Dual Weapon's and Smartgun Links Options

[CanRay]

OUCH! Is it just major cities, or is it something cultural?

'Course, then again, they shut down my old school because someone didn't find all the sticks of dynamite while prospecting on the weekend and it rolled out from under the seat when he parked the car.

Still trying to figure out why my hometown has a SWAT team.

[Saint Hallow]

I used to live in Texas, Land of the Gun, and had about a half dozen firearms while there. I eventually moved to New York, where They Hate Guns. So I had to sell most of them before I moved. Kept just the shotgun because that is much easier to get a license for in NY.

NY (& mainly NYC) is very anti-gun due to history & age of the place. I live in NYC, & getting a pistol/handgun license is a trial & a half. Rifles are a little easier. I think (and this is all my own perspective & skewed recollection of history) that Texas loves guns due they had a wonderful working relationship with guns in it's past. Texas was a wilderness/territory that needed pacification & civilization. The gun was a tool for that purpose. NY doesn't have that. NY was already a major metro hub of cities & such, there was no need to own a weapon, except for self protection. However, most of the people who owned/used guns weren't "law abiding" folk, so gun violence & criminality was much more common.

[Seriously Mike]

I live in NYC, & getting a pistol/handgun license is a trial & a half.

Wait, so it IS possible without being a celebrity and/or the commissioner's friend?

[3278]

So, I tried out paired pistols with laser sights at the range today.

For what it's worth, your experiences match those of police officer and experienced shooter who did the same test probably almost a decade ago when this issue was brought up here. He also remarked that it'd be somewhat easier to do both independent and paired shooting if the reticles were different colors and/or shapes. The consensus at the time was that it was independent targeting, not paired reticles, that made shooting akimbo difficult, and that penalties for shooting akimbo should be high, while penalties for using two smartlinks should be low. Clearly someone's opinion wasn't swayed when SR4 was written.

[Yerameyahu]

Yay! Thanks for that cool work, KarmaInferno. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Snow_Fox]

NY is hard on hand guns, you haveto have a reason for carrying it beyond 'self defense.' I know a dentist who has a caryr permit because he has large amounts of drugs in his office. Long arms are fine, outside of NYC. But it is easy to get booze.
By comparrison, Pennsylvania where I live is much more gun friendly but it is harder to get a drink. My conclusion is that NY would rather you be drunk than armed, PA would rather you be armed than drunk. I'm a New Yorker.

That having been said the problem in the thread- using two weapons each with targeting aids is not the system it's the soft squishy bit between the shooters ears. Just imagine it, you have two dots on the target, but which dot is which gun? Sure it's easy to think - one on the right is the right gun, one on the left is the left gun. But what if the beams crossed? What if one's too high and the other's too low. you can spend a momment playing with it to test- jiggle the right hand and see what dot moves, BUT all that takes time and while you're playing with the laser the guy you're pointing it at is going to be shooting back at you, sending lead back down the beams while you're still playing with the fine tuning.

speaking personally and having read Wyatt Earp, shooting two guns at once is not going to be accurate and is just flashing, supression fire at most. aiming at anything bigger than a crowded street or a body on the floor before you, you're not going to hit by skill but just dumb luck.

[Yerameyahu]

I've been assuming the reticules are different (color or otherwise). You can have different lasers, and smartlink output is AR—that can be literally anything.

I agree: akimbo should not be a normal tactic for hitting things with bullets. Truly exceptional people can do it (in SR!), if the situation isn't too crazy, because that's cinematic.

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

Without knowing too many facts I guess there is a history of actually using a gun in each hand - it stems from the time of muzzle-loaded pistols. Even in the age of revolvers, the main reason would be more ammo - if you're reasonably ambidextrous, lining up your left and right hand - independantly and not simultaneously, probably each time supporting with the other arm - shouldn't be that different. But that's a long way from firing Hardboiled style.

