Which is why I want a Assault Carbine class.

The 7.62mm round is more likely to be a 5.45mm round, however. AKS-74U equivalent.

The simple solution for that is to move 'Carbines' back into the Assault Rifle category, easy. They may need to be tagged with 'Barrel Reduction' mods and/or 'Use SMG Ranges', and so on. This also solves the skill category issue ('why is it a different skill to fire the AK-97 Carbine?'). No need to get too fancy. Why would you need a whole new class? There are already too many classes.

Heck, there's even a MP5 sized gun that shoot 7,62NATO rounds, but do you really want one of those in a game, considering it pretty much makes all other SMG:S pointless with all assault and battle rifles to boot.

*shrug* Presumably there are tradeoffs. If nothing else, it could just be illegal or rare. I'd kind of like it if SMG and pistol ammo were easy to get (esp. in quantities), while PDW and rifle ammo were much more strictly controlled (and more expensive, I guess?). I don't know anything about guns, but that seems reasonable, and it contributes to solving that problem, right?

Rule of thumb is the a pistol is the gun you have when you are not expecting trouble. A long gun of some sort is what you have when you are expecting trouble and don't care if people see you are armed.

It's a lot harder to carry around a 6+ pound rifle than a pound and half service pistol (or a half pound backup pistol) during your daily activities. It's also LOT easier for someone else to notice it.

Definitely. But for SMG vs. AR(/Carbine), I assume it's the same distinction, but more shades of grey. The SMGs are still noticeably smaller and Concealable, of course. I feel like the economics and legality should be enough to balance it all (and/or give the 7.62 MP5 fewer mod slots, I dunno).

7.62mm MP-5: RECOIL!!!

Heh, exactly. Tradeoffs, balance. If you were keeping track of calibers/cartridges like that, you could apply appropriate modifiers (even just as specific rules in the 'flavor' text, if it's not across-the-board). Like those things in WAR, except not dumb.

Yeah, well, again... *Sighs* Never mind. I don't have it in me to vent.

Hehe. I wouldn't say the easy solution would be a super-detailed system, though. If they were dying for such a thing to exist (high-power cartridge in a small SMG package), it'd just be a unique variant of an existing class (say, an AR carbine, which I put under the AR category earlier). No fuss, dead simple.

That would be completely bass-ackwards. It makes them even less useful than they are currently. At least at the base statistic level. Trading a 1Pg for -2 AP is a terrible trade off because 1P ~= 4 hits on the soak test.

And that's the problem with the existing DV/AP lineups. But, that's not to say that PDWs oughtn't have relatively lower DV and relatively higher AP. You just have to fix the whole system first, or, as you say, it doesn't work out.

Yeah, the problem is that guns have essentially 4 things they do:

1) Punch holes in resistant materials (armor etc)
2) Do damage to people whose armor doesn't work
3) Shoot accurately at long range
4) Shoot fast and move easily in combat at close range

3 & 4 are pretty much "choose one".
1 & 2 are linked for heavy weapons (like a HMG or an autocannon) but conflict for individual weapons. For example a 12 gauge shotgun with buckshot is hugely damaging at close range, but is stopped by fairly light armor. Or the FN 5.7 pistol, which while able to penetrate soft body armor is roughly equal to a .22LR in effect past the armor. This is due to the fact that a very hard, very strong, high cross-sectional density*, very stable round is ideal to penetrate armor. The maximum damage requires that the the round deliver all it's energy to the targets body and produce the largest possible permanent wound cavity.

* cross-sectional density is maximized by a very long, very heavy, very small diameter round. These will typically make a clean hole all the way though a person, what surgeons call a through and through wound.

The holy grail of bullet material would be something that remains stable in flight and hard enough to be armor-defeating, but then immediately afterwards spread out, tumble, or otherwise stop and dump all it's energy into the inside of the armored target.

So far, a lot of claims have been made over the years, but nothing with conclusive proven results.

I can imagine some sort of flight-stabilizing jacket around a hard core, that strips off when it passes through the armor. The hard core would be shaped such that it would be highly unstable without it's jacket, and as such be prone to tumble in the target's soft tissue. I have no idea how the engineering would work to achieve this, though.



-k

Presuming that US interest rates remain on-trend and directly carry over to UCAS dollars (which, given the sort of stuff that goes down in SR's setting, is hardly a given) $1US 2011 would be worth approx. $6UCAS 2050, so 1.16 nuyen (2050) Either the author of that bit of NAGtRL did some research and found that the trend inflation post-WWII is ~500% over 50 years and just extrapolated that forward or they got really lucky.

5.56x45mm SCF is the way to go - the flechette penetrates 35mm of steel at 600m, and the tip of the round deforms in soft materials, causing it to turn 90° - 180°.

You know, technically you may be right. But it is like the word "ain't". Ain't aint a word till everybody kinded of just kept using it till one day it showed up in the dictionary.

