Compare to 1700s, 1800s.

Heh, just noticed that Red Dot Sight has no mention of being incompatible with Laser Sight, meaning you can use those 2 to get +2 dicepool bnus for shooting, negating the need for a smartlink

Well. On one hand, that's kinda what it does today, right? On the other hand, *sigh*.

Does it say it's incompatible with scopes or smartlink?

That's interesting. It makes all those guns with innate laser sights better. Smartlinks are still nice for the sensor channel(s), but you have to weigh that with the hoop you have to jump to make it unhackable. I'm not sure how I feel about it overall till I get a better look.

Edit- I miss Raygun. He'll be an interesting addition to this discussion

Let's just assume it's an error. Smartlinks are better anyway.

You can't combine sights to get the benefits of both. Same way you can't use laser sight with a smartgun system.

You could use DU for smaller bullets, like, say, rifle bullets and it would have the same effect as a tungsten bullet, with the added feature that DU can set fuel tanks on fire if hitting properly.
And really, if are going to use DU to make bullets, it is cheaper use it on bigger bullets and tungsten or other REALLY-REALLY-HEAVY metal on smaller bullets.

Only way i can interpret that "interesting" is as "popcorn, anyone?"...

I'm confused
what's the difference between Red Dot Targeting, and Laser sight?

Not a whole heck of a lot.

It's only tipped with Depleted Uranium, not completely made of it (Expensive bullet!), so the additional charge wouldn't be that much. Probably not even much more than the "+P" (Overpressure ammunition) made today which can be used by weapons safely as long as they're in good condition. (And if you're using a weapon in bad condition, you deserve to lose a few fingers. Take care of your gear, people!).

Honestly, they probably have the same stats as APDS without the discarding sabot nature, or are, quite possibly, the Anti-Vehicular ammo already referenced. (Which would make sense, as they'd "over-penetrate biological targets", or just make a little hole in the person rather than "Small hole in front, BIG hole in back", in other words.).
IIRC, Fuel tanks, usually, are made of a non-sparking metal (Well, on Civilian Vehicles they are. Amour Plate, I'm not so sure on.). Of course, you can solve that problem by adding in a few tracers with those DU Rounds.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm... I know there's Steel-jacketed rounds, how about Titanium-jacketed Rounds?

I mean, why are they different? Laser sight, shoots a red laser at where the gun is aiming, showing you with a little red dot.

How is that different than this new Red Dot Sight?>

A Laser Sight shoots out a laser that hits a target and puts a little red light on it where the weapon has been sighted in on. This is obvious to the target if he spots it, and smoke will allow someone to trace the laser back to it's source.

A Red Dot Sight is a small piece of glass (Or something else, Transparent Aluminum anyone?) that has a Red Dot superimposed on it where the weapon is sighted in on. It is not hitting anything but the glass, and cannot be seen by anyone unless they're looking right at the weapon itself from the front or back.

Rules wise in Shadowrun, no difference. Fluff and intelligence wise, a lot. From my understanding, red dots have supplanted laser sights for a lot of modern equipped forces, but laser sights might be funneling down to second-rate (But still capable of maintaining high-tech equipment) forces. And, of course, Civilians. That said, a lot of folks still swear by (Or at) Iron Sights.

A laser sight projects a (red) laser dot onto the target. Anybody (including the target) can see this dot. In a dusty or misty environment the laser beam itself can become visible through scattering.

A red dot sight (aka aimpoint) is just an optic with an internally projected aiming dot or reticle. Nothing is projected to the outside and only the user of the sight sees the red dot.

No, the reason you don't get a benefit from both laser sight and smartlink is that the rules say you don't.

Transparex, heretic.

And there we have the advantage of the smartlink versus the laser sight/red dot sight combo: the smartlink doesn't warn the target. If that combo is even legal, which I would rule it not to be because putting a red dot where your sight puts a red dot is kinda redundant and adds no new information.

"Laser sight" is a laser projecting a red (or green, or infrared) dot on the target (or above or below it, depending on the range). "Red dot sight" a diode projecting a red (or green) dot on a sight.

At long range, you lose the benefit of a laser sight because the dot is too far away to be seen (unless using magnification at the same time, of course). Also, if the enemy is using night vision equipment (or is a metahuman...), the laser sight becomes a flashy beam telling where you are and what you're aiming at (or the other way round). Red dot sight, on the other hand cannot be used in all firing positions (though some people would tell you they work in all 'correct' firing positions), and lacks the cool, movie-style, intimidating factor.

