In terms of man stopping power they are roughly the same. If you compare them over 1m flight distance. The difference between the the two is more the effective and lethal range. The video game thesis is more likely.
Why should you keep them shock when these is the ammunition type which is used most of the time? I don't know, if there is a problem with the SMG's, but it doesn't feel right in comparison to the combi rifle. I think, there should be an normal and a multi SMG, where multi SMG equal combi rifle point cost is. But that's only a feeling, so I wouldn't make a decision on this basis.
There is not as much of a gun culture in Spain, much of CB's inspiration comes from video games or other media rather than actual experience. So they have memetic OP smgs, fine, BUT WHY ARE THEY SO UNDERCOSTED?
I find the argument that damage should be lowered because pistol caliber a bit bizarre. (I'd love to see assault pistols nerfed though!) There is a lot of abstraction inherent in how weapons are portrayed. Guns from vastly different cultures wouldn't line up so well otherwise. Damage isn't representative of a single bullet, but damage in aggregate balanced by how much burst the designers were willing to give it. That said, it is undercosted. Having access to shock/AP is a bit much. Dropping it down to either of the previous versions, shock or AP, or increasing the cost should be fine.
Lower point cost doesn't have to equate to lower capability. You can also balance something by being reateixtigrthe overall A AVA or capability of the unit it's being given to. Weapons limited to an 8 inch rangebands are costed cheaply because it's the most dangerous rangeband in the game. Pistols, templates, mines, hacking, shotguns, even engage and change facing, are all options when you engage in 8 inches, to make no mention of the orders it takes to get you there. Besides, JSA is the biggest beneficiary of SMGs, And their entire ethos is dominant short and mid range firepower. It's their forte. They deliberately don't get better long range options, because they need to be close for major efficacy. I haven't looked at any SMG wielder and thought "wtf."
@barakiel I watched an O-yoroi fail against a Ryuken-9 in sf mode in the 16-24 band at gencon. That, and the posthumans with smgs, all seem to punch above their weight by design.
To be fair, that's 100% what the Ryuken-9 is expressly designed for. It's an optimized unit, performing the exact role it's biult for. As someone who uses the Ryuken-9 all the time, I think the correct answer when confronting an ODD SMG wielder is "don't try to shoot it in F2F, especially if you don't want to take a hit from those ammo types." I wouldn't call this the fault of submachine gun, but rather a tactical mismatch. An Avatar costs 4 times as much as a Domaru, but you don't fight the Domaru in CC then call E/M overpowered. The same is applied here... Shock and AP are fantastically good, but the SMG's capabilities are inherently very poor. If you're worried about someone using it in Suppressive Fire, there's about 3 dozen ways that any army can tactically solve that problem that doesn't involve putting a TAG or valuable model in harm's way. I know you as a player... I'm actually surprised that you would hold this up as an example of a problematic rule interaction.
The price of the smg is a bit nuts relative to light multi ammo elsewhere. Imo split it into smg and multi smg, the barebones one could probably still do with an extra point bump.
@barakiel The point is that you get too much firefight dominance for the point cost, in my opinion, with mines to make the other solutions (CC, get close and flamethrower) actually a bit difficult. It's not game-breaking... but as you note you use Ryuken-9 a lot. That's an internal balance problem of JSA, in the sense that I've known you to deride the Domaru profiles. Losing the ability to throw B3 AP rounds in ARO to threaten an expensive, heavily armored piece like a Domaru seems reasonable.
I think the ammo types add tactical relevance. Otherwise it's really a bad gun. Statistically from 0-8, if you don't include those ammo types, it has less likelihood of forcing a wound than a shotgun, and lacks the utility of template, +6 in ARO, etc. To create Suppressive Fire, you're still spending an Order to generate a dubious result. Let's remember too that yes, it's a bummer when your ARM8 TAG is hit with AP, or your NWI beast is Shocked to death, but those are not majority-use situations. Most of the models in the game don't really care if they're hit with either ammo type. I use AP more against 1-Wound targets than Shock anyway, because I want to leave bodies around to score Classified Objectives off of. We're talking about a weapon that can't outrange a Chain Colt or AP mine without considerable negative penalties...
