The Leviathan

My view:  he's another poser in synth-leather pants.  At least, I wish he was.  Then he would at least be believable.  Unfortunately, someone decided to coopt the CP2020 game line and use it as a vehicle to showcase their ultra-munchkin uber characters:  Johnny Silverhand, Morgan Blackhand (come on, guys, the names are already becoming repetitive), Rache Bartmoss...

    Don't get me wrong--"Never Fade Away" was excellent.  Unfortunately, they couldn't leave it alone.  They had to take the characters and use them to permeate the rest of the game lit.  In the process, they took believable, compelling characters and turned them into laughable larger-than-anime icons.      

    Come on--no one is that good!  And I personally prefer beleivable characters.  Look at the Cyberpunk literature base:  Case, Marid, Sarah and Cowboy, even Hiro Protagonist.  These people have plenty of flaws and are better characters because of this humanity.

    The CP2020 game fiction really spun out of control around the time that Cybergeneration came out.  Suddenly Johnny Silverhand is not simply a rockstar, but an undying clone revolutionary pied piper.  Morgan Blackhand has become another Josie Wales, a guy who totes mammoth weapons, shrugs off bullets, and knows no fear.  Rache not only rules the net, he's restructured the entire global information network and quite deliberately ignores the same in-game net physics that the rest of us players have to netrun by.  If anyone else claimed that their netrunner could ignore the "5 grid spaces per turn" rule or interface without a cyberdeck we'd laugh them off of this forum.

    By the time we get to Firestorm: Stormfront, we're almost beyond redemption.  Blackhand is toting ultra munchkin gats and fighting a borg in power armor on top of a toppling skyscraper sitting on a thermonuclear device, Rache has an entire community of zombies fighting for him as he calls down orbital artillery strikes, and we see the whole line-up of all the gamewriters' pet PCs:  Rogue, Thompson, Shaitan, Spider Murphy, Santiago.  I'm totally turned off by this shameless plug, checking the cover of the book to make sure I'm not accidently reading "Heroes Unlimited" instead of a CP2020 book, and frankly, I'm embarrassed for everyone.  They hijacked your game, Mike, and you gave them the keys.

    One of the best moments in the entire CP2020 game line is in Eurotour's "European Graffiti" adventure, when the PCs assist a dreampainter in painting a huge logo that includes the message "Flush Johnny Silverhandle."  Note that this supplement was written by a late-coming European crew.  Their characters are both believable and compelling as well.

BTW: It is the purpose of hunting weapons to kill things. The purpose of a military firearm is to "exercise control over another human being", whether you do that by killing them or forcing them to take cover is not generally important.

    Where it is, such as hostage rescue where you absolutely positively have to drop somebody RIGHT NOW, is where special equipment, ammo and weapons get used.

Wilphe, perhaps you should differentiate political motivations for fielding military firearms vs. military motivations for fielding firearms.  Being in the line military, I can assure you that we are as interested in seeing our intended targets drop instantly as much as those hostage rescue teams.  

    If you talk to any true-blue knuckle-dragging infantry grunt, they too will assure you that they want every possible advantage--technical, tactical, you name it--before going into a firefight.  You only get to lose once!

    As much as the general populace likes to lament the "faceless generals" procuring military equipment with political agendas, the truth is that the majority of them are neither faceless or driven by any desire other than making sure that their troops are best equipped to deal with the broad spectrum of conflict they may be engaged in.  If bolt action elephant guns met this requirement, that's what we'd be toting.

    The U.S. Army's Advanced Infantry Combat Weapon trials showed that the technology of the 80s/90s didn't produce a marked increase in performance.  I strongly suspect that the OICW won't either, after measuring it against lessons learned in the 'Stan and Iraq, and we will see it fade into obscurity just like the G11.

    Special purpose type ammunition tends to operate less reliably than standard "ball" metal-jacketed rounds, has less ability to deal with threats with varying levels of armor protection, shaky ballistics, you name it.  When the military has the ability to field special purpose ammunition that doesn't have these drawbacks, it does so.  That's why U.S. soldiers have armor piercing small arms ammo available (though the current threat set doesn't merit launching icepicks at unarmored foes), or SLAP rounds for the .50, or DU in 25mm for our IFVs, or 30mm HEDP and flechette rockets for our attack helicopters.

