Let's talk about machine guns, And why Catalyst need to hire someone competent to talk to about guns. Options

[psychophipps]

Yeah, Me too... Military hardware should be HARD to get your hands on, and it should not be cheap. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif)

To be honest, I respectfully disagree. Mil-spec is hard and expensive to get now, but the US is also a country with a unilateral jurisdiction federal law enforcement system, a military budget that matches a largish part of the rest of the world combined, and the US has a GDP of right around twice that of the next largest world economy. In Shadowrun, none of this is true. You have several smallish NAN nations, the eastern part of the former US is split into UCAS and CAS, and Seattle is this little island of UCAS like a Shadowrun-era Berlin.

Now add that Mega-corporations have their own jurisdictions, with laws that very likely start with something along the lines of, "Make dat chedda', bitches!" So guess what they do? They make quality military hardware at a reasonable price that your average NAN/fragmented bloc that is ghost of it's glorious past/local warlord can afford. With all that wishy-washy legaleez going around, it's very easy to see how a little bit of "state of the art bang-bang!" makes it's way into the hands of folks that are committing dirty deeds, done dirt cheap for the aforementioned parties.

[kzt]

Because while that axe is moving maybe 100 meters per second on the upper end, the bullet is moving a thousand meters a second, deforms, and rends flesh like you wouldn't believe. Ever seen an exit wound? They're all kinds of nasty, far worse in terms of actual damage done than the swing of your average axe. An axe. Go do some research on terminal ballistics, and you'll see.

No, impact weapons should be far more lethal, particularly swords, axes and similar large weapons. Pistols should be much less effective on average then shooting people with rifles or hitting people with an axe. However it should also be pretty much impossible to charge up to an alert guy with gun ready and attack him with an axe etc without getting perforated. So mechanics matter.

Machine gun bullets should do the exact same thing that the same size rifle does. A SAW and an M16 don't really differ in terminal effects. The RL advantage that a belt fed light machine gun is that it can keep shooting a lot longer without having to stop to reload or overheating nearly as fast. For the first few seconds of a fight it's just a heavy and oversize assault rifle, it's only when everyone else is reloading that the differences appear. There are also things you can do with tripods that make them hell on wheels at long range against targets you are expecting, but that takes quite some time to set up.

Machineguns larger than LMGs are usually classed as crew served weapons because you need multiple people to carry all the parts to the fight, then keep it fed and shooting accurately, plus real-world ammo actually weights quite a bit and MGs purpose is to fire a lot of ammo in a fight.

If you look at the actual price people sell belt-fed light or medium machine guns to armies they are a lot more expensive than assault or battle rifles, however prices in SR have always been absurd. I'd also argue that the fact that a MMG costs 10 times what a battle rifle doesn't mean that it's 10 times or any more effective then a battle rifle in the way shadow run characters would typically use it.

[Samoth]

Really all they have to do to make machineguns usable for anything other than drones is the change the double uncompensated recoil to 1/2 uncompensated. That is a legacy rule from many editions ago that never made sense and nobody bothered to change. Increasing the DV and AP would make sense but isn't necessary.

[Sengir]

To be honest, I respectfully disagree. Mil-spec is hard and expensive to get now, but the US is also a country with a unilateral jurisdiction federal law enforcement system, a military budget that matches a largish part of the rest of the world combined, and the US has a GDP of right around twice that of the next largest world economy. In Shadowrun, none of this is true. You have several smallish NAN nations, the eastern part of the former US is split into UCAS and CAS, and Seattle is this little island of UCAS like a Shadowrun-era Berlin.

Not to forget that before that breakup happened, the USA fought a major war. I doubt all the soldiers bothered to turn in their equipment...

[binarywraith]

This also runs into a core problem with Shadowrun: shadowrun is full of gun nerding. It WANTS to be realistic. It just screws up horribly and accomplishes neither realism or balance. I'm just using real world data to point out problems with in game balance.

Despite RHat being an idiot in any thread that touches on reality, this is the point where it matters. Shadowrun -tries- to be at least quasi-realistic about its guns. It just fails miserably because apparently the writers don't know enough about guns to make it work, and/or weren't given enough time to do the research. An abstraction based off of bad assumptions is a bad abstraction.

