For the record, I'm quite new to Shadowrun (preparing to play my first game), and only have access to the core rulebook (with errata).

I want to buy a Viper Silvergun, with some decent recoil reduction. The gun comes with a silencer, standard. Am I allowed to add a Gas-Vent system to it, or does the silencer use up that slot?

I've heard of adding a customized grip for -1 recoil... but I can't find that anywhere. Assuming it's in another book that I don't have, is it okay for me to ask here how much it costs?

The silvergun says it fires flechette rounds, and I notice it has a huge clip. Does this mean it only fires those kinds of rounds, so I can't ever use any other type? Is the large amount of ammo available in the clip because those rounds are smaller or something?

The damage code for the flechette rounds is factored into the stat line given in the rulebook. Is the concealment reduction for the built in silencer also factored in... in other words, with the silencer, do I have the written concealment of 6, or does it drop to 4? Can I remove the silencer, then, if I need more stealth?

Thanks in advance.

JaronK

You're correct. Can't get Gas Vents, because Silencer takes up the Barrel Slot.

The Personalized Grip is in another book. If your GM allows other book rules, one of the optional ones is that Strength 6 or more gives you one point of recoil compensation.

Yes, the Ares Viper Slivergun only fires Flechette ammo. The damage code in the book 9S(f) indicates the flechette/shotgun staging up of damage has already been counted in the damage code. If you fire at someone wearing armor, you only get the 9M (before burst).

If it comes with a silencer integral to the gun in the listing, all the other stats apply for the silencer, including concealability, so you're gold in that respect.

The Sliverguns are only built to fire smaller flechette rounds, so they can't use other rounds and the clips are for the small rounds. I will warn you that flechettes, true to real life, suck against ballistic armoring, and they're better for unarmed targets.

Note, however, that some GMs do not allow the Ares Viper Slivergun (AVS) in their games. Many consider it to be unrealistic or unbalancing in several ways (huge clip, built-in silencer with good concealability, burst-fire mode). By making player characters not have the AVS that also means that your opposition in the game won't have them either. Many players like that.

/Edit: Here is a link to an earlier discussion of flechette ammo and the AVS. There are many older topics on the AVS. We don't need to re-discuss it, but we'll be happy to point you to such discussion if you want.

You can add a customized Personalized Grip for 125 . There's another recoil compensation option available, but it requires GM consent since the rules for pistols don't allow underbarrel accessories despite the fact that a few of them come with them by default. That other option being an Underbarrel Weight which costs 50 adds 1kg to the weight and lowers Concealability by -1.

Both of those combined with a Strength of 6 or higher will give you 3 points of recoil compensation.

Well, this character is an elven special ops/assassin, so strength 6 really isn't going to happen. Does him being strength 4 help in any way, or is there any other way to add recoil reduction? 3 points of it would be wonderful, though if it's not meant to be, c'est la vie.

JaronK

Added question. I've got Ultrasound Goggles (customized to look like sunglasses) and an ultrasound sight... is there anyway to just make the goggles "see" using ultrasound, without needing the sight on the weapon?

JaronK

You could probably stick the emitter somewhere on the frames, or tape it to your head or somesuch. Strength 4 adds nothing; without Cannon Companion, I think you're stuck as for recoil compensation.

Also, I Eat Time is incorrect, flechettes in real life tear through armor but don't do so great in terms of actual tissue damage. It's more or less the exact opposite of SR flechettes, but don't think about it too hard or your brain will explode.

~J

A double-post sometimes offers recoil comp, though.

~J

Just so I can get it clear, I was under the impression that shotgun buckshot was practically useless against Kevlar, except for some serious knockdown? And that Kevlar was designed to absorb kinetic energy, and flechettes on a whole have much, much less kinetic energy than a normal 9mm round?

You're right, shotgun buckshot is pretty much useless against kevlar. It's also not flechette-related in any stretch of the word; even SR doesn't make that claim past having shot use the same rules as flechettes.

Flechettes are essentially darts, spikes rather than mostly-blunt bullets. They typically are lighter, and thus much faster, than ordinary bullets, hence more kinetic energy. Flechette means arrow, IIRC, and as a sharp object will lose much less energy to armor. It will also not deform much, if at all, inside a person. Actually, what it will do is generally make a small hole in the person, whatever they're wearing, and possibly whatever's behind them as well.

~J

Here are some earlier discussions about flechette ammunition. You'll want to pay most attention to Raygun, Crusher Bob, and maybe a few others like Arethusa and me. Especially Raygun and Crusher Bob know their stuff, I mostly just repeat what they've said earlier.

