QUOTE (Yerameyahu @ Jan 21 2012, 02:24 AM)

3278, your example is *not* converting to revolver. It's just a smarter drum. That's a topic, just not the one I was talking about.
Yeah, you're definitely right, that's not conversion to a revolver: it's conversion to an ammo select system, which is the topic
I was talking about.

It would be weirdly arbitrary to limit the conversion of a grenade launcher into
only a revolver; you could use a helical feed system, if you wanted, and maintain the vast majority of the original receiver. There are a bazillion ways to do this thing; whether you could make one that took 20 shells each with a 1 inch diameter, and fit them into a revolver six inches in diameter, is completely and utterly moot.

A small-diameter revolver is never going to have a lot of large-diameter rounds. I don't think anyone's seriously talking about that.
QUOTE (Yerameyahu @ Jan 21 2012, 02:24 AM)

Why would they? How often do users of riot-sized grenade launchers need to switch between 4 kinds of grenades in real life?
Shadowrun has such an incredible selection of grenades, and options for things to do with them that aren't available in real life. Now, I don't spend a lot of time using multiple-round grenade launchers, much less ones that take dozens of rounds, but it seems to me that, if they make lots of different types - flash-bangs, smoke, stun, fragmentation, gas - that's probably because several of those types are useful. Since combat situations are often not predictable, having an array of options is also useful. Having an array of possibly useful ballistic explosive options strikes me as something that some users might desire, particularly if they lost no other options, i.e. if they could still load a full battery of willie petes and go light up the night like the 4th of July.
QUOTE (Yerameyahu @ Jan 21 2012, 02:24 AM)

Back in SR terms, this would definitely be limited to SA at most.
There's no particular reason it would need to be, although there's no particular reason most weapons in Shadowrun should be limited to the rates of fire they're limited to, either, so, sure, why not.

I'd probably require a more expensive conversion, though, if it were expected to work at any kind of autofire rate. [Because it would either mean a seriously quick commutation control, or a drum that just constantly spins, and just opens the port of whatever type is selected on the way past.]
QUOTE (Yerameyahu @ Jan 21 2012, 02:24 AM)

Like I said, your idea sounds possible (if I'm reading it right), but definitely more involved than a drum, revolver (smart or dumb), etc.
Definitely more involved. Any kind of ammo select system is going to be more involved than not having an ammo select system. One computer-controlled electric motor and a drum with a handful of the same mechanism found on hundreds of thousands of rifle drums is as simple a way to ammo-select on a rotary drum as any I can think of.