A pure game theory approach doesn't even work, because the game stats they're giving for these weapons don't make sense with the in-game tactical situations they describe them as being built for. The stats don't make them the most desirable weapon for the niche they were 'meant' to fill. It's the same reason we get stuff printed like the Rain Forest Carbine, which is outright superior to most of the main book guns.

[KarmaInferno]

I'm wondering if the recoil on non-heavy weapons should be adjusted to scale more severely as you fire more rounds.

Like firing off a normal burst should be no problem, long burst gets pretty hard, and full auto sprays wildly.





-k

[binarywraith]

I'm wondering if the recoil on non-heavy weapons should be adjusted to scale more severely as you fire more rounds.

Like firing off a normal burst should be no problem, long burst gets pretty hard, and full auto sprays wildly.





-k

If anything that'd make more sense. Uncompensated recoil -should- be more of a problem on a lighter gun because you have less weapon mass relative to the amount of recoil each round produces. Keeping the nose down on an MP5 in FA is, from experience, a hell of a lot harder than an M16, despite the heavier round in the rifle.

[Warlordtheft]

Not to forget that before that breakup happened, the USA fought a major war. I doubt all the soldiers bothered to turn in their equipment...

Granted up to the present SR timeline that was 50+ years ago. The CAS and Eurowars are 30+ years ago, and there have been two crashes that probably wiped out all the gun registries and inventory logs. So some things did go missing, that is for certain. There is the balkanization of authority, cheaper manufacturing and barrens (where you could set up a firearms factory and no one would bug you about it).

[Daier Mune]

I don't disagree that there are balance problems. My point is that the reality-based argument isn't a good approach to solving balance problems. Certainly the damage needs to be a lot higher.

I agree with the idea that as a game, Shadowrun won't be better by trying to simulate reality; levels of abstraction are necisary. My problem is that Shadowrun is abstracting it's gun rules off of action movies & video games (which were already abstractions of reality themselves). If they scrapped what they had and rebuilt the gun & ammo rules based off a little bit of research & hands on testing, I know they could come up with a simplified & abstracted system that at least makes some amount of sense, and reflects how physics work in reality.

However, the fact that the selection of guns and ammunition types basically hasn't changed in five editions makes me think they have no intention of changing this any time soon. (another reason I didn't pick up 5th ed)

[thorya]

I'm wondering if the recoil on non-heavy weapons should be adjusted to scale more severely as you fire more rounds.

Like firing off a normal burst should be no problem, long burst gets pretty hard, and full auto sprays wildly.





-k

It might be easier to reverse what we have now. Heavy weapons have 1/2 the recoil penalty rather than double. Then they're useful especially for going full auto which is what they're designed for, but still have other draw backs (large size, hard to conceal, etc.).

[Sengir]

Granted up to the present SR timeline that was 50+ years ago. The CAS and Eurowars are 30+ years ago, and there have been two crashes that probably wiped out all the gun registries and inventory logs. So some things did go missing, that is for certain. There is the balkanization of authority, cheaper manufacturing and barrens (where you could set up a firearms factory and no one would bug you about it).

You certainly won't find an n-th generation SAM with the very latest counter-countermeasure firmware unless looking very hard and bribing half a division worth of people. But ordinary infantry weapons like assault rifles or grenades are common enough (both by fluff and RAW), and the available "Eurowar Antiques" should also include stuff like aircraft autocannons and shoulder-launched fun.

As for better recoil rules, IMO good rules are not just balanced and accurate, but also should work without a logarithm table (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[FuelDrop]

As for better recoil rules, IMO good rules are not just balanced and accurate, but also should work without a logarithm table (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

See I disagree. All Shadowrun's mathematics should be base pi squared, use D%/4 as the basic dice for everything, have logarithmic attributes but linear skills and exponential bonuses.
Oh, and guns should only work if you throw your dice 1 at a time, because otherwise it jams so things are more realisti-
HERESY! *Blam!*
*Pushes body off keyboard*
And that, folks, is why you never leave your laptop unlocked.

[Umidori]

I dunno, FuelDrop, for a minute there that started to sound like playing with the Earthdawn system.

*twitch*

~Umi

[FuelDrop]

I dunno, FuelDrop, for a minute there that started to sound like playing with the Earthdawn system.

*twitch*

~Umi

I'd ask the guy what he was referencing, but the large caliber round through his brain has rendered him a little on the quiet side.

