Yes, and for most games losing 5 characters == ending the campaign, so don't use snipers in RPGs.

No Doubt... It is a quick route to a reboot... but sometimes there are repurcussions that must be played out, and this was one of those times... it was brutal, but it was a lesson learned... at least the majority of the normal group survived it... the rest were guest appearances of another team...

Keep the Faith

Regarding perception and range, I think there are a lot of good ideas here - I particularly like Dr Funk's system - but my recommendation is a little different, and I think it's one any Shadowrun GM - or player! - should follow: go outside and look.

Recently I started playing my first SR4 drone rigger, and so I'm using LMG's and sniper rifles for the first time in this system. To get a sense of the relevant range modifiers, and what they meant in-system, I measured out a variety of distances in Google Earth, both in the closest city, and in the wilderness [although a park works if it's big enough and you don't have any convenient wildernesses]. I took a couple of different image magnification systems - a high-power scope and some reasonable field binoculars - to remind me of what was possible with magnification. Then it's just a matter of looking at various-sized things - some of my drones are person-sized, some garbage-can-sized, some breadbox-sized, some car-sized - and thinking about the ramifications of your observations.

Seriously, I know it sounds like simple bullshit, and most of us feel like, yeah, we know what it means to try to see a guy standing on a building 1650 meters away, but it's really, really, genuinely worth doing. I have a whole new appreciation for ranged combat in SR. [And it's spelled d.o.o.m.]

Well, on the one hand you have the fastest mechanic there is, flipping a coin. On the other, you have Rolemaster and its 27 charts to decide if you can take a leak without getting your shoes wet.

Somewhere in between, we all play.

I saw a rulebook for Roadhogs recently (it was TMNT in an apocalypic future type setting--not actually TMNT as it was...not meant for kids) that had a whole slew of rules regarding vehicular combat, including, but not limited to, taking bullets to the radiator, setting the engine on fire, and blowing out tires.

A smart sniper probably would also avoid using drones, since as you pointed out, they can be hacked and it can possibly be used to pinpoint his location. The sniper's strength is stealth, anything that compromises that should be heavily considered as to whether you really need it.

I would suggest that instead of using snipers, use sharpshooters. There's a fundamental difference between the two. Sharpshooters tend to require many others to support them, usually by acting as a barrier between the shooter and the targets. They're also not nearly as clever, dangerous, or difficult as a sniper.

--



I think your numbers are wrong, and personally I would say that attempting to locate a sound by pinpointing would be a higher threshold than just hearing it, so I would set the threshold for a check with your spatial recog at 3 not 2, or require that the player first -hears- the sound before he can attempt to pinpoint it. The ability to pinpoint a sound more easily does not convey any additional ability to hear the sound in the first place.

Visually you'd have 4+4+3-4-3 (I'm not sure how you're getting -7 from range) so 4 dice against the sniper's infiltration hits. Playing the averages, I'd say you'd have to get 4 successes to match the sniper's infiltration successes, and that's being generous.
Audibly you'd have 4+4+3-3-6 so 2 dice against a threshold 2 to hear his gunfire.

Personally, I've always felt that the ghillie suit was too underpowered. The only advantage it had over chameleon was that it could technically be worn over anything. I've felt, especially given the penalties, that a -6 would have been far more suitable.

--



Heh, my MO for my sniper PC, when able, is to severely injure one member of the target group then pick off the rest. People tend to hate leaving people behind, unless they're dead.

--



We personally use Small Unit Tactics and Sniper Tactics knowledge.

--



LOG+Longarms really wouldn't help much. You don't know what sniper rifle he's using (if he's using a sniper rifle), you don't know how it's modded. You really have no way of telling beyond knowing that sniper rifles are generally useful from 1500m in. This is also partially why I encourage splitting sniper tactics from tactics in general. Sharpshooters and snipers behave differently. Snipers do consider far more criteria than just the shooting field from their chosen cover.

