Most lethal ballistic firearms (editorial)

  Updated:  To conform with recent updates to the source material.

  Today I will make some personal opinion comments on the data from the previous post.

  High-Power Chambering

  As expected, high-power chambering did not fair well in terms of pure damage.  However, with some examples to look at, it seems the niche for HPC is in low recoil reasonably high damage weapons, assuming you fit enough recoil compensation on the weapon.

  Ammunition Capacity

  The Ares Crusader does slightly more (average) damage than the Ceska Black Scorpion, despite having all the same modifications, due solely to it's slightly larger clip.

  Recoil

  The Ares Viper Slivergun edges out the Ruger Thunderbolt by a small margin (about 4%), but I would personally prefer the latter for it's reduced recoil.  The greater chance of hitting the target far outweighs the increase in damage output.  Additionally, the Ruger is more likely to do lethal damage due to it's better armour piercing (assuming killing is your thing).

  This argument can be made for the M-4A1 Carbine versus the HK 229-X as well.

  Holdouts in general suffer from too much recoil when attempting to maximize damage output.  Don't expect to score many hits.  A compromise in damage, accuracy and concealability is the Fichetti Security 600.

  Gyro Stabilization

  The Boyd & Richards Desperado isn't a great choice (and the gyro mount option option makes it ridiculous), but it is a shotgun, and is a small package to be able to deploy special shotgun rounds from.  In reality the magazine makes it a non-starter for use as a full auto weapon.

  I can't say enough good things about the Auto-Assault 16.  It does considerable damage, even with few modifications (leaving 5 slots for adding non-damage related toys), and since it's a shotgun can fire a great variety of ammuntion.  One option I would suggest would be to forgo the gyro stabilization for a personal grip and auto-adjusting underbarrel weight (for a total recoil 0 and slots 0) making it a little bit more subtle but with just as much stopping power.

  The HK G12A4m (personal grip alone gives 1 recoil and 2 slots remaining), Ares PLD (auto-adjusting underbarrel weight gives 0 recoil, 0 slots) and Ingram White Knight (personal grip gives 2 recoil, 3 slots left) can likewise be outfitted to not use the gyro stabilization

  Machine Guns

  Light, medium and heavy MGs are all nearly perfectly configured off the shelf for dealing death.  Little can be done to increase their damage output.

  Sourcebooks

  In general the War, Gun Heaven and State of the Art 2073 supplements do not increase the lethality of the game that significantly.  Once your have incorporated Arsenal in you game, and are modifying weapons (especially with high-velocity), you already have a pretty high damage, lethal game.

Most lethal ballistic firearms (results by range)

Updated: Pistols (including machine pistols) can not use underbarrel auto-adjusting weight.  Fixed relevant entries.

Updated: Added HK 229-X and removed some others (as redundant).  Also fixed reload (drum) for high-power chambering weapons.  Fixed Ingram White Knight entry (data errors).

For the impatient, the highest damage weapon is the AVC-7.62 battle rifle. If you lack the War supplement, look at the Ultimax HMG-2 or Ares Alpha.

Included are a number of choices from different source books, as well as different amounts of recoil (for those with lower skill), more armour piercing (for more lethality), and more free modification slots (damage isn't the only thing).

The weapons are grouped by their range categories, as follows:

Short Range	Extended Range	Typical classes
5	50	Light Pistol, Holdout, Machine Pistol, Heavy Pistol
5	60	Heavy Pistol, Light Pistol
10	150	SMG, Shotgun
50	550	Assault Rifle
100	750	Battle Rifle, Sporting Rifle
75	800	LMG
80	1200	MMG, HMG
100	1500	Assault Canon
150	1500	Sniper Rifle

Extended Range: The range category, as above.  Does not include changes from modifications (such as barrel extension, or armour piercing rounds).
Average Damage: The calculated average damage (per combat phase) with all modifications and accessories.

Recoil: The uncompensated recoil for firing one long and one short burst (full auto) or two long bursts (high velocity), including doubling for heavy weapons, shotguns, high-power chambering, etceteras.  Negative recoil is for informational purposes only, and should be treated as zero.
Armour Piercing: Does not include the -1 virtual AP bonus for impact armour.
Slots: The remaining modification slots.
Reload: The ammunition reload method.

