He's BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACCKK!!
Yes, Mr. Science is back in action(that's 'MR.', not 'DR.', dammit!), and
I thought I'd toss in my two bits on the recent firearms discussion. I don't
have any material in front of me, so this is only as reliable as my memory:
usually pretty good, but I encourage corrections.
Since the various and sundry types of firearms are already getting plenty
of air time, let's toss another bone in the pot: ammunition.
Something that a lot of ordinary people have found out(that the police and
military won't notice 'till the end of the century at least! :) is that
ammo technology has changed *a lot* in the past decade or two. Back before
the early '80s (I don't work well with precise dates, no flames please),
about all anybody used was plain 'ol FMJ - Full Metal Jacket - a lead
bullet wrapped in a thin copper (or other soft metal) jacket to give it
a little more oomph. If you didn't want to shell out for FMJ, you got
even plainer 'ol Ball ammo - no jacket; cheap for training & practice,
but leaves a mess in your barrel. If you were really in a bad mood, you got
some HP - Hollow Point - a lead bullet, with or without a jacket, which had
a divot taken out of the middle so that on impact with a reasonably soft
target(usually a person), it expanded outward into a large flat surface
(called 'mushrooming', get the picture?) and caused really nasty wounds.
Unfortunately, nobody really cared what shape the divot was when they
started making these things, so their mushrooming effect wasn't terribly
reliable. Finally, if you really had some spare cash, or were in some
armies, you might even get some AP rounds - Armor Piercing - just use
something harder than lead(hence the high cost to make).
You'll note that I'm only discussing common types of rounds; there have
always been people who 'roll their own', casting their own custom bullets
and so forth. Also, 'gee-whiz' rounds like tracers, discarding sabot,
explosive-tipped, etc. either only existed in medium- to large-caliber
rifles, or(when put into handgun-sized calibers) were about as reliable as
your average public-transit system(in other words, not very!).
Recently, however, most companies have gotten a *lot* better with their
production techniques, as well as having much more creative R&D people.
Fr'instance: my personal choice for 'carry' ammo is the Winchester SilverTip
Hollow Point(STHP); weighing in at 129 grains in 9mm, it is, IMHO, the
best combination of penetration and stopping power in this caliber. A friend
of mine did some testing with this round in his .357 Magnum, and found that
it *very* reliably expanded in soft targets(just water jugs, guys :); but
against hard surfaces, it 'noses in', collapsing on the divot for better
penetration. Federal Hydra-Shok ammo uses a bizarre-shaped divot with a
post, or sprue(or something) in the middle for easily comparable results.
As Mark noted, various companies now make 'shotshell' rounds in handgun
calibers; .22 shotshell has been around for some time as a bird or rodent
round. It would make a wonderfully safe shipboard round in your 10mm
Autopistol(as long as your targets were unarmored :)
Another new creature in the zoo is the Glaser Safety Slug. This thing is
basically a bunch of tiny pellets(I don't remember what size), inside a
soft plastic(?) shell. The entire 'packet' is fired from the gun, which
then breaks on impact, causing fairly nasty wounds(again, only to unarmored
targets), but it won't go through walls or doors and so forth. They'd be
perfect for modern-day police departments, except for their outrageous
price: ~$18 for a packet of -6- shells is ridiculous!
Tracer and explosive rounds are also more availiable in pistol sizes these
days - more reliable too, although an expl. round will go off on the first
thing it hits, including panes of glass, etc., so watch what your PCs are
shooting at! These things are also a lot more available(frighteningly so) to
the general public. At any decent-sized gun show(the Indy 1500 in Indianapolis
is good), you can buy damn near *anything*. Did you know that, even though
you have to be 21 to get a pistol in Indiana, you can buy explosive handgun
ammo, over the counter, without even showing a driver's license? Don't you
feel safe with that kind of firepower at your disposal?(note:this is sarcasm:-)
I could probably go into a tirade about the NRA, but I've prattled on enough
as it is.
Suffice to say that even at TL7.5(and holding...), firearms are more than
deadly enough to get your PCs on the 'Imperium's Most Wanted' very quickly.
In game terms, even low-tech guns kill people *quickly*, not just from the
bullet itself, but from the *kinetic energy* it brings with it. I'll leave
it to you Physics types to do the calculations, but I'm pretty sure that
gauss weapons, with their 4mm needle bullets, are horribly overrated. They
may have a small enough cross-section to penetrate heavy armor, but they
won't do much damage once they get there. An old .45 slug, in comparison,
can't get through even modern body armor(cheap Cloth), but the impact alone
*will* knock you on your ass, and may very well kill you from blunt trauma
alone(ever been hit with a baseball bat at full speed?). Advance
miniaturization from higeher TLs will only make things worse(yes, Virginia,
they already make explosive-tip shotgun slugs...try not to think about it);
It'll be a long time indeed before energy weapons replase slugthrowers on the
battlefield, if only because they're cheaper.
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* Legion * "And all this science, I don't understand; *
* [email removed] * It's just my job, five days a week..." *
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