--



I've told my GM this when I made my sniper... if I'm being targeted, I screwed up bad. Even if I'm running into a building with the rest of the team, a lot of the same skills can apply. If I'm being targeted over most of the rest of the team, I screwed up bad. The sniper's strength is not his distance shooting or firearms skill, it's his knowledge and stealth.

Not only all of these issues, but technically a sniper is one of the few combat characters that is effective with just a single IP. Also consider that most individuals who actually manage to survive a sniper shot almost certainly took more damage than their body, meaning they got knocked down by the shot. I'm beginning to think that using APDS rounds on a Desert Fox when most of your enemies are using 6/4 with a few 8/6 armors might not be the most cost effective strategy....

The rule I mentioned previously just sounds complicated. In practice, it's no more difficult looking at the (albeit larger) table of modifiers than it is to look at the default one. That's what I meant by it being more complex. Complexity doesn't necessarily make something more difficult. It's just more encompassing.

You would be free to do so, but I'm just going with what's in the book. (Silenced gunfire is a threshold [2], the Spatial Recognizer says, "This accessory pinpoints the direction from which a sound is coming. The user receives a bonus of +2 dice pool modifier on all Perception Tests to find the source of a specific sound.") I could see splitting that up into two separate tests (first without the spatial recog to hear the sound, and a second with to pinpoint it), but honestly I would just roll that into one test since hearing a sound is part of trying to find out where it is coming from. I'm not sure the rules specify either way.



The -7 was the total modifier from the OP's example, which was -3 from range and -4 for ghille suit. What I didn't include was the -4 for the silencer (which wasn't mentioned, but I was assuming since most snipers would be using it). So the penalty would shake out the same either way, - 3 from Range in both cases and -4 from visual perception for the ghille suit or -4 for aural perception from the silencer.

The aural perception test is still easier though, since instead of having to beat the sniper's Infilitration test as a threshold, you only have to beat the [2] for silenced gunfire. Now, if the sniper has ratscrewed his Infiltration test it might still be easier to see him than to hear him (hey, anybody can crit glitch, or clitch as my group calls it), but given that most snipers are going to have pretty good AGL + Infil pools, the threshold [2] is probably going to be easier to hit (and you still get 2 extra dice from the spatial recognizer). More dice against a lower threshold seems better to me.

There are no rules about pin-pointing the source of a sound. So it will depend on GM to GM. I'm just saying how I would do it. I just can't personally see having the same difficulty to hear a sound and pinpoint it. My choice of approach is based on the numbers and law of averages, that's all. Here's how I look at it. I can do it as a single roll, but you would have to use 2 dice separate for the spatial recognizer. You would need 2 hits to just hear the sound from your normal pool. If you get 3 hits on your normal pool, you ignore the spatial dice and you can pinpoint (within reason). If you get 1 hit, you fail to hear the noise and you ignore the spatial dice. If you get 2 hits, you roll the spatial dice to see if you can get another hit to pinpoint.

As I've said, I see no logical reasoning behind why the spatial recognizer would aid in noticing a particular sound.




Any sniper would tool his rifle. They won't be using the silencer accessory, but rather have it built in. This is key, because you're looking at 4 visual, 2 audible for detecting. In either case you will probably need 100% of your dice to be successes. Either way, detecting a sniper without going through rigorous time consuming methods is practically impossible for most characters. It's a good reason for edge.

Aren't the distance modifiers for a silenced gunshot pretty intense?

I hadn't considered the Electronic Warfare option for uncovering his location - I guess if he's in communication with the drones, he's probably got a detectable node. I still think he got his money's worth out of the spotters, though, considering how often he got to shoot at characters hiding behind trees. On any other map, though, you're probably right. Last thing a sniper needs is to give the opposition a way to find him.

Regarding sharpshooters versus snipers, can you elaborate on that? I think I recall hearing that a squad-level marksman is a Sharpshooter, and a battalion-level marksman is a Sniper, but I don't know much more about them then the nomenclature. From what you said above, it sounds like a Sharpshooter is more of a on-the-move or medium range engagement style then the sniper's long-range long-wait style. Any tips about how I would differentiate, or kit them out if I use them as NPCs?