By the rules, it's still going to provide +X to your shooting dice pool.

EDIT: aw, too slow.

Well you can make the second dot green or some other color too

That reminds me what I wanted to do, make up stats for an Infrared Laser Sight for Dwarves and Trolls (And folks that have had their eyes done.). Be a fairly niche market, but a profitable one, I bet.

I don't know about niche, considering you can get those IRL and we don't even have any people with that kind of vision without using goggles.

IIRC, Steel-jacketed bullets are actually relatively soft because a) you don't want to have excessive wear on the barrel and b) essentially you want the rifling of the barrel to cause the bullet to spin thus aiding it in ballistic flight. If the bullet is to hard it wouldn't spin correctly (see pre-rifled guns) and/or would shred the barrel due to excessive wear and tear. I imagine misfires would be even more problematic.

DU rounds or Tungsten Rounds are typically used as the penetrator of large anti-vehicular weaponry (20mm+). I'm not sure that it would be possible to scale down DU to anti-personnel purposes (or even that it would be advantageous). Factor in the health concerns about DU and tungsten ammo and I'm not sure that DU should be included outside of vehicular weaponry ( GAU-8 Avenger Chain Guns for example). Assault Cannons would be the other likely candidate.

I always assumed you could buy your laser sight with any reasonable frequency off the shelf. Damn, I have an SR3 character who has UV view in his ZeissEyes just because he always uses this light for this laser sight.

OK, that makes even better sense then.

Actually, the Vampir system developed during WWII comes to mind. It was a IR Sniper System for nighttime shooting.

What? Yes it does.

They come with a laser range finder for reason. Thats because it works exactly like a laser sight, but also has a camera.

Excpt there's really no reason what so ever for the laser range finder to use a visible spectrum.

Visible is such an optional phrase with cybernetics...

I seem to recall a sniper scope that used laser to calculate compensation for wind.

In a world with Smartlinks, there is little actual use for either red dot sights or laser sights.

All three put a dot, from the user's point of view, onto the target.

Only the Smartlink can inherently use this information in a networked data-rich manner, whereas the other two are... dots. That's it.




-k

On the flipside, Smartguns can now be hacked. Before, they were major cybernetic implants (Or goofy-looking goggles connected by a cable.).

My Accountant From Hell refuses to use them due to this liability.

It's pretty trivial to hackproof them, your characters' little eccentricities aside. If you don't want the tacnet/etc. features, it's even more secure.

True, but it's a nice touch to the character. And he's more than a little eccentric.

Trivial? Maybe. Good if you're a Hacker, have a Hacker in your crew, or one as a Contact. Otherwise, not so much. Hard to keep up to date if you don't have the skills and interests to keep them up-to-date, unless, of course you're trusting legit programs. (Poor fools!). Skinlink (Ick!) and Datacable (Also in this book, thank you!!!) are good alternatives.

Skinlink is a given, but of course fiber cables have been always been available in the core book (though not priced: it's 5¥/m in Unwired). But how could you ever have a team without a hacker?

Anyway… the point is that no character should have to avoid smartlink for practical reasons. Worst case, you run it as a direct, closed loop from gun to eyes/trodes. I guess you could avoid it because you're a luddite, though, or suffer simsense vertigo or something.

The information on Smartgun Links and Datacables are in Gun Heaven.

He had a Smartgun hacked when the first wireless ones came out, and it was the first time he tried using one. He's had an aversion to them ever since, and is a very stubborn man in a lot of ways. (To be fair, that's how a wageslave of an accountant like him lived through an assassination attempt.).

I understand that this book has something about smartguns and datacables. I'm saying that SR4 has *always* had the option of fiber links for *all* electronics, so unless these datacables are something different, they're not new.

So we're arguing about agreeing. Gotcha.

Just as any cyberware if you're extremly stupid and actually allow wireless on it (even if you feel that having your gun jerk through the room by propelling it with recoil due to you firing it remotely, route that through your - decently secured commlink). I never understood where the advantages of wireless items in a PAN are. All the PAN needs is one bottleneck that does the communicating for them. Which, btw, rules out the renraku type 78b, nominee for 'crappiest gun accessoire ever'.


A laser rangefinder in *some* spectrum, yes, but not in one where you have totake into account that it's supposed to actually be visible. Far IR would suffice there.


Well, the text says:
So it basically is a dedicated smartlink cable that, for being dedicated, costs ten times what an ordinary smartlink cable should cost (it's possibly the brand name Smartlink, which should be copyrighted to Ares, going by SR1 fluff).