[Umidori]

Did you fire that large caliber round from a pistol, or a machine gun? Because I imagine your wrist must be hurting if it was the latter, what with that doubled recoil... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

~Umi

[FuelDrop]

Did you fire that large caliber round from a pistol, or a machine gun? Because I imagine your wrist must be hurting if it was the latter, what with that doubled recoil... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

~Umi

Man-portable artillery, in point of fact. ARMP specifically.
Thanks for your concern, it's really touching.

[psychophipps]

The correct machinegun protocol is to shoot controlled, five or six round bursts to conserve ammunition and to keep the barrel from taking a shit in the first 60 seconds or so of the battle.

Also, don't forget that SAWs are being replaced within the USMC with the M27, a heavy-barreled version of the HK416 assault rifle. Pop a 60 or 100-round Surefire magazine into them (yes, they exist now and work wonderfully) and you have yourself an excellent sustained-fire platform that reloads much faster than a belt-fed and is more reliable. 7.8 lbs unloaded with bipod and optic.

One thing that constantly irks me about Shadowrun is how they all this gee-whiz firearms wankery in their books that I just love, despite their often being completely fucking retarded about how it actually, like...y'know...works...and stuff..., but they're constantly looking in the past for the actual weapons design cues. I'm all for some old skool fun, but you need to look in the future and what's happening now as well, for crying out loud.

[kzt]

Burst size depends on what you are doing. There are times when you fire on cyclic, though not many.

My understanding is the main problem with the SAWs is that they are all worn out. They are mostly about 30 some years old and have been through two major wars and endless training. USMC needed new guns, I hope they chose well.

One thing that constantly irks me about Shadowrun is how they all this gee-whiz firearms wankery in their books that I just love, despite their often being completely fucking retarded about how it actually, like...y'know...works...and stuff..., but they're constantly looking in the past for the actual weapons design cues. I'm all for some old skool fun, but you need to look in the future and what's happening now as well, for crying out loud.

It just annoys me that they manage to waste endless pages on describing great detail their varied gun models, during which they manage to clearly demonstrate again and again both their total lack of clue and fascination with comic books, and at the end you have one or two that make any sense for anyone to actually use due to their always creating a model that has all the best things and no limitations.

[Faelan]

Burst size depends on what you are doing. There are times when you fire on cyclic, though not many.

My understanding is the main problem with the SAWs is that they are all worn out. They are mostly about 30 some years old and have been through two major wars and endless training. USMC needed new guns, I hope they chose well.

Just to address a couple of things. If you are firing cyclic you have lost your mind, are scared shitless, and will soon be dead because your barrel will melt, and you will run out of ammo stupid quick. You never fire on cyclic except if you are screwing around on a nice safe range, and want to think about how cool it is. If you know a damn thing about how to properly deploy a MG you would know that you never, ever, fire cyclic. Yes those war movies get it completely wrong.

The SAW is and always has been a piece of shit, primarily becaus eof the caliber of round it fires. The only part on the damn thing that wears out easily, very regularly, and rarely gets replaced because it never seems to be in the budget is the extractor. Slight wear+sand=failed extraction=bolt action weapon that weighs more than it should.

Sorry about that, SAW=pet peeve.

[Faelan]

Directed at the OP.

Take a thirty pound weight and run around with it for an hour at the ready. Then tell me how easy it is to deploy or fire. Ever fire an M240 or M60 in the assault position? Good luck hitting anything that is not within 50 ft, also good luck not getting yourself shot by the enemy while you do this. Suggesting a Troll can fire a 40mm autocannon is completely ludicrous, because you know aircraft firing them in a strafing run don't get slowed down at all by them, right? So while I agree that game designers regularly screw up their firearms facts, this really is not one of those times.

[Zombayz]

I'm seeing an unfortunate number of people who are too busy showing their incredible lack of firearms knowledge here. I would kindly request you do some research, and then return to the problem at hand of balancing machine guns. If you think that a low availability matters because it's military hardware: so is every assault rifle, SMG, and machine pistol in the book. If you think that an axe is more lethal than a bullet: please go research terminal ballistics. An axe, while very dangerous, cannot kill anywhere near as reliably as a gun. There is a reason that no army in the world equips their troops with axes as a close quarters weapon; that's what SMGs, PDWs, and smaller assault rifles are for.

