Hi guys, recently we came to realization that, with the rules on auto-fire in shadowrun and, specially, with the recoil compensation rules in arsenal, there is no reason not to fire always in full auto with your guns, no matter the distance.
As much as we know that it is a cinematic game, we think that it sometimes can get a little out of hand. How do you do in your games? Allow characters to hit with long burst from far alway? Use some kind of house rule? We're tinkering with the following rules and we were unable, so far, to decide what to use, pick one:

1 - Recoil compensation works only up to Short Range, this way, at CQB range you unleash your auto guns fury but at long ranges you resort to short bursts and to semi-auto. Bipods and tripods works up to medium range so your tripod/bipod monted machine-guns are not useless.

2 - Longe range penalties are worsened by 1 for short bursts and by 2 for long and full bursts.

What do you guys think? Worth the trouble?

Full auto makes an awful lot of noise. It is not always feasible to have a clear field of vision, sometimes you just cannot see the target.

Most "real" weapons you'd be thinking of don't have recoil compensation. Which means that firing in full auto on top of range modifiers means you'd tend to miss. However weapons that are braced (say the gun on an Apache) are typically fired in full auto at ranged targets.

If you want a house rule I'd increase the recoil penalty at longer ranges.

However a big part of firing from a distance is them not knowing where you are for sure. Full auto kinda spoils that.

QFT

You also have the problem of ammo count.

You also look like more of a professional if the investigators arent announcing the finding of hundreds of shell casings the next morning on the news.

It's an interesting point. Long range sniping (IRL) is even affected adversely (some say) by the reciprocation of a semi-auto action, so the best sniper rifles are manual bolt-actions. Considering you can get an Ares Alpha cpmpensated enough to fire 6-shot bursts with no modifiers, either that's not a consideration any more, or there's room for a houserule making the effect of recoil greater at long range. You could consider making recoil modifiers multiplied by a factor depending on the range, so that compensation might mean a 3-round burst at medium isn't much incovenience, but at long range it's just not sensible.

And Shiloh has it in one. You can port the hell out of the weapon but the recoil action combined with the action slamming around in the weapon will make full-auto sniping impossible.

I'd chalk it up to the ease of locating the source of automatic weapons fire. Locating a shooter after one round is problematic. Locating him after a burst from a heavy machinegun is a lot easier. Once you've found him, you get to blanket his area with white phosphorous mortar rounds.

i remember in SR3, i once made a character that somehow got to 10 points of recoil-compensation . . zoom in the eyes to get the range category from extreme to close and extreme range laser pointer with low-light for a TN# of 3 for shooting things up to Assault-Rifle-Range with 10 bullets in the head O.o
aimed shot and it really hurt most things out there quite fine, even without APDS or something like that . . and all that ouchies from a silenced weapon too! . . i don't know if i did that with an assault rifle or a light MG, as that's the highest you can go for silencer . .

Yeah, that's it. Just burn down a six block area of the city to get that one sniper. That'll go over real well with the legal department.
Then you can explain, as the officer in charge, exactly why little darling Suzy had to have her legs burned through with Willy Pete, and watch her brother burn from the inside out, to get one flathead with a machinegun where only the first 2-3 shots were worth a damn anyway.

Hmm...

DOH!

Sniping was born as a battlefield art, where artillery reprisal was a valid option.

Obviously, in an urban environment where collateral damage is an issue, the lines of sight are also going to be a lot shorter, which means your chances of being spotted are a lot higher, and reprisal can come from other precision riflemen.

I do not see where a good sniper is in need of a full-auto firerate, in the first place.

to defend himself from mre than one enemey

If he's defending himself, then it's probably close-quarters combat. I'd suggest a SMG at that point. Small, light, full-auto, and doesn't weigh you down *THAT* much more with the Sniper.

but this way you only need one weapon for close-quarter and sniping, less ammo to carry, less general clutter, cheaper etc.
it's basically what assault-rifles were made for, but usually the sniping does not happen at full auto but on single auto mode . . at maximum burst fire . .
but with shadowruns possibilities, why should one adhere to this tactic?
it came up because sniping on full auto is more or less impossible without mounting the rifle somewhere so it can't really recoil all that much O.o

And that's where Drones come in. A heavily-braced drone with a full-auto weapon that uses caseless ammo and a rotating bolt... There you go!

