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Xirces
I've relented and I've got NSRCG and I'm editing the datafiles to better serve my own purposes and I've noticed that belted ammo isn't well served.

Can anyone clarify what ammo can/can't be used in belts and what the maximum belt size is (I remember the 1000 round belts in SSC smile.gif )?

Most, I think, are common sense, but can/would you use capsule rounds belted? Explosive (big bang!) and some others that occurred to me earlier.
Austere Emancipator
I can't understand why any type of ammunition couldn't be belted. If a cartridge cannot handle the pressures caused by the belt feeding mechanism (which is rather aggressive, I'll grant that), it certainly couldn't handle the firing.

Explosive ammunition is absolutely "beltable". That's how most explosive ammunition in the world is fired IRL -- from heavy machineguns and autocannons.
Cain
IIRC, there's no actual upper limit to the amount of rounds that can be belted together-- if you want to have a 1,000,000-round belt, there's nothing stopping you from doing so. However, there's a practical limit in the amount of rounds you can carry-- I'd certainly be enforcing the encumbrance rules on anyone trying to tote around a million rounds of ammo.
TinkerGnome
Vehicles can carry an insane amount of ammo in their bins. I image that it's all one long belt.
Xirces
Ok thanks, pretty much what I was thinking. It's just as I was editing the dat file I was wondering how much or little I'd need to do. I'm going up to 1000 round belts. The only ammo type I'm missing out is tracer (which is pointless), but my thoughts were on whether the others are practical - gel I can see, capsule not so much.

My comment about explosive was for when the Mage sends a Fireball at the 1000 round belt biggrin.gif
Smiley
What's reeeeally going to suck is re-belting all that ammo after you've shot it all off. That is a cast iron BITCH. Those links are easy enough to get, but snapping in every individual round... i don't envy you, boss.
Smiley
Also, i just remembered the concealability of a belt of 100 rounds in the back of Cannon Companion (look it up, it's amusing). I don't know if you're planning to walk around with your belt of 1000, but everybody is GOING to know you have it. There's very little avoiding it. I guess if you need to carry around that many belted rounds, the time for stealth is at an end and being spotted with heavy ammo is the least of your worries.
Moonstone Spider
I'd get a drone with mechanical arms and an Ammo B/R autosoft to do it for me if I had to belt a million rounds.
Nikoli
GM Mr. Fix-it, 2 arms, tool kit and B/R included, SSG I believe, very handy for small annoying chores.
Smiley
And trust me, linking individual rounds is EXTREMELY annoying.
Arethusa
Or, hell, just get a linking machine. We have them today.
Shrike30
The concealability rating for that belt in the book is for Assault Cannon ammunition... not what you'd usually see belted. A normal 100 round belt could be draped around you like a real belt, or slung on your shoulder Pancho Villa style, and easily concealed under a long coat or jacket.

Admittedly, if you figure in things like getting the links bent, getting them dirty, etc, this is a dumb way to carry your ammo compared to in a pouch. But you can, and people have.
Smiley
1000 rounds? 10 times the number in Cannon Companion that had a concealability of 'yeah, right?' Try carrying that many rounds, totally concealed. You'll look like the Michelin Man.
Raygun
A 100 round belt of 20mm cannon ammunition is not going to be concealed under a long coat. At least not one worn by a human. First, the weight for 100 rounds of "assault cannon" ammunition on SR3.280 is pretty optimistic. For example, the 25mm round the XM307 (OCSW) and Barrett Payload Rifle fires (as close to an "assault cannon" as we get today) weighs 0.368 lbs per cartridge. 100 rounds, sans belt, weighs 36.8 lbs (16.7 kg). Second, each cartridge is about five inches in length. Pretty difficult to sneak around with.

Now, about how much ammunition you can have on a single belt, it depends on the weapon system. Conventional, lightweight, man-portable machine guns depend on the gas expansion of the cartridge to operate the action and pull the belt through the action. There's a limited amount of energy there. Actual link feed systems can't pull an infinite number of rounds because the more rounds you put on the belt, the heavier the belt is, and the more friction it encounters as you're pulling it. If you put too many rounds on a belt and the gun is going to jam repeatedly. Of course, there are ways to minimize that.