To be far as well, the Ryuken-9 was not a popular unit at release. I had to actively make a case for its use, here and elsewhere. I've been singing its praises for 6 months. What's the most common complaint about it? that its range is limited, and that it's vulnerable to direct template weapons. Those both speak very directly to the in-built balancing limitations of the SMG. I think it's natural for you to hate them, because your in a meta that's at the bleeding edge of trying to use them well. Similarly, the Domaru is growing on me, because E/M has great utility. I've started running the Combi FO a lot. Why is that? Because the more I play JSA, the more I recognize the tactical strengths and strategic limitations of the sectorial. JSA has a big number of great SMG platforms, because they're paying a heavy tax in orders and points to be able to apply it. You either have to walk your units close, or you have to clear mines, approach from the back arc, neutralize template wielders, etc. before you get a chance to put those AP or Shock mines on target. That's difficult. JSA faces an Order tax in almost everything it does, and relying on SMGs feeds right into that.
I think the other problem around SMGs is the fact that you pick the ammo... if it was hard coded one way or the other it would be less of an issue. Give one unit a Shock SMG, give another unit an AP SMG, and then give Proxy Mk5s Multi-SMGs because proxies are OP as a rule.
@barakiel you are overseeing one special point. A SMG isn't less useful then a combi rifle at the moment. You'll have an disadvantage in active turn and an advantage, with or without SF, in the reactive. So why is it less expensive?
I'm confused a bit here? IThe Combi Rifle has significantly better rangebands across a variety of distances. The SMG is never more accurate than the Combi... In fact it's worse in the majority of rangebands. The Ryuken-9 is the game's best SMG wielder because someone had the bright idea of pairing it with an x-visor. But that's a unique interaction, and not one that the game's other SMG wielders (Oniwaban, Wu Ming, Scots Guard... Whatever...) are able to apply. In some cases, the SMG even fixes other problems. The Brawler Assault Hacker is awesome, because it's a cheap AHD (finally) and the SMG's discount cost allows that to happen. Are these units also a perceived problem, or are we specifically unhappy about JSA? Personally I like the Brawler Hacker getting a discount, Assault Devices are hard enough to use as it is. As mentioned, I think JSA has earned its SMGs because short and medium range dominance is the focal point of the Sectorial. Seems straightforward. It's a high-risk, high-reward weapon.
Yeah, I was expecting Pistol damage with shotgun range, B3 maybe B4. No fancy ammo types. To a lot of people, an AK is an AK. The difference is that the AK47 shoots a larger bullet at lower speeds (Americans, it's basically a .30-30), while the 74 shoots a smaller bullet at higher speeds (roughly .204 Ruger). The AK-pattern Marksman Rifle is the Dragunov or PSL, though the Iraqis did make a version that fired the standard AK round (7.62x39) instead of the bigger PKM round (7.62x54). It's actually worse than that. 5.7x28 launches a ~30grain/2gram projectile at 2350fps/716m/s. 5.56x45 launches a 62grain/4gram projectile at 2800fps/860m/s. The 5.56 out of the short M4 carbine hits about 3x harder than the 5.7 out of a P90. Just to show the differences between the various ammunition types: From L-R: 9mm Parabellum, .40 S&W, .45ACP, 5.7x28 with the blue tip, 5.56x45, .300 Winchester Magnum with the belt around the bottom of the case, 12gauge 2&3/4" with the aluminum base and 12ga 3" with the high brass base. There's about twice as much powder in a 5.56 case as there is in a 5.7 case. Also, just to really make a point, 5.7x28 is pretty much identical to .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire, which isn't good for much more than ground squirrels. I assumed that the basic pistol in Infinity was some flavor of small-caliber thing like the Five-seveN, since everyone in Infinity is wearing hard plate armor. I actually had a Five-seveN pistol for a while, sold it because I needed the money. Rather large beast for the firepower, it's physically about the same size as a Desert Eagle .50 or the H&K Mk23. Made finding a holster difficult enough that I later bought a CZ75 Compact pistol specifically to carry. Fun to shoot, though. Speed made for very flat shooting. Anyway, I do think that Infinity SMGs are a bit too cheap. Last I checked, they were a ~5pt discount over a combirifle.
