The image-enhancing goggles can be used by mages to cast spells only if the enhancements are optical, not electronic. As such, the only vision enhancement that is likely to work is the optical version of the vision magnification enhancement. Depending on the GM, the image link and the smartlink may only display lines on an otherwise optical display field, and so also be compatible.

I'd imagine because in the former you pull the triger, pull the gun down, and pull again it's alot easier than if you were to just hold down the trigger. There's no half second gap in fire to recenter yourself so it becomes a little harder to throw those bullets in the same area.

Atleast that's the rationale I came up with.

It's an excellent attempt, I'll give you that. I can't agree with it, though. If anything, bringing the gun back to bear in that half-second (or whatever) would just throw your aim off more, not less. Not to mention the fact that in the same time, you can just as easily compensate for the recoil and track the autofire back into line.

There's also still the problem that the rules and the example in the book seem pretty clear about recoil accruing across the entire phase.

This may be yet another one for the FAQ.

Easier said that done. Firing a weapon on burst fire (Short controlled bursts!) is much easier to retain accuracy than when holding the trigger down, firing on fully automatic mode - The waste of ammunition, and loss of accuracy is why (As I'm sure you all know) automatic weapons are much less common field issue weapons. In the U.S. Armed Service you'll usually find one dude toting the SAW. Everyone else is rocking less-than-fully-automatic.

Even easier (And for all intents and purposes just as rapidly) to retain accuracy is to just fire in semi-auto mode. Totally practical. Especially since w/ burst fire, many grunts will just aim between multiple targets, and hope their was aim is a little off.

Retaining accuracy, while your weapon is bouncing around from recoil is difficult at best - The most likely scenario for Shadowrun is that runners sight their target. Squeeze the trigger. The weapon burst fires. They resight their target. And fire a second burst. This is a pretty realistic scenario for 3-6 seconds. Which would mean a gas vent applying in both bursts isn't that far fetched.

But you can, generally speaking, count 'holding down the trigger and walking your weapon back on target' pretty much out the window for realistic scenarios - Especially at any respectable range.

I was hoping this conversation would bring forth people that had experience with this sort of thing. I've only done research; I haven't actually had small arms training.

Two bursts in three to six seconds makes a lot of sense. But the Combat Turn is only three seconds long. I think that clearing recoil modifiers (resighting the target) every three seconds is reasonable. I think that being able to clear them in several phases (with multiple IPs) is being generous, but acceptable given that the people in question are inhumanly quick. I think being able to resight at twice that rate is a bit much.

This sentence, too, could really use the "in the US Armed Forces" qualifier. Nearly all other militaries are rather less pessimistic about non-limited fully automatic fire.

That's how you are supposed to use a ring mounted .50 cal IIRC. Other than a rigidly mounted belt fed MG this doesn't seem very effective. The last instructor I had said, in regards to the walk the rounds in and whole hose them down bit, "about the time it gets interesting you run out of ammo".

The only people I know who typically use a lot of fully automatic weapons are the guys in SOCOM. Who are busy spending a small fortune on an integrated electronic bullet counter so they can send their M4s in for rebuild before they shoot them to pieces, which is what tends to happen now. I'm told that if you practice a lot you can get very good effects with full auto from MP5s and M4s.

But at $2 per round I doubt many SR teams spend 40 hours a month in shoothouses firing 5,000 rounds per man.

Yes, spray and pray on full-auto is very popular with other forces. Which is why the US have a greater than 20:1 kill ratio in combat with them. (Example – in Somalia the Somali’s had between 500 and 5000 dead while killing 18 Americans.) Aiming at your target and firing a single well aimed round tends to work very well. It also requires that your guys go out to the range and shoot, then go do live-fire exercises faster and faster. This tends to be very expensive in both time and ammo and hence most armies don't do it.

There used to be a thread on the ar-15 forum that had loads of pictures of 3rd worlders firing weapons in the general direction of their enemies. Aiming wasn't a phrase I'd use to describe any of the techniques demonstrated. But it makes a great resource for describing ganger shooting techniques, if I could find it.

Well. Two bursts in three seconds isn't horribly far fetched. It's two -accurate- bursts in three seconds that start making things interesting. To fire both those bursts inside of three seconds, you're probably jerking your trigger, which will send your shots awry.

However. If Shadowrun Technology is to the point where triggers are better equipped to handle jerking (Somehow?), and weapons are barely recoiling at all due to advanced gas venting, and weighting, then...

...The Process, inside of three seconds, would be more like this.

1) Sight Target.
2) Jerk Trigger - Fire Burst
3) No recoil, weapon does not need to be resighted.
4) Jerk Trigger - Fire Burst - At this point, recoil may apply.

So. There you have it. I can suspend disbelief a bit, and believe that some future weapons technology allows for rapid trigger pulling compensation. The most unrealistic part for all of this to me, however, is been that a street Joe Samurai with 4 IPs can burn 40 rounds on full auto per turn. Whereas, Joe Average's weapon only fires 10 rounds on full auto.

Somehow, Joe Samurai got wired reflexes put on his weapon, too.