1000 round belts are pretty much out of the question on a man-portable system because moving that much ammunition at once is very difficult. The longest belt I've heard of being used was 450 rounds, and that was on an M60E4 under controlled circumstances. AFAIK, the longest belts used in on military small arms is a 200 round belt on the M249 SAW.

On linkless feed systems (like most miniguns use), you can store much more ammunition because the system isn't dependent on the fired cartridge to cycle the action.
Austere Emancipator
Someone mentioned wearing (small arms) ammunition belts as regular belts, or otherwise draped over a body. You should remember that you than have nothing to keep the belt in, and firing a machinegun while 150 rounds are just hanging freely on one side is really fucking stupid, regardless of what Rambo might have to say about that. Reasonably speaking, you should always have belt pouches. You can fire them without, obviously, but getting the belt stuck into places and going into knots can be a pain in the ass, plus all the crap the belt will collect and "deposit" inside the weapon.

Here you can see a belt box for 200 rounds of linked AR/LMG ammunition. That box alone is the size of a stockless SMG (Conc 4, Conc 5?). Of course it doesn't really matter if you're also carrying a fricken machinegun. Might as well carry 6 belt boxes.

Raygun said the most important thing to remember about actual belt length: limited by what the action can pull through. 250s were used in many weapons in WWII -- most Maxims seem to have that as a standard, and it stuck around for a while. But 250 is the largest I've ever seen or heard of for a LMG or HMG carried by infantry.

I'm guessing we aren't discussing miniguns here, but still, have I got this straight: Miniguns work so that the electric engine pulls the belt to a feeder/delinker system, which then feed the rounds one at a time, sans belt, to the actual weapon? Which part, exactly, is it on conventional machineguns that yanks the cartridges free of the belt?

Fired and played around a lot with the internals of 2 machineguns, and still have no clue how that bit works...

[Edit]Nevermind, reading HowStuffWorks.Com right now.[/Edit]
RangerJoe
The mention of using a drone to belt ammo for a runner during pre-run prep time got me thinking of other expensive approaches to what is otherwise a fairly mind-numbing task. Behold the result.

Spell Name: Belt Ammo
Type: Physical
Category: Manipulation
Range: LOS
TN: 4
Duration: Permanent
Drain: +1M
Spell Descritpion: When cast on a pile of ammunition and belting clips, Belt Ammo links up to (successes x 20) bullets into a belt with max successes equal to the force of the spell. The spell takes 10 turns to become permanent (as per normal permanent spells, during which time, the bullets are actually fitted together into the belt-clips).
Notes: (minor phys change M, -1 level (very restricted target), +1 power (physical spell), +1 level (permanent)). The original wording was (successes x 10) bullets, but I felt this made the spell too weak. Yes, this is a hyper-specialized form of magic fingers, but it led to the following idea for an even better spell....

Spell Name: unBelt Ammo
Type: Physical
Range: LOS
TN: 4
Duration: Instant
Drain: +1L
Spell Description: When cast on a belt of ammunition, unBelt Ammo unclips (successes) bullets visible to the caster from the belt of ammunition, up to a maximum of the force of the spell.
Notes: (minor phys change M, -1 level (very restricted target), +1 power (physical spell)). This spell is a great way to ruin any machine-gunner's day. A clever mage could cast this spell on a belt of ammo being fed into the chain-gun which is chewing up his pinned-down team members. Breaking the belt (it only takes one unlinked bullet....) might buy the runners the turn they need to take out the machine-gunner. Worse, a broken belt may start slipping catastrophically out of its ammo bin. It'll take something of a quickness test to arrest the slinky-action.

Ain't snarky cantrips great?
Phaeton
QUOTE (RangerJoe)
The mention of using a drone to belt ammo for a runner during pre-run prep time got me thinking of other expensive approaches to what is otherwise a fairly mind-numbing task. Behold the result.