They don't need full auto sniper rifles, but, as they do exist in shadowrun and are simply better than no-auto ones, that house rules came in place...
And for being easy to locate, this is a issue sometimes but not always, where being simply unable to hit shit with full auto at sensible distances IS. Bombing the place isn't always an option, at least for the non-military shadowrunners out there.

No, but dispatching a Rotodrone with a LMG is an option.

Personally, if they're good enough that they can reduce recoil to nothing, I'd let them snipe with it. Futuretech, and all the cyber needed for that, why not?

Especially if they've got it in a gyro-harness.

Or another type of Gyrostabilizer.

IIRC, the Gyroharnes comes from Aliens, where, in the documention surrounding the movie, they talked about being freaked out that all the rounds of the Smartgun went through ONE BULLET HOLE when testing the equipment, and how they had to tone down the accuracy.

Are you aware that the US military has a semi-automatic sniper rifle with approximately double the fire rate of a bolt action with no measureable loss in accuracy at "standard" range?

Note that: "Standard".

For TRUE accuracy, and I'm talking BEYOND standard here, you need a Bolt Action.

There's a reason the World Record Holder for Longest-Ranged Confirmed Kill used a Bolt and not a Semi.

Well, I think that some kind of penaltie must exist, even with all the recoil compensators, if not for balance reasons. And, as far as I know, gas vent is a technology that already exists today (maybe in rudimentary form on AK-97+ rifles and stuff) and we don't see they losing all they recoil.
Weapons pods, turrets and on tripod should not be affected (or be affected by a lesser degree) by these problems.

It's been around longer than that. Early Thompson M1921 SMGs had Gas Vent Compensators on their barrels.

It's a very simple technology.

FYI, its Rob Furlong with the world record. (Another note you didn't point out, he took 3 shots. One missed, one hit the guys knapsack, and the last killed.)

Of course, the guy (Carlos Hathcock) who held the record before him, (short by 144m) made his record with a browning m2 .50 bmg machine gun with a scope on it. And that record held for 35 years. I don't think your point holds much weight.

A lot will do with the GM.. I'd be fulling willing to let the sniper do a "Called Shot" to bypass armor on their target, but no way in hell the machine gunner is going to get that from me. I think even with max recoil comp too, that the sniper is almost always going to get the better damage output... someone else can do that math though.

Though you might ask: Was Hathcock's shot a precision shot or a lucky bullet during full-auto spraying a target?

On the topic of semi-auto vs. bolt-action I'd say if not today, by 2070 engineering should be way beyond what is needed to build semiautomatic rifles that offer equivalent accuracy.
I mean, you could assemble a sniper rifle part by part in a nanoforge, completely accurate to the molecule.

Didn't Hathcock "Feather" the trigger to set off single-shots?

At least, that was the impression I got from what I heard about him.

isn't the browning M2 .50 the light fifty the base modell for the M(A" Barret Sniper Rifle anyway?

From what I can find, wikipedia says the m2 was accurate to 2500 yds when fired single-shot. It doesn't say how that was accomplished.

accurate depending on the definition of the word . . as it's role was to be a light anti vehicle weapon, it was accurate enough to reliably hit a moving vehicle at 2500 yards . .
confirmed kill for single person with one of those babies i've heard from was about 1800 to 2000m or something along those lines . .

It was 2,286m, and I gave you the name of the guy who did it. Sheesh.

The Barrett is the Light Fifty (clocking in around 30lbs) and other than the common ammunition is a completely distinct weapon from the M2 (clocking in around 80 pounds, weapon only).

