I thought that was called Eclipse Phase?

Tempt ye not THE CURSE!

You do realise, you chose a weapon which (a) doesn't even really EXIST in the game as an "example", and then when called upon to clarify, chose a weapon that is roll-on-the-floor laughable to put on a plane under ANY circumstances .... right?


Fine. Have 11 of them. The Eurofighter Typhoon will have thirteen of them, PLUS it's internal 27mm cannon. The American F/A-18 will have 11 of them, plus it's internal 20mm cannon.

Military craft really ARE that bad-ass.

This is the only thing we should care about.

There are breach loading mortars. For example, the Soviet 240 mm Mortar M240.

Actually, putting 11 mortars on an airplane makes perfect sense... Assuming your world has just been reality-raped to be a side-scrolling 2d schmup where your high-tech jet-fighter cruises along at a liesurely pace of about thirty miles an hour and is at risk of attack from helicopters and foot infantry.

ROFLMAO

Have you even read the entry for heavy mortar?

Except they can't really carry that much weapons, not even close.

Have you ...?

War! p173, emphasis mine:
Heavy Mortar: The term “heavy mortar” encompasses
large mortar weapons, small artillery guns, and light howitzers.
For all intents and purposes, the heavy mortar is a larger version
of the mortar launcher (p. 31, Arsenal), and fires the same
types of shells, but with di erent ratings listed on the Heavy
Mortar Rounds table. A heavy mortar can only be  red once per
Combat Turn

Arsenal p31, emphasis again mine:
M-12 Portable Mortar System: The M-12 is an example of
the classic portable mortar systems used by military forces since
the First World War. It consists of a long barrel tube ending in a
round base with four prongs that dig into the earth to stabilize the
unit. A bipod brace props the barrel at the desired firing angle.



Except, yes they can (if you select the right gun pods, of course). The GPU-2/A pod, featuring an M197 20mm multibarrel cannon and carrying 300 rounds of ammunition, weighs in at only 586lbs (266kg).

Eleven GPU-2/A pods would total 6,446lbs.

The F/A-18E "Superhornet" has a maximum external ordinance load of 17,750lbs. Eleven GPU-5/A's would underload this plane by over ten thousand pounds. Honestly, you could swap out eight of those GPU-2/A's for the much heavier GPU-5/As, and still come in almost 800lbs under maximum weight.

The Eurofighter Typhoon can carry up to 16,500lbs of external ordinance - barely less than the S/A-18E. So, it'll only have SEVEN GPU-5/As, with the balance being GPU-2/A's.

Either way, both planes can carry the weight of those eleven external gun pods (ignoring only the detail of where those mounts are - two of them on the Hornet are wingtip mounts, and solely due to placement, unsuitable for carrying a gun pod). And to add insult to injury:both of them also have one internal cannon. So that's TWELVE cannons, on each plane. Real world.





.... you were saying?

I think at this point, i'm just gonna chime in and say that the Weapon Mount rules are hella dumb.

This deserves to be immortalized.

Well, yes, yes they are. That's why I redesigned them for my own home campaign.

I started looking at the missiles, trying to find something with enough range to actually, y'know, hit a target at range, and revisited the Heimdall drone. Its the only significantly supersonic craft (speed 3,000) but, here's the stupid part the flavor text says it maxes out at 300kph.

If, in a 3 second combat round, you can travel 3,000m, that means you travel 1km/s or 3,600kph (mach 3).

As extra stupid, I realized that it'll fly out of its default Signal range since it can only make 30 degrees of turn per round due to "limited maneuverability." since at its subsonic speed it still cover about 12km. And what's its handling? +2

Sighhh..

Oh, and at a max range of 18km, its only got about half the range than a short-range missiles like a Sidewinder.

To a certain degree, what do you expect?

Shadowrun is the brainchild of FASA, who also gave us giant stompy 'mechs shooting high-tech lasers and autocannon 20s over iron sights.

