QUOTE (Wakshaani @ Apr 25 2016, 02:55 AM)
Getting the stats for firearms of olde isn't that hard, but it comes with a twist.
For one, starting around 2040, firearm caliber went up just a tad. 10mm replaced 9mm, and 11 is hardly unheard of. So, you'll want to adjust older firearms down by 1 damage code to take that into consideration. (And, of course, getting bullets will be a bear.)
Next is the relative advances in technology... lighter materials, computer-assisted aiming, and so on, that are second-nature to a modern shooter. as such, you'll probably want to drop Accuracy by 1.
Lastly, and the biggie, is armor penetration. SOTA advances in armor, and armor-piercing, tech over the years has made the biggest impact here. For a rough guide, assume that every ten years, or twenty if you're being nice, behind the curve a gun is, reduce the AP by 1... and, yes, this means that a -1 AP can turn into a +1, +2, or even worse over time. Bullets from the 1970's just don't do diddly to modern armor thanks to SOTA advances in ceramics and what have you.
So, general rule of thumb:
-1 Acc
-1 Pow
+0 to +6 AP
On the plus side, they're all unhackable. You take the good, you take the bad...
I don't know, man, as another poster said, .30-06 will still penetrate most armor today. If anything battle rifles have been getting less powerful since the World War II era for logistical reasons.
.45 ACP was used in military settings since 1911 or so and it is still considered one of the gold standard rounds in stopping power. It doesn't perform badly in any way compared to more modern rounds like .40 S&W. And the FBI actually backed off of using 10mm because it was too powerful and too hard to control.
There are some modern rounds like .357 sig that are supposed to be really excellent, but it's not like .45 ACP is now irrelevant because some police departments run with .357 sig.
It's also not hard to get old ammunition. Not really. You can always make your own. In Las Vegas, for example, there's a guy who comes out to the Crossroads of the West gun show and sells arisaka ammunition. If one individual wanted, say, 1000 arisaka cartridges, it probably wouldn't be a huge problem to get them. I can see it would be a problem if you needed a constant large supply, like if for some reason you were running a platoon that was using arisakas. But for one guy, any amount that he would use just wouldn't be that big of an amount.
The only thing I might do in terms of reducing the power would be if the person is using lead round nose (LRN) ammunition. In a military museum, I saw some military handgun cartridges from the Korean War that were LRN instead of FMJ. Also, according to Ayoob's book "Combat Handgunnery", there was a time when the old .38s carried by police were called "widowmakers" because they were loaded with .38 LRN and often did not "stop" the bad guy.
So, hypothetically, if the character only found a tin of LRN cartridges, those might be penalized in terms of armor penetration. But, the thing is, many old rifles and handguns can fire modern rounds, and even old surplus rounds are typically FMJ. So normally I wouldn't penalize.