Besides AV specific munitions, is there anything else which is AV?

I'm only asking because I've seen it mentioned a couple of times on DS and I think it's been implied in one of the SRM's that dikote counts as anti-vehicle.

I just wanna get this confirmed, cos if that's the case, then I need to watch out.....

dikote is everywhere!! :o(

Dikote most expressly does not count as antivehicular. Everything that does is labeled as such with one exception: underwater, all explosives count as antivehicular.

~J

If that is the case then my Gilette razor would count as an AV weapon and I pretty much doubt that.

Answer to your question: NO, and NO. And if there is someone who still insists to you that it is so: NO!

In that case it would probably be much cheaper to Dikote bullets (just the actual bullet, not the casing as well) than buying AV ammunition.

Not cheaper, probably, but certainly easier to come by.

~J

Well, that's another thing which SRM4 gets wrong then.

Okay, cheers guys.

You need to get a solid bronze core for your Dikoted Ancient Ancestral Katana for it to count as AV.

Hmm, sounds like I need to come up with some TN mods for enchanting a weapon made of Orichalcum and Depleted Uranium :o)

True, very true.

But how would orichalcum and tungsten alloy together? Prolly a metalurgical mostrosity, much like orichalcum itself :o)

Why would you want to alloy them together? If you absolutely must have orichalcum in the weapon itself, you could make most of the handle of it -- a sword blade made out of tungsten (carbide?) will be insanely heavy, so you'll want a lot of weight on the handle as well. A 9kg normal-sized one-hand sword, yay!

Yeah, I'm thinking blade and not weapon.

However, the reason I wanna alloy them is so I can get Force 2 Hand Razor weapon foci which count as AV :o)

Seriously, I'm kinda surprised there's nothing which is AV in close combat. I mean, a troll can have STR 16 at Max, add in a halberd or something akin and you've got a damage code of 20D or so. Granted that'll be AV (or close enough) but how about a poor human? He needs slugs - so adepts are kinda screwed if you play the stereotypical 'thwack' adept.

*shrug* you just need to get enough dice to jack the power of your attack up. vehicles are notoriously too easy to destroy in SR as it is; i don't think it's really necessary to make an AV melee attack.

You don't need orichalcum in the weapon. Orichalcum used in the creation of a focus does help the Enchanting test, but that orichalcum doesn't have to end up in the actual weapon. Or, if your GM gets really anal about the description of Weapon Foci in sr3.191, just put some orichalcum etchings on the shaft. There's absolutely no reason to use an orichalcum alloy for the blades, nor to put orichalcum in the blades in the first place.

indeed. nothing you can do to the blade of a normal sword will make it able to punch through vehicle armor if it's got only the strength of a high-end human behind it. in SR, however, a super-badass with a sword can actually do it, if he's got enough skill. the fact that it's possible at all is enough for me.

It only takes at minimum 2 swings. Even if you do 500D, it drops down to 250S. Simply because of the way vehicles stage it down automatically, two swings minimum.

A rapier point can punch through quire a bit of steel, I don't see why a sword with a stouter blade cannot damage the armor on a vehicle. IMO the hard part would be retrieving the sword once it went into the armor.

steel != vehicle armor. how much titanium and hardened ceramic can a rapier punch through? besides which, a rapier--or any other blade--can damage a vehicle, even one with armor. for instance, a guy with 4 skill, 6 Str, and a regular sword can put a serious hurting on an Americar with three or four hits.

Not much?

Too bad the sword doesn't have to make a break check against the armor rating. Game mechanic wise I agree, but the real situation is probably very different.

Not vehicle armor, vehicle damage period. But you are right, even unarmored vehicles drop damage level by 1 and half power. So the minimum is in fact one swing, and thats not too hard to get done with most vehicles bodies of 2 or 3.

Dikote isn't technically AV, but it goes a long ways towards it by effectively negating the staging down of the damage level

Pg. 122 M&M
"When dikote is used to coat a melee, throwing or projectile weapon, add 1 to the power of any attack made with the treated weapon. If applied to an edged instrument such as a sword, the weapons damage level is also increased by one."

Also, one good use for Orichalcum in a bullet: anchored focus. Sniper round w/ an anchored fireball to go off when it comes into contact w/ blood.Since it's in the person, it's inside the armor. Damn effective fireball bypassing armor (just don't miss).

I like the idea that a super sonic projectile is more effective vs vehicals than a sword and some welly. Normal guns turn normal cars into swis cheese, I just cant imagen a normal strength person doing that much more than body damage. Doing the maths I think it works well.

Wether Melee weapons could punch through veichle amror or not depends mostly on the weapon. Remember than many of these weapons were originally desinged to punch through plate mail armor.
Rapiers are right out IMO. While very efficient in concentrating the force of a blow at a very small point it would probably bend if you tried to punch through anything really toguh, it was not used to penetrate rennisance armor, and most veichle armor would escape with a scratch.

Other weapons might do it though.
A halberd wielded by a reasonably strong person should have no problem wrecking your regular car. A troll with a dikoted halberd and muscle-replacement would wreck most non-military veichles. This scenario can easily be recreated within the rules, without making dikoted halberd AV.
Halberds are however among the weapons that would be best suited for this purpose. Pole-axes, picks, and even two-handed swords might also do the trick.