I'm with you, Flatline.  My personal preference is for the Liquid TV shorts; their imagery was that much more evocative specifically because they didn't rely on dialogue to get the point across.  Yes, they were very obscure at times, but that just adds to their replay value.

    My favorite has got to be the very first animated short, "War."  It's a little rougher than those that followed, but it illustrates all the concepts that make the series intgriguing and shows all the main characters in their prototypical forms.

Does anybody have a particular episode that they love/hate?

Has anyone played a CP2020 campaign set in the Aeon Flux univers?

Speaking of Electro Thermal Enhancement, does anyone else find this mechanic to be overpowered and based on faulty reasoning?

    In Guns! Guns! Guns!, Greg Porter's diagnosis is that speeding up a bullet wouldn't render a significant damage increase in small arms--perhaps a +2 or so.  His logic is hard to refute--once a bullet achieves enough velocity to completely penetrate a target, moving that slug faster won't inflict a bigger wound channel.  It's like speeding up a stab with an ice-pick.  The damage is already done, right?

    I'm not interested in starting a flamewar about the whole Myth of Energy Transfer.  It's a simple matter of physics, though.  Note that the Navy Seals didn't produce a more powerful .45 caliber pistol round by lightening the slug to make it hypersonic.  In fact, they increased the weight of the bullet along with the powder charge to keep it subsonic (to facilitate silenced wetwork).

    Even if you don't have any gripes with the potential for unbalancing a game already woefully prone to firepower escalation (CP2020 combat is deadly enough already--why to PCs feel the necessity to haul around ultra-caliber borg smashers?), I think that the brief blurb in Chrome 2 conveniently ignores some of the disadvantages.

    What about the extreme barrel wear generated by funneling plasma--yes, the fourth state of matter!--down the tube?

    What about the enormous muzzle flash that this huge cloud of "plasma" (insert appropriate Doctor Evil voice) would produce?  Or the insane heat that this would generate.  Can you relish the idea of your super-custom ETE sniper rifle bursting into molten "magma" (another Dr. Evil word) after your first shot?

    What about Newton's 3rd law, which would suggest that the reaction to this increased velocity propulsion charge would slam that weapon against the shooter that much more violently?

    Does anyone realize how much juice it takes to crank out 100,000 amps like the blurb in Chrome 2 states?  We're talking capacitor technology beyond the current trend.  Those are some serious batteries!  I suppose that if you can plug a battery into a cyberleg that will run it for 6 months(!), a 100-shot grip battery for an ETE weapon shouldn't cause any raised eyebrows, but that's a topic for another rant...  My personal feeling is that the huge power requirement wouldn't become practical until the weapons reached a vehicular scale, where full-size generators and power plants could feed this energy hog.

    Why must ETE weapons used cased ammuntion?  The liquid catalyst?  Binary weapons like the Militech M31a1 AICW use liquid-propellant binary ammuntion.  Hmm...

    Speaking of special ammunition, ETE wouldn't likely work with any type of expanding or fragmenting slug.  Hollowpoints?  Just like a conventional cartridge powered beyond it's design capacity, an ETE weapon would almost certainly blow the core out of a fragmenting bullet and leave the softer bullet sleeve lodged in the barrel.  Looks like a sure-fire recipe for an obstructed barrel-induce explosion (primed with ultra-hot "plasma") with the next shot!

    The bottom line?  ETE as presented in Chromebook 2 is MUNCHKIN in the extreme and needs some common sense applied to keep it in check.  Having shamelessly laid that blatant troll bait before you, please recognize that I'm establishing a position from which I expect to have many dissenting views--bring 'em!  Looking forward to hearing your take on the issue.

