Assaults Rifles vs. Machine Guns Options

[CanRay]

In any case, I was issued magazines with same ammo capacity as the M-16's.

Well, there's your problem!

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Well, there's your problem!

Indeed... With the Drum, the SAW is awesome. And if you are good, you can fire 3-5 round bursts with a SAW with as much accuracy as the M16 in Burst (And if you are really good you can fire single rounds with a SAW). But when it comnes to actual suppression, the SAW rocks over the M16 (Duh! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) ). I liked the M60 as well (but boy does that hog suck on a hump of any distance), but for sheer portability and maximum rounds downrange, I far preferred the SAW.

[Jaid]

Those are retail prices. If you wanted to fudge it, you could say that megas (in particular, those that are known for software/cyber) could produce / implant their operators at cost- in this case, an out-patient procedure and a 5 nuyen chip.

-DrZ

so what you're saying is that the corps have artificially put into play a profit margin of 3,200,000 percent to make sure that they don't sell a single one of their stupidly overpriced cyberware which they developed so that they could sell?

hmmm.... not feeling convinced.

for those who seem to think that the gang is going to do the implant removal, i did specify having an organlegger contact. you don't need to find a buyer when you already know someone who buys this sort of thing for a living. if they know any street doc, that street doc probably also has the contacts to get rid of the corpse. yes, they won't get full price for it. but if you're just chipping all your guards, you're basically putting a price on their heads.

consider this is the edition where officially, shadowrunners break into extremely secure research compounds for a few thousand nuyen each. even 18,000 nuyen (if we presume the gang doesn't have *anyone* in it with a halfway decent level of social skills) is a pretty good score in the setting as presented. certainly, it's a heck of a lot easier than shadowrunning, and appears to pay similar amounts (if not more).

[Epicedion]

Considering that a rating 6 skillwire system (that could run one rating 6 skillsoft) in SR3 would cost about 325,000 nuyen, I don't see the major complaint.

[Shemhazai]

yes, they won't get full price for it.

I'm curious what percent of the book value for used 'ware people think the runners would get for fencing something they ripped out of a guard on one of their own runs. Imagine being asked to deal in something so identifiable, and being traceable from both ends -- either from people who have tracked down the runners and forced them to rat out who they sold it to, or from people who have tracked down the 'ware itself and forced the new owner to rat out who they bought it from.

And what about the reaction of a street doc contact when asked to harvest from a a recent casualty. Are you sure she would be okay with it? Would the Johnson or fixer be cool with it if they were to find out?

[binarywraith]

This discussion is a disconnect, though, from Reality to Game. In reality, very few people are willing to risk getting dead by operating in a suppressive fire zone. In the game, hoewver, all it takes is the decision to do so (since no one really dies), and a character with a semi-competant design to almost completely ignore the ramifications of the Suppresion zone. Unfortunately, the mechanics do not support the reality. Suppressive fire from fully automatic weapons designed for sustained fire is a devastating thing. Suppressive fire from fully automatic weapons using grenades is truly horrifying.

Having been on a Mk19 range when someone was going full-auto? That shit would be absurdly terrifying to be downrange of. Honestly, I really do think Shadowrun needs a either a better suppression mechanic, or something on the lines of 'attack of opportunity' style rules to make breaking cover in a beaten zone more dangerous.

Edit : Reading up on suppression in SR5, that looks like what they did.

Suppressive fire takes a Complex Action, uses twenty rounds of ammo, and ignores recoil. Though it may appear as a “spray and pray” technique it is in fact a combination of controlled and fully automatic bursts focused over a narrow area and directed at anything that moves. A character can suppress a triangular area projecting from the shooting character outward up to a distance of his choosing, up to the maximum range of the weapon, with a width of 10 meters at its end and a height of 2 meters. Make a (Weapon Skill) + Agility [Accuracy] Test, including bonuses for smartlink, laser sight, tracer rounds, and other gamemaster-approved modifiers, and record the hits. The suppressive fire zone lasts until the end of the Combat Turn as long as the firer does not move or commit to any other action. Anyone in the suppressive fire zone or immediately adjacent to it takes a dice pool penalty to all actions equal to the shooter’s hits, unless they are completely unaware of it (a magician using astral projection, for example).