Gas vent isn't exacty enough to remove full-auto recoil is SR either, so i fail to see your point.
and you can not get gas vent for a sniper rifle anyway. I would like to see how they got 10 points of recoil comp with out bi/tripod or gyro harness.

weren't you talking about yards?

Was referencing wikipedia, which says a m2 is accurate out to 2,500 yards. His kill record is measure in meters, at 2286 Meters. Which, conveniently enough, equals 2500 yards.

It is important to remember that there is a huge difference between sniping and shooting shit.

If you're going to wait on your belly for six hours without moving a muscle while wearing a suit made out of plants just so that you can get that one perfect shot at a target two and a half miles away, then you will want as few moving parts as is feasible.

But most people aren't going to be doing that. Most people are going to be shooting shit.

One important thing to remember when shooting shit is that there comes a point where automatic bursts actually make you more accurate. If you're shooting at a target five or six hundred yards away with a M16A2 then you're going o switch to burst fire mode or you're going to miss. There really is no middle ground there. At that distance, the weapon's accuracy is so abysmal that you might as well just drop it and buy a lottery ticket if your goal is pinpoint shooting. But a burst fires a pattern, almost like a shotgun. That pattern greatly increases the probability of a hit at extreme ranges. Most bullets will miss, but you'll put substantially more on target than you would have using single aimed shots.

Wide bursts and suppressive fire both simulate this somewhat, but not entirely. This is, unfortunately, the price paid for using a system that doesn't calculate bullet trajectories with trigonometry. Since all firing is abstract, I don't have a problem with acturate long range fully automatic shooting.

Cant we use trig in game?

I wanna.

Maybe anyone who cant solve a formula within 6 seconds misses?

If I have a smartlink system does that mean I get to use my math programs on the laptop?

Its totally wacky that people don't think that mounted automatic weapons are highly accurate? Whats the accurate range on the 25MM chaingun mounted on LAVs? Pretty sure its over 3000 meters, and I'm pretty sure the RADEN is accurate out that far too.

The pintled mounted HMGs firing bursts are much more likely to hit anything at extreme ranges than a sniper rifle, thanks in part to superior stablisation.

As a weapons nut I can tell you that a bolt action is inherently more accurate then a semi- or full-auto, because of the fewer moving parts(less vibrations=more accurate). However, with a full auto, you can throw out enough shells to make up the difference. Add in things like gas vents, pintle mounts, and other such things, and you can put out enough lead acurately to hit a target at those exteme ranges.

Hell NO.

It's perfectly possible to shoot someone 500 meters away with an M16a2 on semi, if you know what you are doing. The effective range of an M16A2 is 550 meters (the range at which an average troop can be reasonably expected to hit point targets). The basic USMC M16A2 qualification stage 5 is at 500 meters. Fired on semi.

Burst/automatic fire is for CLOSE range. Shooting long range targets on burst/automatic will, at best, produce no additional hits.

" Effectiveness of Automatic or Burst Fire. Automatic or burst fire is inherently less accurate than semiautomatic fire. The first full-automatic shot fired may be on target, but recoil and a high-cyclic rate of fire often combine to place subsequent rounds far from the desired point of impact. Even controlled (three-round burst) automatic or burst fire may place only one round on the target. ... Closely spaced multiple targets, appearing at the same time at 50 meters or closer, may be engaged effectively with automatic or burst fire. More widely spaced targets appearing at greater distances should be engaged with semiautomatic fire."

I have crappy depth perception, but the central point remains. Once you are past the range at which you can aim effectively, more bullets simply increases the probability that at least one of them will hit. You may only get one hit out of three shots (or worse), but that is certainly better than no hits out of one shot.

Not quite true. Burst fire is for engaging target/s that are within your cone of fire, which is defined as the probability cone in which a large percentage of rounds are most likely to hit, in the shortest time possible.

I have managed to engage 2-3 man sized targets at a range of 800m with my GPMG. Sure, if you can fire 3 single rounds in quick succession, you can bring down all 3 targets fairly quickly. But if the targets exposure times are only a couple of seconds, your best bet is a burst.