I'm not aware of any penalties beyond the -3 for range (Object/Sound Far Away), -4 for the Silencer (listed under gear), and the threshold [2] listed under Percption Tests Threshold, BBB pg 117 (silenced gunfire being a specific example).



My assumption is based on how it's presented on the Perception Test Table. Penalties are listed for "Object/Sound", if you see an object you know where it is, if you hear a sound you have an idea where it is coming from. I can see making pinpointing (for the purposes of blindfire) to be much more difficult at GM discretion, but I think the basic Perception test should be enough for the characters to have an idea where the attack is coming from.

A sniper could use drones to shoot from different directions, hindering attempts to track him down through confusion.

Here's a good way to look at it. Snipers are strategic assets. Sharpshooters are tactical assets.

Each squad or fireteam has a sharpshooter; generally it's the guy with the best rifle range score. Usually he'll be equipped the same as the other riflemen in the platoon, although this was changing about the time I was getting out (2002).

Snipers tend to be in their own unit, which is often attached to the headquarters element. That is, if a given battalion has 3 line companies (each with 3 line platoons and a weapons platoon), the HQ company will generally have one scout sniper unit attached. The snipers would be deployed at the discretion of the battalion commander, the sharpshooters will be utilized with their squads by their squad leader or platoon commader.

Or could even, in certain circumstances, avoid being present personally. [The best cover is not being there at all.] Drones as sniper assets are one of the most ruinous factors of the game, if dealt with realistically [which isn't, fortunately, a requirement, as much as I personally like it]. Shadowrun high-precision rifles should be capable of ranges over 2km and accuracy greater than 0.1 minutes of angle [minute of arc, if you're a math guy]. To mount such a device to an aerial platform with an indefinite operational period and an expert system optimized with targeting algorithms is to gain an incredible capability, albeit one with certain limitations. Very significantly, such a capability costs vastly less than the countermeasures required to overcome it.

Is subsonic ammunition in use (p.35 Arsenal)? Another -2 for use in a silenced weapon (drops to -1 when used without a silencer).

There's a drawback to that, no?

Either so, subsonic ammo + weapon modded silencer + long ranger = -11 penalty

Makes it impossible for that 4 intuit / 4 percep / 3 sound enhancer character to hear.

Okay...that kind of takes me back to my Imperial Guard days, but I'm still kind of unclear on how we use them in Shadowrun. If I'm reading this right, a Sniper would be a pro, using 20k+ worth of custom stealth and longarms tech and striking from as far away as possible, generally having set up hours before. A Sharpshooter would be equipped like a regular enemy, but would hang back and strike with more accuracy?

You lose 20% off of all range categories. The 800 meters described in the first post of this thread moves from being the far end of the "Long" cateogory to being in the middle of the "Extreme" for a sniper rifle.

Subsonic ammo reduces a weapon's range by 20%, and the AP mod is +2. With a silencer or sound suppressor, it is a -2 penalty to hear the shot, -1 without.

That would still be a -3 (range) -4 (silencer) -2 (subsonic ammo) for a -9.

Still, a -9 penalty against a threshold [2] is easier than a -7 penalty (range and ghille suit) against a threshold determined by most Infiltration tests made by a character who is good at infiltration. (And when it comes to trying to locate the sniper by sound, the +2 for the Spatial Recognizer basically cancels the -2 for the subsonic ammo, so you're still rolling at a -7 vs what is likely the lower threshold.)

Against most opposition, the -7 and the -9 are going to make the sniper all but impossible to find. Against runners-- against most PC's-- there's going to be one or more people in the group with a high enough perception that locating the sniper will be pretty likely. (In my experience, most runner groups have at least one guy with a 15+ perception dice pool.)

Edit: That should be -6 for the weapon modded silencer, for a -11. -11 vs a [2] is closer to even with the -7 to the higher Infiltration threshhold. But as a general rule, the lower threshold with the higher penalty will be better than the higher threshold with the lower penalty, especially when Edge is factored in.

