High Power Chambering

  Continuing on to determine the most deadly weapon(s) in Shadowrun, today I take another look at the high power chambering (HPC) modification.  Since I had missed the rule about armour piercing flechette reducing range, I had previously dismissed HPC as inferior (I mistakenly considered it to be the same damage as armour piercing flechette, but with a higher modification cost at the expense of other damage increasing mods).

  As before the graphs represent reload interval multiplied by damage value to give damage over time.  Also as before, the damage is calculated as if all recoil is uncompensated.  Full auto refers to one long and one short burst, and high velocity to two long bursts.

  Here I will add the ammunition modifier to the per initiative pass damage value, either high-power chambering, or armour piercing flechette, as shown in my last post.

Scarce Modification Slots

  First, let us take a look at possible builds incorporating HPC for weapons requiring modification to full auto (SS and SA), leaving insufficient modification space for extended clip (together with either high velocity or HPC).

  The graph depicts a weapon of Power 4, but as in previous posts, the results scale and hold true for higher Power weapons as well.

  For no values of ammo do smartgun high-power chambering full auto or laser sight tracer rounds high-power chambering full auto produce the most damage output.  This is as a result of the better reload interval provided by extended clip modification and greater damage output of high velocity modification.

  (Note: Only those builds which generate the greatest damage for some value of ammo are shown, plus the HPC builds.)

Full Auto and Burst Fire

  For weapons that have enough modification slots available (such as FA and BF, or if you allow modification removal), the situation changes only slightly.

  It is difficult to see in the graph, but smartgun armour piercing flechette full auto extended clip initially is best (except for the extended clip drum options).  Smartgun high-power chambering full auto extended clip takes a slim lead for a very small interval before smartgun armour piercing flechette high velocity extended clip surpasses it.

  For drum modifications, laser sight tracer rounds high-power chambering full auto extended clip drum is inferior to laser sight tracer rounds armour piercing flechette high velocity extended clip drum for all ammo values.

Conclusion

  While high power chambering provides more damage output per shot, over time it produces less damage than other options in nearly all cases.  The only instance where HPC does (marginally) better are for very small ammunition capacity burst fire or fully automatic weapons.

  When other options are unavailable (non-clip non-high velocity weapons), high power chambering is best only because it is the only option.  Even in such cases, however, HPC means loosing the option to use other specialized ammunition (such as gel rounds for non-lethal take downs), and dealing with double uncompensated recoil.