No-scoping, Silliness with sniper rifles Options

[Sengir]

But the thing is, you said punches to the chest - now you're conveniently switching to punches to the head.

Uh, where did I do that?

And the real thing is this: I said "the equivalent of a few solid punches to the chest will give the target some pause". You then claimed that "'A few solid punches to the chest' doesn't give the target some pause.", which of course creates some problems once you want to explain the actual results of a fistfight. If somebody runs towards you and you greet him with a solid punch, the result will not exactly be that he continues to run like nothing happened, regardless of how doped up he is.

then used an erroneous boxing analogy to back it.

Hint: If an anology makes your point look stupid, maybe the problem is not the analogy...

[Smokeskin]

You said punches to the chest here:

However in case of firearms this is the exception, not the rule. Because even if you don't hit something vital, the equivalent of a few solid punches to the chest will give the target some pause.

Sengir, please try to follow your own arguments.

You said people went down with a couple of rounds to the chest - this is not true. You haven't backed this statement with anything.

You're saying it isn't about pain or hitting something vital, it is about kinetic energy and momentum. This is also false.

You said punches to the chest gave the target pause - I said that it meant pain instantly and after a while oxygen deprivation, but it didn't give you pause except for that.

Now you're trying to dodge around these things - you've started with blows to the head, which is completely irrelevant. You are saying that the effects of blows to the chest in fights have an effect, as if this backs your argument, which it doesn't. Yes, blows to the chest does have an effect, but not what you claimed: it hurts, it can cause spasms in your diaphragm so you have trouble breathing, and rib and muscular damage can also take its tolls. Just like with bullets to the chest, unless the pain makes you emotionally faint, it probably won't have an immediate effect, which is what you claimed.

[Sengir]

You said punches to the chest here:

Not just there, also everywhere else. Not that it really matters, but even your accusation that I switched to blows to the head doesn't hold water.

Sengir, please try to follow your own arguments.

I do. How about you do the same and explain to me what happens when somebody runs straight into a punch, without invalidating your own claims?

[Yerameyahu]

How do punches or bullets *not* 'give pause'? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) You just got punched/shot!

[kjones]

Yeah, I'm really curious as to what kind of person doesn't fall down when they get shot or punched. Maybe this is just my Body score of 1 talking, but...

I don't know, I don't have any problem with a game in which shooting somebody in the chest a few times stops them in their tracks.

[Yerameyahu]

I'm just confused about the apparently weird definition of 'give pause'. It doesn't mean you're blown across the room. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) But it's absurd to argue that there's zero effect.

[psychophipps]

There was a pair of fairly recent police-involved shootings where the suspect took six Gold-Dot .45 ACP 230-grain JHP (some seriously premium ammo) to the torso, including a coule of COM shots, and kept fighting. There was another where the suspect, on Marijuana of all things, took a total of 17 shots that where a mix if .223 Remington BHP and .40 S&W 180-grain Gold-Dot JHP (again, some pretty serious stuff here) including several torso/COM hits, and two shots in the neck. Neither one of these guys was particularly huge or trained as unstoppable ninja assassins or anything.

People can be fairly easily stopped (when it happens to you) but also very hard to stop (when you're trying to do it to someone else) and you never know which until you're neck deep in it...

[kzt]

Hey, I saw in a movie that shooting a guy blows him across the room, through a wall and sets him on fire! You saying that isn't right?

[Teulisch]

on giving pause- i think it would be because the force of the impact is knocking all the air out of your lungs.

I took some judo lessons some years back. at one point my unskilled self was practicing against an unskilled white belt southpaw in a karate gi. he threw me hard, and i didnt have the reflexes to slow the impact against the ground. took me a good minute or so to recover from that, just from being slammed into a padded mat. wasnt hurt, but couldnt breath properly for a moment.

if the bullets hit your kevlar-covered torso, the force may be enough to knock the wind out of you. basically anytime that knockdown applies, it could conceivably happen. thats realistic, although the rules dont really cover it as it would be abstracted into the stun track and knockdown rules.

[Yerameyahu]

I think the point is that there are many factors in play, and yes, a significant element of chance. You're right that it's all abstracted in this system, so we really don't care whether it's pain, damage, gasping for breath, or kinetic energy. It's just silly for them to argue that the system's dumb because getting hit does *nothing*. Weren't we talking about sniper rifles? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Smokeskin]

Yeah, I'm really curious as to what kind of person doesn't fall down when they get shot or punched. Maybe this is just my Body score of 1 talking, but...

Falling down when punched or shot in the chest is generally because of emotional fainting. Many people don't suffer from it. Determined attackers and people in fight or flight mode with lots of adrenaline in their blood generally don't.

