats that? Taking aspirin can cause internal hemorrhaging, among other things? Why would people use this??)

Caffeine:
http://www.drugs.com/sfx/caffeine-side-effects.html

(Seizures? Isn't this crap in most of our drinks?)

Curling Iron:
..For external use only.
Do not use in shower
Risk of burning
Risk of death by electrocution

(Who would -do- that? Apparently some people! Enough that they had to put warning labels on about it...)

Just saying.

I'm sure that the people shooting at you will be very willing to delay the fight while you carefully consider how to handle this situation and methodically examine your weapon and ammo....

However I suggest the acronym SPORTS might refresh you memory about what you were actually taught.

Do you think that probability theory is right in predicting that at 4 dice you have 5% risk of crit glitch, and 1.5% at 6 dice?
Looking at common modifiers (-2 for being in cover, -3 for long range, wound, recoil and visibility modifiers) and the size of dice pools for most military and security professionals, will rolling less than 7 dice be common for them?

If you answered yes to the above, those organizations would often see their troops getting wounded. For assault rifle wielders, this is a 7DV -2AP hit. It can't be fatal per the rules, but someone taking up to 7 boxes must be considered a pretty serious injury (and at body 3 and even armor 8, about 2.5% of the incidents will give the guy 0 hits), don't you think? Even the expected 4 boxes of damage isn't trivial. Even if the troops didn't mind it, you'd still be looking at med evac, recovery time and medical bills.

It just seems to me there's no way that something like that would be accepted. And at that rate of operator injury, there'd be liability from the manufacturer.

Grunts don't have edge, so that won't save them. The only thing that could maybe make it acceptable was if the GM ruled that pretty much all crit glitches with any sort of ammo caused the weapon to blow up, which is clearly not what was intended with the crit glitch rules.

I'd really like to know where you think the above is wrong - math, size of dice pools for NPCs, willingness for organizations to suffer frequent injuries from unstable ammo.

Except for Explosive Rounds, of course. Because Explosive Rounds don't cause weapons to explode on a critical glitch.

2.5% *of* 1.5% is plenty rare enough for me. It's an abstract game mechanic.

I'm happy to load up my AR with 100 round drums of Ex-Ex rolling 10-12 dice before negatives. Yet to have the eat my face or such.

Actually its an HMG/sniper round.

Being Danish I didn't really know what SPORTS was, but that was easy to google.

I also digged up the Army and Marine Corps M4 operators manual at http://fliiby.com/file/34639/sl3w698eae.html. On page 115 it describes a partial discharge misfire and says

WARNING

DO NOT APPLY IMMEDIATE ACTION


(emphasis is not mine)

You're supposed to inspect the barrel visually and/or with a cleaning rod according to that.

I think you're mistaking a misfire for a malfunction.

Of course it is unfortunate that stuff like that happens while you're under fire, but doing something that will blow up your weapon in your face won't help anything. Of course, missing the signs of a misfire in the heat of battle and just falling back on the SPORTS that's in muscle memory, that's another thing, messing up like that could easily happen.

The part I'm not sure about is whether or not we cared about delayed discharges in the army, or if that's just a hunting thing. Maybe there's even a difference between combat and training here.

But a partial discharge, even if you're under fire, you don't just apply SPORTS.

That's what we were taught: rack the slide to eject the misfired round and get a new round in, and shoot again.

Sorry, I don't believe that. kzt was in the military too iirc from his previous posts, and he also thought you just did that, but the US army and marine corps manuals says otherwise, as I posted above.

Can you access a training manual and check? A misfire is different and MUCH rarer than a weapon malfunction, and it is catastrophic to reload and fire the weapon if you've had partial discharge with a bullet stuck in the bore. I guess that's why people only remember about malfunctions. I was a qualified firing instructor in the army, and I'm still using a rifle for hunting, maybe that's why I remember it (and with bolt-action rifles, you don't really get malfunctions).

Once again... Just sayin.

Misfire = round does not get off at all, I think. Dud round. Not partial discharge or such. Maybe I am not using the english terms properly.

I get misfires with most cheap crappy training ammo about 1-2 per thousand. I have never had one with the cheap soviet surplus ammo I mostly shoot, it's just nasty corrosive stuff.

Squib rounds are ugly, but very rare. Most are reloads where someone forgot the powder and then didn't weight the rounds when done. About as common are double loads, where someone puts in twice the powder and also fails to weight the round. With a squib you have the chance to realize that the recoil and report was wrong and not shoot the next round, but you might not notice when involved in combat or a fast-moving exercise.

Modern guns are designed so that is unlikely you'll be seriously injured by either, though it will typically trash your gun - whether it's a pistol or rifle. On a really bad day you can get killed by either.

Milspec ammo from any reputable military supplier is extremely reliable. The US military has detailed specs on what it has to do to be accepted, so a lot of the "Lake City" ammo for sale commercially is ammo that failed the QC in some minor way. It passed critical checks like the weight test and overall length tests (the two things that are most likely to result in a kaboom), but isn't perfect.

Sheez. As I said, it was over 12 years ago, I don't remember every detail of it. Do you remember everything you did 12 years ago?

