Re: Manhunter vs. Thunderbolt. The Thunderbolt gets its power from the fact that it is firing three rounds at once. Essentially burst fire. These are special rounds that are sequentially stacked caseless rounds. I know many of you want to just alphabet soup that ammo, but it really makes my brain hurt to think about what you're trying to do. So, for the vanilla manhunter vs. thunderbolt, the Thunderbolt wins hands down. But when you get into stock, easy access alternative ammo, the Manhunter outshines the Thunderbolt.
So this is totally wrong. I can only assume you are describing the YSK and not the Ruger Thunderbolt. Regardless of ammo available, the Thunderbolt is the better gun and the comparison is not even that close. By offering the players between a choice between one of the worst handguns (the manhunter), and one of the very best (the Thunderbolt), the OP is just giving poor optimizers some rope to hang themselves with. Why would a GM purposely do that except out of spite?
Actually, automatic weapons are not permissible in Seattle.
Again this is totally wrong. Not all assault rifles have a F legality rating. Off the top of my head, both the AK-97 and the Colt M22A3 are only restricted. Furthermore every single SMG in the main rulebook has only an R-rating.
Also, the Thunderbolt does only fire in BF, however that isn't really a big issue, since it still uses the Pistol skill. The only downsides are the short "lifespan" of the clip, and the recoil on the second burst, which is only an issue if they fire it twice in one IP... and I might suggest allowing them to "requisition" something like a gas-vent accessory (only if they think to ask, of course) to neutralize that as well.
You can't add gas vents to pistols. This is mentioned in the description of the gas vent accessory in the main rulebook, and in Arsenal when describing the gas vent modification.
They could add a personalized grip and a folding stock at minimal extra cost (about 130 nuYen) to bring RC up to 4 (the Thunderbolt has 2 inherent RC).
Another question I have for people: how do you suggest I handle the plethora of cameras and sensors throughout Seattle? I'm sure LS would have immediate access to any sensors owned by the city and that they would have their own network operating in public areas. I suppose for these things, I should mostly just provide the PCs with info that the first on the scene cops and forensics crews have discovered. Or should I make the PCs have to work for this evidence themselves? There would be plenty of digital eyes out there belonging to other corps and private individuals. Should I play this stuff up or let it ride more in the background? Should I let this be a regular source of leads or only occasionally? Thoughts?
The Runners Companion p.23 has useful things to say on the topic of public surveillance which suggests they should only provide intermittent leads to the cops. These systems face
3 [EDIT]] 4 critical obstacles:
(1) Content-recognition problem: The such a ridiculous amount of data recorded by all forms of surveillance every single second that filtering it all to find leads is actually a mammoth task that is not going to often provide a just-in-time solution.
(2) Data balkanziation: Seattle is a patchwork of jurisdictions, and information does not easily or readily flow between them. The bureaucratic wrangling can delay an investigation by hours or days, assuming Lonestar can even get the other party to play ball.
(3) Data completeness: All personal info is linked to a SIN. For SINless operatives, there may be a lot of info out there on such an individual, but it remains distributed over many identities and unlinked databases rather than seamlessly flowing into a single file folder for a particular suspect.
(4) Data veracity: It's easy to falsify bits and pieces of the data to create a misleading profile or false trails. Rewriting all the info linked to a SIN is like virtually impossible, but adding inaccuracies is very doable.