Okay, so I've been working out a Rigger for an upcoming SR3 campaign, and I've got a few questions... I'll see what I can remember.

1) The Rigger 3 rules talk about multiple guns in a single turret. How does this work? Do they all have to target the same enemy? Does it count like burst fire, or like separate attacks?

2) If I have a trailer with multiple turrets in it, can they target seperate things? How does that work? Can I only target one thing in a given initiative pass?

3) Can a Robot Advanced Pilot use passive sensors and then fire turrets as though they were using manual gunnery? This would apply mostly when shooting at an enemy using serious ECM... I'd prefer to avoid needing a sensor lock if the darn thing is right in front of me and clearly visible via passive sensors.

4) Can I fire at the ground instead of an enemy, since the ground is theoretically a lot easier to hit and I'm using area weapons?

So, some examples based on what I'm looking at:

1a) If I have a Medium Popup Antiaircraft Turret with two Heavy Machine Guns in it, and I want to fire at an enemy, what happens? If I want to fire at two enemies, can that work?

1b) If said turret has a Heavy Machine Gun and a Sniper Rifle, can I fire both at one enemy, or at two enemies?

2a) I have a trailer with a Medium Turret with a Mortar, a Small Turret with a Heavy Machinegun, and a Micro Turret with a Sniper Rifle. It has a Rating 3 Robot Advanced Pilot, and a spotter drone is currently using BattleTac FDDM to lock on to an enemy tank. Additionally, my pilot used sensors to lock onto an incoming troll last round. Can I, on the drone's initiative, fire the mortar at the painted target, fire the Sniper Rifle at the troll I got a sensor lock on, and fire the heavy machine gun using passive sensors at the attack copter that's coming in as well, all in the same initiative pass?

2b) Same situation, but the rigger is jacked in to the trailer. Can the rigger just take control of the heavy machine gun, allowing the drone to handle the other two turrets?

3a) Speaking of which, let's say there's an attack helicopter coming at me, and due to ECM it has a signature of 12. Locking on is unlikely and sensor enhanced gunnery is bound to fail... but my rating 3 pilot drone can roll 3 dice for perception to just see the thing with passive sensors. Can it use manual gunnery to take out the chopper, or are only directly controlled (via a rigger) vehicles allowed to do that?

4a) I've got white phospherous mortars loaded up and ready to go, but enemy soldiers have a signature of 6. Can I just fire at the ground where they are to ensure lesser scatter? If so, what's the TN to do that?

Thanks in advance.

JaronK

Like mixing ammo types in a single burst, this is something the Shadowrun combat system simply isn't set up to handle. Consequently, the designers ran screaming from this scenario; p157: "A drone may have only one weapon system armed at any one time."


"Target" is vague; certainly you can only fire on one thing (see above).


I'm not aware of anything permitting this in Canon.


The answer is the same as it would be if you were talking about thrown grenades. I seem to remember this being one of the hideous parts where no reasonable answer emerges.


Your active weapon system (one HMG or the other) fires. Well, provided that you pull the trigger rather than just wanting it


No, no, and no.


Nope.


You might want to look at the section on multiple-Rigger networks; it provides the best grounds on which to base something like this. With a standard drone, no.


Your drone can't actually roll 3 dice for Perception; drones can't use passive sensors at all, it isn't just manual gunnery that's forbidden. Passive sensors is basically "what happens when a human looks at sensor output".


See above; if I remember correctly, this opens up a world of rules-pain.

~J

Thanks for the help, I totally didn't see that page 157 reference. However, this opens up a few more questions.

First off, it says "one of its weapon systems" not "one of its weapons." That to me indicates a group of weapons... for example, all on board heavy machine guns or something. This deals with the firing sniper rifles while launching mortars issue (by saying you can't do it) but it seems to me like having multiple turrets with the same weapon, or one turret with two of the same weapon, should work as a single weapon system.

Also, page 136 does say that drones can make both passive and active sensor tests, specifically using their pilot rating as their intelligence for the perception test, so they absolutely can use passive sensors. It never says they can use manual gunnery though... but I can't see why not.

JaronK

Further down p157: "Fire a Weapon System: a Rigger may fire an armed weapon on any single drone." This establishes the 1-to-1 system-to-weapon relation.

(Even if this weren't established, there's still the fact that you'd be the one stuck making rules for what happens when you mix fire types, because they're so not established that you can't even mix AP and EX-EX in a single magazine.)