I talked to a guy at work about it today. He thought that people dropped from a few holes in the chest. He also thought that there was nothing unusual about walking around with an arm ripped off. I guess people trust what they see in the movies too much.

[Smokeskin]

I'm just confused about the apparently weird definition of 'give pause'. It doesn't mean you're blown across the room. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) But it's absurd to argue that there's zero effect.

In the context I read it as he meant at least preventing the guy from continuing at you. And I don't think anyone said there'd be zero effect - there will be serious pain, and somewhere down the line (at least 10 seconds), oxygen deprivation could easily cause him to go unconscious. None of things stops a determined attacker from reaching you and taking several stabs at you though.

[Yerameyahu]

*shrug* Maybe he did mean 'give pause' to mean 'stops dead', but that'd seem like a pretty weird meaning to me.

[Sengir]

Falling down when punched or shot in the chest is generally because of emotional fainting.

...or simply because the force of the impact pushes you over, no emoness involded. No, I'm not talking about flying though the room like in the movies, just toppling over. And before you get to the "action = reaction" thing, the human body is not a statically determinate solid system, where you can simply calculate which forces apply and decide if the structure falls over. To somewhat continue the boxing analogy, it's perfectly possible to shove a person to the ground without sitting on your butt yourself.


@Yerameyahu: With "give pause" I basically meant...well, the stuff that happens if you get a solid punch to the chest while charging towards somebody. It's not going to kill you (most of the time), but you will be stunned/disoriented for a moment and it will make you slow down, stumble, or just fall flat on your face.

[Smokeskin]

...or simply because the force of the impact pushes you over, no emoness involded. No, I'm not talking about flying though the room like in the movies, just toppling over. And before you get to the "action = reaction" thing, the human body is not a statically determinate solid system, where you can simply calculate which forces apply and decide if the structure falls over. To somewhat continue the boxing analogy, it's perfectly possible to shove a person to the ground without sitting on your butt yourself.

And we're in physics fairy land. Throw up a fancy analogy, anything is possible.

The "action = reaction thing" is real. Getting hit by a bullet that doesn't overpenetrate transfers about as much momentum as the shooter feels as recoil. I can hardly imagine what sort of position you'd need to be in to get toppled over by recoil, and the same goes for a bullet hitting someone. The force of the impact really is as low as the recoil.

PS: I didn't mean to imply "emoness", I merely looked it up on wiki today and they used the term "emotional fainting".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stopping_power#Psychological_effects
Emotional fainting is the likely reason for most "one-shot stops", and not an intrinsic effectiveness quality of any firearm or bullet

[Whipstitch]

I wouldn't underestimate how much of not falling down and keeping one's balance can come down to learned behavior, either. In football practice we called learning to more or less ignore minor collisions as "getting religion." Some guys just have a harder time really, truly committing themselves to an action and can be thrown off by surprisingly little. When people go down to arm tackles, for example, it's really often just a simple case of the player not moving their legs for a moment in response to the jolt-- once you lose track of your feet it's all over. It doesn't even really matter where you get hit either if you can't keep on target mentally. I've seen plenty of people essentially trip over their own feet in response to someone slapping a shoulder pad.

I mean, c'mon, nobody's perfect! People trip on cracks in the sidewalk, for cryin' out loud.

[Sengir]

Throw up a fancy analogy, anything is possible.

Like I said, if any analogy shows tat your argument sucks, the problem might not be the analogy...

The "action = reaction thing" is real. Getting hit by a bullet that doesn't overpenetrate transfers about as much momentum as the shooter feels as recoil.

Did I claim anything different? Of course not, not another pathetic attempt to save your position...

[Smokeskin]

Like I said, if any analogy shows tat your argument sucks, the problem might not be the analogy...

Your analogy of "you can shove someone to the ground without falling over, so bullets can knock people down" shows that my argument sucks?

Of course not, not another pathetic attempt to save your position...

Hmm, let's see. You've moved on to someone charging you with a knife getting toppled by the "sheer force of the impact" from getting hit with a bullet, and you think I'm the one with the pathetic attempts?


Sengir, you had some hollywood ideas about terminal ballistics that don't hold up. People don't generally drop when hit in the chest. There's not enough force to topple them, there's little chance of a CNS hit, oxygen deprivation even from a ruptured heart don't set in that fast, and going unconscious from pain is uncommon for determined attackers. That's just how it is, you should accept it instead of digging yourself a deeper hole.

[Smokeskin]

I've seen plenty of people essentially trip over their own feet in response to someone slapping a shoulder pad.

I mean, c'mon, nobody's perfect! People trip on cracks in the sidewalk, for cryin' out loud.

