yep, getting pretty jaded here

hmm, mayhaps .50GI does have a future after all...
.88 Magnum performance in a compact .50 caliber package

what are you basing that gestimation on? 9mm/.35? how about .40, .45, .50?

I'd expect it to be safer to make the jacket out of a material that burns away as a result of something else than contact to water. A high-temperature contact-friction incendiary right under a jacket with a low melting point, or something like that.

someone has to be wiley coyote

Anyway if you don't think it's enough explosive power i don't see why it couldn't just be sodium tipped with another type of explosive behind it so the main explosive charge goes off inside the body rather than exploding on contact like it does with lead azide based explosive bullets. this is getting farther from the original homemade idea but such a bullet has a very practical purpose because contact detonations generally don't allow for a good amount of penetration.

hydrostatic shock is a contraversial subject, certainly it happens, people often talk about it when very high speed cartridge are brought up like .220 Swift but it can't be relied upon and it doesn't even start to do anything until you get over 2000fps (the body is water based but quite elastic).

on anime - ya gotta get ideas from somewhere, creativity doesn't happen in a vacuum. Kite, i hear that one is like Leon/The Professional but with a crazy amount of sex and violence? is it actually any good?

Raygun mentioned the Hague Convention which prohibits the use of bullets designed to expand when engaging soldiers of enemy nations. Armor-Piercing is about the only route that militaries are allowed to pursue in small arms bullet design because of international law. If you can't have expanding bullets you might as well go Armor-Piercing. OTOH .223 Remington was kind of designed to possibly fragment in the body at close ranges. It also appears that militaries are spending more and more time engaging non-soldiers that don't represent nations and aren't protected by the Geneva Convention or Hague Convention.

I would have to disagree with that comment strongly. Beyond just tanks and other large caliber military smooth bores that have proven to have exceptional accuracy. Small arms smooth bore can do pretty well in their own right. Foster slugs in properly choked smooth bore shotguns will shoot pretty good groups out to 100 yards and more in some cases.

I have a Winchester 9410 lever action 410 shotgun that will shoot 5-shot 2 inch groups at 50 yds. I dare say you would be tuff pressed to do much better than that with a rifled Winchester 94 chambered in a pistol cartridge at similar ranges.

Sure rifled barrels, especially with high velocity rifle cartridges will ultimately shoot a tighter group at longer ranges but the old comment that 'you can't hit the broad side of a barn with a smooth bore' is painfully out of date. Even better than the venerable foster slug many slug manufacture have made stabilized slugs that can be fired from either a smooth bore, smooth bore with a rifled choke tube or a fully rifle barrel with good accuracy from any of those barrels. I know Brenneke and Remington and several other manufactures make similar stabilized slugs.

So sure the smooth bore shotgun is not a sniper’s first choice but inside 100 yds the difference in accuracy is not going to make much difference shooting at meta-human size target. And nothings better that a nice pump shotgun loaded with and alternating slug, buckshot loadout for the emergency do anything go to gun.

If I could only have one gun then it would be a 12 gage pump shotgun.

mcb

Maybe back in the old "Punkin' Ball" days, but when you start looking at rifled saboted slugs and the like (hell, maybe by SR days we'll start seeing fin-stabilized rounds in small arms), you can get awfully accurate weapons.

Hell, we've got a LARP coming up in the summer where we've built short bows that use a PVC launch tube (with the sides cut out, no less) and rolled cylinders of naugahyde for projectiles. I can still hit a torso out at 50 yards with it, if I get the range on the poor bastard i'm shooting at.

They're here already, it's just a question of making them useful and cost-effective. That might happen in 60 years for some applications, certainly.

To nit-pick here there is not such think as a ‘rifled sabot slug’. There are rifled slugs and there are sabot slugs.

The sabot slugs, as expected, has a discarding sabot with a copper, lead, or copper and lead projectile contained in the sabot. The sabot slugs are to be fired from rifled shotgun barrels or smooth bore barrels with a rifled choke tube installed. If fired in a smooth bore the projectile will not be stabilized and will tumble. I know of one example of a sabot slug shotgun round that is designed for a smooth bore but most sabot slugs are for rifle bores only.

There are also rifled slugs or better-named Foster slugs. The rifled slug name comes from the fact that many foster slugs have grooves on the outside that look like riflings. Most slug manufactures and people that have studied them acknowledge that the rifled grooves do little or nothing to spin the slug (at least while the slug is still super sonic) but they do help reduce contact area with the barrel and thus the friction as the projectile goes down the barrel. The Foster slugs stability in flight comes from the fact that the center of gravity is well forward of the center of drag and the slug flies through the air stabilized much the same way as a badminton shuttlecock flies.

I believe raygun has pictures of examples of both the sabot and foster slug on his web sight.

