Firearms Options

[Kingmaker]

There are rules for suppressing fire?

[TheOneRonin]

[Schaeffer]

[kzt]

[TheOneRonin]

Of course, once the projectile has left the muzzle of a modern firearm, no one is going to be fast enough to "dodge" it. Face it, we all know this to be a fact, and we all know that "dodging bullets" is an abstraction, and is usually meant to be the RPG equivalent of "moving in such a way to make yourself a difficult target.

I believe some years back I read a interview with some RPG developer who had some things to say about combat in RPGs...specifically about how in most RPGs, actually hitting in ranged/melee combat is much, much easier and happens much more frequently than in real life. His philosophy was that combat isn't fun if the players miss 80%-90% of the time. And that the rules do the opposite of that so as to make combat more fun, more satisfying, and take less time to play out than they would otherwise.

I understand his point...at least a little. However, I think that's a very short-sighted view for a game developer. And I think it short-changes the tactical side of combat. That approach is fine for Heroic/High Fantasy type games, but isn't worth a crap in modern/post-modern high-tech games.

[Moon-Hawk]

[TheOneRonin]

[Moon-Hawk]

I think a good fix for autofire is to allow every bullet past the first to give +1DV (narrow burst), -1 die to dodge (wide burst), or +1 die on the attack (searching fire), in any combination.
All the standard rules are available as special cases of this rule, but overall it gives you a bit more freedom and lets you adjust your autofire to have the effect you want.
I will note that the searching fire option is only really meaningful if you have recoil compensation. If not, it's just a convenient way to get rid of more bullets than single-shot.

[stable_sort]

Recoil and recoil compensation always seemed a little half-baked to me, though RC is a little better in SR4 than in 3 (for me, 3 was worse because of all the odd RC bonuses in CC).

You start with a penalty that rapidly gets harsh and then need to add a variety of options to reduce the penalty (6 out of 18 items under Firearms Accessories provide recoil compensation -- counting the Smart Firing Platform). Some accessories are mutually incompatible, and others come with guns stock (at least most Longarms come with Shock Pads now, though for some reason most Assault Rifles don't).

To make things worse, there's the Ingram White Knight and the Stoner-Ares M202. The 5-point gas vent and low price make the IWK far better than the M202 for half the price.

I'm not terribly concerned about realism -- much more about game balance and giving some reward to using tactics that are productive in practice.

[kzt]

[Jaid]

[Kingmaker]

[Whipstitch]

I guess I just believe devs should be more concerned with giving meaningful combat options than upholding realism, personally. I realize missing can be "realistic", but I'm afraid I don't like "You swing at the kobold. You miss. The kobold misses as well." style combat in my cyberpunk anymore than I like it in my fantasy.

[TheOneRonin]

[Moon-Hawk]

[Wounded Ronin]

[l33tpenguin]

I'm all for keeping the rules fun and exciting. I wouldn't compare SR to a post modern high tech RPG. If there wasn't elves and trolls and magic, if the matrix was anything near realistic, if the whole time line even made practical sense, then I can go with making ultra realistic rules for firearms. But when a wagemage can light me up with a lightning bolt, I'd much rather have rules for firearms that let me take him out fast.

[Critias]

[TheOneRonin]

[Moon-Hawk]

TheOneRonin: First off, no hostilities detected, just making sure that I didn't come off as belligerent or abrasive. :-)

First Scenario:
Glad it helped. And I completely agree with you in that if the rules only work for cyberbadass with 23 dice then they don't really work. I'm trying to think in terms of DPs of 6-11 ranging from average professional to slightly above-average veteran with a specialization and a laser/red dot.
It is true that SR makes minimal distinction between the recoil of large weapons vs small weapons. But there is a little help, at least. Aside from the double uncompensated recoil from heavy weapons, bear in mind that rifles and assault rifles assume that you're using the stock and don't give recoil for that, but machine pistols or SMGs and carbines (which are sometimes classified in SR4 as SMGs) DO get a free point of recoil simply for using the stock. Aside from that, though, there just isn't enough granularity in the system to account for subtle (and even not-so-subtle) differences in recoil. You could come up with an arguably more realistic rule where machine pistols only add 2 points per 3 bullets or something, but at that point you're adding complexity that I would argue detracts more overall fun than it adds.

But despite my rambles, let's not loose your real point. Your real point is that, due to the recoil system, you fire a bullet at someone, they get hurt; you fire more bullets, they get hurt more; and if you fire more bullets still suddenly they get off without a scratch because your DP died. WTF?
The fact of the matter is, because of the way the system works, certain choices are...shall we say, sub-optimal. If firing 10 rounds is worse than firing 6 round, then don't do that. You have to look at your intention (kill the dude), use the rules that best accomplish that (perhaps a long narrow burst), and then use a quality fluff description to fill in the gaps. (you hold the trigger down and keep a stream of bullets on the fragger until he stops twitching) Alternately, you could use my suggested autofire rule and use the searching fire option where you use those extra bullets to cancel their own recoil. In that scenario, firing 10 bullets instead of 6 doesn't help your damage, but at least it doesn't hurt it either. :-)

Special cases of recoil can make problems, but again it's mostly a lack of granularity. They're trying to make sure that "more recoil compensation = better", and they've done that, despite some weirdness in special cases. But you can easily avoid those special cases and use more optimal cases while still accomplishing an action which is described in exactly the same way.

