Full Version: Brand name firearms
| QUOTE (Austere Emancipator) |
| How much better than an average RL person will this guy be able to handle recoil? How well do you personally think whatever gadgets you glue onto your guns will help diminish recoil? How much do you think firearms and ammunition technology, as well as armor technology, will advance in the next 60 years? Do you want to fire akimbo guns in burst-fire or even fully automatic modes? |
Okay, I'll try and answer these.
Recoil: The character should be stronger than an average human, but not beyond natural strength levels - well trained combatant. Say strength 5.
Gadgets: Not being over-informed on these matters, I would be assuming approximately GV2 equivalent for recoil reduction as that is what Raygun awarded the Beretta 93R for its ported barrel.
Tech advancement: Good question. I actually don't think it will advance that far; with all technologies you accelerate quickly (look at the difference between computers from 1984 to 1994) then start to level off (from 1994 to now). I would imagine that, barring some unforeseen mega-breakthrough in bullet or armour tech, we won't be looking at massively increased tech levels.
Akimbo modes: I'm not actually wedded to the idea of akimbo burst firing, although it would be nice to have as a "swimming in the drek" option. I can live without it.
Then the next important question is how realistic you want to be about it? Firing 3-round bursts accurately with akimbo pistols is pretty much an impossibility, even with something as weak as .380 ACP and all the porting you can put in a pistol barrel. It might not be too far out for something like the Beretta M93R to be controllable when fired in such a fashion in a fictional world.
I would suggest against naming it Beretta M93R, however. I don't think it very likely he would be using a 87-year-old pistol. I don't think this particular pistol will age that well. At the very least, you could name it Beretta M107R or something similar, and make it clear from the description that it's not an antique gun.
If you assume that the balance of penetration by firearms (and handguns in particular) and body armor technology stays the same for the next 60 years, the 9x19mm round fired by the Beretta M93R (and most other pistols of that size, at least for now) will still be capable of penetrating light to medium flexible body armor with armor piercing rounds. Anything non-AP will be stopped cold. In fact, because of how common body armor is and the existance of trolls and big orks, you might as well use armor piercing ammunition only.
Any decent rigid body armor will still stop even AP bullets fired from it easily, and you'll have to literally riddle trolls with it to kill them. But if you want akimbo BF pistols, that's as big as you could semi-realistically get.
For a semi-automatic solution, the 10x25mm (or something similar) would be decent. It will crush a larger hole deeper into the big metahumans, and with dedicated armor piercing ammunition it's bound to be capable of defeating most flexible body armor for a while still. With the full power rounds the recoil may be a bit stiff, but certainly more controllable for one shot than a 3-round burst of 9x19mm.
Cartridges more powerful than that are generally not available for pistols of the same size. Of course in a fictional world you can always wield .50 AE Desert Eagles akimbo, but expect to be laughed at by the people who like realism. Not only will the recoil screw your following shots, the weight and bulk of the guns makes wielding two of them pretty difficult. I suppose you could get away with more power in revolvers, but that really cuts down the lead-spraying.
I would suggest against naming it Beretta M93R, however. I don't think it very likely he would be using a 87-year-old pistol. I don't think this particular pistol will age that well. At the very least, you could name it Beretta M107R or something similar, and make it clear from the description that it's not an antique gun.
If you assume that the balance of penetration by firearms (and handguns in particular) and body armor technology stays the same for the next 60 years, the 9x19mm round fired by the Beretta M93R (and most other pistols of that size, at least for now) will still be capable of penetrating light to medium flexible body armor with armor piercing rounds. Anything non-AP will be stopped cold. In fact, because of how common body armor is and the existance of trolls and big orks, you might as well use armor piercing ammunition only.
Any decent rigid body armor will still stop even AP bullets fired from it easily, and you'll have to literally riddle trolls with it to kill them. But if you want akimbo BF pistols, that's as big as you could semi-realistically get.
For a semi-automatic solution, the 10x25mm (or something similar) would be decent. It will crush a larger hole deeper into the big metahumans, and with dedicated armor piercing ammunition it's bound to be capable of defeating most flexible body armor for a while still. With the full power rounds the recoil may be a bit stiff, but certainly more controllable for one shot than a 3-round burst of 9x19mm.
Cartridges more powerful than that are generally not available for pistols of the same size. Of course in a fictional world you can always wield .50 AE Desert Eagles akimbo, but expect to be laughed at by the people who like realism. Not only will the recoil screw your following shots, the weight and bulk of the guns makes wielding two of them pretty difficult. I suppose you could get away with more power in revolvers, but that really cuts down the lead-spraying.
If you made 10mm pistols that were gas rather than recoil operated, you might be able to fire them with one hand, a good gas operated weapon will help mitigate the recoil. The problem with this is that such 'pistols' would be rather large, so you'd have to deal with two ~1.5+ KG weights on the end of each arm.