Extended Range	Average Damage		Modifications
50	20.58	Ares Crusader Machine Pistol Recoil: 2 Armour Piercing: -half Slots: 0 Reload: clip Source: Arsenal	Barrel Extension Extended Clip Firing Selection Change (Small) Folding Stock Gas-Vent Personalized Grip Smartgun External Stick-n-Shock Underbarrel Weight
50	20.34	Ceska Black Scorpion Machine Pistol Recoil: 2 Armour Piercing: -half Slots: 0 Reload: clip Source: Shadowrun	Barrel Extension Extended Clip Firing Selection Change (Small) Folding Stock Gas-Vent Personalized Grip Smartgun External Stick-n-Shock Underbarrel Weight
50	19.64	Fichetti Security 600 Light Pistol Recoil: 3 Armour Piercing: -half Slots: 0 Reload: clip Source: Shadowrun	Extended Clip Firing Selection Change (Large) Folding Stock Gas-Vent Personalized Grip Smartgun External Stick-n-Shock
50	14.48	Enfield M1098 Holdout Recoil: 6 Armour Piercing: -half Slots: 0 Reload: clip Source: Gun Heaven	Extended Clip Firing Selection Change (Large) Folding Stock Personalized Grip Smartgun External Stick-n-Shock
50	13.87	Cavalier Scout Holdout Recoil: 6 Armour Piercing: -half Slots: 0 Reload: clip Source: Arsenal	Extended Clip Firing Selection Change (Large) Folding Stock Personalized Grip Smartgun External Stick-n-Shock
50	13.13	Streetline Special Holdout Recoil: 6 Armour Piercing: -half Slots: 0 Reload: clip Source: Shadowrun	Extended Clip Firing Selection Change (Large) Folding Stock Personalized Grip Smartgun External Stick-n-Shock
50	10.87	Boyd & Richards Desperado Shotgun Recoil: 0 Armour Piercing: -1 Slots: 0 Reload: magazine Source: Arsenal	Armour-Piercing Flechette Barrel Extension Firing Selection Change (Large) Gyro Stabilization Shock Pad Personalized Grip Smartgun External
60	21.22	Ares Viper Slivergun Heavy Pistol Recoil: 2 Armour Piercing: 5 Slots: 0 Reload: clip Source: Shadowrun	Barrel Extension Extended Clip Firing Selection Change (Small) Flechette Rounds Folding Stock Gas-Vent Personalized Grip Smartgun External Underbarrel Weight
60	20.33	Ruger Thunderbolt Smartgun Heavy Pistol Recoil: 0 Armour Piercing: -1 Slots: 0 Reload: clip Source: Arsenal	Armour-Piercing Flechette Barrel Extension Extended Clip Firing Selection Change (Small) Folding Stock Gas-Vent Personalized Grip Smartgun Underbarrel Weight
150	26.79	M-4A1 Carbine SMG Recoil: 5 Armour Piercing: 0 Slots: 0 Reload: drum Source: Gun Heaven	Armour-Piercing Flechette Extended Clip Drum Firing Selection Change (Small) Folding Stock Foregrip Gas-Vent High Velocity Laser Sight Personalized Grip Tracer
150	25.69	AK-147 Carbine SMG Recoil: 5 Armour Piercing: -1 Slots: 0 Reload: drum Source: War	Armour-Piercing Flechette Barrel Extension Extended Clip Drum Folding Stock Foregrip Gas-Vent High Velocity Laser Sight Personalized Grip Tracer
150	25.09	Ingram Smartgun X SMG Recoil: 5 Armour Piercing: 0 Slots: 0 Reload: drum Source: Shadowrun	Armour-Piercing Flechette Barrel Extension Extended Clip Drum Folding Stock Foregrip Gas-Vent High Velocity Laser Sight Personalized Grip Tracer
150	24.47	HK 229-X SMG Recoil: 0 Armour Piercing: -1 Slots: 0 Reload: drum Source: War	Extended Clip Drum Folding Stock Foregrip Gas-Vent High-Power Chambering High-Power Rounds Laser Sight Tracer Underbarrel Weight Auto-adjusting
150	23.75	Auto-Assault 16 Shotgun Recoil: -4 Armour Piercing: -1 Slots: 5 Reload: drum Source: Arsenal	Armour-Piercing Flechette Barrel Extension Gas-Vent Gyro Stabilization Shock Pad Smartgun External