I realize I'm sort of taking the position of the "rules apologist" (I tend to play devil's advocate) but seriously, you need to look at your intention, use the rules to best accomplish that goal, and then give yourself a little leeway in terms of the description. Something that, in fluff, is described as a long stream of autofire could be represented by a complex action of autofire, a long and a short burst (or vice versa), surpressive fire, or any other combinations of actions spanning multiple passes. It's up to you as a player to understand the rules and know how to best use them to achieve the desired goal, to know when to represent your stream of bullets as full autofire, surpressive fire, or short bursts, even though all three could represent the exact same action.

So the problem isn't that you can't kill a dude with autofire, but the problem may well be that you simply elected to use the wrong option to best kill him. Maybe you surpressed when you should've narrow-short-burst-followed-by-a-long-wide-bursted. See what I mean?

*whew*

On to point 2:
Again, you absolutely can empty the entire magazine into him. It's just going to take you more than one pass to get there.
Admittedly, there is some odd interplay between weapon ROF and initiative passes, but it's really only an issue in the case of surpressive fire requiring more bullets for faster people, but that's easily house-ruled around by allowing a 4-pass speed demon to extend his surpression through a turn by forfeiting extra actions without using any more ammo than Captain Slowpoke.
The point? Ah yes. Again, you make a strong argument for applying cover modifiers positively to the defender's dodge pool (dice which they get regardless of being aware of the attack or not) rather than negatively to the attacker's pool. The other good argument for this, by the way, comes from the glitch mechanic: Your target jumping behind a couch should not increase the chance of your Ex-Ex ammo exploding in your gun. That would be silly. In that case he gets a big bonus to dodge for being behind cover (which you negate with a wide burst) and you take a much smaller penalty (allowing you to have enough dice to hurt him).
We also revisit the issue of having your odds of doing damage go down as you fire more bullets. Admittedly weird. But again, I say that you have the option to draw the line after any number of bullets and resolve that number as a single burst of varying length and width. (standard rules allow only for narrow or wide, but there's no reason you couldn't combine the two into a continuum of options, as I suggested a couple posts ago) Just figure out your optimal number, call that a burst, resolve it, and move on to the next burst (which may or maybe not be in another pass) and just call it an unending stream of shots with the fluff. Granted, if the guy next to you has some recoil compensation (or maybe is bracing his weapon on another car so the GM gives him some RC for an improvised bipod, eh?) then he's going to be drawing the line after more bullets and thus is doing more damage. You can still describe it as a more or less uninterrupted stream of bullets from the both of you. And if you change it in any other way you run the risk of making recoil compensation meaningless, and that would be bad too.
At least if you're using wide bursts to eat up his defense pool, as you add bullets with RC you're increasing your chances of putting the hurt on him, and as you add bullets without RC at least you decreasing both of your pools evenly and breaking even.

I feel like if you focus too much on the specifics then you can definitely find sub-optimal choices. Don't use those. Use the optimal choices and describe it however you want.

So...all in all, I realize that I defended the rules by introducing house rules, and that's not really defending the rules at all. But bear in mind that all the house rules I suggested do not really have an effect on balance (moving dice from the defender to the attacker doesn't change net hits, usually) but they do eliminate some special-case weirdness.

So you're looking at a problem and saying: I want to kill this guy with lots of bullets, but if I do X it works better than XYZ, and that's weird.

And I say: True. But you want to kill him with lots of bullets, and there's a good way to do that, so there's not really a problem. Feel free to take some creative license in your description of X.

I can't deny that there are some very weird cases that can be found in the SR4 rules. But the question is can you come up with a common situation that you (or I) just can't model with any option in the rules? THAT is where we really have a problem.

Helping any?

[kzt]

If the rules are counter to reality they are broken and should be fixed If your attempt to apply tactics requires that you memorize all the edge cases and weird bizarreness so you can remember when to something totally stupid in order to succeed I'd argue the rules are broken and need to be fixed.

[Moon-Hawk]

[Kingmaker]

Another problem with the recoil rules is that it has the same effect at all ranges. If I remember correctly , if I fire my AK-97 on full auto and shoot off a full burst, I receive the same penalty whether the target is 5 meters away or 150 meters away, (someone point out if I am wrong, I still need to review the combat rules) despite the fact that the accuracy loss from recoil would be far less significant a 5m than at 150m. The only thing that immediately springs to mind would be to apply a Recoil modifier based on range.

[Moon-Hawk]

Interesting idea. Can you figure a way to make it workable? As in, not hideously complicated, but still balanced? I can help with the rules aspects, but not the "it works like such in real life". I have fired many a rifle, but never in my life anything faster than semi-auto.

[Kingmaker]

Unfortunately, I have never fired a full auto weapon either. My info comes from several friends of mine who possess weapons that are most likely illegal in most states.