Spell Name: Belt Ammo
Type: Physical
Category: Manipulation
Range: LOS
TN: 4
Duration: Permanent
Drain: +1M
Spell Descritpion: When cast on a pile of ammunition and belting clips, Belt Ammo links up to (successes x 20) bullets into a belt with max successes equal to the force of the spell. The spell takes 10 turns to become permanent (as per normal permanent spells, during which time, the bullets are actually fitted together into the belt-clips).
Notes: (minor phys change M, -1 level (very restricted target), +1 power (physical spell), +1 level (permanent)). The original wording was (successes x 10) bullets, but I felt this made the spell too weak. Yes, this is a hyper-specialized form of magic fingers, but it led to the following idea for an even better spell....

Spell Name: unBelt Ammo
Type: Physical
Range: LOS
TN: 4
Duration: Instant
Drain: +1L
Spell Description: When cast on a belt of ammunition, unBelt Ammo unclips (successes) bullets visible to the cast from the belt of ammunition, up to a maximum of the force of the spell.
Notes: (minor phys change M, -1 level (very restricted target), +1 power (physical spell)). This spell is a great way to ruin any machine-gunner's day. A clever mage could cast this spell on a belt of ammo being fed into the chain-gun which is chewing up his pinned down team members. Breaking the belt (it only takes one unlinked bullet....) might buy the runners the turn they need to take out the machine-gunner. Worse, a broken belt may start slipping catastrophically out of its ammo bin. It'll take something of a quickness test to arrest the slinky-action.

Ain't snarky cantrips great?

An equally fun idea---the Cook Ammo spell on a belt of assault cannon shells. THAT'S gonna leave a mark... cool.gif nyahnyah.gif biggrin.gif
Austere Emancipator
Does chain gun = minigun? Because you won't see the belt on a minigun, usually, and I doubt one unlinked cartridge would do anything for that. An unlinked cartridge will only cost the gunner of a conventional machinegun one "Ready Weapon" Simple Action. And I doubt a "slipping" can happen, or can it? I'd figure it'd just jam the weapon and might take some quick fingerwork to get back into working order.

Anyhoo, it's not much more than you could do with a Magic Fingers spell, putting the weapon back to safe, opening the feed system and ejecting the belt every Action.

And forget about the cooking thing. Sure assault cannon rounds might actually hurt a bit, but a plain ole fireball shouldn't really do a damn thing to covered ammunition (in magazines/belt pouches/boxes). I suppose some incendiary or incendiary/explosive rounds could touch off and make a *bang*, but you won't get any significant effect until you've raised temperatures high enough to cook the target person, too.
Lindt
Hence the FIREball. I love the unbelt spell, its goofy, yet oddly usefull. All of the sudden the gunner sees 10 rounds fall out of the belt. Evil....
RangerJoe
Of course it might only cost the gunner a simple action, but that's one combat phase where you don't have to worry about 15 rounds coming your way. For a non-enhanced gunner, dedicating a simple action to re-readying the weapon means he cannot (usually) get another FA burst off until the next initiative pass.

That, and such a spell would annoy a gunner, which is priceless.
Lindt
Id imagine it might be more, though I dont know exactly how belt fed weapons work. It might require opening the breach, pulling the belt over to where there is ammo, cocking, then finally letting fly hot death... but I could (and most likely am) be wrong.
Arethusa
Actually, you're pretty much spot on, but in terms of SR rules, that's just a complex action since fully reloading a weapon never takes more than that.
Raygun
QUOTE (Austere Emancipator)
Does chain gun = minigun?

No. Two different technologies. I'm sure you know the basics of how a minigun works. A chain gun is a single barrel system that uses an electric motor to drive the action via an actual chain. The M242 gun on the M2 Bradley and the M230 on the AH-64 Apache are chain guns. Both use linkless feeds.

edit> Oops. The M242 has a dual feed system that apparently uses linked belts.
Smiley
QUOTE (Lindt)
Id imagine it might be more, though I dont know exactly how belt fed weapons work. It might require opening the breach, pulling the belt over to where there is ammo, cocking, then finally letting fly hot death... but I could (and most likely am) be wrong.

