[savaze]

So I just bought War!, Mil Spec Tech, and This Old Drone... I just skimmed through War and came to the gear section where it starts listing weapon calibers.  Since when did SR start doing that or is that the fluff from days of old integrated into the game mechanics?

[Charybdis]

So I just bought War!, Mil Spec Tech, and This Old Drone... I just skimmed through War and came to the gear section where it starts listing weapon calibers.  Since when did SR start doing that or is that the fluff from days of old integrated into the game mechanics?

Fluff.

Unless you start using the 'High Power Chambering' Weapon Quality with associated High-Power ammunition (Both from War!) then weapon caliber is pretty much irrelevant between weapon types.

[LonePaladin]

There's also the option to have ammunition be compatible between specific gun types. They don't mention calibers in the weapon descriptions (like they used to), but you can decide to allow it -- for instance, you could rule that the Ares Predator and the Ingram Smartgun use the same type of ammo.

The default rule -- where ammo is specific for weapon categories -- is just a simple abstraction.

[CanRay]

This has always been a major issue for me and annoys me

But I'm a Gun Nut, and know that the average person couldn't care less about 10mm Automatic, .40 S&W, or .45 ACP.

[LonePaladin]

Yep. It's one of those "make it as complicated as your players will tolerate" things. If your group has some kindred gun-nuts in it, and they can help it make sense for the rest, then jump right in and pick a caliber for each gun in the catalog. Maybe even give special modifiers to some types. It'd make sense, anyway.

Then again, if they have trouble with the "one ammo type per weapon class" idea, and lose track at that level, you may have to scale it back to "ammo is ammo".

[CanRay]

I'm happy that my group is at least willing to say, "Guns need ammo to work.".

[LonePaladin]

 

[insert laughter here]

+1.

[savaze]

I think my biggest gripe with the round being listed is that it's saying that a 60 year old cartridge IRL, 120 years old in SR, is still the current favorite.  In US military circles the argument right now is whether to keep two rifle ammunition types (those with ARs/5.56 & DMRs and light machine gunners/7.62) for man portable weapons, barring snipers, or go one caliber to rule them all.  There are more accurate and damaging cartridges in use IRL that weight less than the 7.62. 

On top of that we're now talking caseless ammo that wouldn't use the same moniker as cased ammo, since cased ammo uses identifiers that aren't necessarily referring to caliber, but more so to formula and length (e.g. any .35 caliber round: 9mm PA & 9mm FEDERAL & 9mm MAKROV & 9mm DILLON; or .30 caliber round: .308 series & 7.62x39 & 7.62x51 & 7.62x54R & .30-06; or .40 caliber: .40 S&W & 10mm; or .45 caliber: .45 ACP & .45 LC; it gets even crazier when you get into the .28 caliber/7mm rounds).

Maybe after first inducting caseless ammo conversion kits would be requested and obnoxious amounts caseless varieties would exist (only if there was a market for it), but the reality of it would be that it's a new round and if it proved itself everybody would want a new firearm chambered in it.  My example would be the 1800's muzzle loading conversion to cased ammo, there was only a few calibers at that point because having cased ammo simplified the process of making the weapons and not everybody was making ammo.  Fast forward ~150 years to when caseless was made wide spread and manufacturing and engineering isn't the problem, the issue would be different rounds to do the needed things and the first company that mastered and marketed the formula would set the caliber standards, I'm assuming Ares.  SR listed them as the different firearm classification (e.g. holdout, light pistol, heavy pistol, etc) and arguably many of these classifications are the same caliber round, realistically they'd probably market the rounds as the classification.  I think the fluff text would have been better off saying 7.62 CR (caseless rifle) or even 7.62 Ares (or whichever company pwned the market with it). 

I'm just grumpy because of the ancient label on something so far in the future that I highly doubt something that is largely considered dated, but not ineffective now, would be the standard 60 years from now...

[Man Who Walks At Night]

I'm one of those "Guns needs ammo to work" types, I do try to get my players to differentiate between heavy pistol ammo and smg ammo, but even if they messed that up, I wouldn't mind too much, its just not important enough to warrant the time and effort in most of my campaigns.

Now, if my group was stuck in the jungle without any chance of resupply, its one of those situations I would pay closer attention to it so they don't take their extra heavy pistol ammo to load up their LMG, (or vice versa) but even then, I would most likely monitor food and water supply more closely.

[savaze]

I'm one of those "Guns needs ammo to work" types, I do try to get my players to differentiate between heavy pistol ammo and smg ammo, but even if they messed that up, I wouldn't mind too much, its just not important enough to warrant the time and effort in most of my campaigns.

Now, if my group was stuck in the jungle without any chance of resupply, its one of those situations I would pay closer attention to it so they don't take their extra heavy pistol ammo to load up their LMG, (or vice versa) but even then, I would most likely monitor food and water supply more closely.

When ever I've played ammo's always left fairly simple, cased/CL and weapon type.

I'm probably the only person that would have had my hopes and dreams smashed by reading that specific fluff in the text...

[hobgoblin]

Back in SR1 they had to introduce max-power ammo to heavy pistols stand out or something. In SR2 there was a notice that all heavy pistols had max-power ammo factored in.

[CanRay]

I've told my group that ammo works like this, just to make things easier:  "They standardized the sizes for more firearms.  Holdouts all use the same ammo.  Light Pistols and Machine Pistols use the same ammo.  Heavy Pistols and SMGs use the same ammo.  Shotguns are all 12 Gauge.  Hunting Rifles use different ammo depending on their damage, but the same damage, the same ammo.  Assault Rifles and LMGs are standardized with ammo.  MMGs and HMGs each have their own ammo.  Magazines, NOT CLIPS, are not interchangeable.  They all use Caseless Ammo, save for Hunting Rifles, which still use Brass Cases.  Revolvers are the exception to all of those rules, and also use cased ammo."

Their eyes started to lose focus after "Machine Pistol".     So, hopefully this'll help you guys.

[Man Who Walks At Night]

Back in SR1 they had to introduce max-power ammo to heavy pistols stand out or something. In SR2 there was a notice that all heavy pistols had max-power ammo factored in.

Yes was introduced in Street Samurai (1st ed version) and then removed in 2nd ed. But that was more a matter of a different type of ammo (like APDS, HE etc) not a matter of calibre.

[CanRay]

I just want to say for the record that the characters in my stories have firearms that I know the calibers are.  If anyone cares, I'll list them all...

[Angelone]

Go for it, I'm interested on the subject. I know the P93 and 5-7 use the same ammo 5.7mm. I'm away from book for the rest.