For the man who brought up the M27: It's an assault rifle that's being used with machine gun doctrine. It's literally a piston M16 instead of a direct impingement M16.

And now, this man:

Directed at the OP.

Take a thirty pound weight and run around with it for an hour at the ready. Then tell me how easy it is to deploy or fire. Ever fire an M240 or M60 in the assault position? Good luck hitting anything that is not within 50 ft, also good luck not getting yourself shot by the enemy while you do this. Suggesting a Troll can fire a 40mm autocannon is completely ludicrous, because you know aircraft firing them in a strafing run don't get slowed down at all by them, right? So while I agree that game designers regularly screw up their firearms facts, this really is not one of those times.

You must be seriously out of shape or work in an office if you can't run around with something in your arms all day. I used to work in a warehouse All I did, all day, was move 20-50 pound boxes, all day. Peak days involved three forty foot shipping containers and close to eighty thousand pounds of boxes moved. Keep in mind, that's not just HOLDING the boxes. That's picking them up and moving them. And people have been using GPMGs at the squad level for close to a hundred years. These aren't cybernetically or magically enhanced superhumans. They're regular people. Normal human beings, Joe Chummer.

On top of that, if you cannot hit a target at 50 feet, with an MG(or anything aside from a pistol really), after only an hour of physical activity you probably shouldn't be in combat. At all. You should actually be exercising until you are no longer overweight and have some decent cardio going. And while a troll firing a 40mm autocannon might be absurd, you seem to be forgetting about the rates of fire on aircraft autocannons versus the ones we use down on the ground. Not to mention the sheer weight of a rotary autocannon. Firing rates in the thousands of rounds a minute are very, very, VERY different from weapons that only reach hundreds of rounds a minute.

Go do some research before you complain please. And perhaps exercise some.



Now, does anyone have any actual input on balancing machine guns, or are we effectively finished here?

[Faelan]

You must be seriously out of shape or work in an office if you can't run around with something in your arms all day. I used to work in a warehouse All I did, all day, was move 20-50 pound boxes, all day. Peak days involved three forty foot shipping containers and close to eighty thousand pounds of boxes moved. Keep in mind, that's not just HOLDING the boxes. That's picking them up and moving them. And people have been using GPMGs at the squad level for close to a hundred years. These aren't cybernetically or magically enhanced superhumans. They're regular people. Normal human beings, Joe Chummer.

Sorry but you are showing your ass here. Marine Corps Infantry 92-98. If you don't know what you are talking about shut your pie hole. Read my original post and if you don't know simple terminology like "at the ready" or "firing in the assault position" you might want to ask rather than talking and showing those who know what a fool you are.

On top of that, if you cannot hit a target at 50 feet, with an MG(or anything aside from a pistol really), after only an hour of physical activity you probably shouldn't be in combat. At all. You should actually be exercising until you are no longer overweight and have some decent cardio going. And while a troll firing a 40mm autocannon might be absurd, you seem to be forgetting about the rates of fire on aircraft autocannons versus the ones we use down on the ground. Not to mention the sheer weight of a rotary autocannon. Firing rates in the thousands of rounds a minute are very, very, VERY different from weapons that only reach hundreds of rounds a minute.

Go learn how to deploy the weapon correctly and read what I actually wrote instead of running your suck like a complete tool, and showing your complete lack of knowledge on the subject being discussed. As to ground based autocannons please look up the hardware you are talking about and check their actual rates of fire, or better yet specify the hardware you want to talk about so the rest of us are not guessing what particular piece of equipment you had in mind, because guess what there are non gatling/rotary autocannons that achieve a rate of fire in the the thousands, and they too are not restricted to aerial use. (i.e. rotary feed single barrel, multi barrel rotary feed, multi barrel belt fed, combination multi barrel rotary feed, or gatling)

Go do some research before you complain please. And perhaps exercise some.

I recommend you do something other than make shit up, and maybe go play with the equipment before you decide to act the pro when there are plenty of us here who have done it for a living, BOOT.

Now, does anyone have any actual input on balancing machine guns, or are we effectively finished here?

Now do you have anything constructive and real to add to this discussion or are you going to continue talking out your ass?

[Koekepan]

If you think that an axe is more lethal than a bullet: please go research terminal ballistics. An axe, while very dangerous, cannot kill anywhere near as reliably as a gun. There is a reason that no army in the world equips their troops with axes as a close quarters weapon; that's what SMGs, PDWs, and smaller assault rifles are for.

