Yeah, I think it might be something NATEC is developing with DARPA (actually, it could be ARDEC, which is mentioned on that page). I'm struggling to recall it, but I remember hearing the name of the program was something like "Enhanced Lethality Munition" or "Increased Lethality", and I recall joking that it was semi-caseless, because of the combustible case. It could've been an article on Hackworth's or Murdoc Online we're I first heard about that, but for the life of me, can't find anything about it.

Or Law Enforcement.

Or any private citizen gun owner who doesn't relish the thought of having to stop using his favorite pistol, the one he's got hours of practice with at the range and just "feels right" in his hands, just to go out and get a higher caliber hand cannon because his neighbor three doors down who's always had an anger management problem suddenly now has horns and calcium deposits on his skin and an even worse disposition.

I agree on this point. It'd have to be at least as big of a bump as +P.

naw, why go get a bigger hand cannon, a real cannon works just as well if not better, and barring that at least a large bore shotgun

The only real problem I have with that is 10 x 25 probably makes the grip of a gun too big for most humans (your target audience) and the .454 casull has too much recoil to be reliably used by Str 2 and 3 humans.

I'm not saying that there wouldn't be a niche market for the handcannons but since most people in the setting are unaugmented humans I really don't see dramatically increasing calibre size being an option.

Now what I do think is an option would be some increases to gunpowder manufacture that might give significantly better muzzle velocities using the same basic loads and round size of modern guns. While I imagine gunpowder might be getting to the limits of it's ability to be refined you could see some sort of replacement chemical accelerant being developed.

The other thing of course is that future manufacturers assume that body armor is prevalent enough that they have to change thier core assumptions away from a maximum tissue disruption strategy towards a maximum penetration strategy.

Neither do I. I just used that as an example to point out that there's no real need to squeeze out those few extra fps out of weaker calibers when people can simply pick a slightly more powerful caliber to begin with.

I could definitely see shotguns (or indeed slug guns) becoming even more common. Carbines, though, at least ones chambered in something as weak (relative to other rifle calibers) as 5.56x45mm, would probably not be very useful against trolls -- although arming patrols with them might partly solve the problem with body armor.

Yeah 5.56 x 45mm although it is still a pretty deadly round all things considered would likely be replaced by the 6.5 or 6.8 rounds to a certain degree for harder targets. The major concern though with going to a larger round on your carbines is that collateral damage to innocent lives would almost certainly increase significantly.

Of course this also brings up a big issue I had with SR having the carbine versions of assault rifles using the same damage codes as SMGs rather than some slight range and possibly power modifications to the base AR damage codes.

Frangible rounds? I have heard they have the same penetration and wound profile as FMJ, against unarmoured targets (although i doubt this, but I'm not a materials engineer/physicist) but they do not over-penetrate.

I've never fired the primary guns that could handle the 10 x 25 norma (the Bren Ten and Delta Elite) but by all accounts it's fairly comparable to the .357 magnum in power and significantly more powerful than the 9 x 19mm and .45 ACP.

The Colt 1076 was the round initially selected by the FBI for meeting thier primary ballistics demands but it was only manufactured for a brief period of time.

The .40 S&W is a necked down version of the 1076 chosen that allows for similar ballistic performance and greater magazine capacity. In general it seems to be an excellent competitor to the 9 x 19mm and .45 ACP market.

From a carbine, deforming 5.56x45mm rounds most likely compare very well with FMJs, because at lower velocities bullets like the US (and NATO) standard M193 and M855 only fragment in tissue when fired at very close ranges or not at all. If a FMJ rifle round doesn't fragment, you can bet it will over-penetrate most humans; meanwhile an expanding 5.56 might not even penetrate the 12" of tissue deemed by FBI and several experts of wound ballistics as the minimum necessary for combat loads, and as such may well not over-penetrate.

As for fragmenting bullets, I couldn't say. Depends first and foremost on exactly what kind of bullet design you're talking about. Bullets designed to fragment also tend to be rather quirky and will often behave very differently based on velocity, even a bit of armor, etc.

[Edit]However, like Vuron points out below, over-penetration is rarely an issue with small arms. With fragmenting 5.56x45mm rounds, I'd be more concerned with under-penetration.[/Edit]

Over penetration isn't so much my concern as the fear that even a small increase in caliber size in combination with a 3 round burst would have less accuracy and thus a tendency of hitting a nearby innocent target.

With military and intelligence operators I don't see this being as much of a concern although it would be very interesting to hear if counterterrorist and hostage rescue units will go with the 6.8 or 6.5 rounds during hostage situations. However factor in something like lonestar in SR and I don't know that the average cop will be as capable of managing thier recoil and not hitting collateral targets.

In general I don't think overpenetration would be that big of a concern until you really start looking at high velocity AP rounds.

Within the game yes smartlink technology makes firing burst fire and autofire significantly more accurate in regards to stray rounds. I would even say that many people might object to how accurate smartlinks make weapons especially in regards to walking fire in fully automatic operation. Considering the rates that the weapons are firing it just doesn't seem reasonable for any technology to be able to go "wait .002 seconds then return to normal firing rates".

Some aspects of smartlinks make sense but being able to not lose rounds during full auto operation is not one of them.

Getting back to the problem of trolls and penetrating the dermal armor if weapons aren't completely changed in how armor and weapons interact I'd like for dermal armor to not boost body but to offer a +1 to ballistic/ +1 to impact per level fully stackable with body armor.

Thus a troll with an armor vest with plates would have 5/4 rather than 4/3.

Don't you want to live in harmony with nature?