I'd say that the fixed threshold for detecting the silenced gunshot is just that. You detected the silenced gunshot. To find out where the shot came from is still opposed by Disguise whichever Stealth Group skill your GM deems appropriate. Infiltration is the SR4 equivalent of move silently. Disguise is hide.

Really? Disguise? That seems... odd.

Disguise: When a character wants to take on a false appearance of some kind, she uses the Disguise skill. This is true whether she wants to look like someone else or blend into the background. (Bold mine.)

It still seems like it would be Infiltration, except that the silenced gunfire itself can't make a test. It simply is a thing, and it has a difficulty to detect stated explicitly in the book.

I would draw your attention to the second line. "This is true whether she wants to look like someone else or blend into the background." You do detect the silenced gunfire. Using it to detect where it came from and hence where the sniper is is still an opposed test. If you fail to detect the gunfire in the first place...

It seems pretty clear to me that Disguise is used to make you look like someone else or appear innocuous in a general setting. Your interpretation seems, frankly, kind of "out there".

Well, checking the quality of your camouflage with disguise makes sense to me.

Especially since Infiltration thwarts visual Perception Tests as much as they do aural ones.

It seems pretty clear to me that Disguise is specifically used to make you look like someone else or not appear to be there at all. You could interprete that "appear" only applies to sight or vision based tests, but I would go with the sense-neutral "outward aspect".

My initial point was that no matter if you detect the gunshot or not, you still had to beat the appropriate Stealth Group skill to find out where the sniper was. If as the GM, you want to say that the appropriate skill is Infiltration then so be it. My interpretation is that Disguise could be use to disguise where the shot came from.

I agree that pinpointing a shot (knowing exactly where the sniper is, say what window he is firing from) should be harder than knowing the general location (say, the building).

I can't get on board with the Infiltration test though. My reasoning is, the sniper has a lot of control over how and where he hides, but the silenced gunfire is a constant. The sniper can put a lot of situation modifiers out there (distance, silencer, subsonic ammo, intervening noise and so on), but he can't change the thing itself. The gun is always going to sound the same, all the sniper can do is pile on the penalties to make it harder to hear.

This has a nice mechanical balancing effect as well. First of all, hearing the shot is less useful than seeing the sniper, because if you see him (beating the visual modifiers), you can target him. If you hear him, you just know basically where he is. (This can be very useful for characters who can call in indirect fire and air support, but that isn't going to be available in many campaigns.)

Secondly, with all the options that affect the aural test (silencer, subsonic ammo and so on), you can stack more penalties on hearing the sniper than seeing him. If the threshold is the same (based off Infiltration), it becomes significantly harder (more penalties) to get less information (hearing the general location, but still being unable to directly target the sniper).

This is the same basic reasoning I would use if an Invisible character was firing a silenced pistol at people. If people can't beat the spell, they can't see him. But the pistol is always going to be a threshold [2] (silenced gunfire), with the usual penalties (silenced, subsonic, et al). People will be able to hear it (maybe, if they have decent perception ratings), but they're never going to be able to see the guy.

And lets not forget... you can mod that sniper rifle to provide a -9 to Aural Perceptions...

Internal Silencer Provides -6 to the DP, Electronic Firing for a -1, and you could also use subsonic Rounds (why you would want to in a Sniper Rifle is beyond me, but the dynamics of the round do not actually change much... The AP Mod is +2) for an additional -2 for a total of -9

Me personally, I go with the Internal Silencer, Electronic Firing and APDS for a total of -7 to Perception DP and AP -7 as well...

Keep the Faith

This is also my interpretation.

Another consideration in many circumstances is ambient noise. The sound and flash of a rifle shot from a kilometer and a half away are much more obvious in a silent field at night than in a cyberpunk metropolis full of blimpverts and building-sized animated billboards.

