[Joseph Paul]

Originally Posted by Varyon

It is when you convert it to Guided with Viper or similar (UT146). And, no, this doesn't particularly make much sense, as it's meant to be just adding a sensor suite and control surfaces to a normal bullet, rather than turning it into a gyroc.



At TL 9, Viper and APEP shouldn't be combinable for calibers below 30mm. Viper has a minimum caliber of 15mm at TL 9, while an APEP's actual projectile (after discarding the sabot) would be - based on the APDSDU round from HT it's replacing - around 50% of the weapon's nominal caliber. Granted, UT doesn't explicitly disallow this combination, but it makes sense. UT's APDS/APEP entries do imply a 75% caliber projectile (pi class doesn't drop - that is, caliber doesn't go down below 15mm - unless below 20mm), but I feel HT's stats are more realistic. Indeed, integrating UT and HT ammunition options would be a good idea, which would change APEP to be x1.5 damage and AD (2) (rather than AD (3)). It also would introduce fin-stabilized versions of APDS and APEP, for further increased range and damage.

And yeah, the gyroc is, sadly, a fairly pitiful weapon. Granted, rifles wouldn't be that great if you had all your weapons designed to be loaded with 9mm Parabellum. "Hot" gyrocs would make some sense, with higher damage due to a higher sustained velocity, and possibly longer range if they are longer (and thus hold more propellant). This might allow gyrocs to more be competitive with conventional rifles, particularly if you adjust ETC down to a less-problematic x1.2 or x1.3 damage (+1/die) and range, reserving x1.5 for TL10's ETK.

The fact gyroc projectiles need a special modification to become capable of getting the Viper/etc treatment, but bullets can get converted no problem, is also a bit problematic. Bullets should also be at least x10 to base cost, and arguably more (gyrocs already have most of the control surfaces to keep themselves stable in flight, so should need less modification than bullets, which will need those added and will need to deal with spin), before they can get a sensor suite installed.

I would like to see more discussion leading to constructive guidelines about several of the issues with UT ammo. Fast small bullets don't have a lot of space for control surfaces and most of those will not be very effective. The time to target shouldn't change which puts a crimp in how much the bullet can be made to deviate and home on the target. and changing the time to target would drastically change the delivered force for non-payload munitions. Also some sensor sensibility and pitting sensors against Powers.