unless you're Clint Eastwood of course

Nahh, I don't buy it. Even with a simsense component, how does the gun know what your target is? SR4 tech is advanced, but I'm guessing that is WAY beyond the scope of the capabilities they envisioned for the Smartlink.

It's not "ZOMFG-HeatseekingBullets-pewpewpew-FTW", it's an aiming assist. It doesn't turn a mediocre shooter into Carlos Hathcock.

Aiming Reticle in your field of vision: check!
Laser rangefinder to adjust reticle for projectile drop: check!
Ammo counter displayed in your field of vision: check!
Mental command to switch firing modes/fire/drop magazine: check (would require some cyberware in addition to the vision/gun mods.
Gun-camera, accessible via cybereye/contacts/smart shades: check!

And that's about it, folks.

i prefer the prone unsupported with an M-16. i've never been formally trained in handgun shooting, but the Weaver stance feels the most comfortable.

so, quick poll: is there anyone who's used firearms regularly, who doesn't think shooting around corners should be pretty hard regardless of the targeting technology involved?

it's not very hard to do, although I can't regularly hit what I'm trying to due to not being able to see it.
never done it with a rifle only pistols, and only down hallways, against others that are adhering to cover.

see, that's a special case that i didn't want to mention because it'd just confuse people. skipping shots down a wall is a trick that's neat as hell, but it's only applicable in a limited set of circumstances. i'd hate to build a general rule off of it, because it'd be inapplicable in so many cases.

What do you qualify as regularly?

I practice with my bow more than a pistol, with a rifle more than either. My rough guess by adding up reciepts for shells is that I probably put 2-3000 round per year through my buddies ruger 22 and about 1000 through his USP40. That's a nice pistol, he has a laser sight on it and in the begining of november we were shooting from the hip. With the laser at 10 yards I can keep the whole clip inside a paper plate. It doesn't seem that hard to me.

My father taught me a modified weaver. That's what I use. The only soreness I've ever experienced was from thumbing shells into the clip. Personaly I don't believe that the weaver or any variation will be used by a person with a smartlink.

Check out some papers on Aimed Point Shooting HERE for an alternate of the standard.

Also Let's define exactly what positions were talking about when we're talking about shooting around the corner. this is my idea.
1. Pick up your pistol or something similar.
2. if you are right dominant lean your left shoulder against a wall near a corner.
3. using your right leg push your left hip against the wall, lock your knee.
4. point your pistol or prop, in your right hand, around the corner at about the level of your chin. (use the same level you would when shooting a traditional stance.
5. support your pistol with your left hand under the but the way you would if you were pointing your pistol forward.

Do you feel stable? I do. Infact because Im leaning against the wall-- instead of doing something stupid like holding my arm out to the side with my nose pressed agianst the wall-- I feel more stable than I do in my usual stance. When I set up this stance my pistol grip is verticle, my barrel is parralel to the floor. In relation to my intended field of fire there's about 10 degrees of angle in my wrist, 45 in my elbow and 10 in my shoulder. I feel comfortable that I could handle any recoil from any pistol that I've experienced up to a .357.

In this position I have "GOOD COVER" vs any thing that is more than 4 feet down my hallway. tghe only thing exposed are my hands and wrists. I also feel that this is a good position from which to launch myself across the opening to the other side. If I had a 2006 gun cam I'm certain that I could hit any target as consistantly as I might from a standing position.

Try it. See what you think. Try some kneeling variations. Try it with your off hand. This will work fine.

It does put a novice (Skill 2) on the level of a veteran (Skill 4) or a professional (Skill 3) on the level of an expert (Skill 5)....

And I maybe I do ascribe more abilities to the guncam/smartlink than are implied, but I think that it's a relatively trivial matter for the gun to sense what you're aiming at. We already have the ability to create games that target based solely off visual cues and activate based on brain activity. To think that 60 years from now, they haven't perfected that doesn't seem logical to me.

a cyberarm has a strength of 3, average, the "wobbly" nature of the arm is due to strength, and nerves not "muscle jump."
you also take into account a cyberarm has pain sensors that translate damage data into a pain sense to simulate a real arm. it's going to function almost exactly like a real arm,
if you give into the theory that it does give a more stable firing platform you have to then give recoil reduction due to high strength characters.
when you do that you'll fall back to the old SR3 days where the team was all trolls with HMG's

All of them firing around corners because they have guncams and smartlinks.

Ah, the good old days!

Edit: To be fair, some of those trolls had cyberarms, Panther Assault Cannons, and/or Vindicator Miniguns.

Hold out your arm. Try and keep your hand absolutely still.

See that slight twitch you get? I'm taking about that. The slight muscle twitch back and forth that a meat arm has. The one that makes it hard to keep a sight on target. you get that twitch regardless of what strength you might have.

A machine? Going to sit there and not move. Again, regardless of what strength rating it might have. Unless the load is simply greater than it can hold, it's not going to twitch or move or anything without being told to.