I keep coming back to the initial answer to this question: It's a balance thing. If the authors had thought it ok to shoot two weapons simultaneously with smartguns, then they would have made it possible. Simple as that. It's Scifi where you can boost your brain power with cyber- or bioware. Changing the visual cortex to something akin to a Chameleon to independantly move and focus - and interpret - either eye should be a simple enough task. You don't even need 3D vision when using a smartlink, because that's what the rangefinder and ballistic computer is for. From an evolutionary perspective, eyes with overlapping 3D vision are a thing of the predators, whereas a wide field of view which is largely not three-dimensional is common among herbivores. So the reason to even have a foveal is to accurately aquire your prey. But you don't need that when you have a computer to do the distances for you. You could even have two mini-cameras in each cybereye so that each cybereye produces an independant 3D image. It's a question of game design that we don't have this.

It's really the same as drones not being able to track multiple targets and fire two or more weapons simultaneously - you don't want that to happen, because it tends to make hamburgers of people really easily.

So really the only problem I'm seeing with the rules as they are is that the writers ignore stuff already in the game in order to enforce their balance policy. You can't argue realism, but you CAN argue game-world consistency, where it just doesn't make sense that you can't paint two dots, and therefore make it easier than without dots.

[Yerameyahu]

But, you could easily keep those bonuses and increase the penalties for 'akimbo' (I hate calling it that, but it's so much easier to type). Net result: same or better.

[CanRay]

Rural Canada: Drunk and Well-armed!

And you might even have the ancestral distillery dating back from Prohibition. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Draco18s]

*Skips last two pages*

Alright guys.

Here's the deal.

If you have two red dots, each controlled by one hand.

And they're both dead center aimed at something, and one hand slips a little and the dot moves off target.

Which hand do you have to move to get it back on target?

The one that slipped, but seeing two red dots out in the field, you don't know which one is which.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

But, you could easily keep those bonuses and increase the penalties for 'akimbo' (I hate calling it that, but it's so much easier to type). Net result: same or better.

Except that I would say that is exactly the end result of what they did. You argued for a -2/-4 mechanic earlier (Primary/Secondary), and allowing the Smartlinked shooter the use of his/her Smartgun. This results in +0/-2, which is EXACTLY what we have now. So why go through all the math (some people HATE math with a passion) when it works out the exact same way. Disallowing Smartlink Bonuses and applying a -2 to second target is Identical to your suggestion in result. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Mäx]

*Skips last two pages*

Alright guys.

Here's the deal.

If you have two red dots, each controlled by one hand.

And they're both dead center aimed at something, and one hand slips a little and the dot moves off target.

Which hand do you have to move to get it back on target?

The one that slipped, but seeing two red dots out in the field, you don't know which one is which.

You don't have to be a total and utter moron and use two dots that are same color.
Even currently Lasers sight are available in colors other then red.
And the smartlinks hit indicator can be what ever you want it to be.

Except that I would say that is exactly the end result of what they did. You argued for a -2/-4 mechanic earlier (Primary/Secondary), and allowing the Smartlinked shooter the use of his/her Smartgun. This results in +0/-2, which is EXACTLY what we have now. So why go through all the math (some people HATE math with a passion) when it works out the exact same way. Disallowing Smartlink Bonuses and applying a -2 to second target is Identical to your suggestion in result. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Except for people who only have a laser pointers or not even those

[3278]

*Skips last two pages*

...

The one that slipped, but seeing two red dots out in the field, you don't know which one is which.

Probably shouldn't have skipped the last two pages. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) This was discussed rather a lot therein.

[Draco18s]

You don't have to be a total and utter moron and use two dots that are same color.
Even currently Lasers sight are available in colors other then red.
And the smartlinks hit indicator can be what ever you want it to be.

Having played a vertically scrolling shooter that has hot-seat coop (like an arcade game) that can detect multiple mice, I plugged two in (this was some time ago). Each "player" is a different color.

Blue was left hand, green was right hand.

I still flew into things because I moved the wrong mouse.

It's really frakking difficult especially in the heat of combat.

Oh, did I mention that the game was running slow because I was doing it on my laptop, not my desktop?

So despite running at 1/10th it's normal speed I was still flying into things. Using only 1 hand (and 1 ship) I can beat the hardest difficulties without dying at that speed (and the ships are One Hit Point Wonders).