Any character who is in the suppressed area (but not behind cover or prone), or who moves into or out of the area before the end of the suppressive fire, risks catching some flying lead. That character must make a Reaction + Edge Test (+ any dice they may get as a result of choosing to use Full Defense) with a threshold equal to the hits scored by the suppressing attacker. Note that in the test, you use your full Edge rating, regardless of whether you have spent points during the session (though you do not, of course, use burned Edge points). If the test fails, the character is hit, suffering damage equal to the weapon’s base Damage Value modified by any special ammunition being fired. Characters in the suppressed area who remain behind full cover or drop prone are not at risk (though they suffer the normal modifiers for being prone; see Melee Modifiers, p. 187, and Ranged Modifiers, p. 173). Characters may choose to avoid rolling and use their Free Action to go prone and avoid getting hit. If a character does not have a Free Action remaining she may use the Hit the Dirt Interrupt Action and go prone instead of getting hit. Any character who stands up or moves again before the suppressive fire stops must make a test to see if she is hit.

[Jaid]

I'm curious what percent of the book value for used 'ware people think the runners would get for fencing something they ripped out of a guard on one of their own runs. Imagine being asked to deal in something so identifiable, and being traceable from both ends -- either from people who have tracked down the runners and forced them to rat out who they sold it to, or from people who have tracked down the 'ware itself and forced the new owner to rat out who they bought it from.

And what about the reaction of a street doc contact when asked to harvest from a a recent casualty. Are you sure she would be okay with it? Would the Johnson or fixer be cool with it if they were to find out?

i'm not entirely certain what setting you think you are playing, but tamanous is known for having connections that extend into legitimate hospitals, never mind the street doc who probably lost his license for some reason or another (and is no longer legally a doctor) and cannot even *access* regular channels for organs and such that (s)he needs.

the organization has a very long reach that extends to almost any medical facility, legitimate or otherwise, that you care to name. and they're only one organization that does this sort of thing.

organ-legging is a known phenomenon in shadowrun. and tamanous is actually an organization that people who fairly often will find themselves needing to make a body disappear (say, into the mouths of some ghouls, after all the valuable parts have been taken out by a doctor) can benefit from, and it is *extremely* plausible, even likely, that any given character you create has a contact that is in some way attached to the organization (although they may or may not have told you about it).

if your gang has ever gone in to a shadow clinic to buy a set of handrazors, odds are good that your gang knows someone with connections to tamanous.

and while i don't have a problem (per se) with skillwires costing a lot, i *do* have a problem with people claiming that they cost a small fortune and yet are somehow *also* something that you could put into random people like it was a datajack or something.

you get to have it one way or the other; it's either expensive and rare (ie most editions), or cheap and common (ie 4th edition). expensive and common makes absolutely no sense for the setting. it would be like arguing that corporations are using the GMC banshee to ship people desperate for any kind of work from the barrens instead of an old, beat-up bus. sure, they could, but it's just not reasonable to expect the corporations to choose an expensive and complicated solution over a cheap and simple one, whether that be for transporting untrained labour or giving their workforce the skills needed to do their job.

[binarywraith]

you get to have it one way or the other; it's either expensive and rare (ie most editions), or cheap and common (ie 4th edition). expensive and common makes absolutely no sense for the setting. it would be like arguing that corporations are using the GMC banshee to ship people desperate for any kind of work from the barrens instead of an old, beat-up bus. sure, they could, but it's just not reasonable to expect the corporations to choose an expensive and complicated solution over a cheap and simple one, whether that be for transporting untrained labour or giving their workforce the skills needed to do their job.

I think it's just a manifestation of one of the ongoing problems of 5e. Game mechanics and worldbuilding in this edition have very little to do with each other.

[RHat]

you get to have it one way or the other; it's either expensive and rare (ie most editions), or cheap and common (ie 4th edition). expensive and common makes absolutely no sense for the setting.

Actually, "was cheap, became common, got expensive" works. Just because it's now much more expensive to put the wires in doesn't mean that the existing wired workforce suddenly vanishes.

[phlapjack77]

Actually, "was cheap, became common, got expensive" works. Just because it's now much more expensive to put the wires in doesn't mean that the existing wired workforce suddenly vanishes.

C'mon. That's exactly what's happened with every single piece of equipment - they vanished. The workforce with cheap wires DID vanish, because the world was retconned. It's why noone has "old school" smartguns/smartlinks anymore.

