One of my characters is a meat-shield type troll that shoots things. In terms of flavor and awesomeness, an Assault Cannon sounds pretty sweet. But I'm trying to justify that in terms of numbers. It's a single shot weapon that does 10P with -5AP. The Medium Machine Gun (which I currently have) does 6P with -2AP. Doing a full round narrow burst gives a +9 DV, for 15P with -2AP (if you use normal bullets). That's a whole heap load of recoil comp, but if you know you're going into combat I think you can get it compensated.

I might get one anyway, just because it sounds awesome. But I'd also love it to be at least as good.

I would go for the MMG if you want effectiveness. The PAC is too expensive and doesen't do enough damage for it's ammunition cost and availability. PACs are good as fashion statements though

Assaults rifles are pretty good. The Ares Alpha has only one higher AP than the MMG, is smaller and easier to put it a backback or slung over the shoulder, has free recoil comp. that stacs with gasvent, and a grenade launcher to boot! What more could a troll want? And you don't need a cumbersome tripod or gyro mount to shoot it effectively, which means you can bring it along fairly often. I may be mistaken but the AA could be Restricted, which means you could legally own it with a (fake) licence.

AA is forbidden, the FN HAR is restricted and what I normally use as my 'big automatics gun' though the alpha is a better gun.

Yeah, that is its (only?) plus point, otherwise the AA is, as you rightfully point out better in every respect. The FN HAR doesn't even have a smartlink

I wouldn't go so far as to say 'walk on the street,' but being able to present a valid license is nice if you have it in your car, or your bag, and someone wants to check it. That and a Ingram smartgun X are a pretty good combo for a mage or rigger or somefink to get serious mileage out of 'Automatics 1'

If you want to PUNCH through hardened armor / a spirits immunity, doing basic damage is the only thing of importance. High rate of fire does not apply.

Therefore you are usually better of with an automatic weapon of some kind, yes.

Ask your GM about houseruling that big strong characters are bothered less by recoil.
There was a SR3 rule that didn't make it into SR4.

A maxed Alpha package is gas-vent-3 (on the barrel), bipod (under barrel), airburst link (over barrel), shockpad on the stock, for RC 6, and RC 8 when firing prone with bipod. You can get that entire package, including integral smartlink, for much less than the base cost of the MMG.
If you're shooting at a materialized spirit and need to punch through Immunity to Normal Weapons, go full auto for 15P; you'll take net -3 recoil with the maxed Ares. An equivalently equipped MMG would take -10 recoil (recoil 9, minus RC 4, is 5, doubled for MG is 10).
Firing with the Alpha gets 7 more dice to hit; firing with the Stoner MMG gets 1 more point of AP.

Alternately, you could fire a grenade and then a long burst, with -1 recoil penalty on the burst. Even if you have no Heavy Weapons skill and fire at AGL-1, you'll usually get a hit; with the airburst link, you just need that single hit to get the grenade within 1d6 meters of the target... flash-bangs and gas grenades have 10m radius effect, while frag has 6P left at 6m away, and might get luckily dead-on for 12P. I recommend a rank in HvWpns with Grenade Launcher specialization, though, because airburst with net hits results in bonus DV. Grenades also give a lot more flexibility. With the Stoner, you're a one-trick pony; with the Alpha, you might have anything from HESH to Neurostun in the lower barrel. Or, if you're going against bugs, you could load pesticide grenades; against plant spirits, you could load incindiaries; if the opposition has guard dogs, they'll flinch away from Pepper Punch; and so forth. A player in my group has a sniper character who designed grenade-launcher shells for deploying fly-spies over the area of operations. One might design a grenade-launcher munition that slaps a radio tracer onto a vehicle, if you want to track its getaway rather than blow it up. Heck, you could even design a low-velocity round that breaks open to splash nanotrode paste onto the target's head, pre-programmed with Black Hammer or a personafix BTL.

You mean something like this?