BTech actually tries to explain away the limits in targeting things, in-setting, though: most computer tech that would help with things like that are LosTech.

What were your houserules? I've been thinking about doing the same thing, mind sharing?

That's what makes it so insane. There are rules to handle weapons actually hit things as far as the horizon, it's just 'Targetting' that can't handle it. So what prevents guided mech fired missiles? Uhm. Energon cubes.

Well, for one, I tried to make sure it would be as retro-compatible with the rst of SR4's vehicle modification rules as possible, and not completely invalidate existing any future non-MilSpec vehicles, drones, and their prices. There might be a few cases wher things wind up "off" by a slot or two, or a couple thousand "nuyen: ... but nothing _major_, one hopes.

So ... let's see if I can format this reasonably on the forum:

Vehicle Modification: Weapon Mounts
… to allow smaller drones to carry very small weapons, and to make mid-sized drones not always carry an LMG, the following changes are used:

Basic Frame

• Mini Mount (Minidrone); 1 slot / 500 nuyen; kit, threshold 3 (Armorer); Can mount Holdout and Light Pistols.
• Light Mount (Standard); 1 slot / 1000 nuyen; kit, threshold 6 (Armorer); Can mount Heavy Pistols, Machine Pistols, and SMGs.
• Standard Mount (Standard); 1 slot / 1,500 nuyen; kit, threshold 9 (Armorer); Can mount any rifle, shotgun, or generally rifle-sized grenade launcher. Minimum body of 4, may have one per 4 body (round up).
• Reinforced Mount (Standard); 2 slots / 3,000 nuyen; shop, threshold 12 (Armorer); Can mount Machineguns and man-portable Assault Cannons. Minimum body of 6; may only have one per 6 body (round down).
• Heavy Mount (Standard); 3 slots / 10,000 nuyen; shop, threshold 15 (Armorer); Can mount vehicle-scale weapons (e.g., rotary assault cannons). Minimum body of 14; may only have one per 10 body (round down).

Mobility

• Fixed; +0 slots / 1,000 nuyen; no tools, no threshold
• Flexible; +1 slot / 3,000 nuyen; shop, +6 threshold
• Turret; +3 slots / 5,000 nuyen; facility, +16 threshold

Visibility

• External; +0 slots / 0 nuyen
• Internal; +2 slots / 1,000 nuyen; shop, +6 threshold
• Concealed; +3 slots / 4,000 nuyen; shop, +10 threshold (Disguise)

Special

• Armored Control; +2 slots / 2,000 nuyen; shop, +10 threshold
• Manual Control; +1 slot / 0 nuyen; no tools, no threshold
• Remote Control; +0 slots / 500 nuyen; shop, +6 threshold

So; note there is no "Heavy Turret"; if you want that, you're taking Heavy Mount (3 slots, 10K:nuyen: ), Turret (+3 slots, +5K (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) ), and External (+0 slots, 0 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) ) .... for a net final cost of 6 slots and 15,000 nuyen. Poof, "Heavy Turret".

Also note that you can now put a holdout pistol, or a single grenade perhaps, into a minidrone. Sure, it's going to look like a Tank Main Gun on the thing ... but hey, RC Tanks sound like fun to me ...! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

I would suggest moving Battle Rifles from Standard to Reinforced. BRs are mostly between MMGs and HMGs in effectiveness.

It's not about effectiveness to me, exactly. It's about size and force of recoil. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Yeah? Pity that doesn't explain Star Leauge Royals and Clan OmniMechs having barely more range.

Royals are a Herbtech invention. Herbtech sucks balls.

Clan LPL's have more then double the range of their IS counterparts.

What Almost_Normal said abotu the "Royals" you mention.

