Wired Reflexes and Firearms - Laws of Mechanics, I don't care how fast you are... Options

[Kool Kat]

Something interesting was brought up at our last game session that I have to agree with. It's nit picking the rules and game universe but makes sense when put to the real world test.

WIRED RELFEXES - A lot of chromed up street monkies and wanna be Cyberzombs have them and while it is obvious their use in melee combat is well worth it's weight in nuyen in my opinion wired reflexes become useless when firearms are involved in the attack.

While wired reflexes will help you reload your weapon faster, help you draw it faster and help you aim quicker than your average mundane meatbod Joe, the weapon in your hand ultimately controls your speed.

Firearms are designed to fire at certain speeds. It's the mechanics of the weapon. It takes a certain amount of time for the trigger to be pulled, the firing pin to slam into the round, ignite the powder, send the bullet on its way, eject the spent case, chamber a new round and repeat the process.

No amount of Wired Reflexes will make the weapon shoot faster. So I find it a bit unfair the amount of whip ass Wired up characters/NPCs can do with firearms and wired reflexes turned on.

A semi-auto pistol can only cycle so fast. If you keep pulling on the trigger faster than the weapon can cycle you are going to jam it up something good. That SMG can only spit out bullets so fast.. you can't make it shoot faster.

So, to me, a firearm should negate your Wired Reflexes bonus when doing ranged combat. Does anyone else see it this way?

[DireRadiant]

I wonder what else in a game with dragons, wizards, elves, artificial intelligences, and other assorted Horrors doesn't model well from the real world.

[galathrax]

heh

[Buster]

With a maximum of 4 IPs per 3 second turn, that's 1 double tap every 0.75 seconds. Machine guns fire lots faster than that, so it's well within the realm of physics.

[Moon-Hawk]

If you look at typical cyclic rates for firearms, the 4IP people have it just about right. It's those unaugmented who waste most of their time being inefficient.

[Lagomorph]

The problem is that a modern semi-auto pistol has a RoF that well exceeds the fire rate in the game. Each combat round is 3 seconds, with 4 IP doing semi-auto shots you're fireing a bullet every .375 seconds which is 160 rounds per min, most modern weapons can sustain 300-800. Even blowback operated ones like the Beretta 93R can fire 1100 rnd/min. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beretta_93R

I don't think even doing full auto weapons would max out their actual cyclic rate. With 10rd full auto from a lmg, you're doing 40 rds in 3 seconds, or 800 rnd/min which is faster than an M60, but slower than an MG3 from what I could find on wikipedia. So even a full auto weapon isn't outside the realm of possibility for its RoF.

[James McMurray]

[Moon-Hawk]

I will say, however, that if someone is in a non-combat situation, not aiming, not dodging, simply wasting ammunition as fast as possible, then they should probably be allowed to fire more than 2 shots per second. :-D

[deek]

The real world example that I think breaks down in SR4 is full auto-fire. I don't understand why one runner with a single IP, holding down the trigger should fire less bullets than the 4IP chromed out cybermonkey.

No matter how many IPs you have, the time doesn't change. Its the same 3 seconds, right?

[Aristotle]

[Cweord]

I was actually thinking about this earlier, funny to get home and see a thread

The way I would (and probably will) handle it is if you are firing a full auto burst, and planning to do so for more than 1 rounds (e.g suppressive fire with an machine gun) have the 40 rounds, but max out the recoil at 10.

They aint going to be aiming, but for area suppressive fire it puts then back in the field. The rules may need a little tweaking (I didn't get out the rule books).

But I would also count it as 10 rounds per IP for people reacting to the suppressive fire to even things out a little.

I look forward to seeing the reacting to this idea, and where it gets taken.

[Lagomorph]

[eidolon]

Yay, another OMGBBQ firearms aren't realistic in Shadowrun thread. Wheeee.

;)

[Kool Kat]

[Kool Kat]

[Kool Kat]

[Tarantula]

[Synner667]

[Emperor Tippy]

I usually run IP's as 4,1,3,2

I've also toyed around with 4,3,1,2

I've found the first is fairly well balanced and teh second is ok.

[Mr. Unpronouncea...]

[Emperor Tippy]

[Eryk the Red]

The grenade issue can be solved simply by defining a specific number of IPs later that the grenade goes off. (In my game, we run combat different, as a series of ticks, each representing about a second of time. Grenades usually have a fuse of 2 to 5 ticks, 5 at default. I once threw the players for a loop by throwing a grenade with an extra long fuse.)

Rate of fire for sustained automatic fire? I don't have an answer, we don't think about it much. We assume that a full burst is just that, a burst, and we just don't have much actual sustained fire.

[James McMurray]

[Cweord]

My point with supressive earlier was that full suppressive across a full turn is going to empty anyones clip. your razor guy has to do it over potentially 4 ips so all you do is say that suppressive fire for a full round is 40 rounds, but that people can only be affected by 10 of them.

if a razor guy wants to suppress an area, it doesn't matter how fast he is, he has to fill the same area over the same period of time, so suppressing the area takes all of his IPs. As combat is supposed theoretically to be spread across the same period of time.

If you then deal with suppressive fire at the end of the round, so that if he stops suppressing half way through, you can cut down the no rounds suppression he can still react to external stimuli but it wont effect the suppression.

I do like the 4132 idea though

[Wounded Ronin]

I always feel that if a non wired person gets off less rounds using autofire than a wired person it has to do with the fact that it takes longer for the non wired person to apply pressure to the trigger and thus is autofire starts later in the turn and that is why he gets off less rounds per turn.