Whoa!  What's with all the negative energy, Rockwolf?  You're harshing my mellow, hombre.  I've got to agree with Freakboy on this one.  Nowhere in the weapon descriptions for the Plasmatic Revolvers in either Blackhand's or SOF II does it mention that the revolvers are designed as a low recoil alternative.  To the contrary, I find that the ultra-macho wannabe names ("Stallone?" "Arno?") suggest that the pistols are targeted toward the overcompensating muscleboy market.  

    My personal take on the whole ETE thing is more in line with Greg Porter's view in Guns! Guns! Guns!  In his calculations, the velocity boost from ETE wouldn't net more than about a +2 to damage.  Without getting into the whole "stopping power/hydrostatic shock" fuzzy logic issue, I think that the current ETE rules are seriously munchkin.  I feel a new thread coming on...

My bad--calculated the stats for the ETE .454-caliber pistol.  The .44 only has a Bod Min of 12, so you'll only fire it at -8 WA and have to meet a Strength Feat check vs. 24 to avoid taking 4 points of damage to each arm.

Makes for interesting firefights, I suppose:  the odds of hitting are abysmal, but if you do connect, your hapless target will be out of the equation in a hurry...

No, your hands will be fine.  On the other hand, you'll probably lose the arm at the rotator cuff--ouch! Your wrists will be pulped into formless hunks of gristle and bone fragments as well, but don't worry: the hands will be fine.  Happy shooting!

OK, on a more serious note, here's the skinny using the recoil rules from SOF2/Blackhand's:  Bod Min per pistol is 13.  With a BOD of 8, this means that you will only be able to fire either pistol with a rate of fire of 1/2 at a -10 WA penalty.  Firing akimbo puts you at another -3 to hit for a total WA of -13!  You also will have to roll a Strength Feat vs. 26(!) check each time you fire or take 5 points of damage to your arm.  Looks like a definite case of pulling the trigger being much more dangerous to your character than his intended target...

I'm not sure, but Flatline's book sounds a lot like the "Ghost In the Shell Official Art Book," which is actually an art book for the 3D action-shooting game for Playstation.  It's published by Sony Comupter Entertainment Inc./Kodansha Ltd., ISBN4-06-319829-4.

    It has plenty of artwork, clips from the manga and film, concept sketches, CGI, Intron Depot II Shirow pieces, and storyboards.  On the positive angle, the fact that it is published as a spin-off from a console shooter doesn't detract from its material, but the down side is that it is written entirely in Japanese, which bums me to no end.

I suspect that caseless amunition will be produced again.  Probably not for infantry arms.  I suspect that it will be used in competative shooting and may develop into a niche like the .22lr family of cartreges (cheap low-powered cartreges).

Fix, your prediction is already becoming reality.  There's a company (Czech, I think, but not sure) called Voere that manufactures bolt-action hunting rifles that fire 5.56mm caseless ammo.  Kind of a niche market, but I'm interested to see if they'll branch out into the security market as well.

You have a good point, Mephostophilis.  Another point, from the the covert ops perspective, is that the sound of spent brass falling onto a hard surface makes a characteristic sound.  Though not particularly loud, it could make a difference when using a fully silenced SMG or similar type gat.  

    Caseless weapons would be handy for all the same functions that brass catchers provide now--no spent brass evidence, no casings getting under foot or into places where they could mess up machinery, no audible signature, etc.  

   In theory, caseless firearms might be easier to silence than conventional cased versions, since current silenced weapons "leak" noise through the ejection port as the bolt cycles.  Since caseless guns don't need an open ejection port, that's one less path for noise to escape the weapon.

[One of the big advantages of caseless from the covert ops point of view would probably be the absence of empties. ]

In Mike Pondsmith's rant on the R. Tal page he stated that he was working for Microsoft on the console-only sequel to Crimson Skies, called Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge.

The concept of caseless weapons being the norm in 2020 seems to be a wrong turn down the evolutionary path into a dead end.  When the Cyberpunk RPG first hit the scene, H&K's G11 looked promising and even was a serious contender for the U.S. military's standard infantry weapon.  