I was curious about the whole axe thing, so I went to my favourite surgeon, who has spent quality time in inner city emergency rooms patching people back up after little bullets, big bullets, and trauma ranging from industrial accidents to two drunk morons trying to kill each other with chainsaws.

Real dope, straight from the streets follows:

• Yes, rifle bullets which actually hit the head, body, or upper limbs including arteries, are killers. Very capable killers. This is why hunters use them.
• Handgun bullets just don't compare. The physics of expanding gases and short barrels mean that handgun wounds, including head wounds in the numbers, have lethality rates of under 20%. Seriously, the survival rate is somewhere over 80% with today's medical care on tap.
• A knife wound is close to a pistol wound in lethality, but since stabbings usually entail multiple knife wounds, and the torso hit rate tends to be better, the knife is on balance more lethal than the pistol.
• Two handed, swung, weighted weapons are killers on a level very close to rifles. The accumulated energy is plenty to crush joints, split skulls, sever limbs and penetrate all the way through a body.

It comes down to the volume of tissue disrupted. Arrows are actually pretty comparable, given a powerful bow and well designed head, with rifles, because they carve long, deep wounds all the way through bodies, and this is despite the fact that a typical arrow has kinetic energy levels way below that of a rifle. Why? Because penetration capacity is best measured in terms of the momentum of the projectile, and not the energy. (If you want a truly detailed explanation, I can provide one, but that will be a very long post.) Knives tend not to penetrate very deeply, but can penetrate enough to reach vital organs, depending on the size (and fat layer) of the victim and the length of the blade. Slashing tends not to be a fight stopper, but chopping (a la machete) can be with sufficient momentum to drive the edge through the tissues quite deep. This is because swinging a heavy mass accumulates momentum, which is why swinging a hammer from the handle works better to drive nails than gripping the head in your hand and bashing.

The myth of the amount of tissue disrupted by rifles comes from studies in clay and ballistic gelatin, both of which betray the maximum upset of soft tissues but do not reflect the elasticity of those same tissues. The bullet may bruise nearby things, but unless it hits a full vessel there is no significant transmission of the fabled hydraulic shock because there is no efficient medium of transfer to act as a wave guide for the pulse. If you hit a full heart, the aorta will carry a pulse up to the brain and knock out the victim, but this is a low percentage shot - even if you hit the heart you might easily hit it when it is flaccid, and then the victim will just bleed out into the chest cavity. Your typical rifle bullet wound only actually damages tissues which the bullet strikes (and I have done autopsies on animals with my surgeon friend's guidance and can personally attest to these facts).

So. Yeah. Axes will spoil your whole day, better even than pistols.

Oh, and yes, some soldiers do carry tomahawks. They might not be issue weapons, but they are very useful. Check into that. Armes blanches didn't stop working when the Garand was invented.

[Neraph]

USMC needed new guns...

Budget would help...

Just to address a couple of things. If you are firing cyclic you have lost your mind, are scared shitless, and will soon be dead because your barrel will melt, and you will run out of ammo stupid quick. You never fire on cyclic except if you are screwing around on a nice safe range, and want to think about how cool it is. If you know a damn thing about how to properly deploy a MG you would know that you never, ever, fire cyclic.

Talking Guns.

Directed at the OP.

Take a thirty pound weight and run around with it for an hour at the ready. Then tell me how easy it is to deploy or fire. Ever fire an M240 or M60 in the assault position? Good luck hitting anything that is not within 50 ft, also good luck not getting yourself shot by the enemy while you do this. Suggesting a Troll can fire a 40mm autocannon is completely ludicrous, because you know aircraft firing them in a strafing run don't get slowed down at all by them, right? So while I agree that game designers regularly screw up their firearms facts, this really is not one of those times.

Yup. Call of Duty annoys the crap out of me with all the running around they do at the Ready.

As to axes: things like that already exist. In my MOS school we had a blackbelt SSgt talking about how he had one and wanted to go on another deployment just to get a confirmed kill with an axe in a combat zone.

[Sendaz]

As to axes: things like that already exist. In my MOS school we had a blackbelt SSgt talking about how he had one and wanted to go on another deployment just to get a confirmed kill with an axe in a combat zone.

Yeah I can dig that. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)