Energy isn't really relevant to damage (as opposed to penetration) in and of itself. That being said, yes, a shot should theoretically do less damage given that it'd be making a neat little hole through someone. Whether this needs be covered in the rules is a matter of personal opinion.

~J

Yeah, but then what are we looking at? Take a guy with ar jacket 5/3 being hit by a 9M round.

-1/2 5 = 2 so round is effectively 11M in that situation
now, say APDS halves amrour, but suffers -2 power due to less energy transfer..

See where I'm going with this?

There was some conflict in which soldiers were using primarily AP ammo because they thought it would work better, against unarmored drugged up opponents. The ammo ended up punching neat little holes in people who didn't feel it, and it took more shots that normal to drop each of them, resulting in lots of wasted ammo.

This is why the M-16 is made to tumble its rounds after impact. Goes in through the armor, then tumbles about inside of you, and then maybe goes out another side of the armor, or just stops from being in you.

algcs, non APDS would do 4M, APDS does 7M. If it got dropped back down to 5M, what good is it?

Incidentally, am I missing something or is 12" way more than should be needed to reach vital organs? Hell, on me that's most of the way through any part of my torso horizontally.

~J

Anyone else seeing Jack Black's character from teh Jackal in their head, "Yeah, sprawl baby."

hmm, you could stage dmg level one down..
that would make vs 5/3 jacket..
9M Regular round vs 5 ballistic : 4M
9M APDS vs 5 ballistic : 7L
9M ExEx round (so 11M) vs 5 ballistic: 6M

9M Regular vs no armour : 9M
9M APDS vs no armour: 9L
9M ExEx vs no armour: 11M

My SR characters tend to end up with 6/5 armor which would mean here..
9m regular: 3M
9M Apds... 6L
9M EXEX 5M
makes apds start to be interesting.. and really the only good choice vs 7+ armor.. but not that great vs unarmored..

DS

-1 Damage Code does make an interesting mix..

But what about weapons that do base Light damage? No APDS for them?

Actually I do give APDS and AV a -1 power against squishies, I have for years.

Let me start by: It Really Depends But and It's Not Quite This Simple But.

Like Kagetenshi said in his first post, energy transfer isn't important, not compared to the size of wound cavity. For all comparisons between the SR APDS and Standard ammunition types, it is most meaningful to compare RL Amor Piercing and FMJ/Ball ammunition (and other solids). Cannon Companion already introduces a number of deforming/fragmenting ammunition types, most importantly the Hollow Point which corresponds to most defense handgun and hunting (other than big game) ammunition in use today.

Most FMJ ammunition does not deform or fragment upon hitting humans, as you can see from the 9x19mm 124gr FMJ, .45 ACP 230gr FMJ, 5.45x39mm 53gr FMJ, 7.62x39mm 120.5gr FMJ and 7.62x51mm 150gr FMJ wound profile illustrations. Because of the round or sharp ogive shapes of the bullet's nose, these ammunition types leave permanent wound cavities of about the same diameter as the bullet itself.

The more to the rear of the bullet the mass center is, the more likely it is to tumble and the sooner it will do so. Current assault rifle rounds are often particularly long and are designed such that their mass center is as far back as possible to facilitate tumbling. The M193 and M855 and certain 7.62x51mm FMJ designs are a special case -- not only do they have a strong tendency to tumble, but they also tend to fragment when they do so at sufficiently high velocity.

What I think Arethusa was getting as is that the velocity break-off point is pretty high, so the range where you are likely to get fragmentation is not too great even with a long-barreled weapon and it is insufficient in many cases with short-barreled weapons. Even when the velocity is sufficient, fragmentation does not always occur upon tumbling, nor is it exactly certain (although it is very, very likely) the bullet will tumble in the first place. This effect certainly does not happen after the bullet has penetrated body armor, because that slows the bullet down significantly, and is quite likely to deform the bullet in some way as well.

Anyway, like I said, these are special cases. Most FMJ ammunition does not deform or fragment. Compared to (nearly) full-caliber armor piercing designs, like the M993 and M995, the only real advantage of FMJs in terminal ballistics is their tendency to tumble -- current penetrator designs are very unlikely to tumble. Apart from that, the less sharp/round penetrators will tend to produce permanent wound cavities about as large as those produced by FMJ rounds. With most pistols, where tumbling is insignificant anyway, there is very little loss of terminal effect when going from FMJ to AP.

APDS is different, because there the actual projectile is by definition much smaller in diameter than a standard FMJ for the same weapon would be. With saboted ammunition, it is perfectly reasonable to reduce the Damage Code in some way. However, I personally think you'll be better off just thinking of the SR APDS as plain AP. Even then, a slight drop is justifiable, if that's what you want for your games.

