Something just occured to me about a way to possibly make burst fire in SR3 more realistic than it is under normal SR3 rules.

As you all know, in SR they decided to streamline things a bit by deciding that a "burst" simply raises the damage caused by an attack and making it harder to dodge, and these effects are measured in increments of three rounds. This is faster and easier than having to roll for each bullet discharged, but it lead to a number of inconsistencies, such as a 2 round burst due to limited ammunition being drastically less effective than a 3 round burst, or assault rifles and submachine guns with really low single shot damage codes to compensate for the staging they could accomplish with autofire.

In this day and age, though, when we have computers that can roll many dice for us and process the results, or we can write simple C scripts to deal with certain portions of the rules, I think it's less important to streamline and more fun to revel in simulationism or verisimilitude. In my mind, a game becomes more engrossing and atmospheric when things happen in more realistic ways, just like realistic special effects (rather than poor ones) can make the difference between a great movie and a laughable one.


So, I have this thought for handling burst and automatic fire more realistically, and I was hoping that you could help me out by telling me if it's actually more realistic or not.

My idea is that instead of abstracting burst and full auto fire we treat each round in the air seperately. This is the way it would work:

1.) Player declares that he is going to use automatic fire or a burst on a target.
2.) Player rolls his attack. Any bonuses he gets for Take Aim actions, and any dice he adds to his attack from combat pool or karma pool or Improved Ability, all apply to only the first bullet. This is because the first bullet is the one that was actually aimed most deliberately by the hands of the character himself. The first bullet also gets no recoil penalty.
3.) Each bullet after the first is treated in the following way: the character rolls his base skill versus his target number, plus a recoil penalty adding up one at a time for each subsequent bullet, for each bullet. Thus, somebody with a terrible firearms skill who uses spray and pray tactics probably won't be effective, but somebody with a very high skill can be absolutely lethal with full auto fire.


I'd be inclined to houserule Raygun-esque rates of fire for the various firearms since 10 rounds per complex action maximum is probably unrealistically low, and I always felt that Shadowrun had weirdly low ammo expenditure during firefights anyway.

Since the basis of this system is single rounds hitting the target, I'd probably also need to "fix" the damage codes of assault rifles and submachine guns so that they can actually hurt you in semiautomatic mode.

This could also be the basis for a better suppressive fire rule than cannon, as well. Suppressive fire on a specific target could just be automatic fire actions without aiming at all on that target. If the number of bullets in the air gets very high (like it would with a mounted machine gun with a high ROF) it would be dangerous to not take full cover, or dangerous to spend multiple combat turns out of cover while being suppressed.

If you wanted to suppress an area perhaps we could just declare an area in square meters which you are suppressing. We divide your weapon's maximum ROF by the number of square meters. Anybody who enters the suppressed area gets "attacked" by *half* the rounds in that area (representing the passage of time, etc) using the base skill of the firerer.

EDIT: Part of me doesn't like that area suppression rule, though, because if ten people jumped into the suppressed square they could end up being hit by more bullets than were ever fired in that area. Area suppression is inherently difficult to deal with if we're measuring actions in terms of turns rather than real time.

Maybe it would be better just to say that area suppression per se cannot be done. However, using the almighty power of the Delay Action command, your character may wait with his weapon raised and be able to use suppression fire on anyone who might appear in the area he is looking at, and in that case the normal autofire rules would apply. That actually makes more sense from a simulationist standpoint, I think, than trying to force area suppression per se.

Comments? Thoughts?

It's this basically how 1st edition worked? Only without a computer to speed things up?

It would only work if you found someone to make a program that would do all the work for you I wouldn't use it, since it would be too work intensive as a GM though.

Some other suggestions from the SR3R thread that you might be interested in:

-Autofire problems
- Roll each shot individually
- Recoil modifiers change how many shots in a burst hit, as opposed to TN to hit with entire burst
- Auto (and burst) fire can be done 5 ways, at shooters option
1. DL increased per 3 rnds, as standard
2. +1 die to your ranged attack test per round fired to a max of your base skill
3. Increase dodge TN by +1 per round
4. Reduce uncompensated recoil by -1 per 2 rnds
5. Any combination of the above
(In all but the fourth, recoil is calculated as normal. The Power is not modified in any case.)
- More than 10 rounds can be fired in a phase, but only a maximum of 10 rounds may hit

the thing is, i would not necessarily agree that it's realistic to have the first round of a burst be more accurate than the second, third, and so on. the reason you fire lots of bullets at a target, generally, is so that there's a better chance of at least one of your bullets hitting--it doesn't matter which one. it could be the first, but it could just as easily be the third, or the tenth.