• Weapons have a strength minimum.
• If you're using a weapon beyond your strength minimum, you suffer a -1 dicepool penalty on your attack, and a -2 penalty on all subsequent actions this round (including defense pools) for every point your Strength is exceeded.
• Firing a burst or Suppressive Fire increases the strength minimum by 1. A Long Burst increases it by 2. Full Auto increases it by 3.
• The effects of recoil modifiers are massive reduced. A Bipod reduces the Strength min by 2, a gyromount reduces it by 3. A recoil absorbing shape (stocks, shock pads, whatever) reduces the minimum by 1; a recoil increasing shape (hold-outs, for example) increase it by 1.
• Gas Vents just get abstracted out because they are no longer necessary to allow people to fire bursts of automatic weaponry.
• Drones have an "effective strength" equal to their Body. If they suffer recoil penalties, they fall over.
• The Strength minimum of a weapon is the base damage minus 2. So it's 2 for a light pistol, 4 for an assault rifle (Flechette modifiers obviously don't apply).

Simple, and it eliminates the need for most of the accounting and stupid.

-Frank

The str minimum really kills you on something like a sniper rifle though. I know they have a good bit of recoil, but that isn't going to affect the shot before you make it, and it isn't going to require that massive of a str to use properly anyway. Perhaps you should assign str mins for each class of weapon ie Light pistols take str 2, assult weapons need 4, LMGs need 5, etc.

Oh, and one thing you need to keep in mind with the assult cannon, is that it can match range with a sniper rifle. This means you can put a scope on it, and sit 1500 Meters away and snipe people with it. Heck, you can even put a silencer on it and everything. I mean sure, 10P -5AP maybe can't match the full furry of an AA or HMG, but you don't have to worry about recoil, and you can use it from a massive range that will make your GM cry.

Also, you say that the assult cannon ammo is expensive? I really don't see it, it costs 7 a shot (70 for 10) as opposed to a weapon on full auto using up 18 of ammo per 'shot'. Also your burst weapons are going to take a complex action, meaning you can't do much, while the assult cannon is only a simple action, allowing you to dive for cover or do something else useful.

The recoil mods shouldn't affect a sniper rifle anyways, you don't fire bursts out of a sniper rifle. Granted you won't get two great shots per round, but they are one-shot-one-kill tools, so their recoil could be a million and it won't matter because the target should be down on the first hit. (this is assuming the dam from sniper rifles is modded to match a burst assault rifle and are single shot wpns)

You know, I'm actually totally OK if to properly use a sniper rifle you have to have a Strength of 5 or get on the ground and use it with a Bipod. That seems pretty reasonable to me all around.

Considering that normal people in fact do use high powered sniper rifles braced against something and put up on a bipod.

-Frank

Then What is the bipod for?

Hell, if you just google up the word Sniper, all the pictures have people using bipods. Why would they go prone and not use a bipod?

-Frank

I suppose I was just being stupid and thinking of something much much larger as the bipod, also something closer to the end of the barrel.

There is a semi-auto sniper rifle availble to the US military that fires a 50 caliber round. The recoil is minimal compared to a bolt-action rifle but it is still there. They still use the bipod.

YouTube video:
Barrett M107 .50 Caliber sniper rifle

2:20 is about where he starts to fire 10 rounds in less than 10 seconds.

Here's why I like strength modifiers and suggestions like Frank's, even if they do need a bit of tweaking: Bipods and strength requirements are not JUST about recoil, they're about how unwieldy weapons can be to begin with. A remington 700 and similar rifles may only weigh around the neighborhood of a half dozen pounds to be charitable, but after a long day it can seem heavier than that when shouldered simply because it's around 40 inches long and some of that weight is on the other end of the barrel; that's just physics and leverage people, even shadowrun tech can't fix everything. And with a monstrosity like that m107, you're dealing with what? A 50 inch barrel and probably 20-30 pounds or so? I haven't looked much at the stats on those kind of weapons before but from eyeballing those pictures it looks a lot longer than my 12 gauge benelli pump action, and believe it or not that particular shotgun is a fair bit longer than many rifles I've seen. Recoil isn't even the beginning of your worries there; it's keeping the damned thing steady and pointed in the general direction you want to fire to begin with. It'd be stupid not to prop it up and apparently the military and Barret knows it. Anyway, bipods and other ways of propping up weapons are nice even with low recoil weapons because if nothing else they do a lot of the work of keeping the weapon steady for you.

I do like the STR based recoil idea, however its prone to exploit by extremely high individuals. If full auto is just REQ+3, then whats to stop an ambidextrous strong troll firing 2 full auto guns at no penalty (besides splitting his dice pool)?