You can also see a cut away view of two types of foster slugs on my site at
http://my.stratos.net/~thedump/win9410/Rem_Dougs.jpg
http://my.stratos.net/~thedump/win9410/Rem...ugs_cutaway.jpg

Notice the large cavity in the back of the foster slug this pushes the CG forward. Also notice that the one design does not have the rifled grooves on the outside.

“pumpkin balls’ are sometime confuse with foster slugs because in a loaded roll crimped shotgun shell they look similar but in actuality a ‘pumpkin ball” is a true spherical hard lead projectile, often with a mold spru flat that is pointed forward much like when loading a round ball used in a muzzle loading rifle. They are not very accurate in a smooth bore guns but if fire from a slow twist barrel that is rifled with paradox (oval bore) riflings rather than the standard groove and land riflings they can be very accurate.

Recently there has been a trend to stabilize slugs. Depending on the design they can definitely by fired in rifle barrels and often in smooth barrels. They are a composite slug with a lead nose that has a plastic fin or drag device attached to the back. Although not quite a dart like projectile like most DSAP the military uses they do stabilize on similar principals although some still use spin for additional stability. This Brenneke slug is a good example of stabilized shotgun slug.

All of these projectiles if fired in the proper weapon can be very accurate out to 100yds and more. And many of the can be fire that accurately from a smooth bore weapon. Specifically the foster slug and some versions of the stabilize slug.

Rambling as usual
mcb

Which cases? Foster slugs DO NOT spin when fired from a smooth bore shotgun and many stabilized slugs do not need to be spun to be stable in flight. Both slug types use drag to stabilize them not spin.

In fact many hunters I have talked to find that when shoot foster slugs in a full rifle barrels accuracy actually goes down in many cases. The rate of twist is to fast in many rifle slug barrel for the short fat hollow based foster slug and will actually cause the front heavy slug to wobble in flight open up the groups. If you are going to try to spin a foster type slug you want to spin it with a slow twist similar to round balls 1 rev in 48 - 66 inches range.

The foster slug was really designed to be fired from smooth barrel and to be stable without spinning.

As for muskets IMHO using examples from military battles at the time of the American Revolution is not the best examples of accuracy possible with a musket and round ball. With the logic used on battlefields in that era accuracy was sacrificed for the ability to load quickly to facility coordinated volleys of musket fire. Soldiers did not patch the musket ball simply dropping down the barrel ontop of the powder charge. A civilian of the era with a musket using it to hunt for food for his family would take more care to patch the ball for a tighter fit (all be it harder to load) and thus better accuracy. Sure they were pretty bad compared to even modern smooth bore gun let alone our rifle weapons but a barn at 100 yard would still be an easy shot. A deer at 50-60 yds was very doable.

More aimless ramblings
mcb

really? i've never had fights last long enough that magazine capacity has mattered. IMHO most of the SR pistols are too high in capacity.

Well, that's the thing. It's no fun if you never have to reload. The 1911 gives you an excuse to do super panache reload.

The ammo capacities for the SR guns aren't really off the wall compared to reality. I mean, with the miraculous wonders of double stacking you can get 12 rounds of .45 ACP into a HK SOCOM pistol. The only magazines that seem kind of large are the machine pistol magazines, but I don't know anything about machine pistols so I don't know whether or not those are actually realistic.


The real reason that in SR you don't go through ammo fast enough is because the game lets you be unrealistically precise with the amount of ammo that you deposit here and there. If it takes exactly 2 Predator shots to take your enemy into D wound terrirtory, your character will usually use exactly 2 shots. In real life, however, as the NYPD has demonstrated, you could easily pump the guy up with half your magazine before you know what's happening even if he were instantly killed by your second round.



Although I'd love it if magazines ran dry more often. Once in an effort to promote gratuitious reloading I made a character who was pretty much entirely centered around suppressive fire so as to be able to pump out 10 rounds per complex action and have an actual tactical excuse for it.

Maybe someone is really crazed and he only drops after you empty 10 rounds into him. But it turns out he has a friend.

I agree, it's rather dull when no fight ever outlasts a magazine.

That's the hing, though: a lot of people dislike the USPs (and especially the Tacticals/Mk. 23s) because of the girth of grip, which can make it uncomfortable or unpleasant for a lot of people and unmanagable for a few. And that's only 12 rounds. 15 in a Predator? That's just silly.

As for machine pistols, well, there's no getting around the fact that those capacities are quit simply absurd.

I think this is more the purview of the GM than mechanics, necessarily; a good GM won't tell you any more than you would realistically know, and that includes keeping you worried about that guy you just knocked down. Combine that with good roleplaying and it's probably not much of an issue.

As a side note, though, I think the NYPD more proved what stunning ineptitude, terrible training, and racial tension can do for a firefight than anything else.

Maybe he does; you shouldn't've thrown those 10 rounds at one target as a professional, and, besides, that's what cover's for.

Maybe the pistols are assumed to have extended magazines where applicable? Do they make really long extended magazines for machine pistols?

I was always under the impression that machine pistols are retarded IRL for that very reason. They're just like a bad version of an SMG.