SR4A p. 62, Example: "Manya makes an Infiltration + Agility Test to hide from the Lone Star officer searching for her..."
SR4A p. 138, Using Tracking: "If the tracking target is actively seeking to hide their trail, then Tracking is handled as an Opposed Test, similar to Infiltration. The tracking character rolls Tracking + Intuition against the target’s Infiltration + Agility roll."
SR4A p. 171, Drones and Gunnery: "If the target is trying to evade detection, make this an opposed Test versus the target’s Infiltration + Agility (metahumans, critters) or Infiltration (Vehicle) + Reaction +/– Handling in the case of vehicles."
SR4A p. 261, Motion Sensors: "Defeating a motion sensor requires that characters move very slowly through the field, one halfmeter per Combat Turn, and succeeding in an Infiltration + Agility (3) Test."

Yep. Infiltration is totally just "move silently" and in no way applies to hiding or otherwise evading detection whatsoever.

And yet most people tend to ignore or forget that little detail... though in effect, the penalties are pretty slim; of course, if you are starting at -7 to -9 for the weapon, and then you add range (-3) and the Interfering Noises (-2) and the Perceiver is Distracted (-2), well then your base Negative Modifier is starting around -14 to -16 Dice, then you can add the few positive modifiers; +3 for Audio Enhancement, +2 for Spatial Recognizer (assuming you subscribe to the inclusion of the Recognizer for the initial detection test), for an initial shot Perception of -9 to -11... a great number of characters will never even have dice to roll without Edge Expenditures...and though Silenced Gunfire is placed on the Threshold table at Normal (2), I would actually place it at the Threshold Level of Obscured/Muffled (3), afterall that is what a silencer does, it obscures/muffles...

All in all, a competent Sniper with Comparable Equipment will have likely killed 2-3 People before his initial firing position is ever located, and by the time you do locate the origins of the shot, he is probably long gone from that particular location...

Anyways...

Keep the Faith

If you are running a tac net the first shot should get you a general location, the second shot will probably get spotted as there is a sensor cued on it and then Mr. Sniper is going to have a bad day. I'd also argue that you can't do long range sniping with subsonic bullets. At 400 yards you've lost >900 fps from a good bullet and at less than 200 FPS it's going to do about as much damage as a paint ball gun.

You mean that to be hyperbole, right?

Emphasis mine. Partially true, as noted in your quotes. Perhaps we could get a clearer picture if we were to compare and contrast the texts of Infiltration and Disguise.

No. At under 200 FPS you often won't even get skin penetration. Hitting someone with 1/4 oz at 130 MPH just isn't going to severely hurt most people. If they are wearing body armor it isn't going to do squat.

I'm not [necessarily] disputing effects, only specifics: the bullet as 200fps will do a lot more damage than a paintball at 200fps, if only because the bullet has much more mass. A TTI Armory .308 subsonic round weighs 10.9 grams, whereas a heavy paintball weighs 3.2 grams. Even assuming no other superior characteristics of the bullet over the paintball, that's a threefold difference in force.

Anyway, I'm being pedantic, which is why I asked if you intended the hyperbole. The more important point is that the issue you raise is a valid one. That said, subsonic ammunition is very popular with SWAT teams and snipers, driving evolution of ammunition intended to counteract these drawbacks in velocity. There are various existing solutions, and I would expect those in SR to be further optimized.

While disguise could be used to imitate a gunshot, that would require previous preparation. You can't expect your skills to be used by the gun though, so whatever sound or flash was produced by the gun would still be produced by the gun. I mean I know future guns can be smart, but you can't teach them to throw their voice just by their proximity to you. Maybe if you fed your Barrett 121 a disguise autosoft, it could pretend to be a falling branch. I imagine Crêpe paper would needs be involved.

I was thinking more along the lines of using Disguise to choose a suitable location for the creation of a hunter's blind to make use of surrounding buildings' acoustics to hide the sound of the weapon so that it appears to have come from a different location or to blend into the background altogether.

Toturi is really cracking me up here, just because the sniper in my scenario really did disguise the sound of his shots. I mentioned that he had a half-dozen drones acting as spotters, right? One of them was a Smokecloud, the diversion/distraction drone from Arsenal. It was set up to mimic an unsilenced rifle report every time that he fired; the heroes spent two extra combat turns tracking it down.

