Tactical Shooting p. 70: Weight Reduction

[vicky_molokh]

Greetings, all!

Tactical Shooting offers the Weight Reduction weapon modification, and the third method seems extremely tempting: it requires no materials/cost, 12 hours of work and an Armoury roll, and shaves off 0.15 of the weapon's mass. Now, the chance of ruining the weapon on a natural roll of 18 is scary, but the chance is very low, and you can just put the gun into a vise and shoot it 'remotely' for a few hundred shots to make sure it's not ruined.

Otherwise, it seems like fluted barrels and other mass-saving options can be done even better in the original construction. They're extremely tempting if they provide a 15% mass reduction at the cost of a slightly over 0.5% effective price increase (the chance of ruining a rifle in the process is 1/216).

So . . . does anyone have insights into why the modification works the way it works, and why an off-the-shelf price isn't listed for it?

Thanks in advance!