How so? Under canon rules at least, that'd still give you a suppressed firearm doing 10S base damage. For losing a point of concealability I'd say that's a pretty good deal.

Where are you getting this? Even .50 BMG can be suppressed with far less than that.

And, for shotguns, well, have a look. Not exactly 6"x2-3'.

That's nothing. If This is anywhere near accurate, you just added a klunky barrel extension to your shotgun.

Subsonic rounds, sure. but then you lose damage potential.

This is All speculation, but I think my guess at the size of the thing to get any real reductions (down to around 80 decibles maybe?) is partially accurate.

Expirimentation is needed.

Um, that's true of any suppressor on, say, a rifle or most pistols. As shotguns are essentially the ballistic equivallent of very big pistols, they actually lose substantially less terminal potential than a rifle round as they rely less on velocity for damage.

Size, assuming solid design, has little to do with suppression effectiveness; with a good design, making them bigger is really far more an issue of increasing the suppressor's capacity to handle autofire (and thus larger volumes of expelled gases at a time) than the suppressor's sound dampening potential.

The propellant gases violently escaping the muzzle of the weapon are no longer touching the gun, that's pretty much the point. That blast of gas is what makes up a very large portion of the noise.

If the projectile is moving supersonically there is a constant "sonic boom". The Stealth spell might (depending on the GM) silence this inside the barrel (big help indeed...), and the Silence spell would silence it up until the projectile leaves the radius of the spell, but then the pressure barrier formed by a supersonic object would get back to work.

And the whole point was that even if Stealth did work like a sound suppressor does (and I don't think it does), large amounts of powder + large supersonic projectile = lots and lots of noise. Check this out.

That's not how 'sonic booms' and supersonic flight work.

Just so there's no confusion, there is a somewhat common misconception about the supersonic "boom." In short, there is no single boom. Here's a simple link that explains pressure barriers and fluid mechanics.

[edit]

Here's a simpler link, taken from a link on the aforementioned page.

[edit 2]

And another, in case you just can't get enough of those fluid mechanics and pressure waves. Also very straightforward and it's got pretty pictures.

*Sprays coffee over colleague*
What's the availability on that?!
Anyways, back to topic, Pretty much most of my characters end up with the Rifles skill and a silenced Remington 950 with shock pad. Equipped with a lowlight/thermal scope, it's a great medium-to-long range guard neutraliser. With an internal Smartlink-II and Rangefinder you can put a round between someone's eyes at half a klick with ease. And the base weapon is, as others have said, easy to permit.
For melee I tend towards shock gloves and/or extendable batons. Concealable and effective, and not necessarily lethal- if the target needs to be killed, you can always break their neck after you've beaten them into unconsciousness. The other favourite is the (quasi-legal by SR3 rules) dikoted long fineblade.
One of my GM's NPCs carries a custom nodachi- ceramic, dikoted, with vibration module. Just as well he's cybered from the neck down...

-JH.

no big I useally type these things up either early morning or late at night so I do post some (ok i'll say it) stupid stuff lol. As you can see I get over it.

hehe extendable rifle barrel sounds cool.

It was actually custom built for the German military for use on the firing rage. The noise was bothering the local residents, and the German military responded by building a suppressor on the thing. Not really combat viable hardware.