And I don't know what you think a firing instructor is. It's not necessarily some weapon expert. It pretty much just means you're qualified to supervise and instruct recruits on the firing range.

Since you know what you're talking about, I'd be really interested on hearing your thoughts on:

1) if a misfire injures the operator (and per the rules it is at the same DV as the weapon's), could you see any way that the weapon would function after that?

2) could you imagine the military using ammo that blew up as often as explosive ammo does in SR (5% of the time at 4 dice, 1.5% of the time at 6 dice)?

Apparently it is someone who tries to speak authoritatively about something they admittedly do not remember!



And you have yet to address what in the world those two subjects have to do with the likelyhood of explosive ammunition existing. In real life or in the game. You seem to be stuck on the military use when that was not the question you asked. Plenty of answers have been given and you ignore them all trying to prove that ammo not approved by a military would never exist, even though it clearly does.

Aye, when a user does something wrong (critically glitches) it damages him.
And there is a common item IRL that acts exactly the same (arguably even much worse) - it's called a Hand Grenade.
Are you telling us the military isnt using them ? Because you know, critical glitches can happen when throwing them.

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=11351
This covers the crit glitch and glitch chances. Even dice pools are evil at low amounts of dice. I though I should post this to end the bickering over how common they are.

Some things I feel certain about, and I speak about them with confidence. Other things, like details of what types of misfires was handled in what way, I don't remember exactly, and I believe I've been clear on that when posting about it. It sound's like you're confusing the two.

Could you please point out where I've spoken authoratively about somehing I don't remember?



The first came up because some people are saying the weapon doesn't get damaged by the explosive misfire. Whether it does or not is quite relevant to the downside of explosive ammo.

The second, I'm asking kzt specifically about the military because of his experience. He pretty much already said it, but I think it would be beneficial to the discussion if someone else with experience in these matters could give their opinion.

I also think you need to read my OP again. I specifically argue that it seems unrealistic for a real market or production to exist, and maybe it is some sort of home made ammo type. Many people seem to think the military would gladly use such volatile ammunition that often damages the user, which to me demonstrates they don't understand the reliability demands of the military (at least the western ones).

No, the rules specifically state that it may damage him. Examples given are misfire (typically no damage), friendly fire, spell backfires (damage if combat spell), accidentally setting off alarm (no damage), getting stuck on a fence (no damage).

If the first and last examples had been gun explodes and falls of fence and breaks leg, you'd be on to something. But by the rules and examples, regular ammo crit glitching doesn't have to damage the user.

I already did. And your memory or lack there of always seems to conveniently suit your argument.



Umm I did read your OP. And it has been shown that explosive ammo does exist in the real world and has been used by military forces. So your argument is pointless. A real market and production does exist. You are wrong and have no point. Case closed. Oh and shall we start an argument about the reliability demands of the military and there regards to human life? If you do I will start out with the V-22 Osprey and the 5000+ deaths of US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The explosive ammo in use today doesn't have reliability issues. My beef isn't with explosive ammo as such, my beef is with the military and others using ammo that frequently explode in the user's face.

As I have mentioned numerous times before and you have ignored, you have yet to evidence that they do so.

Edit: They being military. As for others, well numerous reasons and examples have been given there too.

Why all this concern and hubbub over exploding explosive ammo, and no wailing and gnashing of teeth over regular-ammo critical glitches? When those happen -- right there, as per the rules -- one GM option is for your fire to hit a friendly. That would be at least as bad as a round exploding and wounding the shooter, right?

So what makes you think corporate and national military procurement officers are going to crunch the numbers on the likelihood of explosive ammo hurting their own (while ignoring the extra damage that explosive ammo causes the enemy), without similarly crunching the numbers on the likelihood of other critical glitch effects, and just taking guns away from soldiers before someone gets hurt?

No. Pieces of the gun have flow out and whacked some guy in the face. The gun isn't going to go bang again before the missing pieces get replaced. If ever.

No, military explosives are required to only go bang when you plan them to go bang. They are considerably safer then a lot of conventional explosives because the military operates where bullets hit explosives, things catch fire and similar unfortunate events happen fairly commonly. Conventional dynamite, the kind made with nitroglycerin, isn't allowed by the US military in combat areas because it isn't safe enough.

So I can't see any military putting into service anything like that. If nothing else the lack of stability means that it has huge mass detonation potential.

Have you ever been in a combat zone? Ever?

Believe me when I tell you that in the above case, you do exactly what Fuchs mentioned... you eject and move along... stopping to "visually inspect your barrrel and ejected round" as you so eloquently put it, is a good way for you to be inspecting an enemy round in the face... you eject and fire...

Training and Combat are two completely different scenarios... in training, yes, you might just do what you suggest, but you would never do so in actual combat...

That being said, I have had weapons blow up in my face (a hunting rifle once did this due to a weakened sideplate which derstroyed the receiver)... it is not generally as catastrophic as you indicate... on occassion, you MAY hear about the one person who died from it, but it is in the VAST minority here... most people that this happens to get a face, or arm, full of shrapnel, and it is easily treated...

Keep the Faith