the most realistic model i've been able to come up with (and, as an omniscient being who is possessed of all knowledge, my view of realism is of course the most accurate) is that autofire and bursts should lower the TN of an attack. on hard-to-hit targets, lowering the TN gives you a chance of scoring one or two successes--winging the target with only one or two rounds, in effect. against targets of moderate difficulty, lowering the TN means you'll get a few more hits--getting a few rounds solidly into the target, or winging him with a lot of rounds. against an easy target, the TN is low enough that you get a lot of successes (if the TN is reduced to 2 or less, every further TN reduction should add dice to the attack test), which means that most of your rounds hit the target in his center mass. no need to raise the damage level of the base attack or anything else like that. haven't really decided how recoil comp figures in, though--maybe it extends the number of rounds you can fire that affect the attack TN (the rest just affect the target's dodge TN).

There's also the fact that sharpshooters and snipers do tend to hit targets they take time to aim at, and that under the conditions they operate in recoil would very often throw their aim off.

Rifles-3 round burst. There's even a specific setting on a lot of them that allows this.

Machine Guns-3-7 round burst(Depress the trigger long enough to rapidly say, "Die, Motherf***er, Die." Yes, this is what is really taught at USMC boot/Combat training.)

Difference? Rifle sights are generally easier to aim through, hence more accurate. Machine guns tend to rely on saturating an area with lead. Usually a small area, when aiming at a single target, but an area nonetheless.

Uh if i'm not wrong, we have rules for all of this. The standard autofire rule is pulling the trigger and trying to hit a target as many times as possible, to tear them up. You can also walk the fire from one target to another. You can also use suppressive fire, or searching fire, which throws as many bullets over an area, either hoping you hit some-one, or making them stay the hell out of the way of all the bullets.

As for the one bullet rule. God, I find all the different steps and processes to just shooting some-one in Shadowrun complex enough, thankyouverymuch.

Searching fire suffers from the fact that all bullets count towards recoil. If that were removed, it'd be a lot more useful.

~J

So, from this discussion, it seems to me that since area suppression is such an important part of using a machine gun, I get the impression that SR needs better suppression fire rules.

As I said in my first post I think the problem with area suppression is how SR handles time. Since actions happen instantaneously when you get your actions it's hard to simulate something which is constantly taking place over multiple combat turns.

The other issue is how we would gauge the level of risk for people running through the suppressed area. How can we set things up so that if 20 rounds are flying in the suppressed area no one person in that area can be hit more than 20 times, or that if more than 20 people run through that area only up to 20 people will be hit?

i don't think it's necessary to count how many rounds actually hit. after all, a person can be winged by 20 rounds and come out of it almost completely unimpaired; another can take a single round through the face and be dead.

One thing that is poorly modeled in ANY game is the unwillingness of a sane human being to run through machinegun swept ground. It's hard to emulate how intimidating suppressing fire is, and until you've actually had bullets "whip-crack" past you, it's not an easy concept to grasp.

Just offhandedly saying, "well, I'm in enough armor I'll probably be alright" generally doesn't happen in the real world, unless it's in an armored vehicle, and if its a big enough round, even that will sometimes punch through.

Watching films like Saving Private Ryan and Flags of Our Fathers gives some idea just how deadly a machinegun nest can be, and the visceral fear of a wall of lead is really hard to model accurately, IMO. Another point, some folks don't realize that for every tracer zipping by, there are four real rounds in between(generally).

Can't even remeber the SR3 rules. In SR4, you get hit by suppressive fire (dealing base damage), or not. That's easy and logical (and most likely not realistic). The one unlogical thing is the suppressed area.


The mini series Band of Brothers has very realistic combat scenes. One can really hear the scariness of Hitler's buzzsaw (as the maschinegun 42 was known, with double the firerate of most allies weapons).

in the existing SR3 rules, you make a single attack test with a TN penalty equal to the number of rounds fired during your phase. so if you fire two 3-round bursts, you get +3 TN for the first burst and +6 TN for the second (before factoring recoil compenastion). for every 3 rounds fired, you get +1 damage level (M to S); for every round fired, you get +1 power. minimum number of rounds for autofire is usually 3.

what you're talking about sounds like burst fire--a simple action to fire 3 rounds.