When I think clips, I think of stripper clips as opposed to the clips.

Depending on how you define an SMG. Caliber, sillioutte or size? A tommy gun is one of the first SMG's but it has the weight of a rifle and uses a pistol round, The MP-5 can be of different calibers including 9mm, 5.56mm, and others. It is all how you define it. We could use a carbine classs in SR to cover an SMG sized weapon with an AR type ammo.

I define SMG as 'pistol ammo'. I agree: rifle ammo in a small two-handed gun is 'carbine', and should be categorized as an AR with stipulations.

Do we really need a category for them? Just use the short barrel mod rules from Arsenal. Problem solved.

That's what I just said. And said earlier, too.

Yeah, you're both right on that...

a 'carbie' class would make sense in a hyper realistic game but to keep SR working then there's not much reson to have another class between smgs and rifle. It is also getting difficult to tell in some ways. My PS-90 is called a 'carbine' but the combat versoion is 18 inches long and cabable of full auto-with darn well sounds like an smg to me.

Yeah, OK. Knee-Jerk reaction. I admit my folly. You can quit kicking me any time now.

To me, in SR-simple terms (necessarily abstract), a PDW is an SMG that fires PDW ammo. Use SMG stats, with weapon-specific rules modifications (in SR terms, just increased range and AP? In combination with a lower DV, like HV guns?). Maybe charge more for the ammo. ARs do 6P/-1, SMGs do 5P-/0, so there's room in there for a 5P/-1 or 4P/-2, etc. (If you undertook the dramatic AP overhaul I mentioned, the figures would of course be very different.)

This is how the current SR4 rules already work, almost. The P93 is a SMG per RAW, but it lacks any special AP. So, another easy fix.

It is an SMG. It's a select-fire gun firing a pistol cartridge. A pretty fast pistol bullet, but a pistol bullet none the less.

A short barreled rifle is still firing a rifle bullet at rifle speeds. Low rifle speeds, but the absurdly short 7.5" ARs are shooting a 62gr round at 2200-2400 FPS. The 14.5" M4 is 2900 FPS with a 62gr bullet. Vs the P90 with a 31gr bullet at 2350 fps.

I thought it was a PDW cartridge. Double the velocity of the 9mm, but the same energy. Makes sense to me. That's why it's (definitely) in the SMG SR4 category, but maybe it should have special rules (maybe a little more range, presumably slightly better AP). Nothing crazy.

LOL, I'm planning a land nav hike across the desert to some abandoned mines while carrying my A2 style AR on a tac sling and ~200 rounds of ammo, in addition to other supplies, just to get a real hands-on feel for the gear. I feel lucky that I can simply go out into the desert and do that.

Yeah, I'll pass rucking it in the middle of a Manitoba Winter, thankyouverymuch.

"I've got frostbite in places you don't want to have frostbite!"

Hell, I've had frostbite in places I didn't even know I HAD.

STOP MAKING ME JEALOUS. I'm stuck in this stupid superpower for another three and a half years or more: don't rub it in!

You people are so weird. You're making me wish the gun lovers would start spewing facts and exact names again.

I do not know this for certain since I am not a Shadowrun devloper/writer/etc., but I would be amazed if it was not as simple as:

"we want a new type of money to show how the world has changed, and that the Japanese dominate."

Shadowrun is from the late 1980s, but the real yen ($1 ~ 100¥) was too low in value to fit the bill, so they made up the Nuyen. In the original core rulebook (set in 2050), the Nuyen was the only currency detailed, and it had (and still has) the buying power of a present day U.S. dollar. This is great from a game play point of view, since the GM can estimate prices in Nuyen on the fly by using the real price in U.S. dollars.

Then the NAGtNA came out (set in 2052):

• The currency of the Republic of Quebec is the New Franc (f), which is divided into 100 centimes. Currently, the exchange rate is bouncing around two francs to one nuyen (2f = 1¥).
• The UCAS unit of currency is the dollar. The official exchange rate makes one (1) nuyen worth approximately five (5) UCAS dollars. In reality, the dollar fluctuates plus or minus 20 percent against the nuyen on a day-to-day basis.

So, in the 2050s: 1 US dollar ~ 1 Nuyen ~ 2 New francs ~ 5 UCAS dollars.

I have no doubt that this was to demonstrate that the UCAS was a pale shadow of the former U.S., not some kind of calculated inflation over time.

Then SoNA came out (set in 2062)

• Currency: CAS Dollar (nuyen also accepted) Exchange Rate: 1$ = 0.33¥
• Currency: New Franc (nuyen also accepted) Exchange Rate: 1f = 0.5¥
• Currency: UCAS Dollar (nuyen also accepted) Exchange Rate: 1$ = 0.25¥

So, in the 2060s: 1 US dollar ~ 1 Nuyen ~ 2 New francs ~ 3 CAS dollars ~ 4 UCAS dollars. (Apparently the UCAS economy improved a bit, possibly thanks to Ares)

From other SR sourcebooks we have all the relative values listed under Nuyen at the Shadowrun wikia.

