So you're packing your custom Ares Alpha on the job. You've thrown on a scope and bipod for fire support work and added a suppressor to help keep the noise down. It is your pride and joy...

But how easily can it be traced back to you? How many scoped, suppressed, bipodded Ares Alphas are in private hands in Seattle?

In other words, are all those custom mods on your favorite weapon becoming a bit of a signature?

This actually extends beyond the mods. After all, the higher the availability on a piece of equipment the harder they are to get ahold of and the fewer there are in the shadows. Which leads to the question: Are you better off using a rare and expensive Ranger Arms SM-5 when a Remington 950 is so much less distinctive?

Well the answer of course is 'it depends'. Sometimes the stopping power of the rarer gun is more important than making yourself hard to track down. Sometimes the opposite is true.

What end of the spectrum do your characters tend to fall on?

The mods don't make a weapon distinguishable from other weapons, because mods can usually be swapped between weapons.
The ballistic markings on bullet-casings do. Which is why nobody in their right shadowy mind will ever use anything but caseless.

My characters usually get their weapons cheap in char gen, replacing a single pistol to my liking can cost up to 5k Nuyen in game.
But that's still better than being traced by the weapon, so if i have to, i will still simply throw it away.

Of course, sometimes you sorta want to be remembered as the runner that carries 'x', like my weapons/explosive specialist of the denver campaign who got a hold on a gauss rifle (with a customized paint job on the side written 'Trollslayer' after he killed Ang Pen)

For me it isn't the weapon but rather the ammo, tending to carry specialized loads like silver nitride making for a nice explosive round with added punch versus shapeshifters. Tricky to handle but pretty to watch.

This is why my wetworker literally owned a crate of caseless LightFires. Sanatized of RFIDs, only handled with gloves, used for one hit. Then discarded someplace where they are certain to be stolen such as in an alley in a bad part of town.

He was knowingly paranoid, though.

That sounds familiar to me... wasn't that from Wolf and Raven?

Yup. Kid Stealth specials.

Paranoid, maybe; definately smart.

Wolf being a bit more sane uses a silver bullet with inertial silver-nitrate (AgNO 3) explosive tip, as silver nitrate is not a full on explosive, but burns rapidly giving that warm fuzzy feeling to the round. The Burning means it's working...

Meanwhile I have developed a means to contain the more volatile silver nitride (Ag3N), which IS very explosive-(for example in a dry crystal state it acts like a contact explosive - even a drop of water hitting it is enough to set the material off) in a manageable shotgun glaser-like round using a few special processes developed to deliver the payload of the silver nitride and silver shrapnel home.

We also use plain silver buckshot, but that's just so... plain.

As mentioned in another post we also play with embedded rfid tags in some of the ammo, one in particular projecting flaming skulls visible to AR. Granted that is more for personal aesthetics than function, but we all have our quirks.

We continue to work on a means to inscribe magicks into rounds, though the problem of deformation of the symbols from firing and impact ruining the magicks have proved problematic, but are getting closer to a working model.

There were also the cutter loads, but given the latest mishaps with the nanites those are shelved while re-evaluating the items.

We even have blueprints for an AM bullet, unfortunately the cost is a bit prohibitive just for procuring the tiny scrap of AM used plus shelf life of the containment system is just over 24 hours and of course the delivery system is a bit.. short ranged.

But for a cool 2.5 mil you too can have a shotgun/heavy weapon round that can set off a 220 DV explosion (0.0001 g for an estimated yield equal to 4.3 tons of TNT - equating to 1950kg of rating 5 explosive, sqr root of 1950 is 44 x rating 5 for 220 DV plus all the fun side effects of radiation and fallout) making you an instant and permanent World's Most Wanted* for using WMDs.
Lead lined suit extra.

Yes, yes you would be smarter to use in a missle or drone, but then you might miss the earth shattering kaboom!

Plus if you are afraid to face what you fire, you really shouldn't be firing it in the first place now should you?


*and yes, this is on FuelDrop's Chrismas wishlist for those trying to decide what to get him this year.

With ceaseless ammo, the only thing that would link the weapon to the crime would be image evidence (links the character too) and if the caliber of the round is the same used by the weapon.

Though if they had good forensics they may be able to figure out the amount of power behind the bullets force and other minuet details that could help link the bullet fragments to the weapon itself, but quite often I would assume any markings left on the bullet from rifling would be minimal due to the velocity and impact unless they hit something that kept them in decent shape.

Though for that you could replace the barrel of the weapon (if able with said weapon) and replace or alter firing pin (yet again if able) .

Firing pin wouldn't matter, as there's no primer on a caseless round to leave a mark on. They're usually electronically fired.

As far as barrel ballistic matches go, you can alter the profile of your barrel enough to leave different marks by simply running a cleaning brush down it a few times, or shooting a lot.

Definitely smart. With such limited contact, would make trying to use Psychometry to backtrack it to the gunman almost impossible.

However, if all the guns were coming from literally the same crate of the weapons and an astute mage figures out two or more discarded weapons came from the same batch, say they have recovered a couple of them and noticed the similar MO and 'taste', Law of Contagion could lead them back to the remaining unused weapons.

Always better to get a mix from different batches/suppliers and keep separate from one another.

While true for caseless irl, in SR as of 5th the only gun that fires electronically is the Yamaha assault rifle, the rest (unless it's just assumed, but since most people don't know the logistics behind ceaseless ammunitions (myself included until recently), I doubt they would have every gun be fired electronically after going out of their way to mention how the Yamaha is) are fired my traditional ignition methods.

And true, but the brush would have to be coarse enough to scour the metal well enough to hide most of the original marks (or wrapped in metal grade sandpaper) since even now police can look for matching "core" patterns among different rifling marks.

The correct answer, gentlemen, is "polygonal rifling". It's not deep enough to leave a consistent pattern of grooves in the bullets but it does limit the types of ammunition you can use (ie no all-lead bullets). Before you go getting geeked about it, Glocks and HK weapons have been using it for over 20 years now.

Thing about caseless ammunition is that if there's anything left to take an imprint from a firing pin.... it isn't caseless. There's a case left. Unless it's a cap-and-ball setup!



My CZ-82 in 9x18 Makarov uses it as well.

Vladimir Taltoss.

There's still any rifling pattern possibly left on bullet fragments or whatever of a round that happens to be left inside the corpse aswell as the remains of any bullet that didn't hit the target and subsequently was left implanted in a trash can/wall/hobo

Still a percussion cap that falls off (sometimes) when used.

The sound of a rifle probably won't be "unique" to a weapon, but the type of rifle might be able to be identified. A prime example of this is the infamous "Bak-Bak-Bak" of an AK. Which I can confirm is what the bloody things sound like, even on Semi-Auto.

What do you call a Da Vinci style multi gun using cap and ball rifles?

Weapons of Mass Percussion

I'd also list Buddy Rich as one of these as well.