The big problem with a lack of power increases is that it makes troll tanks nearly invincible. It is not terribly difficult to get a TN2 or TN3 for resisting every ammo type except APDS and AV. Armored jacket + FFBA + Kevlar/Titanium bone lacing gives any character 8 ballistic armor.

With Dermal Sheath 3, Titanium lacing, and 12 BP invested in body a starting troll can be rolling 18 dice to resist damage and he can roll 19 if you allow Bonus Attribute Point. At TN 2 (TN 3 with Ex-Ex in a heavy pistol) it is highly improbable that this troll will fail to stage any small arms fire down to nothing.

The only way to deal with the 18 dice/8 balistic troll tank short of assault cannons and rocket launchers is to use that +1 per extra bullet power increase to crank up his TNs.

Make him an albino changeling with Exceptional Attribute: Willpower, Bonus Attribute Point:Willpower, Magic Resistance 4, and Astral Hazing. That gives the mage a base casting TN of 9 before the mobile background count is applied and gives the Troll 13 dice to resist. Add in the Dermal Deposits SURGE effect for an extra point of damage resistance while you are at it.

You could always get one of these from your Fixer. Should be pretty rough on the troll.

SLAM

I could have suggested also making him a ghoul for the extra +2 body and +1 willpower, but I didn't because that would be munchy.

Shameless Self Promotion

Yeah, it's a long post and looks complex, but read the thing - it's actually pretty quick and simple and has been working well for our group for over a year and a half. It directly addresses the idea of saturation/suppression discussed above.

One minor change implemented since this post and a clarification: Extra successes do not stage up damage, but must be matched by defender before staging down. Smartlinked gunners can declare the exact # of bullets fired and do not need to roll to determine burst length.

eh, there's a difference between suppressive fire and what i'm talking about. suppressive fire is hosing down an area to deny it to the enemy. i'm talking about actually shooting at someone on full-auto with the intent of killing that person. they're two different things in real life.

In terms of suppressing an area and the risks posed of collateral damage from stray rounds I think the effects are similar enough that, ideally, a good rule could simulate both. Now for the good rule...

I can write a rule, but it requires battlemaps and and protractor.

When a character fires make a straight line between the character and the target. This line is considered 21 degrees to make the next calculation easier. When a character misses, roll 6d6 to determine the actual flight angle of the bullet in relation to the character firing it. This allows the bullet to miss by +-15 degrees and using 1 as a base saves us from having to deal with negatives. Any character in the bullet's flight path, out to the maximum range of the weapon, has to resist the base damage of the bullet. This may be staged up by 1s on the attack test at the GMs discretion.


Should the power of a nondeforming and nonexploding projectile exceed the target's armor rating + body then the attack overpenetrates and hits anything that is directly behind the initial target for [(base power)-(initial target's armor)](Base damage level). If the [(power)-(initial target's armor)] exceeds the second target's armor+body it also overpenetrates and subtracts both target's armor ratings from its power. This continues until the bullet's power is no longet exceeds armor+body of a target. If a target is a barrier use the rules for shooting through barriers instead.
When APDS and AV ammo is used, divide body in half along with armor for the purpose of determining overpenetration.

Why not just define it on position relative to the target? Everyone within 1 meter of the target or behind the target is potentially hit. Anyone who the GM is uncertain of has half the TN to dodge and power is reduced by half.

Should the power of a nondeforming and nonexploding projectile exceed the target's armor rating + body then the attack overpenetrates and hits anything that is directly within 1d6 degrees of deviation as dictated by deviant bullet rule above (Use rule of 6 to represent potential for magic bullet) behind the initial target for [(base power)-(initial target's armor)](Base damage level). If the [(power)-(initial target's armor)] exceeds the second target's armor+body it also overpenetrates and subtracts both target's armor and body ratings from its power. This continues until the bullet's power is no longet exceeds armor+body of a target. If a target is a barrier use the rules for shooting through barriers instead.
When APDS and AV ammo is used, divide body in half by three quarters along with armor for the purpose of determining overpenetration. If APDS or AV ammo is used halve armour and body.

Not by the same bullet, but it's full auto, which means there are more than 4 bullets. Keep in mind, this is also a very abstract system. If we're not figuring out if a bullet hits the head or the big toe, there's no reason to bother determining if a bullet goes to the right or the left.

At that point we're back to the old suppressive fire rules and it doesn't account for stray semi-automatic fire.

This is a reference/summary of sorts of Steel Rat's old post referred to above.