Flechette Ammo Question
Firearm Damage Codes, Penetration vs. Wound level
Flechette Ammo rules descripency, GMs at war over Flechette
Flechette Rounds, Rule Clarification
On "Called Shot" and flechette, Some thoughts
Flechette, Let's see if I get this right...

Here you can see some pictures of flechette ammunition for an assault rifle caliber weapon. The weapon in question fires only that ammunition, and can defeat most common types of body armor far beyond the effective range of most conventional assault rifles. However, it will never do much more to a human than punch a 6mm-across + -shaped hole right through.

In case you don't want to read through all those threads (quite likely...), it should be mentioned that flechette ammunition sometimes takes a form other than a single such "arrow". In shotguns you sometimes get flechette ammunition which consists of a bundle of very small projectiles like small nails with tiny fins attached to the rear.

These perform slightly better against soft targets than single arrows do (they punch a large number of really tiny holes in humans instead of a single small hole), but much worse against armor. They still penetrate armor far better than buckshot will -- and they have (IIRC) a better range than buckshot, which is the main reason why they're used. Similar "flechette bundles" are used in in weapons such as grenade launchers and recoilless rifles on some occasions.

While I don't know Shadowrun well, I do know physics. Due to the lower mass of the Flechette bullets, they fly faster, but have lower kenetic energy. Thus, they don't penetrate armour nearly as well. In fact, the reason they do more damage is they can't penetrate well inside the body, causing them to pierce the soft bits and richochette off the hard bits, resulting in increased internal bleeding and organ damage. Thus, while you might get shot in the gut by such ammo, the flechettes may curve inside the body and hit your heart, or otherwise richochette around inside your ribcage. Meanwhile, a standard bullet might go straight through, which would still be very bad for you, but they might miss all the vitals.

Thanks for the help, by the way... I think I'll have to go with a AVSilvergun with Internal Smartlink and personalized grip for my assassin... it really seems like the right sort of weapon for him.

JaronK

JaronK, please do read through the stuff I mentioned above. If you want further proof, Google for some RL flechette ammunition.

They might have less kinetic energy; the Steyr ACR 9.85 grain tungsten flechette I linked to above certainly does have less muzzle energy than a 5.56x45mm M855 FMJ -- although this might be reversed around 600 meters. But kinetic energy doesn't determine whether you penetrate armor or not, or at least it's not the only thing that determines it. Flechette ammunition is extremely hard, sharp and fast, so it does punch through armor without trouble. Read the Steyr ACR link above.

They penetrate right through humans. Most single-flechette rounds would probably penetrate a whole lot of humans, if necessary. I seriously doubt they have a habit of changing direction inside living targets when they hit something hard, because the fins keep them really stable, and they are capable of zipping right through bones without trouble. They do not curve inside a body, the fins take care of that.

Might I ask where you've read that stuff about flechettes?

[Edit]If you're interested in terminal ballistics of firearms, check here for some discussion. This is a great introductory reading and contains further links.[/Edit]

I'm no physics or ballistics expert, but I believe that the flechettes being described are similar to discarding-sabot rounds. You use the same amount of propellant to fire a much smaller bullet; the outer casing is stripped off in flight. So, a real-world flechette does penetrate armor much better, since it actually has more kinetic energy behind it. It has less mass, which might seem to reduce the force; but since the original energy is unchanged, it ends up with a higher overall force.

The reason why it does less damage is due to the lack of mass. Damage to the human body depends on how much energy is transferred. The higher speed and lack of mass not only leads to overpenetration; but with less mass, it can't transfer the energy as effectively.

Think of it this way-- if we use the exact same amount of force on a needle and a one-ton boulder, we'd end up moving them at radically different speeds. The needle would go supersonic in a huge way, while the boulder would barely move. But if you're hit by the supersonic needle, it'll go right through you, transferring very little energy. The one-ton rock would roll right over you and stop, neatly transferring all of its energy.

You apparently don't know physics all that well. Kinetic energy is 1/2MV^2. Note the squared on velocity. Much more important than mass for kinetic energy.

~J

Having the bullet lodge in the body would result in a lot of potential health consequences that I can think of, so overpenetration is still probably good to avoid if you're going for maximum adverse effect.

~J

I'm frantically trying to dig up some serious, factual sources for the effectiveness of flechette bundles, such as those used in shotguns, grenade launchers and the like. And it's not easy, since most sites are all about "Flechette ammo is teh shit!!!11222". I thought I'd found a decent site, when it actually said "The accepted casualty producing force criteria for an incapacitating wound is 58 ft. lbf. for an unprotected human." For fuck's sake...

