The SMG is already very attractive. It's a neat change, but I think it's one for the eventual N4 as you'd have to completely rethink the availability and costing of existing AP weapons.
If one doesn't write a dramatic story about how the thing they don't like is DESTROYING the game and their players are dwindling BECAUSE OF THIS and they've HAD ENOUGH people tend to just hang out. Of course now we're getting "like a game mechanic I don't? You should gtfo!" so maybe you can't escape it.
I said "one" not "you". edit: everyone is so on edge I can't say anything except "yaaas king" without people assuming it's a fight now.
Yes, but there's also no rule who catch only a single value of a stat. 1-0 2-1 3-2 4-2 5-3 6-3 That's no longer a series
Rounding down would effectively make all AP weapons +1 DAM As it is, AP ammo barely costs a point, this would most likely make it go up in price
They cost a tiny bit more than 1 point, unless it's a CCW you're talking about in which case it costs 1 point.
Rifle to AP Rifle is 2 points for a Moblot. Rounding down wouldn't increase damage against all targets either, against Arm 0 and any even amount of Arm there's no change, it would only affect troopers with odd numbered ARM. I do feel that AP is in a pretty good place at the moment, maybe it's due to remembering N2 multi rules where AP dropped burst to 2, but you could also choose burst 2 DA/EXP so it was almost never the right choice. Having said that, I like the straight ARM reduction, though as it would be more effective against (at a guess) 80%+ of targets it would require a decent points increase.
I personally would prefer, when AP would effect cover too. But the real point is, mathematically DA will in most cases be better. And when you would negate the to hit mod for cover, what was my first thought, units like Nisse would become too good as aro pice. The truth is, AP is in most case useless, you see it on the Boarding Shotgun wenn targeting an enemy in cover. When the enemy has an armor value lower then 8 (I guess that was the cap) then you will always use the template and not AP. But the balance in Infinity is like a house of cards. You don't have only one dependence but many more for each rule. These threads are in my opinion only good for brainstorming solutions. I don't think we will find here the right solution for these special problem without blowing big parts of the house of cards away.
SMGs are arguably too cheap though. If AP became stronger, I'd just drop it from the SMG tbh. Anyway making ARM better would be cool, yeah, but I do like the current simplicity of the ammo type. I don't like things to be clunky. Elegant and smooth is what you want.
Also, DA is better than AP mostly yes, but EXP is better than DA as well, and it comes down to cost. AP ammo is definitely cheaper than DA is.
The HMRC has a DA round too, maybe that's what you thought of? Unmodified AP is a DAM boost in any situation where the target is ARM 2+, which seems plenty good to me!