i see what you mean but wouldnt wou be learning like machine guns like an Light Machine Gun witch is concitered Heavy weapons

what do you mean by this

I think what he meant was pretty clear. You know the underbarrel grenade launcher that can be mounted on an assault rifle? What he said was that you could use either the assault rifle skill or the launch weapons skill to use it, instead of a separate grenade launcher skill.

I think that sounds like a munchkin trying to get his way.

Shush, I was trying to be polite and trying to end this topic as quietly as possible.

I do have to say the grammatical errors in his passage are killing me.

edit: Hey schmitzzy, GM's game, GM's rules. I imagine he's already decided upon what he wants for the skill breakdown. If you have a problem with it, bring it up with him, not to us. What do you want from us? Vindication so you can say the internet forums agree with you and he should change it... or else? C'mon, do something else, like rules clarification, but not about rule challenges to your GM. That's between you and him, only if it's something blatantly wrong in a scenario. But this matter is also within the rules of the game, so you should just ask your GM about houserules and such instead and bother us with other stuff instead.

Assault rifles, on semiautomatic, are used just like any other repeater rifle. You line up the sights and pop off a round, either quickly or with some care, and there's nothing really difficult about it (frankly, i'd allow a player to use his Longarms skill with an AR if it was set for semi). Full automatic is similar to using an SMG... you usually fire from the shoulder, and the recoil impulse reasonably controllable, since you're not firing a high-power rifle cartridge. Bursts are kind of an in-between... while you've got more than a single round going downrange, the general theory is that you're still aiming like you would a single shot, because the burst is meant to cut off before the number of rounds fired really knocks you off your point of aim. Cutting loose with an assault rifle, running through mag after mag as fast as you can, will damage or destroy it in very short order simply due to the heat involved... your barrel warps or softens, deforms, and if you're really working at it, can be destroyed by the stresses of rapid fire. We're not talking about an insane amount of shooting, either... a few hundred rounds, fired quickly enough, will do.

Machine guns, on the other hand, are a much different animal. They're larger, heavier, and often times fire full-power rifle rounds rather than the lighter rounds used in assault rifles. While you usually fire from the shoulder, the weight and bulk of the weapon and it's ammunition (even when wrapped up in a cloth bag or drum) makes this more difficult, and so one of the many reasons these weapons are commonly fired on a bipod is because of that weight. Shorter bursts are used to engage point targets (as the extra weight and the recoil-reducing construction of the weapon help mitigate some of the recoil), and long bursts are used for suppressive or group-target fire (IE, you're firing into a squad being ambushed, who haven't broken up enough to really become point targets). The construction of the weapon is such that it can handle a great deal of autofire, because it doesn't beat up the user and is better constructed to handle heat (often times using a detatchable barrel, or simply lots of cooling), and so the techniques for using the weapon are heavily oriented around providing a base of fire or suppression for a squad, rather than the kind of point engagements (shooting at individual people, basically) that the weapons which fall under "Firearms" are really built for.

Think of it as a philosophical difference, basically. SR4 "Firearms" are all used in a similar fashion... you pick a target and fire some rounds at it. Machineguns can do that, but they're also really suited for putting a pretty good volume of fire into a group or an area, something that assault rifles *can* do, but just don't have the capacity or the recoil compensation to do *effectively.* While it's noteably different than the other "Heavy Weapons" on the list, they're all kind of different from each other, honestly (machinegun, grenade launcher, missile launcher, and assault cannon... not a great deal of overlap). I'd argue that the use of a machinegun differs enough from the use of the other types of "Firearm" that it really doesn't belong in the skill group.

Nope. You can only default to an attribute.