I don't even know if "ft. lbf." is an accepted unit of force... Basically what it means is that there alledgedly is some amount of force that is required and enough to incapacitate an unprotected human. Which is a completely ridiculous idea, because a human can survive a .50BMG hit to the toes and still die instantaneously when hit in the eye with a .22LR.

Let alone the fucking moronic results that kind of thinking gets you when you start thinking about objects that weigh a hundred kilograms or more, or objects that weigh fractions of grams.

[Edit]It seems foot-pound-force is a unit of work. I have no idea how you could measure that from a projectile.[/Edit]

Unless that's some unit of force I've never seen, it's just a misspelling of ft lbs, which is a wacky and stupid unit of force. Joules are much nicer, but a lot of Americans like their stupid standard system.

Ok, I think I've realized what's going on here. My original argument on kinetic energy dealt with the fact that kevlar is good against high-kinetic incoming attacks, which is why knives only moderately struggle against them. However, IRL, flechette rounds are nothing but tiny knives, or more appropriately, a sharp point that punches the round straight through. Not a lot of damage. So IRL, flechette rounds keep all their kinetic energy going straight through, armor does crap against them, and they do LESS damage to unarmored targets than normal rounds. Needless to say, by the standard (and might I add correct) definition of a 'flechette' round, FASA got it all wrong.

(A note here, before we depart reality: Kagetenshi, absolutely right on the physics thing, KE is much more dependent on velocity than it is mass. However, for a given velocity (read: muzzle velocity) the lead solid bullet is going to have more kinetic energy than a light arrow round. I think you're with me on this. However, if flechettes travel much much faster (square root of bullet's mass over arrow's mass times bullet's velocity to break even), then the flechette does indeed have more KE, you're right. I haven't seen the numbers.)

I think what happened was this: When I first heard what flechette did in SR, I imagined it as a bullet that simply fragmented in the body in a specific way, lots of little slivers of metal and lead that tore through your body in all directions because they had little inertia and lots of kinetic energy. Shotguns were the same concept, because shot has lots of kinetic energy but almost no inertia, compared to a bullet. Needless to say, a bullet that fragments on impact is going to do nothing to a kevlar vest, since the bullet hits, the vest absorbing the Kinetic energy with no penetration, then the bullet slivers with much less energy (most of the impact energy to be specific), at most embedding themselves in the vest.

Maybe this is what FASA is thinking of, correctly or not, when they think of flechette rounds. No penetration in kevlar, specialized bullets, and extra damage to softies. On another note, a really sick version of this round is a ceramic Hi-C version, if possible. Sticks in your body, and it's nigh impossible to fish it out (no x-ray scans).

On Kenetic Energy: The reason flechette rounds fire so fast is they have lower mass and equal kenetic energy (plus they're a bit more aerodynamic). Since the same amount of charge is used to launch the round, the same force must go into it, thus the Kenetic Energy must be equal.

However, I've heard it mentioned that Flechette rounds have less recoil. In that case by Newton's Laws (for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction) there must be less energy going into the Flechette when fired, thus it has less KE.

JaronK

Ceramics will show up fine on x-ray scans, assuming you calibrate it correctly. They don't show up on MADS, but they operate completely differently.

Also, where did you read that flechette rounds recoil less? I've never heard anything like that.

On final note about flechettes: yes, velocity matters much more than mass when you talk about kinetic energy. Do not, however, make the mistake of thinking that terminal performance is equal to kinetic energy delivered, or that mass is insignificant. .72 caliber muskets can fire bullets slow enough to be reliably visible, and still can produce remarkably nasty wounds that far and away dwarf what we're used to with modern weapons. Flechettes, likewise, may be very fast, but their potential for tissue disruption is extremely marginal.

And, yes, FASA got it almost literally backwards with the flechettes. Why the writers couldn't be bothered to do so much as read a dictionary is beyond me, but it's not like flechette's the only mistake in all of canon.

It looks like the idea was to turn any firearm into a shotgun- which seems like an interesting idea, but has not basis in reality (that I can think of). As written "flechette" ammunition should probably go to the same place Dikote needs to.

Arethusa- if you don't already have rules for flechettes, how about high Power (10+), but only dealing Light Damage. Another option is "normal" damage (7~9) and Light Damage, but they reduce armor values by 50 percent. That seems to represent how they really operate.

JaronK- "assassin" doesn't necessarily mean "gun-fighter" so I don't think guns necessarily define "assassin" type characters. An spec ops/assassin (IMO) should probably be a good sniper- meaning having a Ranger Arms SM-3, or a Remington 950 if needing something with an Availability under 8. A Defiance Super Shock could be useful too. Although there's nothing bad about basing a character around a piece of gear, it's used all the time.