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Except for people who only have a laser pointers or not even those

True, which is why I prefer the rule as it is. It gets rid of all the mumbo jumbo. I am okay with the fact (in game) that you cannot use Smartguns or Laser Sights/Red Dots/etc. to add dice pool creep to something that is inherently impossible (in game - specifically the use of such devices to aid in guns akimbo) to accomplish in the first place. I have yet to see it cripple a well built gunbunny (and in fact reigns them in a bit), and am okay with it crippling a poorly built one. It should not be your go-to tactic.

[Mäx]

True, which is why I prefer the rule as it is. It gets rid of all the mumbo jumbo. I am okay with the fact (in game) that you cannot use Smartguns or Laser Sights/Red Dots/etc. to add dice pool creep to something that is inherently impossible (in game - specifically the use of such devices to aid in guns akimbo) to accomplish in the first place. I have yet to see it cripple a well built gunbunny (and in fact reigns them in a bit), and am okay with it crippling a poorly built one. It should not be your go-to tactic.

But that's the real beauty of his solution, there's absolutely no dicepool creep(those who don't have smartlink actually lose dice), just a more consistant set of rules without tech that magically stops working if you try to use it for certain purpose.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

But that's the real beauty of his solution, there's absolutely no dicepool creep(those who don't have smartlink actually lose dice), just a more consistant set of rules without tech that magically stops working if you try to use it for certain purpose.

There IS dice pool creep (you get more dice for Sual weilding than you would have originally).
And Dual weilding already looses a ton of dice. You go from a Gunbunny with 18 Dice on a target, to gunbunny taking 2 shots at 9/7 dice on a target, you have lost 9/11 dice (and though you do get to shoot twice, both shots will be far, far less effective than that single shot would have been). In fact, you lose more dice (20) than your total original pool actually had (18) in the first place.

[Yerameyahu]

TJ, … I think Mäx handled it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) It's consistent and no balance change, except more 'realistically' bad on the tech-less. And it's *not* more math, because you never have to add/remove the smartlink. It just stays put.

Akimbo *should* lose tons of dice. So? Again, rejiggering the smartlink regulation doesn't alter that. Again, I'm definitely not in favor of akimbo (period), and I'm not suggesting this as a 'fix' for boo-hoo gunbunnies. It's purely about consistency.

Draco18s, again, it's not that it's easy with two dot colors. It's that it's easier than *zero* dots. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Mäx]

There IS dice pool creep.

Where?
Dice pool of 20 as example, both guns have smartlink:
Current system:
One target 10 dice per gun, two targets 10 for first and 8(10 -2 for second target) for second
his sytem:
One target 10 dice per gun, two targets 10(10+2-2) for first and 8(10+2-4) for second

[Yerameyahu]

If there's creep, just change the numbers. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) My -2/-4 was more a D&D analogy than anything else. You might want to add a penalty for akimbo in general, though the whole Ambidextrous ecosystem pretty well has that covered?

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

If there's creep, just change the numbers. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) My -2/-4 was more a D&D analogy than anything else. You might want to add a penalty for akimbo in general, though the whole Ambidextrous ecosystem pretty well has that covered?

The Penalty to Guns Akimbo is a Split Dice pool. That already exists. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Yerameyahu]

And obviously I know that, and I know *you* know that, which is why I didn't mention it again. So, if you'd assume that I'm not dumb, you'd conclude that I'm talking about a penalty to offset the smartlink in akimbo 1-target situations. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) Because adding it gives +2/+2 in that case, which is not necessarily desirable.

[Draco18s]

Draco18s, again, it's not that it's easy with two dot colors. It's that it's easier than *zero* dots. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

If you're aiming at the same target, maybe. But I see that distinction as being a rules-wise game balance thing.

(If it works for a single target, why not two guys standing next to each other? And if works for that, why not two guys 30 meters away from each other?)

[Yerameyahu]

It does. Having the dots is easier than not having them, for 1 or 2 targets. (Is my claim.)

It's just that there's no chance of confusion with 2 targets, so we didn't mention the colors with them. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)