You're right, I'd forgotten that drones can make Passive tests; while that significantly reduces the logical base for forbidding manual gunnery, though, p151 is pretty explicit ("Manual gunnery rules apply whenever characters[…]). Given that the Rigger 3 stuff on Robots doesn't provide any exception to this, doesn't paint Robots as characters (repeating several times that they aren't self-aware and can't really think, whatever "really think" means), and pretty much says that Robots are Drones with their own Initiative and a Pool, I'm going to have to say that this is a pretty solid "no" by Canon. There exist decent grounds for arguing for a houserule, but once you're in houserule territory you're limited only by what you can convince your GM to do.

~J

Only if each turret is controlled by a different drone or given a drone brain. Otherwise you have to activate 1 weapon in that group of weapons as that trailer is then considered 1 drone.
For instance a ships NWCN (Naval Weapons Control Sytem) allows a drone brain to operate 1 weapon within the group of weapons it controls. p. 55 R3
Another example might be stationary turrets with drone brains in them. If you have multiple drones rather than a single drone, your idea might work. It'd just get expensive.



nothing expressively allows it, but the little they talk about robots suggest that they might be able to. Depends on how your gm wants to run robots.




In all fairness when your using a grenade/rocket or any other explosion based round, your not aiming at the person but how close you can get to them (see scatter p.118-120 sr3 core). Recall that dmg goes down the farther from the blast. If you were to target say the car next to them because it had a lower signature that'd be fair game, or any other physical object near your target. But the ground is really a guaranteed hit, just don't expect it to be within range to do dmg to who you want. Also if you do this I'd rule that you don't get to stage the dmg up on your target due to him not being the primary target, he'd only get the secondary effects of being near the blast.

Best way to think about it is this, are you trying to do maximum damage to your targets, then its against their signature. Otherwise if they are near some object that can get them caught up in the blast, feel free to do secondary effects to them.

And as for that signature 12 aircraft, get some ECCM. Either that or cover fire... indirect fire (via teammates laser designator)... plenty of options, just don't expect drones to understand all the time.

I would agree with the previous commenter and add that if your target is moving, you're trying to hit the ground under the target, which would also be a non-stationary point. Second, if the vehicle is not moving, how do you get a target lock on the pavement? Certain circumstances would allow it, of course, but it can't always be done.

Hmm, that Weapon System = Weapon thing is weird... a Battleship couldn't even fire all three guns that were in a single turret? How bizarre. Even a rigger in a battleship doesn't seem able to do that. That's extra weird considering the bit about trailers in R3, which says that you can load more weapons on a trailer, but if you fire too many at once a crash test is required.

Which reminds me of another question, and maybe I'm missing something. The R3 rules on trailers says that no trailer may have a higher body than the highest body of any pulling tractors. However, tractors (as in the things that pull big rig trucks) top out at Body 5, the body of a 20 foot trailer. Does this mean that 40' trailers and 53' trailers (Body 6 and 7) can't be pulled by tractors, or am I missing something? Is there a way to increase the body of a tractor so it can pull more? As far as I can tell, pulling a 53' trailer requires a tracked APC, which is downright bizarre. Plus, the tractor entry can only be deisel and can only pull up to 20,000kg, but that's also the load limit of the 53' trailer... so if you factor in the weight of the trailer itself, it can't be pulled when fully loaded. Weird. This doesn't seem to have been changed by any errata.

But back to the guns... I'm shocked that you can't even have two heavy machine guns in one turret and fire on one enemy with a single controller, but c'est la vie. So right now I'm thinking my trailer will have a Mortar and a Sniper Rifle in a popup medium turret, and a Heavy Machinegun in a small antiaircraft popup turret. One thing I did notice was that page 141 of R3 says, on Remote Turrets, "A separate gunner or a rigger may operate a remote turret (military vehicles often use two riggers, one controlling the vehicle and the other controlling the turret)." So, this looks like I can just have a few extra datajacks available to operate the turrets with manual gunners or something... but if that's not available, I'll just fire one weapon at a time (they all have seperate purposes of course).

JaronK

Well, again, before being shocked: if you did this, how would you resolve the resulting attack test?

~J

I was assuming it counted the same as any other time you fire a lot of bullets... burst fire. So if you had a medium turret with two heavy machine guns, and you fired Full Auto with both, you'd fire 20 shots, resulting in the attack staging up to deadly with +20 power and +6 to dodge tests. I mean, that's the normal rules for firing lots of identical bullets at something, after all.

Either that, or you could do it exactly like firing two guns with no offhand penalty (as though you had the Ambidexterity 8 edge). Come to think of it, that makes even more sense.

