SR street equivalent of a charging Buffalo = Maxed Body and Strength Troll with Toughness, Dermal Sheathing 3 and Titanium Bone Lacing and 2 Cyberlimbs, determined to rearrange your anatomy by the most painful means possible,

Canonically, a Troll only needs Body at Modified Limit, 11(12), and 2 points of Armor from whatever source, to be as tough as a rhinoceros. Getting the same Strength is possible, but only through an extreme amount of twinkage. Of course canonically a Troll cannot possibly be more than a fraction of the weight of a rhino, with averages being 225kg vs 1500kg (for a black rhino, ~2500kg and up up up for whites and Indian rhinos). I'd rather take on the Troll, however.

There's not much data circling around the net on the terminal ballistics of the really big calibers, probably because they are generally considered "lethal enough". Still, I'd like to see a gelatin block that has been visited by an expanding .50BMG at 3000fps. Just have to make sure the block is big enough that the temporary cavity doesn't get bigger than the block = Gelatin splattered all over the place.

so as a SR gun then, maybe something more like 10D vehicle.

10 cause it aint gonna peirce military armour on vehicles, but if it can hurt you it'll make you dead really fast.

maybe even a lower power number to reflect it's lower velocity...

as comparison, 16-18D for .50 cal sniper rifle, high penetration good killing power. 10DV for 4-bore, good penetration really good killing power.

they are for different types of situations, the 4 Bore is more like a giant shotgun firing slugs than it is a rifle in use, stopping charging huge animals at close range. versus shooting at range at unaware targets.

-Mike R.

Why vehicle damage? Even Assault Cannons don't do vehicle damage without specialty ammo. And if you're running an otherwise canon game, weapons resembling our .50BMG rifles would do 14D (as per Barrett M121).

I'd put it at 12D. With non-expanding ammo, I bet it would penetrate body armor "adequately". And Power does not represent penetration in Shadowrun anyway, not to mention that the 4-bore would certainly penetrate body armor better than a .338 Lapua, which is probably about the power level the designers were thinking with the Ranger Arms SM-3 and its 14S Damage Code.

For my own game, that'd probably be... 16D/-4 with FMJs? Compared to 14D/-10 for .50BMG. Insignificant difference for most intents and purposes, but meh.

The 4-bore wouldn't need to penetrate the body armor. The blunt trauma alone would probably kill you if it hit you in the torso.

Well then just use rubber bullets. Less messy.

I keep wanting it to be vehicle damage because of the damage staging factor, if it starts at vehicle damage it has to stage down by 4 dice to get to Serious, this would make it harder to stage out of the deadly land... even if the shot was placed quickly in bad conditions. it's more to show the stopping power of the weapon under difficult circumstances than it is anything else.

and as far as mechanics for canon shadowrun goes, power == penetration vs. armour. as well as how hard it is to get successes to stage. so I was thinking lower power higher base damage code to make it easier to make a kill shot under poor conditions versus lightly armoured opponents (like cape buffalo) who may have a lot of body dice. so more damage to stage to begin with is more accurate way wo represent what this gun is for than a higher power...

is this making sense? i am not trying to say it is really a gun to use on vehicles, just that it has that sort of base damage.

as for Assault Cannons and special rounds for vehicle damage, we're talking about a gun that has custom ammo anyway, so that is not a big deal.

-Mike R.

PS maybe we should take this to it's own thread, as there are other big bore guns that exist today that it would be nice to write up for TSS...

Remember it is now quite possible to head shot with a tank gun. A head shot from 10 klicks away anyone?

Fahr, I'm pretty sure you're mixing vehicle and Naval damage. Different beasts by far.

~J

I'm not going to convince you. so here is my thinking.

the example assault cannon you gave was 20D for a 20x83mm APDS
after some converting the gun in question is 24.4x107.95mm soid lead slug

while it's speed was considerably less and is defenitely not APDS
1400fps vs 2360fps

So i see your point, an Assault Cannon should do more.

I was trying to model it a little different than the way raygun is approaching things.

what I don't understand is, why does the assault cannon raygun is referencing not already do Vehicle damage, it was after all an anti-aircraft gun casing to begin with, defenitely anti vehicle. so why doesn't this shell show that?

I am not trying to say that I know more than raygun (I certainly don't), or even that he is wrong, I am trying to understand WHY that shell has a 20D regualr instead of something with a vehicle damage code.

from a canon game mechanics perspective I would expect this gun to do the following:
1) kill metas dead and hurt them even if armoured from the impact if nothing else. if it can stop a charging elephant it should be able to stop any meta.
2) armored vehicles would stop this round (low velocity lead slug)
3) more powerful than sport rifles comperable in killing power to sniper rifle with much shorter range.

to me 10D vehicle matches that better than 20D regular or 14D regular.
If it needed further adjustment I would take the power down more, but I truly believe that this should be in the anti-vehicle damage level. I also think rayguns ammo should have been base anti-vehicle too.

these are of course only my opinions, and this will be my last post on the matter as we have dragged this thread far enough off topic as is.

-Mike R.

PS. I don't have my R3 book near enough to look up the difference, I don't think that this should be LN damage, I think it is Vehicle Deadly. that is if I ma remebering the scale correctly
L(reg)->M(reg)L(veh)->S(reg)M(veh)->D(reg)S(veh)->D(veh)->LN->MN->SN->DN
yes?

Nope, there's no vehicle damage scale, just the quirk of vehicle armor ratings (halving non-AV Powers and acting hardened).

Edit: and the fact that non-AV weapons get their damage levels dropped by one. I guess that's the bit confusing you.

~J

yep. that would be what is confusing me. as AV weapon Deadly is different than just Deadly. I always asumed that meant that AV Deadly was one level higher than regualr deadly, and LN was one higher than that.

my bad. amazing how one can play a game wrong for years, even after re-reading the rules.

-Mike R.

That clears things up a bit...

And the reason why I think Raygun doesn't consider 20x83mm APDS rounds "Anti-Vehicular" is that the higher (or less low) Damage Level against vehicles shouldn't be a consequence of better penetration, but of greater damage dealt to vehicles.

So the APDS simply halves (vehicle) armor, but doesn't cause any more damage to the vehicle, which makes sense. The HEAP, however, causes far more damage to the vehicle itself -- thus AV.

well all I can say now, is that when my assumption and understanding is wrong to begin with, then everything else falls too... Oh well, you win some you lose some...

but hey, now I understand the damage codes better so some good came of it.

-Mike R.