150	19.44	Mossberg AM-CMDT Shotgun Recoil: -4 Armour Piercing: 5 Slots: 4 Reload: clip Source: Shadowrun	Barrel Extension Extended Clip Flechette Rounds Gas-Vent Gyro Stabilization Shock Pad Smartgun External
550	28.96	Ares Alpha Assault Rifle Recoil: -1 Armour Piercing: -1 Slots: 1 Reload: drum Source: Shadowrun	Armour-Piercing Flechette Barrel Extension Extended Clip Drum Gas-Vent Gyro Stabilization High Velocity Laser Sight Shock Pad Tracer
550	27.00	HK G12A4m Assault Rifle Recoil: -4 Armour Piercing: -2 Slots: 3 Reload: drum Source: War	Barrel Extension Extended Clip Drum Gas-Vent Gyro Stabilization High-Power Chambering High-Power Rounds Laser Sight Shock Pad Tracer
750	30.74	AVC-7.62 Battle Rifle Recoil: 0 Armour Piercing: -1 Slots: 0 Reload: drum Source: War	Armour-Piercing Flechette Barrel Extension Extended Clip Drum Firing Selection Change (Small) Gas-Vent Gyro Stabilization High Velocity Laser Sight Shock Pad Tracer
750	29.36	AM-884 Battle Rifle Recoil: -2 Armour Piercing: -2 Slots: 0 Reload: drum Source: War	Armour-Piercing Flechette Extended Clip Drum Firing Selection Change (Large) Gas-Vent Gyro Stabilization Laser Sight Shock Pad Tracer
750	20.27	Mannlicher Wildhunter Sporting Rifle Recoil: -2 Armour Piercing: -1 Slots: 0 Reload: clip Source: Arsenal	Armour-Piercing Flechette Barrel Extension Extended Clip Firing Selection Change (Large) Gas-Vent Gyro Stabilization Shock Pad Smartgun External
800	28.41	Ares PLD LMG Recoil: -6 Armour Piercing: -1 Slots: 4 Reload: clip Source: SotA 73	Armour-Piercing Flechette Barrel Extension Extended Clip Gas-Vent Gyro Stabilization Laser Sight Shock Pad Tracer
800	26.82	SA Nemesis LMG LMG Recoil: -4 Armour Piercing: -1 Slots: 4 Reload: clip Source: Arsenal	Armour-Piercing Flechette Barrel Extension Extended Clip Gas-Vent Gyro Stabilization Shock Pad Smartgun External
800	26.52	Ingram White Knight LMG Recoil: -8 Armour Piercing: -1 Slots: 4 Reload: clip Source: Shadowrun	Armour-Piercing Flechette Barrel Extension Extended Clip Gyro Stabilization Shock Pad Smartgun External
800	26.09	Ares PLD LMG Recoil: -6 Armour Piercing: -1 Slots: 5 Reload: belt Source: SotA 73	Armour-Piercing Flechette Barrel Extension Gas-Vent Gyro Stabilization Shock Pad Smartgun External
1200	29.63	Ultimax HMG-2 HMG Recoil: -4 Armour Piercing: -3 Slots: 4 Reload: clip Source: Shadowrun	Armour-Piercing Flechette Barrel Extension Extended Clip Gas-Vent Gyro Stabilization Shock Pad Smartgun External
1200	26.70	Stoner-Ares M202 MMG Recoil: -4 Armour Piercing: -2 Slots: 5 Reload: belt Source: Arsenal	Armour-Piercing Flechette Barrel Extension Gas-Vent Gyro Stabilization Shock Pad Smartgun External
1200	25.93	Stoner-Ares M107 HMG Recoil: -4 Armour Piercing: -3 Slots: 5 Reload: belt Source: Arsenal	Armour-Piercing Flechette Barrel Extension Gas-Vent Gyro Stabilization Shock Pad Smartgun External
1500	30.00	Panther XXL Assault Cannon Recoil: -4 Armour Piercing: -6 Slots: 0 Reload: clip Source: Shadowrun	Firing Selection Change (Large) Gas-Vent Gyro Stabilization High-Power Chambering High-Power Rounds Shock Pad Smartgun External
1500	28.98	Barrett Model 121 Sniper Rifle Recoil: -2 Armour Piercing: -4 Slots: 0 Reload: clip Source: Arsenal	Armour-Piercing Flechette Barrel Extension Extended Clip Firing Selection Change (Large) Gas-Vent Gyro Stabilization Shock Pad Smartgun External
1500	27.23	Ranger Arms SM-4 Sniper Rifle Recoil: -2 Armour Piercing: -3 Slots: 0 Reload: clip Source: Shadowrun	Armour-Piercing Flechette Barrel Extension Extended Clip Firing Selection Change (Large) Gas-Vent Gyro Stabilization Shock Pad Smartgun External