You're getting things mixed up here. First, Colt had nothing whatsoever to do with the FBI contracts. S&W made the guns, the model number for which was 1076, and Federal Cartridge provided the ammunition, which was an FBI-specified, down-loaded version of the 10mm Auto (180 grain JHP @ 950 fps).

Second, the .40 S&W is not a "necked down" (meaning reduced caliber) version of the 10mm Auto. Bullets for both are .400". The .40 S&W has a slightly shortened case compared to the 10mm Auto (from 0.992" to 0.850"). As a result the .40 S&W, which was developed by Winchester/Olin, could be used in pistols with a smaller grip circumference while retaining the ballistics the FBI had specified.

The full story.

Of the 10mm handguns I have had the opportunity to shoot, I think the EAA Witness (Tanfoglio Combat) has the most potential, being heavily based on another well-proven design, the CZ75 (Which the original Bren Ten was developed from as well). The other was the Glock 20. The Witness was heavier which soaked a little bit more recoil, accuracy was fair enough and the gun just plain felt right to me, unlike the Glock 20. I didn't think either was "unweildy", even with hotter-than-average (Cor-Bon) loads. In fact, I would love to own a 10mm EAA Witness.

The HK MP5/10 is designed to handle all loads of 10mm Auto, including both subsonics and the heavy 200 grain @ 1200 fps loads that Dornaus & Dixon developed with Jeff Cooper, and Norma loaded and sold. As such, I personally think it is one of the best submachine guns devised so far.

Perhaps more for others information than yours...

A good rule of thumb to follow in determining whether a cartridge is "necked down" or not would be to note whether the case has a shoulder or not (that angular bit between the area that contains the powder, and the neck, which actually holds the bullet; much more characteristic of rifle cartridges). For example, like most handgun cartridges, both the 10mm Auto and .40 S&W use a straight-walled case. Whereas the .357 SIG is a .40 S&W case loaded with .357" (~9mm) bullets and so is necked down in order to hold them. The same goes for the .41 to 9mm Action Express cartridges, .45 ACP to .400 Cor-Bon, etc...

I think the 10mm Auto, along with other handgun cartridges that are more powerful than what is considered combat-viable today, such as the .44 Auto Mag, would make a marked comeback in the world of Shadowrun, especially at the dawn of goblinization when a lot of people wouldn't understand what was happening beyond the fact that potential urban threats are getting bigger and thus more difficult to stop with the more common handgun cartridges. They would need something to counter that threat. From there it just makes sense to bring back what has worked in the past, though some "reinventing of the wheel" would likely occur as well. New gun designs able to help compensate for the heavier recoil would also be devised, as sometimes the threat would be more than just potential. Ork or Troll shadowrunners, for example, not to mention the more common-variety gang members and such.

SR3 has flying cars, and sharks. I saw it in a picture once. And lasers. And elf pr0n.

Hey, wait a minute! Why again do we need SR4?

EDIT: Oh right, so we can attach the frickin' lasers onto the heads of the sharks.

Nah you just need to rule that the sharks have cybergun eyes. And maybe someone will have developed offensive laser cybereyes by 2070.

Of course for them to hit effectively they need to have skillwires with a firearms or laser skillsoft but that's not too bad for laser shooting shark minions.

Yep. It would be a pretty decent Troll-stopper.

And how exactly do you figure they'll come by that information? Devine intervention? The only thing that should be linking SK to your presence at MCT in that case is YOUR TEAM, assuming A) that team members aware of who they are working for have been secure enough to keep it to themselves, and B) that MCT didn't get other information to suspect SK of planning such a thing.

Or whoever they hire to figure it out. Depending on how hard you hit them, they could put a shitload of resources into figuring out who did the punching, and your team will be the major connecting link in the chain.

Certainly there could be other, more incriminating evidence left behind. But if the only thing you're not concerned about is a cartridge case, you'd better be an extra cool Shadowrunner and start thinking about considering that, too. Especially when your job involves seriously busting the balls of an outfit with far more resources than you have. You think SK is going to back you up if you fuck up the show? Hell no. They'll throw you to the wolves as soon as they figure it out. You're just a scumbag-deniable-asset shadowrunner!

Sure. That's a possibility. But you were hired by someone. And they knew something you didn't.

"So what did he look like? Where did you meet him? How did you contact him? I'll give you a nice lollypop if you tell me..."

And to that end they'll fight to the point of escape, to be found only by cartidge cases left behind! Crafty bastards!

"Man. It looks like there are about 10 different companies out there that would like to have a piece of this, and with the resources to pull this kind of thing off, too. And homeboy is completely off the radar. What next?"

And it could dead-end, too.

Except for, you know, give them an idea of where to start looking in order to get the guy back?

"Maybe he isn't cooperating. He was pretty loyal to the company, you know... What's next?"

"Well, we find the fuckers who left all this phyiscal evidence behind. Oh, it's an odd cartridge? Hmm. Oh, extraction marks are unique? Hmm. Fluted chamber? What does that mean? Appears to be a custom gun, you say? Well, he's unlikely to want to throw that in a furnace anytime soon. Let's see if we can find any similar marks in other forensic databases. No, I don't care how. The boss is up my ass on this. Outsource it." And so on...

The circumstances are not always the same. The less evidence you leave behind, the better, 100% of the time. Period. Most of the time a cartridge case won't matter. But in some cases it very well might.

Anyway, I'm thinking that further argument against an example that is designed to support your point would be a giant waste of my time. What do you think?

Yeah, but who says it even needs to be a tricked out handgun. Just take an old Ruger Mk. 2 with a homemade silencer. Curse when it jams on you, the guards appear, and then you're stuck with .22 LR.

*ahem*

I mean, discard it and don't feel bad about it after you silently shoot your mark in the face 10 times, drop the magazine, and shoot him 10 times more.