[Jaid]

edit: somehow missed the quote. this was in response to:

Actually, "was cheap, became common, got expensive" works. Just because it's now much more expensive to put the wires in doesn't mean that the existing wired workforce suddenly vanishes.

as phlapjack said, it pretty much did. 5th edition only makes *any* sense at all if you pretend like the world didn't suddenly and spontaneously change completely to be the way it is now.

it doesn't make any sense at all if the smartgun from the 2050s made you better at using with your gun without wireless, but the new ones need wireless to do the same, unless you presume that the old smartguns *never existed*, for example. it doesn't make sense that in the 2050s you could ground spells through a focus when you're on the astral, but now that they've broken all sorts of other barriers in magic they've suddenly all completely forgotten how to do that; that only makes sense if grounding also never existed.

and so on, and so forth. we pretty much have to presume that in most cases, 5th edition is pretending like certain things never happened. if there was still a huge stockpile of dirt cheap skillwires in the world, then rating 1 skillwires (plus the skilljack you need if you want to use them) would not cost more than rating 5 skillwires used to cost. and you also wouldn't need a skilljack, because SR4 skillwires had done away with that.

[Shemhazai]

i'm not entirely certain what setting you think you are playing, but tamanous is known for having connections that extend into legitimate hospitals, never mind the street doc who probably lost his license for some reason or another (and is no longer legally a doctor) and cannot even *access* regular channels for organs and such that (s)he needs.

the organization has a very long reach that extends to almost any medical facility, legitimate or otherwise, that you care to name. and they're only one organization that does this sort of thing.

organ-legging is a known phenomenon in shadowrun. and tamanous is actually an organization that people who fairly often will find themselves needing to make a body disappear (say, into the mouths of some ghouls, after all the valuable parts have been taken out by a doctor) can benefit from, and it is *extremely* plausible, even likely, that any given character you create has a contact that is in some way attached to the organization (although they may or may not have told you about it).

if your gang has ever gone in to a shadow clinic to buy a set of handrazors, odds are good that your gang knows someone with connections to tamanous.

I wouldn't make these assumptions about a character's contacts, and I don't consider all the people a character has ever done business with to be contacts. I completely agree that security staff will be trained rather than chipped. I disagree that runners would be wise to kill people while on a run to harvest the bodies.

[DWC]

I heavily disagree that an M16 converted to FA and Belt Feed would make a better SAW than the SAW... I really liked my M16A2... I LOVED my SAW...

Everyone I've met who trusted their life to a SAW loved them. FN made a great gun. But that's not the point. The point is that the game mechanics mean a belt fed assault rifle is better for everything an LMG does than an LMG is.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Everyone I've met who trusted their life to a SAW loved them. FN made a great gun. But that's not the point. The point is that the game mechanics mean a belt fed assault rifle is better for everything an LMG does than an LMG is.

Which is the problem that we are discussing. Epic fail on the developers side of things, to say the least.

[RHat]

C'mon. That's exactly what's happened with every single piece of equipment - they vanished. The workforce with cheap wires DID vanish, because the world was retconned. It's why noone has "old school" smartguns/smartlinks anymore.

Not a valid comparison. The mechanical function of smartlinks was retconned, pure and simple. Wires, on the other hand, are running into the issues caused by the nanotech disaster - the workforce with cheap wires is still there, but the methodologies that allowed for cheap construction and implantation of those wires is no longer viable.

Skillwires are part of an in-setting change, smartlinks are not.

[RHat]

edit: somehow missed the quote. this was in response to:



as phlapjack said, it pretty much did. 5th edition only makes *any* sense at all if you pretend like the world didn't suddenly and spontaneously change completely to be the way it is now.

it doesn't make any sense at all if the smartgun from the 2050s made you better at using with your gun without wireless, but the new ones need wireless to do the same, unless you presume that the old smartguns *never existed*, for example. it doesn't make sense that in the 2050s you could ground spells through a focus when you're on the astral, but now that they've broken all sorts of other barriers in magic they've suddenly all completely forgotten how to do that; that only makes sense if grounding also never existed.

and so on, and so forth. we pretty much have to presume that in most cases, 5th edition is pretending like certain things never happened. if there was still a huge stockpile of dirt cheap skillwires in the world, then rating 1 skillwires (plus the skilljack you need if you want to use them) would not cost more than rating 5 skillwires used to cost. and you also wouldn't need a skilljack, because SR4 skillwires had done away with that.

The logic here is not sound - just because one mechanical change represents a retcon does not mean all mechanical changes do. Skillwires can be easily explained by the nanopocalypse - they are no longer able to implant the dirt cheap wires, regardless of how many they have, because nanotech is critical to the implantation of those models.

[Emil Barr]

If the original purpose of the smartgun was retconned so that it was meant to help people who already had excellent, then was a similar retcon made for lasersights? If I recall, you only get a DP modifier from those in wireless mode as well

[Remnar]

I miss my implanted induction pads for my Smartguns... especially when my character has cyberarms.