It's possible I have a different idea on how cyberlimbs are supposed to be like, but to me someone with heavy cyber is going to have a similar stability as an automated firing platform.

As for simulated pain, it's there to let you know if something's been damaged. I seriously doubt you would have the system simulate simple fatigue from holding a weapon. Why would you? You'd be giving up on a major advantage of cyberlimbs.


-karma

as is always the case however you do it in your game is fine, because you all like it. I'm not the best example of your situation anyway since I can hold my hand perfectly still for up to half an hour outstretched.
also the adrenaline tremble is not enough to miss your target. most firing is done from the hip, also firing around a corner it is common sense you would use the corner to brace your weapon, no tremble.
giving up a major advantage? stop thinking of it as a combat system and start thinking of it as a replacement for accident victims. that's the technology it's not designed to make people invincible or painless, it's designed to be an arm. if you keep you thoughts in your game as has been pointed out you'd have to give them the same recoil reduction of the stable firing platform. which isn't bad for your game just pointing it out. they removed those rules before because they were unbalancing even though they made sense.

Whuh?

I think this means, "In typical Shadowrun firefights, most firing is done from the hip, as in no aim actions are taken, not necessarily with the weapon proximal to the pelvis."
But I could be wrong.

if it's not enough to notice, it's not going to throw your aim off.

Have you ever aimed a gun before? Seriously.

Those normally unnoticeable movements? Can cause you to completely miss your target.

You aim a gun at a target, say, 10 yards away. Your aiming reticle will drift back and forth across your target, never staying still. I don't care who you are, if you're human this happens. The drifting is caused by minute shifts in muscular movement.

I used to be on my high school's rifle team. Even with all the breathing exercises, even with all the heavy stabilizing gear, hitting the bulls-eye was as much about timing the drifting movement, so you squeezed the trigger right when your aim drifts across the target, as it was about actually aiming.


-karma

From an information processing perspective, dealing with this is one of the easiest things to make something like a smartlink system through a direct neural interface - assuming that the smartlink allows you to mentally designate a target in your field of view. It's not entirely clear in Shadowrun if this is a smartlink function or a tactical computer function - it seems pretty trivial to require a tactical computer.

Bah... now I'm pissed off at smartlink being +2 dice instead of -2 TN again. A good computer targetting system is going to be *significantly* more valuable in hitting a target than the difference between a month and a year of practice - especially if the thing has a direct neural interface.

Even if the smartlink system doesn't let you designate targets, it's going to be way easier to coordinate a DNI trigger pull with almost instant response time rather than the whole nerves -> finger data path.

The problem with this is, you're comparing a meat arm with a brain control system to a metal arm with a silicon control system.
You should be comparing it to a metal arm with a brain control system. Those errors that you're talking about are not 100% due to the arm, part of those errors are coming from the control system, the lower brain, which is still very much in effect.
Coordination could get better with a stable cyberarm, since the muscle errors would go away (buy a high agility cyberarm) but the majority of the errors are coming from the brain, so it won't be an automated firing platform.

As long as you don't mind combat scenes like the motie warriors in "Mote in God's Eye".

"Yet every time a Warrior fired, a Warrior died. There had not been all that much gunfire, yet two thirds of the Warriors in sight were dead."

If it's a robot arm with a computerized control system, just use the drone rules.
But then if that's the case there's no reason to waste any effort trying to graft it onto meat, if you're just giving it commands in captain's chair mode anyway.

Now there's an idea revisited. Rigging your own body for greater combat effectiveness.




-karma

making a firing platform that doesn't miss isn't, i wouldn't think, the problem. a drone with 6 pilot, 6 sharpshooter, and some targeting gadgets (smartlink, recoil comp) will be able to hit just about anything you put in front of it. one assumes that this will be even more true once Arsenal comes out.

the problem is making a platform that does that and all the other things that a human body is supposed to be able to do. how's your Robocopware supposed to tell the difference between an involuntary muscle twitch and the start of a dodge out of the way of incoming fire?

If you want a computer controlled robotic stable firing platform, get a drone. It's cheaper, and safer.

[nitpick]Aren't autosofts limited to rating 4?[/nitpick]

this sums up what i feel about smartlinks, guncams, and the like. having a computer that tells you where the bullet will go if you pull the trigger at any given moment does nothing except remove the need to have bumpy things on the top of your barrel. making a bullet travel from your gun to your target is a precise process which can be thrown off by the tiniest errors. aiming--lining up your weapon such that it will throw a bullet into the face of someone you dislike--is only one part of that process.

pull the trigger on your pistol...
now in between the time that the hammer strikes the shell, move the pistol BEFORE the bullet exits the barrel.

Easy. As the gun goes off look at the target rather than the sights instead of following through. You'll pull off, left and down in my case. There are loads of ways to screw up shooting.