That's right, more or less. If you use your Google-fu to look up the M240G, you'll be able to see where you set the belt to get it started. Then it just feeds itself.
Xirces
It's amazing what you learn...

Something just struck me whilst typing in all these figures - the availability increases for belted ammunition (Sr3 p281 - add rounds/100 to availability). If I want a 50 round belt I add one to availability (rounding up) just for the added difficulty of getting belted ammo.

This makes getting large belts almost impossible, even for the simple ammo. Take Explosive, for instance (Avail 3). A 100 round belt rises to a 4, still not too bad. However a 1000 round belt has avail 13...

Question is - can't you just link smaller belts together instead of buying a single huge one?

"Can I have 10 belts of explosive ammo, 100 rounds per belt, please?"
Austere Emancipator
QUOTE (Raygun)
A chain gun is a single barrel system that uses an electric motor to drive the action via an actual chain.

OK. In that case, I doubt you'd ever see the belt of a chain gun (if indeed it even has one) in a combat situation either. Ammunition for such weapons is usually in a drum, connected to the weapon with, I don't know what to call it, but you can't really see the belt going from the drum to the weapon. And, just like with a minigun, it shouldn't be a major problem, because the electric motor can just keep pulling the belt forward until more rounds appear, causing nothing more than a (0.05-0.2 x rounds un-belted) second delay.

QUOTE (Lindt)
Id imagine it might be more, though I dont know exactly how belt fed weapons work. It might require opening the breach, pulling the belt over to where there is ammo, cocking, then finally letting fly hot death... but I could (and most likely am) be wrong.

If you unbelt a whole lot of ammunition, then that might be the quickest way. However, it's uncommon for someone to see more than just a few cartridges on the belt, depending on where the belt box/pouch is mounted on the machine gun. Skipping over a few rounds would be quickest achieved by just cycling the gun manually a few times, which is a Ready Weapon Simple Action. You can cycle an automatic firearm manually a dozen times a second if it's decently designed.

QUOTE (Xirces)
Question is - can't you just link smaller belts together instead of buying a single huge one?

Better yet, buy 1000 loose rounds of Explosive ammunition for the weapon, and then buy 100 10-round segments of "MMG caliber" ammunition belt. Then load all those segments, and connect them into belts of the length of your liking.

You still won't want a 1000-round belt, because of what Raygun already said above, unless you're getting a minigun or autocannon for a vehicle.

[Edit]How Machine Guns Work[/Edit]
Shrike30
QUOTE
A 100 round belt of 20mm cannon ammunition is not going to be concealed under a long coat. At least not one worn by a human. First, the weight for 100 rounds of "assault cannon" ammunition on SR3.280 is pretty optimistic.


Ah... i should have been more clear when i said "normal" ammunition. I was referring to belted 5.56 or 7.62 (and the Shadowrun equivalents).

QUOTE
Someone mentioned wearing (small arms) ammunition belts as regular belts, or otherwise draped over a body. You should remember that you than have nothing to keep the belt in, and firing a machinegun while 150 rounds are just hanging freely on one side is really fucking stupid, regardless of what Rambo might have to say about that. Reasonably speaking, you should always have belt pouches. You can fire them without, obviously, but getting the belt stuck into places and going into knots can be a pain in the ass, plus all the crap the belt will collect and "deposit" inside the weapon.


I totally agree. There's a reason that mounted guns are often used by two men, and why we keep our ammo pouched or boxed when using GPMGs and LMGs with one gunner. It's rare that this would be appropriate... the story i've heard involved the machinegun being stashed in a piece of pipe on-site ahead of time (the grip had been removed and was reaffixed prior to firing) and the runners having to smuggle the ammunition in on their persons, where the draped belt could be concealed by having the leather jacket zipped up, but a 200 round belt pouch would be pretty noticeably bulky. During the firefight, one of the runners fed for the machinegunner to avoid tangles and jams.
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