I might be confused about the skill check issue for silenced gunfire; isn't the Threshold 2 functionally the same as the net hits on an Infiltrate test? If I roll four hits on Infiltrate, they need to beat a threshold of four to spot me; wouldn't this mean that I simply use the Threshold 2 as my hits and they need to roll better then two to hear it? If I were going to add the hits from a skill test to the audio threshold, then shouldn't there be a base threshold I'm adding to the visual test?

There is a -3 for interfering sight/odor/sounds, all of which would be applicable in most urban settings. I alluded to this in one of my earlier posts about how the sniper can stack penalties by choosing the best ground, but it wasn't included in our penalty tallies. (Although since it applies to visual and aural perception more-or-less equally-- assuming the interference is both sight and sound related-- it doesn't change the math comparing aural to visual.)



My assumption is yes; the threshold for the visual test would be the Infiltrate hits, the threshold for the silenced gunshot would be for "silenced gunfire", threshold [2].

Pinpointing the sniper (knowing what window he's firing from, as opposed to what building) isn't covered specifically, so I think anything we come up with will be a houserule or interpretation. Personally, I'm leaning towards an Extended Test where the targets rack up hits on their perception tests over several shots. That way, as the sniper fires the targets are getting more information each time and that gives the sniper more incentive to move after every few shots, since that would reset the tally.

Something like Threshold [2] per range category, so Threshold [8] at Extreme Range. (I don't know if basing off the range cat of the weapon makes sense, but it seems easier.) The threshold would likely be higher than spotting the sniper by beating his Infiltration hits, but the targets would accrue successes on each perception test for the aural pinpointing, whereas with the visual they'd have to beat the Infiltration all at once.

A sniper who moves every few shots becomes very difficult to pinpoint by sound (hopefully, he'll blow his Infil roll and get spotted that way), but as I pointed out before the sniper moving helps the targets as well, since that gives them time to move, seek cover, and escape and evade. Meanwhile, the targets can be using their tactical skills (LOG + whatev) to pick the best sniper spots. It's a gamble, but so is everything else.

If I remember my rudimentary acoustics correctly... there's a couple of reasons I think pinpointing the source of far sounds is ludicrous (pinpointing meaning the exact location of the source).

The first reason is basic triangulation. If you're standing still, then there should be no reason you can pinpoint the exact location of a sound. You will need at least two points of reference to determine location. A Tacnet -can- help if the other people contributing audible input heard the sound.
The second reason is the lack of regard for any echo or other factors that alter a traveling sound.
The third reason is that pinpointing is an action that doesn't -require- any special software to perform. This means it's entirely possible for an unaugmented human to pinpoint a gunshot.

These three reasons together lead me to believe one of the following three conclusions....
1. Characters can only pinpoint the source of a noise that is close by rather than at longer distances.
2. Pinpointing only gives you the general direction of a noise source, not the specific m^3 location that sound originated from.
3. Both 1 and 2, with the results of pinpointing varying based on distance to source.

--



The sniper used misdirection by utilizing other firing platforms. Disguising the sound of shots would be intentionally firing when other loud noises are going on. Timing your shots with the thunder from a storm, stuff like that.

Though, that's the biggest problem with snipers. There is no way to force detecting them by gunfire onto a skill which the sniper can excel in. The rifle will always be the weak point.

--



This is an example of when I hate extended test rules. It's also a prime example of an extended test that should require a minimum success number to contribute to the extended test threshold. A person who constantly rolls 1 success, and thus entirely unable to hear silence gunfire, will suddenly pinpoint the location of gunfire that he never heard after 8 tests.

Triangulation is what tacnets are all about. Remember, it's the future.
Echoes don't matter. The first soundwave to arrive will always be the original. We're looking at triangulation based on x distance traveled in differing time per point with a known speed of sound. A computer should be able to narrow direction very quickly when given that data. In fact, it should be able to plot the exact flight path. This is all provided that the sound can be distinguished, which is a very doubtful sentiment. Though, once again, we're talking future tech.

