Dial-a-Bullet and Smart Bullet Technology

Edit: And here is the self-guided bullet.

So, how would this work in Shadowrun? Suggestions?
And they mentioned grenades which knew when and where to detonate. The idea of firing a grenade, and not having it go off if the intended target(s) are out of the blast radius so you can pick it up again intrigues me.

Like Judge Dredd?

I'd have to trust the tech a lot to retrieve fired grenades…

I'd rather try to make the user smarter instead of the weapon smarter.

That's what drones are for.

You can already get that, after a fashion, with the "Additional Clip" modification for a gun.

More like Runaway.

Yeah, but I know what Judge Dredd is.

I guess I'm wondering if SR even has the RL problem Dial-A-Bullet purportedly fixes? They mention the 'compromise' of chain gun feeds.

FL for Crowd Control. APDS to issue speeding tickets.

Well, there is the Safe Target system in Arsenal (page 33), if you can program it backwards so the safety will turn off if you're aiming within 1m of the intended target.

This just gave me a run idea, shame I'm not the GM.

Basically it gives you a way to let the PCs play with seriously powerful weapons that they couldn't normally have, by giving them a specific target they need to take out, and offering them the use of a heavy weapon to do it (thunderstruck gauss rifle, or maybe the heavy man portable laser for example)

Mark 74 Smartlink. War.

Perhaps, but this isn't really addressing the idea here. A bullet which homes in on the target (funny enough, when Tir n'an Og came out, I thought that's what a 'morph seeking rifle' did) is pretty awesome. I'm thinking it might have 'ignore cover' effects, perhaps. The bullet-switching mechanism is also pretty awesome though, having that mixed with a smartlink, then giving someone a case with three or four ammo types, and letting them switch ammo by thought, is cool. The 'smart grenades' would make nearly perfect sense in SR4, too.

Well… yes. Everyone wants seeker bullets. I'm asking what real benefit there is for Dial-A-Bullet over the similar systems already in the game; and how much that's even needed in SR. Any tech is cool, but in what situations would you actually use Dial-A-Bullet, and how much would it help?

Smart grenades, too, basically already exist in SR4. At most, it might require a tacnet and GM approval.

Ah yes. Basically the same thing, except the level of accuracy and a whole slew of trouble if you get caught with it.

Well, consider this. If you have a case of 400 bullets, you can divide them any way you want between different types, and for each and every shot, have the type of bullet you want. No 'additional clip' required. You just split the ammunition all in one case. Mind, this would only work for belt-fed ammunition or box ammunition, but that's actually not too bad. An additional clip has to be fixed to the weapon and takes up slots within the weapon itself for what it can hold. This bypasses that.

As for smart grenades - I've not seen anything about being able to tell a grenade not to detonate, or to detonate 'now' for example, in mid-flight. That would be really handy if you overshot your target, and for arc firing. It would reduce the 'scatter' result of grenades significantly (like, to 'none' in some cases).

In the core book itself there's the Airburst Link for rocket/grenade launchers that says specifically it can tell a grenade to detonate in flight, and it reduces the scatter distance by two dice as well. I don't see any reason that it couldn't be used to tell the grenade to disarm itself if you happened to grossly overshoot your intended target point, but then you've just given your target a potential weapon to shoot back at you.

Eh... if you fire a 40mm grenade at someone, how pray tell are they going to use it as a weapon against you? Best case, throw it back like a hand grenade that still wont explode because its disarmed itself (missed its target). Worst, try and beat you to death it it? Its not like they can just drop it into a launcher again, its got no firing charge.

No, I *understand* what D-A-B is. I'm asking if anyone can supply actual use-cases where it provides significant utility. The use-cases for Additional Clip are already quite scanty; I usually use that mod just for the extra ammo cap.

AFAIK, all grenades in SR4 are fully wireless, programmable, multi-triggered, etc. already; if you add Airburst, as others mentioned, it's just gravy.

Well, I said "potential" weapon. No guarantee in that. And aside from that there's always a good quality Spoof program, and if the other guys happen to have a grenade launcher too...

Best way to switch ammo types on the fly in SR? Revolver-type weapons with an Ammo Skip System, "the cylinder simply spins to the selected round with a Free Action".

The morph seeking rifle combines the Smartlink with a face-recognizing-system. Since in SR4 the smartlink-system on the weapon includes a camera, you can now make the system rules-conform. Combine that with a weapon-comlink, electronisc firing, advanced saftey basic system and a weapon-personality could make a funny situation, when the weapon refuse to shot a target because the Target-ID is not confirmed.

Why am I reminded of the first "xXx" movie?

Here's a thing one can do in ones games.

Usually when you contact your armsdealer to get a weapon it is a black market weapon and can basically be ANYTHING the armsdealer manage to scrounge up in the time for the buyer to get it.

So depending on how fast you need the weapon you have less control on WHAT you get.

The weapon could have a weapon mod installed, or removed, or a flaw since a troll stepped on it before selling it to the armsdealer. It could even have a safe target system so somewhere in the campaign there is a random target where the gun refuses to fire.

Nice. I think I'm going to steal this.