Although, in hingsight - With a move by wire system, a body that is constantly in tension may be able to produce a smoother trigger pull, contributing to quick, accurate bursts.

Smartlink connected by a Direct Neural Interface ?

This is incorrect. Sure, when using good aim and control, a street sammie can still get off 40 rounds while average joe wageslave only gets off 10... but if it's a matter of fire away the joe can simply use the cover fire option and pretty much empty his magazine in that 3 second round.

Although Suppressive fire uses 20 rounds according to the rules, IMHO this is the MINIMUM rounds spent required to have this effect. Unprofessionals should be able to fire off 30 rounds or more (depending on ROF, most fully automatics can fire 600 RPM or more).

And even apart from this, you could easily rule for flavor that less skilled firearm users can squize the trigger alot and still only get the effect of firing a few rounds. I could probably get off 5-6 rounds with a 9mm automatic myself in 3 seconds, but I wouldn't hit anyone other than innocent bystanders with that.

I'm sure the Armed Forces of Canada, the UK, Spain, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, and Australia (to name but a few) appreciate being compared to the Somali militias circa 1993.

I don't think it does.

AFAIK, you add up all recoil during each pass and apply the GasVent once to the total before figuring the modifier.

i.e. one short burst (first burst) is -2 and one long burst (second burst) is -6 for a total of -8.

A GasVent III will completely neutralize the -2, but when you have acculmulated a total recoil of -8 for the second burst, it will only reduce it to -5.

Bye
Thanee

There you go. Good call.

If you want to introduce suppression fire in, then our afforementioned 4 IP pass character vs. a 1 IP pass character is now getting 80 bullets out of his weapon, while the other character is only getting 20 rounds out.

So. The Rate of Fire of the weapon is improving along with the wielders reflexes. But to fix this issue would introduce unneccesary complexity into the system, which is why I chalk it up to suspension of disbelief, along with those Smartlink+Direct Neural Interface triggers.

Yeah, I could see that, if recoil never added up in any way.

However, I always thought that you add up recoil during one action phase (i.e. -2 for the first and -5 for the second burst in one action phase total), though admittedly, I cannot really find any evidence that you actually do that right now, I just think, that that's what they meant there, since they mentioned the action phase in the recoil rules.

Bye
Thanee

You're living in Shadowrun 3rd edition right now.

Here you go: Recoil Clarification

Welcome to SR:4.

Uhm... no?

Ok, so recoil modifiers are cumulative, apparantly, so my intuition wasn't so far off there.

Is there any actual rule, that mentions cumulative recoil in the book?

Bye
Thanee

Once again: the rules on page 142 and the example on page 143 do not agree with the explanation attributed to Rob Boyle in that topic. This means one of the following:

• Rob Boyle is right and the book is wrong, even through two re-printings and errata.
• The book is right and Rob Boyle is wrong, which happens (I've screwed up rules I've written myself; that's why I write them down).
• The book is right and Rob Boyle is right, and the message cited in the forum topic isn't really from Rob Boyle.

In the end, I think this one must wait for the FAQ. But for my part, I'm going to stick with the book (and the errata).

Hey neat. That's the thread where I first learned how recoil worked.

Which of these heavily/exclusively uses full-auto fire? The ones I'm reasonably familiar with, Canada and the UK, pretty much only fire in semi-auto mode (oddly enough, like US troops). This is true of the US troops issues M4A1, which don't have burst controls, as much as it is for those issued guns with burst controls. It's a function of being trained to shoot accurately. You want to shoot your target, not shoot up the general vicinity of where he is.

The reality is that most people across the world who have automatic weapons have no idea how to shoot accurately. The whole idea of using the sights is foreign to them. Heck, given the lack of people you see who wave a gun and have glasses in the 3rd world, many of them can't see worth a damn anyhow. So they fire on full auto in the general direction of their opponent. And get mowed down against a competent Western military force.

Well, you are wrong on this. I know, from experience, that the Bundeswehr (german army) were trained to used single shot or burst fire.
The only time they trained us to use full auto was at 'Sturmabwehrschiessen', which I can't even begin to translate (basically, when the enemy were in the process of overruning our position).

Hm, or did they take the full auto mode away ?

Well. They do have some value. Just not enough value to warrant every soldier on the field wondering if right now is a good time to start spraying rounds.

Edit: To include quote

That the basic rifleman doesn't receive a lot of training for firing the weapon on fully automatic is not quite the same as the weapon having been made mechanically incapable of fully automatic fire. Or has HKPro.com (and every other site I found on the weapon) got the modes of fire of the G36 wrong?

By the way, I am not up to SOTA. We still used the G3, and it's near impossible to use it in an effective way at full auto due to recoil.
That might have changed with the G36, but the 40 years or so the Bundeswehr used the G3, that was the rule .

I'll give you that, but how many magicians do you see with Wired Reflexes 2?

No, the AV rocket is the force 10 mana bolt. Works just about every time. Of course, in our group it's the mystic adept and the hacker who use them. . . And they don't take unhealable body damage from shooting them.

The force 6 manaball are the guys with alphas and HE grenades. It's really hard to get 10 successes on body+Impact-2.