Lotsa Weird Science going around...

I'd recommend getting Cannon Companion ASAP.

My point in looking at the basic mechanics of it was to discuss penetration through kevlar armor. Stuff that's not shaped and with a significant amount of KE is going to get slowed down by kevlar, and stuff with less mass and the SAME kinetic e. are going to get stopped dead in their tracks by kevlar. Point in case, bullets for the former and SR's "reinvisioning" of the flechette round for the latter.

Personally, I rather like the rules as they stand. These (if I'm imagining them right) shattering sliver-bullets do lots of internal tissue damage because they don't penetrate and tend to ricochet against hard stuff in your body. Not to mention, with ten of these jammed in your body, every move you make is gonna hurt like a bitch. Furthermore, by the way they're built, any kind of bullet-proofing does wonders against it.

So I say, keep the rules, discard the word. The things Shadowrun is talking about aren't flechettes, they're rather the opposite. Would anti-personnel ammunition be more appropriate? How about sliverbullets?

Small bullet fragments could certainly go in all sorts of different directions inside a body, especially if the pieces take semi-random forms upon fragmenting. Bullets don't go straight in a body just because of rotational inertia, however. In fact, AFAIK rotational inertia is insignificant once you get inside a body. This is most obvious from the way that nearly all bullets with center-mass clearly behind the center point length-wise flip when they hit (semi-)fluids such as humans. This particular bullet has a habit of flipping twice and then turning about 45 degrees when it hits ballistic gelatin.

That incredibly small energy level alone counts for a lot. I'm quite confident that even a FMJ, sharper ogive .22LR wouldn't penetrate quite as well as a 5.56x45mm FMJ -- maybe not a fair comparison at ~9x as much KE, but the point stands. If you want to penetrate stuff, you don't want a projectile with 120-140ft-lbs when you can so easily get much, much, much more.

Of course shape and hardness matters a lot. That's been one of my main points all along. Doesn't surprise me in the least that measily little 4.3mm bullet is good at penetrating body armor when you fire it fast enough. I suppose a .17 Remington 25gr FMJ @ 4,000fps+ would penetrate pretty well, too.

My point also was that you don't necessarily have to do it fast or with a lot of energy if you can focus your attack. You can take an ice pick or similar hard slender pointed object in your bare hands and relatively easily push it through most soft body armor. A forceful plunge will push most point knife blades through the armor and if you use a cross bow it gets really easy to defeat soft body armor. Body armor is so bad at stopping stabbing attacks from hard extremely sharp points that several companies have created body armor specifically design to both pistol rounds and stabbing attacks. These seem especially popular with British police officer.

Since there are already NIJ standards for stab protection of body armor, I'd think that sort of thing would become popular everywhere really soon.

Having never worked with flechette ammo before, I'm wondering what the official distinction is between them and APDS. My guess would be the 'DS=Discarding Sabot' portion. Does anyone have the official answer for this?

I have worked a lot in the past with large bore (tank) APDS before, and can say that it has much higher muzzle velocities than other ammo types, and a straighter flight path and longer range due to lower wind resistance of it smaller cross-section. The pointy end of the rounds are only for aerodynamics, not actual penatration, because the slug instantly melts when it hits its target and much of that kinetic energy translates into heat. (or so I was taught).

Although the rounds are lighter than normal low-velocity ones, we should note that weapon designers try to make sabots as heavy as possible within their size restrictions (which is why the business end is made out of depleted uranium.)

What you fire from tanks is usually APFSDS, adding DU to the end if you've got Depleted Uranium there like you did. FS stands for "Fin Stabilized" which basically means you're talking about a flechette. Smallarms APDS ammunition is usually not FS, instead the penetrator usually is simply a smaller diameter bullet inside the sabot and not an "arrow".

However, in Shadowrun Flechette has absolutely nothing to do with APDS. It is completely different in every single way.

Almost all ammunition is made as heavy as possible, taking size into consideration. Greater density -> less wind resistance, better penetration, better terminal ballistics, better almost everything.

I'm got a feeling that sharpness does help in penetration even with cannon APFSDSDU ammunition, but I'm not absolutely certain. More pressure = better "liquidation" of armor and better penetration.

Which means that a pound should really be different on the North Pole than on the equator.

Sort of. The relationship between a pound and a kilo should be different. Both units remain unchanged, just the relationship between the two shifts.

You know. That has never occurred to me. Thank you for giving me another bit of information to out-geek my "friends".