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.

Ammunition

  Updated: Fixed a mistake in text and graphic related to previous fix (fixed a mistake in the calculation of Armour-Piercing Flechette).

  The quest continues to determine the most deadly weapon(s) in Shadowrun.  There seem to be numerous stops on this path, and todays will be ammunition types.

  Below are the ammunition types that are contenders for causing the most damage.

  Armour Piercing was normalized with a -1 bonus for rounds affecting impact armour, as discussed in my previous post.  I consider this the minimum adjustment that impact armour should receive to make realistic comparisons between ammo types.

  Virtual damage bonus is calculated as Power - (Armour Piercing / 3), with the above normilization incorporated.  Armour is either Impact or Ballistic.

Ammunition	Virtual Damage Bonus	Armour
Gel	-0.33	I
Flechette	0.67	I
EX-Explosive	1.33	B
Anti-Vehicle	1.33/2.00	B
Anti-Tank	2.00	B
Armour-Piercing Flechette	2.13	I
High-Power	2.33	B
Stick-n-Shock		I

Comments

  While Flechette provides a large damage bonus, the armour piercing penalty is too large for it to do much damage, even with the impact armour adjustment.

  For those wishing to do lethal damage, EX-Explosive falls short of other rounds with better armour piercing.  Against heavily armoured targets the armour piercing rounds will do physical damage more often (see SR4A page 161), and unarmoured targets will have less resistance test dice meaning more or less equivalent damage (in my opinion).

  APDS was left out in favour of Anti-Vehicle rounds.  Both confer the same damage versus soft targets, but AV is superior against vehicles and drones.  Anti-Tank rounds would trump both APDS and AV if not for the deficit that they are only for large bore weapons.

  Armour-Piercing Flechette was adjusted for impact armour, and reduced by 0.2 due to it's range reduction of 20% (each range modifier is 1 threshold, which reduces net hits by 1, effectively reducing the modified damage value by one, therefore a 20% reduction is equivalent to a 0.2 damage value reduction).

  High-Power does provide the greatest damage bonus, but requires a modification to the weapon (at the cost of other modifications which could potentially increase damage), precludes the use of other rounds (such as Gel for non-lethal engagements), and is incompatible with the high velocity modification (which adds significant damage, as argued in a previous post).  Overall, I feel that Armour-Piercing Flechette are vastly superior to High-Power rounds.

  Stick-n-Shock provides a stickier (pardon the pun) dilemma, since the Virtual Damage bonus is dependent on the Power of the weapon it is fired from.  What we really want to know is when Stick-n-Shock is better than our current leader, High-Power.  In other words, when does it confer more than 2.33 damage bonus.  Graphs to the rescue!

  The pattern is easy enough to see.  Stick-n-Shock becomes better than High-Power when the targets armour is greater than 6(Power - 4).  For Power of 4, that means that Stick-n-Shock is equal or better in all cases.  After that, it will depend on the game you play in.  I suspect campaigns incorporating the Arsenal sourcebook will likely see Stick-n-Shock used for weapons with Power 5, and adding War! may increase that to Power 6.

Conclusion

  Assuming that stun damage is sufficient for your needs, Stick-n-Shock is the superior round for lower Power weapons, High-Power is the winner for higher Power weapons in terms of pure damage, and Anti-Tank is probably best for ensuring lethality when applicable.

  If you don't have access to the War! sourcebook, but do have Arsenal, Anti-Vehicle is your winner for higher Power weapons.

  If you are running without any additional sourcebooks, then for higher Power it's APDS when you can get it, EX-Explosive when you can't.