JaronK

But it isn't; there's no other case that I remember in which attacking with two things is combined like that. This isn't a deep objection, I just want to first establish that that isn't "normal rules" before I get to the real issues.

The other issue is that nothing in the rules currently enforces the bullets being identical. If you've got an HMG and an LMG, what's the damage code of a full burst from both? Two HMGs, one with AP and one with EX-EX?

(Thirdly there's the scaling issue; nothing else supports getting Power that high. The multiple-round staging is really not an elegant system.)


This is even more totally unprecedented (is there anything even vaguely hinting at a resolution like this?), but it does have the advantage of rendering most of the issues I bring up above inapplicable. If you're looking to make a rule to allow it, do this. Just be aware that there's no support for it in canon.

I have to admit, one of the things that always bugged me about Shadowrun is that a lot of the rules seem set up to say "no" to the players.

~J

I'll follow with all of kage's suggestions. If you use his house rules, make them 2 separate attacks, calculate recoil of both, affecting each other before each fire, no smartlink. This already somewhat violates the rule where you can only fire once. Also I'd rule that it can only attack 1 target, unless your full autoing between multiple.

Also I'd suggest your mortar be equipped with a drone brain or putting the mortar on a wheeled drone. This is because you don't want to be wasting the action firing the weapon yourself. Your drones(spotter and mortar) with FDDM can take care of it themselves, allowing you to have more control over the battle itself.

Also it seems odd to have the sniper rifle on the trailer itself as the trailer is so big. Perhaps a different drone can take it?

Well, what I was thinking with the two guns in a turret thing is that the "weapons system" rule would require one ammo, one type of weapon. So, that solves most of the issues. But the ambidexterity rules are indeed the rules for wielding two weapons, and the penalties only apply for having an off hand (which drones don't have) so there's some vague precident at least.

I should mention that an autocannon would also fit in a medium popup turret (with a little room to spare) and one of the ones in R3 (the Victory Cannon) on full auto would do 30D with a TN 7 to dodge, as compared to a pair of heavy machine guns from the core book which, with the burst fire rules, would do 30D with a TN 10 to dodge... so the staging isn't anything rediculous. But still, I think the dual wielding rules seem closest. And yeah, one target per round seems appropriate (though I'd imagine with a rigger in control you could walk the fire along as normal).

I should mention that this trailer is indeed part of an FDDM system... it has spotter miniblimp drones. With the range on a sniper rifle, it can be about half a mile away and still fire a silent shot, then drop the turret back down and look like a standard truck trailer sitting by the side of the road. Mortar also works, of course. I may drop the rifle eventually... I just hate to see that wasted turret space, you know? Still, eventually I may swap out the mortar for a Light Railgun, if I can ever manage to find one... and that would take all the room in the turret. Plus, one of my spotter drones does indeed pack a sniper rifle, and is the primary sniper, but the robot drone brain in the trailer is much more advanced and thus is a much better shot.

JaronK

You're thinking too small. Medium Turret is WV 6, that gives you six SMGs. Using one of the 7M base models, that gives you 67D at TN 24 to dodge.

~J

Horrible range though, and the trailer can't exactly be terribly stealthy or escape from hot pursuit. Far better to have longer range, so I can park it half a mile from the target and use it only if I really need extra damage. Plus, Heavy Machineguns are reasonably effective against vehicles, while SMGs likely aren't. Plus, there's not much of a difference between 67D and 30D when you get down to it, nor between TN 24 to dodge and TN 10.

JaronK

Oh, certainly, I'm not arguing that it's a good idea; I'm just pointing out the kind of scenario that popped into my head when I was saying that nothing else really supports getting Power that high.

(Also, while 67D and 30D aren't that practically different, TN 24 is much, much nastier than TN 10; 10 is still in "achievable, if painful" range.)

~J

Yeah, but I wouldn't expect more than one success at TN 10, so that still won't stage anything down. Something freakish might happen, but I doubt it.

Still, I think we'll go with the dual wielding rules without offhand penalties, since that seems to have the most actual foundation in the rules (since it is multiple weapons, and drones don't have offhands in turrets).

But while we're on the topic of drone guns... what's up with heavy weapons and recoil? Turrets all say they reduce recoil by half before recoil compensation, while heavy weapons double their recoil after recoil compensation. Just from that, I'd say that a heavy weapon in a turret halves it's recoil, then you apply recoil compensation, then you double the uncompensated recoil (thus countering the halving after recoil compensation). But a bunch of entries in the books talk about turrets negating the heavy weapons doubling, or heavy weapons negating the turret halving. What's going on there?