    Time has shown that caseless weapons have pretty much fizzled out before getting anywhere at all.  Ever heard of Smith & Wesson¡¦s Vietnam-era Model 76 submachinegun?  This started out as a Karl Gustav M-45 clone firing electrically-primed caseless 9mm ammunition using a nine-volt battery stored in a housing in front of the magazine well.  Turned out it wasn¡¦t worth the hassle, so S&W turned the design into a conventional submachinegun in 9mm Parabellum.  In the 1980s/90s, Heckler & Koch designed the now-famous G11 assault rifle.  Both the German and United States militaries considered the weapon but rejected it in favor of weapons utilizing cased ammunition.  

    Why is it that caseless ammunition hasn't taken off like we thought it might?  Here's a few reasons:

ć Caseless weapons may be more reliable in that they seal out much of the environmental grime that has the potential to foul the internal mechanisms, but these weapons also seal in combustion residue as well as any external grime that does manage to get inside the frame.

ƒá Automatic weapons can build up a dangerous amount of heat in a relatively short time.  With cased ammunition, the ejected shell casing acts as a heat sink, transferring thermal energy from the chamber to the spent cartridge and reducing the amount of heat that builds up in the chamber.  This reduces the likelihood of ammunition ¡§cooking off¡¨ in an overheated chamber.

ƒá With a cased cartridge, the propellant is shielded from the environment in a non-reactive casing, unlike caseless rounds, where the propellant makes up the outside of the cartridge and is exposed to react with the air or moisture or other substances the bullet contacts.  Over time, oxidation and other chemical reactions can reduce the performance of the propellant and threaten the reliability of the firearm.

ć You can reload cased ammunition.

ƒá We already have tons of cased ammunition on hand and the industries needed to produce more.  The possible benefits of caseless ammo just don't justify retooling an entire industry or the huge cost involved in replacing existing weapon designs.

OR, you can get silly, like me, and look up the answer in the rulebook, which is fairly straitforward:

v.2.01, page 110:

"Flamethrowers are much like other area of effect weapons, with one difference; they can be 'swept' between two points.  When using flamethrowing weapons, you may decide both a starting point and an ending point; then roll to Hit, determining if you're on target.  Missed rolls refer to the Grenade scatter chart (p.99).  Anything caught in the sweep between the two points is ignited.  Using these weapons in anything other than the cyberweapon form requires the Heavy Weapons Skill; cyberweapon flamers use Handgun Skill as the default.  Damage is 2D10 the 1st turn, 1D10 and 1D6 the following two turns.  Hard armors protect normally.  Soft armors must be >15SP to protect the target, and are damaged 2pts/hit."

Did I miss something?  CP2020 is pretty clear on this count:

"If a character takes more than 8 points of damage to a limb area in any one attack, the area is severed or crushed beyond recognition.  The character must make an immediate Death Save at Mortal 0.  A head wound of this type will kill automatically.

Head Hits:  a head hit always doubles damage"

    If this is the case, with a (below) average roll of 2D6+1 for 7 points of damage, x2 for head hits for 14 points, the most head damage an unarmored character could sustain with the max "superhuman" BTM of -5 would be a measly 6-point hit (x2 for head shot = 12, -5 BTM results in 7 points damage inflicted)--a .22 can dish out this much!  Anything more would kill even the biggest brute with a well-placed head shot.  Those knuckleheads who fail to respect the "mid range" calibers are simply misinformed Goliaths.

    Of course, you may have been assuming that no hard case worth his time on the streets would even think about venturing outside without covering his dome with some kevlar...

Bottum Line Up Front:  the lower the MOA a weapon has, the more accurate it is.

MOA = "Minutes of Angle."  This means that if a weapon was held absoluteley stationary, the dispersion of multiple shots would all fall within a cone of this measurement from the target.  One degree (1/360th of a circle) is a huge dispersion, so most MOA measurements are broken down into minutes, which are equivalent to 1/60th of a degree.  The higher the number, the farther a bullet might impact from its intended target, thus greater inaccuracy.  MOAs really only become a factor (for anybody but your serious sniper types) with precision weapons fired at long range with the use of magnification sights, where a seemingly negligable dispersion angle can compound over distance to make the difference between a hit or a miss.  Make sense?