As for the Clans ... while they managed to preserve MORE tech than the Star League did ... they, too, suffered massive backslides in technology due to infighting, and also due to the generally less-habitable nature of the worlds they ultimately settled on. Their rigid caste system, while it certainly helped preclude massive losses like that again, would also have stultified their culture and thus slowed the pace of their regaining those missing technologies.

There's also this to consider: it had to be a playable game. The game just wouldn't be nearly as much fun, if it had been rigidly realistic - not only with range, but even with damage.

I'd rather a fun game with some "dumb but necessary" moments of plot-blindness, than an accurate but un-entertaining simulation.

What's Herby done this time? It's been ages since I last talked to him. Royals?

But you don't have it quite right. The reason the ranges are so short in BT isn't because the weapons don't go that far it's because electronic counter measures at ground level have advanced so much. Beyond a certain range you get lost in ground clutter was the official rationale for a while. Aerospace weapons still go a long range, space they go even farther. Air to air targetting is measured in multiple mapsheets (even of VTOL's on the ground map). But once the VTOL lands and gets lost in the ground clutter like mechs and vehicles suddenly it becomes very hard to sense and target them. I'm not saying it's overly realistic (as if stomping gigantic mechs are)...

But I'm fully with Pax on the playability bit. My only real gripe with the system is the +2 range breaks in the system. There's not a good reason for not having +1 range increments. On a 2d6 system... that +2BTH is a huge modifier on the odds of the bell curve. The other problem is the game doesn't translate well at all to computer games.


Pax:
I've taken the time to look at your house rules int he past... I'll just say this bluntly. You have WAY too many of them. Once you hit the point where you're replacing 10% of the rulebook with your own stuff you're no longer playing the same game as the rest of us.

That said, the reason for medium drones carrying a LMG is because of one thing. Belted ammo. Assault rifles are almost always a better pick for no good reason. (they're lighter weight and should suffer double recoil penalties not MG's as well as suppressable, more and better mods, and all the rest). That and there is no ultra light MG.

First off ... so what? It's not like your game has to conform to what I'm doing, after all. "There is no One True Way".

Secondly, 10%? Pffft, not even close. More like half a percent, tops. My entire "houserules" document is 21.6kb, comprising 5 pages of plain text:

Page 1: a list of rulebooks and supplements allowed, and a statement that I'll be using Season 4 Missions as adventure modules;
Page 2: a list of which published optional rules I intend to use;
Pages 3, 4 and 5: actual house rules. Yes, all sixteen houserules.

In extremely brief form:

• Redesigned Weapon Mount rules;
• made Recoil Compensation count/help for Suppressive Fire;
• Free Contacts (CHA + INT + Etiquette);
• Stick and Shock ammo damage changed to "-1S(e)";
• Commlinks can be (hardware) Optimised for Firewall and System;
• Redesigned rules for Cyberlimb Armor;
• Removed Automatics skill; added Heavy Weapons to Firearms; specified which weapons use which skill;
• Changed "High Power Ammunition" to be a modifier - so someone wiht more money than sense can buy HP-APDS if they really really want to;
• Changed how Edge-for-dice interacts with cap on hits when spellcasting (add your Edge to the Force of the spell, rather than "no limit at all")
• Changed the cost of Improved Attribute power for Adepts
• Explicitly state that Adepts may gain a PP in place of a Metamagic when initiating
• Explicitly state how I interpret the split Magic ratings of Mystic Adepts
• Made combat slightly more lethal (damage converts to stun only if the DV is less than HALF the armor rating)
• Changed maximum armor encumbrance to Body+Strength
• Made the minimum Karma cost for any advancement be 1, regardless of discounts available (matters where Learning Nanites are concerned, for example)
• Added three custom Lifestyle Qualities (Hidden Storage, Concealed Room, and Saferoom)

Honestly, if that's even 0.000001% of the rules changed, I'll be shocked into a coma.


My desire was for there to be OPTIONS, trade-offs, and not have every medium drone sporting an LMG. In other words, make it no longer be "LMG or don't bother".