I’m with @Lasairiona_Raske on this one. I will have to ponder 
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Hello !
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We could just shoot you in the head, over and over. Line up a whole medbay of waiting clones, we’ll play whack-a-moron with blaster pistols as they sit up!
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Use a submachine gun. Then you never have to stop to allow the gun to cool down.
You can just pull the trigger until you empty your mag, then swap and do it all over again, if you so please.
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Why not just throw spears or rocks if you’re going to go primitive?
Besides, slugthrowers and hulls don’t get along. Get yourself a good hand laser or blaster.
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I’d suggest a good selection of ankle-bars and an entirely reusable well heated poker…
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Considering blasters fire a superheated plasma made from the round in the chamber, and (let’s face it) everyone loads anti-matter… firing a superheated stream of anti-protons at a ship or station’s hull is actually a more effective way of causing explosive decompression and death than a slug-thrower.
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Uh … pretty sure nobody uses antimatter in atmosphere, Arrendis. Even with a dropsuit, that would be really bad.
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If your station or starship suffers from hull breach due to a firefight involving projectile weapons, I say your station or starship isn’t properly armoured.
Even the lightest of hull platings used in stations in the past centuries (fernite carbide) are excellently proofed against the calibre commonly employed in small arms. Especially the platings covering the station shell layer. Those are thick enough to resist dreadnought-calibre munitions, at least long enough for evacuation.
If your small arms bullets can pierce that hull, find and space that architect who designed the station.
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I think it’s maybe more that stations tend to be pretty full of Things That Ought Not Be Shot. It’s kind of the reason low tech firearms are illegal almost everywhere: you want to be able to keep people’s weapons locked down rather than having a firefight breaking out near a power transformer or an O2 line or life support unit or something.
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There’s a good reason why the pipes and conduits are stashed away behind grates and plate and why every station has their utility stations built out of the way of the general public.
Otherwise, every bar shootout in some backwater will result in that station venting atmosphere in several sectors.
If your station or starship has all these ‘things that shouldn’t be shot at’ in full view of the public, exposed to vandals and other undesirable elements, you ought to fire your station or starship architect.
And in these lawful places, small arms of ANY TYPE AND DESCRIPTION are banned (unless employed by the people who license or have very good reason to employ the weapons, depending on region and system) not because of the possibility of causing an unwanted explosion and dooming that part of the station but because they are, you know, weapons. That can kill people.
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Depending on your point of view, most places contain things that ought not to be shot. It never stops anyone.
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Stashed, yes. Shielded (by various means that usually don’t involve actual shields), sure. Nevertheless typically vulnerable to an unlucky stray shot at various points, considering that a lot of them extend throughout the station, generally, yeah. They don’t necessarily need to “doom that part of the station,” as dramatic as that would be; causing a bunch of people to lose power to their quarters is apt to be trouble enough. Consider also that a lot of exchanges that are likely to result in a trade of gunfire don’t happen in bars, but in more “functional” and less-visited, little patrolled, hard-to-monitor places.
I used to carry a “high-tech small arms” sidearm professionally as a matter of course. It was legal in most places, specifically because it was mostly useful as a club. Station protocols would lock it down like the guns on my ship. I eventually stopped carrying it at all. Go ahead and check legality: they’re legal to ship almost everywhere for just this reason. Low-tech small arms will get you in trouble with customs because they can’t be locked down, so you can shoot people wherever.
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Shielded with things like tungsten carbide, fernite carbide, you know, the kind of thing you would use to plate starship interiors and exteriors? Take a 4mm tungsten carbide plate and the bullet calibre that’s available to the civilian market and shoot at it. See how much penetration you are going to get.
Planetside residence wall materials can stop that very same calibre. Station walls, especially the ones meant to protect utilities and life support equipment are made of far sterner stuff. Heck, they will even deflect all but specially-made armour piercing rounds.
There is a good reason when you need to cut life support off a part of a station you are invading, you do not send someone with an autocannon to shoot up the walls or the ceiling, you send a combat engineer with a blowtorch or demolition charges and wire cutters.
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As someone who grew up, and worked on, what was effectively a station I can say what should be done and what can be done in terms of protecting all sorts of things is not always done. Corners can, and often are, cut. Vulnerabilities do exist. ‘Never events’ (a term safety inspectors seem so fond of saying more often then they should) do occur.
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I’m a Caldari, we over-engineer by design, but I can’t say that everything in the compartments of my home-station were bullet proof! Especially not against milspec rounds.
The major lines were buried deep in the infrastructure layer and definitely heavily armoured (and shielded against EMP) but anything that was local to the compartment itself could easily be penetrated by a civilian firearm. We didn’t have many problems with sabotage amongst locals, because everybody knows to “Stay away from the Aqua!” or air or power or any of the other things that are VITAL to the livelihood of the whole station.
You can sabotage the mains, but most Caldari invasion parties would do so only as a combat expedient. Generally the plan is to breach near Engineering and get to the lifesupport controls, so you can establish control at the infrastructure level. This is much more efficient than going after compartment junction controls or local vent controls.
Sending a combat engineer is okay, but it’s far better to send a computer systems intrusion specialist.
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Mr. Egivand, I’m really confused that I’m even having this conversation with a Matari. Your stations are so full of open access ports and jerry-rigged solutions that I keep being afraid I’m going to fall down a hole and never be heard from again. And that’s coming from someone from the State; workplace safety isn’t really our “thing,” either.
(I’d really love the chance to explore down some of those, mind. The things people come up with as solutions to various troubling problems can be so neat!)
Not every station is built to milspec, and not everything that is is armored everywhere you look. That plating you’re going on about, where it exists, is frequently a veneer, like the false ceiling in a meeting room. As for stopping bullets, I assume the planetside residence you’re talking about either involves rounds that are made to do something that’ll stop them pretty quick after the first impact or houses that are made of something different from the ones around here.
(Seriously, nobody wants to have to wrestle armor plate every time a fuse blows. If you really want to cut life support off part of a station you’re invading, you can usually do it with a crowbar. It’s usually ill-advised, because it’s usually the section you’re standing in and might not be easy to fix. If you do it in a combat situation, it’s kind of a desperate thing to do. If you do it outside a combat situation, you can expect security to be turning up real quick and a bunch of techs right on their heels.)
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Are people honestly debating if small arms can burst open stations? In most cases, no. Even the shoddiest station is built to withstand far heavier structural stresses and not every wall is lined up with explosives - even some station dwellers seem to have watched too many holoflicks. Bet you believe hacked holographic interfaces explode too. Can such a thing happen? If you’re extraordinarily unlucky, yeah. Will it? Most likely no.
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The only reason we milspec armour living quarters in gallente facilities is in case of angry spouses…ours or someone else’s
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I’m not sure anyone is arguing that you can bust a cap through a bulkhead or compromise the structural integrity of a station with a small arm, but explosives? Put a bunch of shaped charges on the inside of the hull exterior and I’d be surprised if you couldn’t put a hole in the station skin.
Is that going to cause more than your room to evacuate pressure? Probably not - bulkheads are a thing.
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