If you only need to shoot at someone in the same room, you can probably use two small submachine guns, though hitting anything further away than that is probably right out.
Of course, if you are superhumanly strong (or just have cyberarms), the extra weight might not bother you. A cyberarm specifically designed to mitigate recoil (ie cyberarm gyromount) will probably make your job a lot simper.
If you only need to shoot at someone in the same room, you can probably use two small submachine guns, though hitting anything further away than that is probably right out.
Of course, if you are superhumanly strong (or just have cyberarms), the extra weight might not bother you. A cyberarm specifically designed to mitigate recoil (ie cyberarm gyromount) will probably make your job a lot simper.
Yup, I wouldn't hesitate to suggest the heftier DEs for someone with B10/Q6/S8 and two cyberarms with S10 and gyromounts. For an unaugmented human with S5, though, large & heavy weapons with a lot of recoil are probably a bad idea.
Thanks for that, gents. Since I'm not wedded to the necessity for burst fire, I'll take AE's advice and go with 10mm rounds (for the record, is that approximate to the .40 S&W round?), probably in something like a descendant of the Glock Subcompact for the concealability.
Since we have experts on tap here, what about the .41AE round? (And no, that's not "a little under half an Austere Emancipator"
) I know very little about it apart from a passing reference in Millennium's End many years ago, net research tells me that it is comparable to a similar sized magnum round with less recoil but seems to be rather short on manufacturers.
Since we have experts on tap here, what about the .41AE round? (And no, that's not "a little under half an Austere Emancipator"
) I know very little about it apart from a passing reference in Millennium's End many years ago, net research tells me that it is comparable to a similar sized magnum round with less recoil but seems to be rather short on manufacturers.
| QUOTE (DrJest) |
| 10mm rounds (for the record, is that approximate to the .40 S&W round?) |
| QUOTE (Raygun) |
| The 10mm (also called 10x25mm, 10mm Auto, 10mm Norma) is a very powerful automatic handgun cartridge that was developed to compete, and actually surpass in terms of ballstic performance, other common cartridges like the 9mm Parabellum and .45 Automatic Colt Pistol. It's probably the most powerful of the practical automatic handgun cartridges, meaning that, assuming some training, most human beings should be able to handle it. Obviously it has a smaller bullet diameter than the .45 ACP (bullet diameter is actually .400" = 10.16mm), but bullet weights do overlap on the high end (135-200 grains), and the 10mm is capable of launching those bullets much faster, up to 1,350 fps, where the .45 ACP is stuck around 1150 fps at +P loadings with light bullets for its caliber. While the 10mm Auto is very powerful, it's also a relatively long cartridge, which limits its ability to fit into a grip frame that will be comfortable to most users. Because of this, a shortened version of the 10mm Auto was developed by Smith & Wesson for the FBI in 1989. It's a little less powerful, but the .40 S&W splits the difference between the 9mm Para and the .45 ACP nicely, allowing a high capacity with decent terminal effects. The .40 S&W has pretty much taken over the police handgun market in the US. you can generally fit 11-15 rounds of either 10mm Auto or .40 S&W into a through-grip magazine. |
So the .40 S&W has a shorter but wider, necked case and fires bullets that are often a bit lighter at velocities significantly lower than the 10mm Auto.
The AE acronym is, I assume, quite widely known because of the .50 Action Express Desert Eagle (.50AE DE). There is relatively little information on the .41 AE, and it's apparently obsolete and quite rare. Basically, it's a shortened .41 Magnum cartridge with a rebated rim to fit 9mm bolt faces, in order to make conversion of a gun between .41 AE and 9x19mm easier.
Ballistics-wise, it seems capable of, for example, firing a 170gr bullet at 1215fps for 557 ft-lbs of kinetic energy. Compared to the .40 S&W (155gr at 1205fps for 500 ft-lbs), it fires very slightly heavier bullets (mostly because it's often loaded with .41 Magnum bullets) at about the same velocities, for about 10% more kinetic energy. It's significantly less powerful than the 10mm Auto (e.g. 175gr @ 1290fps for 649 ft-lbs), and doesn't hold a candle to the .41 Magnum (e.g. 210gr @ 1300fps for 788 ft-lbs). The .40 S&W is capable of nearly everything the .41 AE is, and is far more common.
| QUOTE (DrJest) |
| net research tells me that it is comparable to a similar sized magnum round with less recoil |
Whenever someone tells you one cartridge is as powerful as another but with less recoil, you are probably better off ignoring them. If you fire a bullet of the same weight at the same velocity with about the same amount of propellant, you will have equal amounts of recoil (excluding the effects of gun construction and mass). In this case, however, you are firing bullets of the same or smaller mass and much slower than the .41 Magnum, so you get less recoil.
It is indeed mentioned on the net that the .41 AE performs about the same as some "police loads" for the .41 Magnum, but apparently these "police loads" are loaded quite a bit below the potential of the round.
Thanks, AE, I'll stick with the 10mm then.
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