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.