A guy who makes real hand-machine forged sword replicas demonstrated the quality of his swords by putting the hood(I don't know techincal car-terms in English. I'm talking about the big plate that covers the engine area of a car) of a regular sedan on high-end and cleaving halfway through it with a single stroke.
Wich ought to prove that melee weapons can damage vechles.

If any one wanted to make a real AV melee-weapon you should make some sort of pole-pickaxe, getting lots of leverage and focusing the power in a small point. The head should be made out of the above mentioned Tungsten, or a core of tungsten covered with a more durable surface, with a long point, enabling it to puncture through armor and into the vital parts of a veichle. Finish it off with a monomolecular point, dikoted surface, cutting lasers (like the crescent axe) or anything you fancy and you've got yourself a weapon that'd cut through any unarmoured veichle without problem. And probably some military veichles as well provided a Troll was doing the wrecking.

Or you could of course make some sort of high-powered, dikoted chainsaw from hell.



So in short. Current rules picture veichles vs. melee weapons accurately enough for a simplified rpg. AV melee wepaons could indeed be made, but simply dikoting your spurs won't do the trick.

Aside from cutting the door pannel of a parked car why would you want an AV melee weapon? Try hitting a car doing 80kph and the sheer force would damd near tear your arm off, not to mention if the blade got caught and you went for a drag.....
Melee against an armoured vehicle? Lets assume that it has guns then...
BIG guns....

Van lead to some cool role playing situations, but in the case were you manage to get that close to a vehicle just jam a shaped charge up its wang.

Welcome to the world of Sillyrun...

Cleaving through a hood (or bonnet or whatever you want to refer to it as) is not that impressive a feat. It's a thin piece of metal. Smacking a stationary, unarmored vehicle with something big and heavy could hurt it, but armor is another story all together.

My whole spiel about attacking vehicles moving at high speeds would be rather redundant now.

It might be useful to know what type of can opener to use for attempting to get a fellow runner out of the back of an overturned Lonestar armored transport where the lock has been frazzled. Demolitions and high explosives could be dangerous to your teammate in such a situation. Cutting torches or laser weapons, on the other hand, may be a bit more beneficial.

Yeah Lasers are pretty anti-vehicular provided that it isn't a completely mirrored vehicle.
DPU does work wonders against vehicle but sometime that is a bit excessive. I for the most part use electricity against vehicles because it isn't considered normal damage. Infact if a rigger is driving the vehicle then it can make for a very interesting situation especially when they realize that they have been kicked out of their beloved vehicle by a little electricity then of course there is also dumpshock to worry about which almost always owns the rigger. Electricity can also overload sensors and cause alot of what once was working properly to screw up and go haywire. =)

Lasers are not considered anti-vehicular as a weapon. As a tool, they are compared to Barrier rating.

It doesn't say anything against them not being anti-vehicular. It may go of barrier but the rules for barrier rating seem kind of crappy in the first place. I have seen an ares firelance cut straight through a nissan patroller 2 like a hot knife throught butter.

Firelance is A/V. MP Laser & MP Laser III are non-A/V. errr... in my out-of-print copy of Fields of Fire anyhoo. I don't have Rigger3 tho' so I'll shut my hole.

Not to mention that most SR vehicle armor is ceramic...

Whoever wrote that section was smart enough not to say anything specific about the nature of those ceramic or metallic materials.

For an example of the difference 60 years of technology can make:
PzKpfw VI Tiger I Ausf E
Weight: 57,000kg
Armor Type: Electrowelded rolled homogenous nickel-steel armor, best quality of its time
Front Turret Armor (Rolled Homogenous Armor equivalent): 100mm, 120mm on gun mantlet
Front Hull Armor (RHAe): 100mm

Leopard 2A6:
Weight: 62,000kg
Armor Type: Third generation composite armor with spaced armor steel plating and spall liner (for specifics, your guess is as good as mine)
Front Turret Armor (RHAe): 920-940mm vs kinetic energy, 1,730-1,960mm vs chemical energy
Front Hull Armor (RHAe): 620mm vs kinetic energy, 750mm vs chemical energy

Cutting through metal armor is easy. Just get yourself a plasma cutter. Modern day fabrication equipment, which I have used to blast holes in 1-inch steel fast. Mind you, the equipment isn't small, and you need a high voltage line. A wall socket will NOT cut it with one.

Ceramic might be a problem, but even that would melt or delaminate if you applied enough heat.

As a teacher at my high school stated: "I have access to dynamite and oxy-acetylene. There is nowhere I couldn’t go if I planned it."

prevention of spalling is important. when your material is spalling in reaction to absorption of kinetic energy, the spalled fragments are usually flung away from the material at high speeds--shrapnel, basically.

But usually the ceramic is an interlayer and the kinetic energy of a small piece of ceramic (designed to pebble, not chunk I would hope) not moving in the same line of incidence would be much lower. And the ceramic is not the innermost layer, there could be a steel innermost layer. Also, you could use a high strength welded wire fabric to reinforce the ceramic so that when it spalls most is still contained and active as load bearing structure.

indeed.

Spall liners are bad. They killed HESH weapons, which were cool

~J

HESH???

High Explosive S H ???

Squash Head.

They splatted against tank armor or pillboxes and did little damage to the outside, but made it spall like crazy inside, shredding the personnel.

~J