Infinity Unlimited Questions - Gear and Whatnot

[ericthered]

I kind of agree and i really like empowering the players with cool tools and other gadgets. My main problem with the ISP however is mainly that it stands above all without question. My players just don't even look at gear anymore.
Why have a shotgun if a slug barely does a single die of damage more. Why use submachine guns when the ISP has a RoF of 10 and also hits harder. Why use armour piercing bullets when - because of the damage type reduction from pi to pi- - anything smaller than a full sized rifle deals less damage with the armor divisor than the ISP in basic damage. Why use any other pistol at all if every single stat is worse. Why even use the ICW (Infantry Combat Weapon), Infinity's other standard weapon, if after damage type adjustment, yhey deal the same damage, but the ISP can be hidden in a jacket. etc. Of course there is some gear that they use. Like frangible rounds for doors etc. but still most of the guns are non viable at all for them.

I looked at things closer. The stats are not a mistake, unless you consider the entire ETC rule to be a mistake, and some forumites do. It is competitive with UT weapons if you make the weapons ETC (The ISP is already ETC by default). See page 139 of ultratech. ETC does a bunch of things, but the most relevant to your concerns is increasing damage by x1.5. If you make UT weapons ETC, they're competitive with the ISP. Though I've just eyeballed the numbers for the most part.

I generally roll my eyes and say "Please No" when a player tries to use ETC. In my infinity games, if this is a place to be using out-time gear its usually also a place to be bringing body armor and heavy weapons.