Choose the third floor of a building made using reinforced concrete. Keep the rifle far back in the room. Possibly with the creation of a hole if there is no window. The building should have multiple underground exit points.

Alternatively the use of a helicopter with a control rig is also possible.

Anything that involves a target which demands more than three shots should be done in an urban setting with explosives.

150 meters assault rifle, 300 meters machine gun, 450+ meters sniper rifle, 1000+ meters .50 caliber rifle.

Of course this is today so I could just have a rifle which is mounted on a computer controlled rig and have it controlled either by mobile phone, radio or a tracker. This is all rather old technology too, at least 10 years now.

And a *tripod*. Mounted weapons have different parameters. People who are concerned with seconds of arc groupings at over 1000m tend to prefer bolt actions. Much of the recoil compensation available in SR is available today: gas vent, "shock pads", heavy barrels. A proportion of snipers and serious lon range target shooters do use semi-auto rifles, even some militaries issue SA rifles to their marksmen, but none use full auto.

Sure, RAW doesn't penalise recoil-y operation more at long range than at short, but there are holes in RAW that do need plugging, and this is probably one of them if you want to maintain any verisimilitude: the sesigned sniper riles don't include any full-auto-only ones, do they?.

Indeed.. at 600m it is not THAT big of a deal to hit your stationary target within 10-15cm repeatedly IF you are properly braced, with little to no wind, clear LOS, etc with a AK5, try to fire a burst at that range and you will fint that you hit very little, mabye the first slug will hit the intended target, but nr2 and nr 3 will 100% not hit the target because of the deviation made by the recoil and the warping of the barrel, and at ranges of 600m the dispersion of the bullets would be close to 1-4 feet between each bullet depending on the weight of the projectile, its aerodynamica and a shit load of other factors..


I could not feasibly see anything other than .50 or heavier rounds having any reliable accuracy at ranges over 600m.. in anything but perfect conditions..
especially not when fired in bursts or full auto, unless vehicle mounted, then its only the warping of the barrel you have to take into account, the rest of the recoil is 0.. Chainguns help with this as they shift barrels, giving the barrel just used time to stabilize enough to provide acurate fire when it is its time to guide the projectile..

.303 shoots straight way past that. Record (yes, I know it's an extreme, but 2300m is extreme for a tripod-mounted BMG) is 1500m or so, IIRC. That's a *mile*.

You can reliably hit a 1.5m x 1.5m square with the second round of a burst, with 25mm rounds at 800m. You just need a heavier barrel and a lot of bracing. Can be done, I have seen it done before.

Let me put it this way, getting a bipod/tripod in SR4 rule terms = recoil comp. If you can get equivalent recoil comp from other mods (gyro harness, mounting on a vehicle, being a strong bastard, etc) then you can aim and shoot it just as good, its equivalent. I don't see any reason why you are fine with it letting him nail all 10 bullets into one guy's head as a called shot at 50m, but make that all 10 just into a guy at a few hundred and suddenly you're all over him. It negates the recoil, and if its entirely negated, I'd let it happen.

If there was recoil left over, at ranges beyond medium, I'd probably say that any uncompensated recoil counted against that shot as well as future ones taken.

<nitpick>Chainguns don't shift barrels. Rotary cannon and miniguns shift barrels. Big thanks to Wolfenstein 3d and Doom for starting this misinformation...</nitpick>

Total accuracy is a combination of weapon accuracy and shooter accuracy. Bracing is a major part of shooter accuracy, and being bolted onto a 20-ton armored vehicle is about the best bracing there is. A tripod is probably a close second. Unfortunately, tripods are heavy, bulky and take time to set up. This is why snipers usually have to make do with bipods, talent and practice, practice, practice.

Incidentally, the .50 BMG isn't all that accurate, relatively speaking, it just holds on to it's accuracy at long ranges better than many other sniper-practical rounds, because the bullet is so darn heavy. Heavier rounds, like the 25mm autocannon rounds Toturi was talking about are even more so.