I can buy "loose" Cat5 Cable by the foot for a lot cheaper than I can buy a LAN Cable, which is the same damn thing but has the connectors on each end.

That, and being marketed as a "dedicated Smartlink Fiber Optic Cable" are the only explanations I have though. *shrug* Then again, I personally think much of Unwired is kinda, well, crap, and not well thought out in places. *shrug* Of course, I have severe issues with hackers, the way wireless is set up, and that whole thing anyway.

Bull

I agree with everything here. Especially the part with how wireless is set up.

As written it does not make much sense, but it could easily be explained as the "dedicated" cable being tougher than a standard FO cable, with dust-proof plugs and capable of being used as a lanyard.

RE Tungsten rounds for small arms, the US Army actually did develop both 7.62 and 5.56 mm rounds with a Tungsten Carbide core...although apparently these rounds don't see much use, or have been decommissioned altogether.

I find myself wondering if someone misunderstood the rules regarding the "additional clip" modification...

I would kill for some additional laser weapons.

Probably because there isn't much in the way of OpForces that the US Army faces that use body armor. Or even really decent armoured vehicles.

From my understanding at least. Again, never been to the sandbox, someone confirm or deny, or cannot confirm or deny and state so?
Ares is killing many test subjects in Africa to bring you just such items! But before they're ready to be put to market, we must ensure that they are of the highest quality and safety for the user, as to be expected from something marked with the Ares Arms logo!

Ares Arms: Because your life is worth the protection we can provide through our products!

Trivial. According to Unhinged you just need an agent and encrypt. Then have it run for several days ahead of time and hard encrypt your PAN. Now each extended test has a time of 1 day. Good luck hacking that in combat.

You cannot hard encrypt communication channels.

It's not possible.

Noted. Thank you.

You can hard encrypt files, and file systems. Which is a bitch, and I don't understand why everyone wouldn't be doing it

Really, all secured commlinks and nexii should have hard-encrypted file systems. But that stuff.. shouldn't work that way.

Hard Encryption should only slow you down if you're trying to access the files 'offline'

If you're IN the Commlink, and have a seemingly legit account, then the system should auto-decrypt it for you. Because noone is going to require you to enter a passphrase everytime your OS tries to edit a system log. That's just not viable.

I would argue that Strong Encryption is really for specific files, that have been individually encrypted to be even more obnoxious. (like Password protected files)

OK, back to the Gun Nuttery, as we're in a topic that I'm fully entrenched in (Even if everyone wants me to shut up. ).

What new or vintage firearm has you drooling over?

For some reason, the Ares Canadian Sportster Rifle seems to speak to me. I'm thinking I'll get it for Pup the Dog Shaman for his Devil Rat/Demon Rat and Cat Hunting expeditions to get meat for his cooking experiments.

And, of course, I now have stats for a Colt M1911A1. (OK, it's the M1991, but it's not like there's much difference in stats!). I think China will finally have stopped knocking off the Browning M1900 and started knocking off these by the 2050s at least.

Not drooling, but the G36 is a nice touch for an aging merc of mine, and my vigilante/militiaman will love all the old-fashioned all-american guns.


Seriously? Those guns from China (excuse me, the 'former Chinese communist regime') look more like they'Re ripping off Manga these days. No offense to the artist, it's technically sound and all, but ... maybe guns ought to look a tad more ergonomic?

Also, there actually are more sensible Chinese weapons from older fluff. Like the Tan Tien Louh Fu (stats like Samopal vz/88V) and Tan Tien Paau (stats like Ares Predator I) from Predator&Prey.

IIRC Norinco has been producing 1911s since the 80s. Pretty much exact copies of the Colt M1911A1, from what I've read.

Well the M1991 using a .45 ACP in a 5" barrel is highly important to me for a couple of reasons. It is a solid round size through which other pistols built on the M1911 frame can be extrapolated and the damage of 5P and AP -1 provides me with a basis for further vintage handguns or rather updates for 2070's use. For instance now I know that a hi cap version of a 1911 frame firing a .460 Rowland (Case length is longer so you don't accidentally load it in a regular .45 ACP handgun since it might send the slide flying directly at your face at high velocity. The width or standard measure for caliber actually remains the same), would reasonably and accurately do damage of 6P and AP -1 or somewhere in that range. Essentially the power of a .44 magnum revolver round fired from a M1911 gun frame, simply awesome. Combined with a 14 round magazine and we are one happy gunslinger.