So you're saying getting toppled by a bullet is at least as common as tripping over their own feet? Doesn't sound wrong, but its not saying much either (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Whipstitch]

I don't see why it is not saying much. People don't stand in a vacuum. We're not propped up with a stick. I don't like Shadowrun's knockdown system because it is so binary and doesn't really reflect reality, but that doesn't mean that people always stay standing when someone inflicts harm upon them either. I think of it less in terms of "knockdown" and more in terms of whether someone continues to stand up or not. It's a fine distinction, but it is a distinction; the former requires someone to be hit with enough force that they couldn't remain standing regardless of other factors while the latter is more like a cascade failure in which the person being acted upon matters as much as the force behind the actual attack.

[Whipstitch]

TLDR version: a wussy keeb may not stay standing while the nasty ganger with the scars might just laugh it off.

[KarmaInferno]

Guys, some people fall down when shot or stabbed or punched, and some folks don't.

Training sometimes helps, but sometimes it does not.

There have been cases where a totally untrained average joe keeps going after getting hit multiple times, and the brawny professional soldier drops a second after getting hit once.

The human body is simply unpredictable on how it will react to trauma.




-np

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Guys, some people fall down when shot or stabbed or punched, and some folks don't.

Training sometimes helps, but sometimes it does not.

There have been cases where a totally untrained average joe keeps going after getting hit multiple times, and the brawny professional soldier drops a second after getting hit once.

The human body is simply unpredictable on how it will react to trauma.

-np

This is very true... On the night that my unit crossed the line of advancement in the gulf during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, I had an individual take a bayonet through the back of his calf, severing the achilles tendon, and going all the way through his foot in the middle of his arch (guy behind him tripped going through the minefield)... now, if that had been me, I would have probably immediatly stopped advancing, started cussing loudly and continuously, hopping around before falling onto a mine, killing myself... He, however, never utterred a sound, continued on for the next 300 meters (to clear the minefield that had been blown) and then calmly told the platoon leader that he needed a medic... his boot was so full of blood you could pour it out onto the ground, and eventually he was evac'd to Batallion Aid, where he was sent back to the cantonement areas...

Damndest thing I had ever seen...

Keep the Faith

[Bob Lord of Evil]

First, I appologize for not reading all of the posts in this thread...so if I retread a statement my bad.

DMRs are kinda built for this kind of duty.

Also, its no different than carrying a full-sized shotgun like the binelli M-4 into the same situations.

Full sized shotguns are not ideal for CQB, Benelli's M4 has an overall length of 40" and that is very easy to get hung up in an apartment hallway. Before anyone starts yelling at me, stand the middle of your hallway with 40" stick pressed up to your shoulder (i.e. like you are holding a weapon) and turn around -slowly- so not to put a big hole in your drywall.

A great many people think that the deadliness of a sniper rifle is the high-powered cartridge that it fires. The vast majority of MMG's fire the same (7.62mm NATO round) as most military sniper rifles, potent...yes. What makes a sniper rifle standout is that it is accurate. Being able to put that projectile through the grey matter of a target 800 yards away is absolutely deadly. You are bypassing body armor and going for the command center of the body, game over. True sniper rifles are insanely accurate up to 1/4 MOA, far more accurate than 99.9% of the shooters are capable of making use of.

In a CQB situation you are not going to be able to utilize that accuracy.

This has always been a point of contention but I am going to throw this out there anyway. Sniper rifles are bolt action rifles. I know that they make semi-auto rifles that they tack on the sniper title to and that they are finely made but they just cannot compete against a bolt action rifle. When I pull the trigger on a semi-auto rifle, there is movement inside of that gun before the bullet leaves the barrel, that movement translates into muzzle drift. If that muzzle moves 1/8 of an inch that translates into inches at 500 yards.

There is a reason that the Cheytac M200 is a bolt action rifle (53" long, 31 lbs, seven .408 rounds of nail driving death). (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)

[Bob Lord of Evil]

Even a 60 pound deer won't reliably drop from a .308 win expanding hit that takes out heart and lungs, most of the time it'll run quite a distance before dropping. Sure, many humans are weaker than animals and get scared and faint when getting hit, but a determined attacker with adrenaline pumping, you won't see them dropping just because they have a few small holes in their chest, even if they're actually dead.

My father operated on that premise, I was present on three occasions when he bagged deer with +400 yard head shots with a Ruger falling block rifle in the .270 caliber. That results in an instant drop. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

You run across somebody jacked up on PCP and you could be in for a real rough time.

Somebody talked about movie gunfights...
In my book the all-time worse one has to be the Lethal Weapon (can't remember which version) where they shoot the bad guy...through the frickin dozer blade with 'armor piercing' 9mm rounds! I want those bullets in Shadowrun! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)