This is happening to a bunch of guys with Audio Enhancement to crank up the juice, Select Sound Filters to remove all the ambient stuff, and maybe even a Spacial Recognizer or two to facilitate the pinpointing of sounds. As they close the distance, the clack of the bolt will be enough to kill a sniper too dumb to bug out.

Oh, and back to the Astral, a human's astral signature, even mundane, is far different than that of a tree. Especially when that human is currently participating in the act of shooting people in the head. A few leaves won't cover up that shining beacon of murderous intent. Though kzt's astral ambush idea is wicked nasty.

There's more than sound to go by; you can study where the bullet came from, what angle it hit, how deeply it penetrated or deformed. Factor in wind speeds, properties of that type of bullet, angle etc, and you can begin to guess where the sniper might be. You'd need readings from several shots to get a very precise picture, which is exactly why extended tests (one per shot) make sense.

What about a sniper with a Silence spell?

Read please. The third point is the most relevant. There is no technical requirements to pinpointing the location of sound. It doesn't say you have to have tacnet software running (pinpointing was mentioned in SR4, tacnets came from a later publication). It doesn't say under spatial recognizers that you need to have them to pinpoint. Unaugmented includes software, cyberware, bioware, or any other enhancement you can think of. All of those things only provide a bonus which can make it easier. Unaugmented or augmented, the results from success are the same. Strip it down and ignore the other factors. It means that a 3 intuition, 3 perception character with no further bonuses to his listen checks will get the exactly same information from a pinpoint action as someone with a spatial recognizer and a tacnet, assuming identical numbers of successes.

Make all the statements you want about it being the future and future tech. Unless the equipment dictates otherwise, the rules make no distinction between a technical and a non-technical method to yield results. If you can make a case on how an unaugmented human would be able to pinpoint the exact source of a sound, I'm all ears.

There was talk upthread about how characters could use skill rolls to determine likely sniper blinds (LOG + Small Unit Tactics, LOG + Longarms and so on were all suggested). Nothing was settled, but I would allow rolls like those so the characters could deduce probably locations the sniper was firing from.



I agree. I would say an aural perception test has to hit the threshold [2] to count towards the total on the sniper.

Otherwise, I'm fine with a Threshold [8] Extended Test (with penalties as high as -14 off the top of my head) letting PC's pinpoint the sniper. Because honestly, with the type of penalties the sniper can get going (-6 weapon modded silencer, -2 subsonic rounds, -3 interfereing noise, -3 range, and we could probably get it higher), that effectively means an unaugmented human can't pinpoint a sniper by sound (at least without burning serious Edge, and when you're burning Edge it's luck). A subject would have to have a 16 DP, and roll hits on both dice, and do that four times to pinpoint before the sniper moved.

A character with a 20 Perception pool (a phys ad with tricked out ear pieces, devoted to Perception, with the Spatial Recognizers that we're letting him use on the first test because we're nice) would still require about four shots to beat the extended test threshold.

So let's dispel the notion that an Extended Test Threshold of [8] at a possible -14 (or more) to the DP is somehow letting unaugmented humans run away with the game. I mean, under battlefield conditions, that's pretty much the definition of impossible.

Hint: They're called the left ear, and the right ear.

You can get pretty good positional info on a sound if you pan your head from side to side; I used to use that to track down which of the dozen computers in a room had the broken fan. Give it a try - pick a sound in the room you're in right now, and listen to it while you turn your head from full left to full right. It's surprising just how much it helps.

The problem with using that technique on a rifle report, silenced or otherwise, is that the noise is brief; by the time you realise you're hearing it it's already over. If a system such as a tacnet was set up to triangulate, it should pinpoint it quickly. I've been considering issuing expendable tacnet commlinks to team members, slaved to a master to save on software. I'd like to customise them with some built in sensor packages to help them get to the minimum number to be a contributing member - usually I go with omnidirectional sensors like RF and Audio, since it will be clipped to a belt instead of facing the enemy. If four runners with R6 positional audio/enhanced audio pickups all hear a weapon fire, the tacnet should probably be able to give them a probable location for the shooter. The caveat there when dealing with a silenced weapon is wether the system can hear it in the first place.