There has been a huge number of threads on these same issues in the past. Searching for things like "wound cavity" or anything by the poster "Raygun" from since the beginning of this forum, and you'll find them.

I still think the reason APDS gives more damage even to non-armored characters is the kinetic energy of the bullet. Kinetic energy of a weapon is mass x (Velocity Squared)/450240 = ke. Because the armor piercing round is going faster along with the weight it has more energy.

Take a look at the difference between .22 and .45. A .22 has twice the velocity of a .45, but the mass is less than one tenth. Because of this the .22 has less kinetic energy than the .45. If you were to shoot a person with a .22 in the chest, there is a great chance that the person is going to stand and keep coming. If you were to shoot the same person in the hand with a .45, there is a very good chance that the person is going to be knocked down because of the force (kinetic energy).

When APDS is used in real world (armored jacket bullets sometimes knows as cop killers) the results are similar. An armored 9mm will go though the bulletproof jacket, negating the bulletproof vest, stripping some of if not most of the armor jacket and leaving a regular shell to give the regular and horrific damage to the person on the other side. If the person does not have a vest on, it leaves a nice neat whole in the person. This is where the kinetic energy comes into play with the weapon. A shot to the chest of a person with a APDS round of a rugger super warhawk (roughly a .44 if I read it correctly) would not only leave a whole, but would do a lot of damage because it is a HUGE piece of lead entering and leaving the body as well as all the force that comes with it.

Look at deer hunting. You hit a deer with a .270 there is a chance that the deer is going to run away and you will have to do some tracking. Use a .308 there is going to be more of a chance that there is going to be knockdown. This knockdown keeps the deer from running and more of a chance of a quicker death.

Because of this I see APDS not working fully on Vehicles because the Armor Plating negates the APDS and then the metal in the Vehicle is takes the rest. Metal is strong than skin on this fact.

For rounding down the damage on unarmored people when using APDS I would have to go against because there is more than speed and whole size when getting shot with a bullet.

my two cents worth

The whole purpose of using FMJ rounds in modern assault rifles is to injure and not kill the enemy. A dead enemy soldier is left laying on the field til the fighting is done and = 1 less man fighting. An injured soldier requires 2-3 other guys to drag him to safty during the fighting and = 3-4 less men fighting.

U Fester- first off "knock down power" with small arms is a myth, and second i'm not sure what point your trying to make. the whole crux of this (ongoing) debate is the fact that a high energy/low def-frag round will readily pass through an unarmored target and all that spiffy energy will go right out the other side with the round.

The problem here (in general) is that the situation is not so black and white as the rules make it (in the absences of a hit-location system in SR). An APDS round should be less effective against non-vital soft tissue, but equally effective against bone mass or vital organs. Personally I think this problem could have been handled quite elegantly with the old staging rules from SR1. You simply give the weapon with APDS rounds a staging of 1 (as in 9M1 for HP instead of the standard 9M2). Then the target has an easier time resisting (its a tiny little hole after all) and at the same time the amount of damage done is based more on the shooter's net successes (the accuracy of the shot and the chances that the shooter will hit some vital organ or bone mass). But unfortunatly FASA deemed this system to complicated for the average SR player (or did they mean DnD player?) and the rest, as they say, is history.

now i may be wrong, but i thought "cop killer" rounds were actually the oppiste to AP/APDS rounds, in that they were designed to fastly expand once impact was made and the bullt was in the body, causing a decent hole at entry, and a rather sickening sized one where it exits the body...

i could be wrong, but thats how i thought bullets like the "rhino" where supposed to work...

Well, I guess I was wrong. Not the first and will most likely will not be the last. Looks like I need to do more research. Thanks for the info.

KTW is the company that produces Cop-Killers tm, which by the way were produced for use by cops.

Here is a link to the ATF rulings on Armor Piercing rounds at the bottom is a list of manufacturers that make AP rounds.

An article on "Cop Killers" from The American Rifleman of February 1989, hosted on Raygun's site.

Hey, it's the future. Who knows what new crazyness they've developed, even if it bucks things like modern trends or even, say, physics.

Look over there! It's magic!

And over there, it's an abstract combat system!

While I personally have a keen interest in firearms, I play my own Shadowrun game without even trying to figure in caliber. It's just such a hassle.

Not that I'm saying you all aren't pursuing some very interesting and fine points here. Merely interjecting my own point of view with worrying about applying such things to Shadowrun. And, should I go about trying to make things more realistic, well, that's why God invented Raygun.