Regardless, if a mundane item costs X dollars in real life today, then it costs about X nuyen in Shadowrun.

Yeah, my group has always tacitly used 1:1, and just accepted that the prices on guns and things are just like they are. It's not like we (my group) know the stable black market values of guns and ammo for criminals anyway, or their typical wages, for that matter.

I actually did some research on black-market guns. Someone with typical street connections can buy pistol for a few hundred, about half of what a new gun costs, within a few hours. But it's a stolen gun of whatever type of gun they stolen recently, probably an old gun too. It may or may not work, and probably comes with a box of ammo at best. No spare magazines, etc. This was based on a survey of urban high school students iirc.

MGs are expensive. Lots more than list, though probably less then a legal transferable gun of that type. It will virtually always be a semi-auto gun modified by a black-market gunsmith, though sometimes they are stolen police guns. They are not very commonly seen in crimes outside of movies.

Everything I've seen says that black market hand grenades in the US are crazy expensive. Like a thousand bucks for a $50 hand grenade, because the USG keeps very good control of them and nobody else has them. In the US looking for grenades on the street appears to be a good way to get a "connection" who carries a badge and has a SWAT team covering him. Though I suspect it's a lot cheaper and easier to get in Mexico, since the cartels seem to have pipelines to get bulk South Korean and other grenades. People make live grenades of out deactivated curios, but it requires skill and access to high explosives.

Japanese Corporate dominance is a cyberpunk staple, due to the predominance of Japanese industry in the 70s and through the 80s, until mainland China started gearing up in the mid 90s.

they probably just borrwed Nuyen from William Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy. the name itself is a kludge of "New Yen", which comes from the fact that the Old Yen probably stopped existing as a currency sometime before or after WWIII (In gibson's timeline) or in shadowrun after one of the many disasters and matrix crashes. probably the first one though. I don't recall reading a history of the Nuyen in any official sourcebooks. but it may exist, so feel free to correct me.

Yeah, kzt, I always kind of wanted SR prices (esp. grenades!) to reflect that kind of reality. I understand that 2070 is a whole different world, but still.

HV seems like a pretty decent analog. I would expect integral RC since PDW rounds are basically magnum pistol rounds around .22 caliber fired from a pretty beefy gun (for a .22).

So, comparing an SMG to a PDW, lower the DV by 1 and add 2-3 points of integral RC like with the HV offerings, but instead of an increased RoF, it'd have increased AP.

That would make it a genuine alternative. RC and AP in exchange for DV.
The only fear is that it would be just an alternative SnS spammer to the Supermach.

Yeah, RC is too free and easy already. If any, maybe 1. IMO. I'm mostly concerned with 'modeling' the PDW-subclass, than actually providing a balanced choice; that requires a complete firearms overhaul. :/

The fact you don't see gangbangers buying Hoppes is cause to laugh at them.

To hark back to carbines, the 5.7mm round fired by the PS-90 is a pistol round? What pistol? I mean that's a pretty low load out for a handgun and it's longer than the rounds in my 9mm or .380

I agree that it's more like a pistol round than a rifle round. Same energy, though clearly engineered in a rifle-ish way for the armor-piercing. The size is pretty close, as well.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...any_bullets.jpg
The blue tip is the P90's cartridge, while the much bigger one to the right is the 5.56.

The blue tip have a slightly more powerful charge. you can get straight brass with a lower load.

Heh, it's just a picture for visual comparison, and the blue tip was a handy thing to point out the relevant one. I'm just saying, it looks like (and has the stats of) something more 'pistol' than 'rifle', yeah? That's what PDWs are (more or less). It's a blurry, emergent category, but I think that's safe to say.

The FN Five-seveN pistol. (No, I didn't mistype that.). I figure the round is more useful in an SMG, and the pistol is a back-up in case you can't reload in time when you empty the magazine.

Also, apparently there's a AR-15 modification that allows you to use them. 'Course, what modification to a AR-15 isn't there?

The FN Five-seven pistols. It's what the Army's coddled terrorist used in his murder spree at Ft Hood.

The AP rounds is the pistol are kind of interesting, as they go through soft armor. The 5.7 upper apparently works, but it's one of those "umm, why?" questions.

In fairness, that's only a coincidental answer; the pistol came well after the PDW, right? At best, they were co-designed? I dunno, it seems pretty simple to me: SMGs fire pistol rounds, PDWs *are* SMGs designed for better armor-piercing (and small size, low weight, etc.).

Yeah the fact that the company also sells a pistol that fires the round doesn't make that round a pistol cartridge nor the ammo H&K desinged for MP7.
Both of those area a PDW cartridges.
To say otherwise is like claiming that if i build a pistol that can fire .308 Lapua it suddenly stop being a rifle cartridge and turns into a pistol cartridge