[Leevizer]

Yeah. I want to kill stuff. Should I even bother with regular ammo or just fill my clips with Explosive rounds? What about character creation. What rounds should I buy and how much?

If I'm a hacker, I'm assuming I'm not going to fight much, and only need one weapon with regular ammo, but what about a Street Sam? I thought about having two weapons (one that can be concealed and one when going full-on fighting) but what ammo should I buy? I was thinking of 10 clips of the better explosive rounds, but that would cost me 7000 Nuyen in Chargen... Any suggestions on what to use?

Of course there are the non-lethal things too, but this character's point is to make thing dead.

[Tsuzua]

Regular rounds have the virtue of being cheap.  Thus they're good for slapping into an ammo bin for your drone's LMG and forgetting about it. 

Honestly, price doesn't matter too much.  A FA long and then short burst is 18Y with regular rounds and 90Y from the most expensive ammunition.  That's 72Y difference a pass which isn't enough to get worried about unless your GM is extremely tight with cash (like 2000Y a run pay level).   

The explosive rounds's main drawback is being forbidden.  Thus if you are willing to deal with the illegality, you might as well shell out for Extra Explosive's extra -1AP. 

Flechette rounds are snazzy.  They're +2DV +5AP so on average they do .33 more boxes of damage on average.  However, it's slightly better than that in most cases.  Most people wear armor that has 2 more points of ballistic than impact armor.  Since flechette work against impact, that means effectively they're +2DV +3AP which is 1 extra box of damage on average.  They're a nice restricted legality alternative to Ex-Ex.

Gel Rounds are -1DV +2AP so they're -1.66 damage.  Due to the armor values mentioned earlier, they tend to just be -1DV.  I know you're not interested in them, but it's worth keeping them in mind. 

Stick and Shocks (SnS) are infamously good.  Typically if you want to take someone out, you should SnS them.  Then if you want them dead, just shoot them again. They are a DV increase for smaller weapons and their -1/2AP is great against tough targets.  The electricity side effect is handy against drones and some vehicles.  It also messes up targets badass enough to take more than 1 pass to take out (which is rare, but very important to get every advantage when you run into one). 

My overall suggestion is flechette or Ex-Ex as your default loadout depending on how you feel about the law (or using a gun you can't get a fake license for anyways).  If you don't want to make things dead, but just defeat them, SnSs are the way to go for the majority of firearms.

[Crash_00]

Always keep in mind that you can easily kill someone with SnS rounds even on the first shot if you aren't careful. Especially if they've taken damage before. It's happened numerous times in my missions game.

[CanRay]

All bullets kill.  EX-Explosive rounds just makes getting ballistics from the bullet that much harder.

If you're using cased rounds, police your brass.

It's always good to have some way to stun someone, however.  Stun Gloves give you a great way to do that, and you don't leave pesky fingerprints everywhere.

[Xzylvador]

Also don't forget noise.
Some GM's will decide that Ex-Ex ammo makes quite some noise on impact.
If you want to take down a guard quietly with a silenced pistol and a shot to the neck, having the bullet go BOOM doesn't really help your sneakiness.

[JustADude]

Always keep in mind that you can easily kill someone with SnS rounds even on the first shot if you aren't careful. Especially if they've taken damage before. It's happened numerous times in my missions game.

True words, here. Rather embarassing when you're using the SnS because you want to take the guy alive for interogation.

[Tsuzua]

Hm I also forgot about some other rounds and some more comments.

Flechette's are weaker against vehicles and spirits because of the terrible AP values.  While against people, you don't really care if you're doing P or S after armor*, against vehicles and spirits it's all about defeating armor.   

Likewise, APDS is generally more useful than Ex-Ex.  It does the same damage in all cases you care about (+1DV -1AP is equal to -4AP on average against anyone with 4 or more ballistic armor).  However it does a better job punching though armor.  An APDS heavy pistol is 5P -5AP and that'll cut though a force 5 spirit's armor.  The higher availability is annoying since you have to wait till play to get it. 

Arsenal introduces new ammo options.  Most are niche.  Frangible is for not breaking stuff, Hi-C is for getting past MAD scanners, silver is for allergies to silver, subsonic is for being quiet.  Capsule rounds deliver chemicals so that depends on what poison you pick.  Tracker rounds are so you can be Batman and put a tracking device on a car via gun.  AV rounds are slightly more expensive APDS rounds that do better against vehicles.

War has some new rounds.  Anti-Tank is super APDS for big guns.  RFID rounds are for letting yourself get IDed (which can useful for false flag operations).  Sensor rounds shoot out sensors like you're Batman.  Suppression rounds are to scare.

AP flechette and high-power rounds are the two DV increasing rounds in War.  They are kindof hard to get, but if you're getting APDS, you might want to get them instead.  AP flechette is +2 DV -0AP against impact armor.  Thus it's +2.66 damage in most cases, double Ex-Exs or APDS's bonus.  The -20% range can get annoying, but isn't a factor in most cases.

High-power rounds are +2DV -1AP.  That's not as good as AP flechette's effective damage bonus, but is better against vehicles and spirits though APDS style rounds work best there still.  In addition, you take a -2 penalty to shots with high-powered rounds.  Recoil compensation most likely works against this -2 so it's a not much of a problem with SA and BF.  It could get annoying with HV fire.  If you can't compensate the recoil, the net damage gain is 1.66 which is meh.  In addition, you have to mod your firearm to shoot high-power rounds.  The mod uses up 2 slots which is annoying.  Personally I'll just do AP flechette and if the range is too bad, get an extended barrel or improved range finder mods on the guns.

[JustADude]

Also, AP Flechette ammo works in the Ares Viper, making it 8P DV -0 AP in pistol form, with BF, 30-round mag, and a stock Supressor. Makes it one heck of a sidearm for "low-profile" jobs.

[Mirikon]

I may start loading my Sakura Fubuki with AP Flechette ammo instead of ExEx. Well, one of them. The other one I keep loaded with SnS. One for lethal, one for nonlethal.

[Crash_00]

Also, AP Flechette ammo works in the Ares Viper, making it 8P DV -0 AP in pistol form, with BF, 30-round mag, and a stock Supressor. Makes it one heck of a sidearm for "low-profile" jobs.

That's a highly GM's discretion issue. By RAW they can't.
SR4A, pg. 317

Ares Viper Slivergun: The Slivergun is a sleek weapon with burst fire capabilities and built-in sound suppression. It fires metal slivers that count as flechette ammunition (already factored in to the Damage Code).

It doesn't actually fire flechette rounds. It fires slivers of metal that are counted as flechette ammunition. GM's are free to decide that these slivers (or blocks if you use the old edition description that it shaves slivers off of a block to fire them) are available in tungsten, making it the same as AP Flechette, but you'd have to ask your GM specifically as it varies from person to person and game to game. But remember, anything you can do, the enemy can do to.

On a similar note, by RAW, even guns that say they can only fire flechette rounds aren't able to fire AP flechette rounds, since they are a different type of round by RAW (and there is no text stating they count as flechette for this purpose), but most GM's will allow you to fire them in these situations.