What would the strength minimum be for something like mossberg shotgun? 3? 4? 5? even putting it at 6 (meaning full auto requiring 9) wouldn't do a whole lot to prevent a troll from packing two of them and going to town.

yeah so? O.o
's what trolls are THERE for . . you don't let the Troll Combat Twink do the Social or electronics stuff, but you let him go and make big holes into anything you point him at . .

in SR3 they got (close to) no penalty when using 2H weapons with one Hand.
And STR6 gave 1 point of Recoil Compensation, STR12 gave 2 points and . . either STR18 or STR 24 or something in between gave 3 Points of Recoil Compensation . . so yes, you COULD do the whole ambidexterous Troll with 2 LMG's . . but said Troll could and probably still can do little else . .

as i understand it . . those are quasi legal to own over there in america . . for about everyone . . as long as it is SEMI AUTO or SINGLE AUTO . . you can get it as a hunting rifle as opposed to a military weapon somehow . . of course the rifle in itself costs something like 10k or more US $ if i remember correctly . . and that is JUST the rifle . .

as for why the PAC needs recoil compensation: if i remember correctly, you had to resist 9l stun damage minus impact armor when firing said weapon without bi/tripod or something like that. .
Edit: Modifiers to Damage from burst/Full Auto never came into consideration with hardened Armor . . is why you could just shake off a direct hit from a vindicator while wearing heavy security or military armor which counted as hardened . . because they had an ballaistics rating of 7 and the vindicator had a power niveau of 7 before the +15 for each bullet . . so vindicator with a powerniveau NOT GREATER THAN THE BALLISTICS RATING OF THE HARDENED ARMOR . . just kinda went poof withoutexex or something like that . .
Edit2: you had in fact a better chance of hurting someone with hardened security if you were using a heavy pistol, sports rifle, HMG or some AssaultRifles/SMG's . .

Thank you! We have been playing wrong.

Edit: Beaten by Jaid, did not notice before. Yes, we are sure.

Don't tasers fall under the pistol catagory? They do after all use the pistol skill.

Ah, one could easily put that in the game with a reaction penalty for indoor long-arm users for reaction tests on entering a room. I think my players will like that, it might give SMGs a better position vs. ARs.

You have the butt of the shotgun in the shoulder pocket.

Sniper rifles have no sights, just a scope. Ok, there are versions that have a bastardized setup where you supposedly have iron sights, but I'm told they suck and screw up your ability to use the scope. The last time I heard anyone doing reaction drills with a sniper rifle it was using the scope turrets as really crude sights, and he found it easy to miss at 20 feet. Plus 15 pound sniper rifles don't make that fun. SR ignores this , but long range sniper rifles are typically quite heavy for stability.

At 3 meters with a pistol I can shoot based on pointing and usually hit. I can often hit the head target on an ipsc target.. You can shoot from retention with a pistol and likely hit. At 5 meters it's not so likely. You go to "flash sight pictures" and such and shoot hammers. At about 10 meters few people can shoot hammers successfully and you go to controlled pairs, where you reacquire the sight picture between shots.

It's easier to shoot with a rifle or shotgun fast than a pistol. It points better, you have a better idea of how it's lined up, etc. Doing head shots with a carbine is easy at 25 meters, it's not with a pistol. Unless you are shooting from retention the pistol is at arms length in front of you, so a 14.5" carbine would add 6 inches or so of barrel in front of that instead of the 3 inches of a Glock? A shotgun maybe a foot, a sniper rifle two feet?

CQB is typically fighting inside buildings and modern version require that you identify hostiles, bystanders and friendlies in most cases. Otherwise you end up killing hte wrong people. Once the you know the room is full of bad guys it sucks to be a bystander in the room, as they are likely to killed. Never gotten formal training on this, it's what SWAT teams and infantry do.

For really close range stuff it's ugly. I've been taught that you should typically go HtH if you are within arms reach and someone goes for a weapon. They have one or two hands occupied, you don't, so hurt them a lot right now. Though there are also some very quick draw and shoot from retention drills while you strike at their face with your other arm to keep them from getting the weapon out. Then you shoot them a lot really fast.

Basically it's really hard to miss with a pistol at 3 feet, so you really want to stop them from shooting at you. Shootouts in bathrooms rarely end well.

Similarly, you don't want to try to go for a gun when someone leaps at you from 5 feet with a knife (or their bare hands). If you don't have one in your hands you'll be sliced to ribbons (beaten unconscious) by the time you get it out.

Well, most of the discusion here has goten beyond me as I don't regularly fire weapons at a range or anything like that, but I can make this small addition.