[RHat]

If the original purpose of the smartgun was retconned so that it was meant to help people who already had excellent, then was a similar retcon made for lasersights? If I recall, you only get a DP modifier from those in wireless mode as well

Seems like - maybe the reasoning is that it can't be of much help if you can't keep the weapon on a single point anyways.

[phlapjack77]

Not a valid comparison. The mechanical function of smartlinks was retconned, pure and simple. Wires, on the other hand, are running into the issues caused by the nanotech disaster - the workforce with cheap wires is still there, but the methodologies that allowed for cheap construction and implantation of those wires is no longer viable.

Skillwires are part of an in-setting change, smartlinks are not.

It's totally valid. You expect to be able to say most pieces of gear aren't around because of a retcon, but OH WAIT this one OTHER piece of gear, nah, it wasn't retconned? Doesn't work. Either the world as a whole was retconned, or it wasn't.

You can't just make stuff up and blame everything on the nanotech disaster to try to prove your point.

[Epicedion]

Smartlinks are generally better than they were in SR4, since a +2 dice bonus is harder to come by. Of course it's still no SR3 Smartlink, which for a TN 6 (modified to TN 4 by the smartlink) shot had the roughly equivalent outcome of tripling your dice pool.

[RHat]

It's totally valid. You expect to be able to say most pieces of gear aren't around because of a retcon, but OH WAIT this one OTHER piece of gear, nah, it wasn't retconned? Doesn't work. Either the world as a whole was retconned, or it wasn't.

You can't just make stuff up and blame everything on the nanotech disaster to try to prove your point.

No., it is not the case that either all changes are retcons or no changes are retcons. There's a shit-tonne of middle ground. Skillwires are in that middle ground, as is most gear. The retconned gear is only a few examples - specifically things where their old dice pool bonus function is now new and shiny funtionality that comes with the new Matrix, and their new Limit bonus is now the function they've always had. That's pretty much the ONLY gear retcon. Things like price changes are trivial to explain in-universe between the massive economic issues and nanogeddon.

And as an aside, coming up with new terms whenever I mention the nanotech thing is fun. Wonder how long I can keep it up.

[toturi]

It's totally valid. You expect to be able to say most pieces of gear aren't around because of a retcon, but OH WAIT this one OTHER piece of gear, nah, it wasn't retconned? Doesn't work. Either the world as a whole was retconned, or it wasn't.

You can't just make stuff up and blame everything on the nanotech disaster to try to prove your point.

Yes, most pieces of gear. Not all pieces of gear.

Even if we assume that the world as a whole has to be retconned, you can still say that that piece of gear that "wasn't retconned" was retconned but it now functions similarly to the pre-retconned version.

[kzt]

Smartlinks are generally better than they were in SR4, since a +2 dice bonus is harder to come by. Of course it's still no SR3 Smartlink, which for a TN 6 (modified to TN 4 by the smartlink) shot had the roughly equivalent outcome of tripling your dice pool.

That's because SR Dev's are required to have either failed or never taken a statistics course.

[Jaid]

Smartlinks are generally better than they were in SR4, since a +2 dice bonus is harder to come by. Of course it's still no SR3 Smartlink, which for a TN 6 (modified to TN 4 by the smartlink) shot had the roughly equivalent outcome of tripling your dice pool.

smartlinks in SR5 are only better (comparatively) if you actually have them wireless, which has a bunch of potential drawbacks. including losing the full use of your smartlink. and, depending on what else is attached to the device that your smartlink is on, your ability to see.

and no, it's pretty obvious that skillwires have indeed been retconned. the 4th edition version needed no skilljack. all you needed to run a knowsoft was a DNI from any source. not so in 5th. we can safely say that the devs looked at 4th edition skillwires and decided that no, they don't work like that anymore.

furthermore, it is *extremely* obvious that skillwires got retconned, because we know *exactly* what old skillwires are like; exactly like the current ones, only not wireless-enabled. not sort of like the current ones, but needing different pieces of equipment to function, and an order of magnitude cheaper. SR4 has pretty clearly had it's augmentation costs errated out of existence.

edit: oh, and by definition, if someone is willing to do business with you, well... here's the description of a loyalty 1 contact:

"Just Biz. The relationship is purely mercenary, based solely on economics. The
people involved may not even like each other, and they won’t offer any sort of
preferential treatment."

so as a matter of fact, yes, if the guy who installed your cyberware is willing to install more cyberware into you in exchange for money, then that guy is a contact.