QUOTE (Seth @ Jan 24 2011, 03:27 PM)
Just explain again how you manage a rate of fire that is around 30 times faster than anything historical? Compared to the finest archers in the world trained from birth. I can see a factor of 3 or 4 from high tech / cyberware / magic... hard to see the rest
Hmmm, if we really wanna take historical numbers into account, the fastest fire rate I've seen recorded is done in Japan, Sanjusangendo, for their "Oyakazu" competition. The extant record for number of shots fired within a 24-hr period was 13503 arrows, fired by Wasa Daihachiro in 1686. This translates down to roughly 9 shots/min averaged out and he had an overall accuracy of about 62%. Oh also the distance was 120M on a 1M diameter target.
Now it's probably reasonable to assume that for a sort period of time you can actually EXCEED the 9shots/min given that the number shown here is actually averaged over
24 HrsTherefore let's assume for our simple math purposes that a non-augmented master archer can fire at a rate of roughly 10 aimed shot/min.
This comes out to 1 shot every 6 seconds for an unaugmented archer which is all in all, not a bad rate, 1 shot per 2 combat turns.
I see it roughly like so:
Turn 1: Ready Weapon (Nock Arrow): 1 Simple Action, Take Aim: 1 Simple Action
Turn 2: Take Aim: 1 Simple Action, Fire: 1 Simple Action.
We can probably simplify it a bit by taking only 1 take aim action per arrow and thus it gives us about 1 shot every 1.5 combat rounds.
Now assuming a maxed out augmented archer, we are able to take 4 initiative passes in a given combat round.
Turn 1
IP1: Nock, Aim
IP2: Fire, Nock
IP3: Aim, Fire,
IP4: Nock, Aim
Turn 2
IP1: Fire, Nock
IP2: Aim, Fire
IP3: Nock, Aim
IP4: Fire, Nock
That's 5 arrows, in 6 seconds which is 1 arrow every 1.2 seconds or so with aimed fire. It looks to me from a pure numbers standpoint you COULD send enough arrows into the sky for a MRSI attempt, but you'd have to be damn near maxed out on speed. Or you could, you know, not aim.
Anyhow there's my attempt to translate Realism™ into Shadowrun Combat Time. I'm not sure what I may have or may not have convinced myself of though. I suppose, I figure if you ARE going to attempt MRSI, then you better be taking aim at least once.