JaronK

Heavy weapons on a turret negate each other out. There are other things that can help recoil on turrets in R3, so it shouldn't be an issue to drop its recoil to a small amount.
If you have high body or too small of a turret to gain benefit, the gyro stabilizers are a good choice. Otherwise the direct recoil adjusters are typically a good way to go.

Ah, but this is dodge rather than soak; a single success can be enough.


I disagree about the foundation in the rules, but totally agree that this is the best way to permit this without overhauling SR firearms combat.


The Artists Formerly Known As FanPro still haven't released a version of Rigger 3 I can search, so you'll have to let me know if there's something in there that I miss; that said:

While I believe the proper interpretation in isolation of SR3 p151 is that the doubling is cancelled, it is ambiguous, while the SEG modifiers table on 154 is not. Therefore, in the absence of evidence that SEG is somehow more susceptible to recoil or somesuch, the halve-modify-double approach would be the correct one.

~J

I dont have it on hand, and you should check the errata, but I believe the concept is that that heavy weapons act 'normal' in heavy mounts (turrets, ect). I know that was one of the parts of R3r that was rewritten to make a little more sense.

You want real madness? HVARs in turrets, packing AV ammo. Stick 6 of them in a med turret and its the new Quad .50 AA gun. 2 in a small pop up would be a much better move (remember you loose 1 WV with the pop up option.)

Actually in reality, you really need a flatbed trailer, and 6 steel lynx drones tied down to it. That would work so much better!

so if not using dual wielding rules it becomes 108 bullets... about +36 for TN to dodge. I guess this makes a prime example why this method shouldn't be used as a house rule.

On the dual wielding side, do you get to make 6 attacks each round? Other than the fact they don't get barrel mounts for being HV, there's still plenty of options left to reduce the recoil. I'm going to say that allowing this would also be broken. especially if you start thinking about large turrets and so on.

Madness. Think long and hard about what your house rules will be.

I may just go along with requiring the ambidexterity edge from now on and use second firearm rules should this come into my games.

normally second firearms impose a +2 TN on both weapons (the edge would lower this)
removes all beneficial bonus's. (Slink, lasersight, vision mag, range finders) some kind of ruling would need to be made on sensor enhanced gunnery. Seems a toss up of which way I'd lean.
uncompensated recoil spreads to the other (though this can be easily mitigated)
each weapon fired must use the same firing method (SA,BF,FA) - though I think you've already ruled that they should be the same type of weapon and I'd agree with that one.

Other issues could be if your firing against a targets signatures. Changing targets, and any environmental/cover issues.

And I agree completely with the 6 SL's. But really a nice dikoted A. Libre RPV is my drone of choice for outdoor battles... except it draws alot of attention... go figure.

Well remember that with dual wielding, the recoil from one effects the recoil from the other, and you don't get extra recoil adjusters for having multiple weapons, plus you can't add extra recoil reducing weapon mods to turret mounted weapons. As such, a pair of HV Heavy Machineguns in a medium popup turret only get 6 points of recoil compensation each from the turret itself (with Recoil Adjusters), and that's as much as you're going to get. I think they only provide 3 recoil each naturally, so on full auto they'll have a recoil modifier of +18. That's not going to even be functional.

So yeah, HV heavy machine guns just won't work at all. You really need enough recoil comp to completely negate it to have a chance.

I think he was referring to the ares HVAR. vs. the LMG so it'd get double recoil comp.

so 2 HVAR need 9 recoil each. They have 3 naturally, so 6 needs to be reduced. Looks like that 6 each is coming for the recoil adjusters, so you shouldn't be having any problems.

Really the only difference between the 2 is a single dmg code, and when your spitting out that many bullets its not an issue.

Each weapon should be doing 24D if by themselves, or 42D if you wish to combine.

No matter which way you rule on it, either a massive dodge modifier or needing to dodge from 2-6 attacks, the target stands little chance of dodging completely.

Well, it works so long as compensated recoil is halved in turrets, even for heavy weapons. That's a little shaky due to some contradictory entries, but it should be okay.

And yeah, it's nasty... but we're talking about a medium turret unloading 36 bullets a round. I'd expect that to hurt, regardless of the rules you use.

JaronK

IIRC, when I wanted to link weapons in tandem in an SR3 campaign, the GM allowed me to fire both weapons at the same time, but it had to be at the same target. Multiple weapon penalties did not apply, but recoil was cumulative. It seemed to work pretty well. I found that firing 1 or 2 bursts was about the max effectiveness, and going full-auto did not bear thinking about