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.