That's (one of) the caliber(s) of the Ceska Scorpion, which has its namesake in the "Machine Pistol" Category. And since "Machine Pistols" have a lower Damage code, I assume that that refers to "lower powered" calibers as the distinguishing factor between "Machine Pistols" and "Submachine Guns". So, using 9mm for both seems inappropriate.

Then again, that's all just personal opinion. >You might as wel home in the "Machine Pistols" under 9mm and the "Submachine Guns" as .45 ACP, although that would feel a bit counter-intuitive to me, as the 9mm is the most common SMG caliber that I know of.

Check out the Centurion C-Ram project.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS (look down to at least halfway down the page)
It's mounted on a trailer... so in way it is vehicle mounted. Agree, it'd definitely would not fit on an MPUV... now if it was dragging it on a trailer...

I want an MPUV with a heavy-duty trailer hitch (Class IV, I guess. No way I could get a Fifth Wheel on a MPUV either.).

I want a Leaopard 2A4 Evolution. No more problems finding a parking lot.

The friend I keep referring to being in the IED Attack while driving a tank was in one of the new Leopard 2A6Ms. He was one of the first to be trained on them, and he's still alive, so the up-armoring works just fine!

Agreed, but I prefer the IBD AMAP solution way over the outdated KMW solution of the A6M.

Really, Shadowrun is not meant to realistically represent the combat environment of real life. Because we all know (at least I hope that it is understood) that when someone is actually hit with a directed burst from a minigun, regardless of how tought that they think they may be, they are a fine mist of hamburger...

Fact is... if you represented Shadowrun with real life simulationist rules for combat, it would be a very short game indeed, as everyone would probably die in the first combat encounter...

It'd just place so much more emphases on Infiltration skill, and Concealment and whatnot. Refer to the megasniper in the perception thread

Nice gun nut show going on in this thread.
Now, just to make things more fun, suppose we also want to include 2A72 or 2A42 analogues.
Those are 30 mm autocannons mounted on Russian BMP IFVs and Mil attack copters.
Would they also count as miniguns, hmmm?

Which, of course, is its own problem...

I resemble that remark.

As I stand here, in the rain, during a storm, wearing my copper armour, screaming obscenities at the Gods.

I think I've gone too far into the "Nut" part.

Rotary cannons.

They are not rotary. Actually, even GSh-30-2 is not rotary. :ь

Well then they can't be miniguns. Miniguns are multibarrel rotary weapons.

Might they be part of the Rotary Club?

Rrrright. But GSh-30-2 is pretty much analogous to oh-so-venerated GAU-8 Avenger (which is in turn rotary), at least when it comes to rates of fire.


Well, maybe just associated members.

Now, in all fairness. Autocannons, right?
Won't that make our precious CIWS one, too, in the end?

I would say yes, considering autocannons are classified as miniguns in general, as far as SR is concerned.
You could argue that, instead of being classified as a "Minigun", it would be classified as a HV weapon instead. Tomayto, tomahto.



Yes, as the CIWS IS a minigun. In fact, the US CIWS systems are actually the GAU-8 Avenger (Goaklkeeper) [GE Vanquisher] and the M61 Vulcan (Phalanx) [GE Vigilant].

Is this based on the 3 second combat turn? Remember that it does not consider the attacker to just be lead hosing the environment, but instead fires off a specific number of rounds, stop to check effectiveness (end of initiative pass) and fires of more vs same or different targets as needed (next initiative pass).

SR combat deals with mental processing speeds, not gross mechanical cycle rates. This is also why the wired reflexes and such do not make one physically faster, as they instead accelerate how quickly one can get ones body to adapt to the changing combat situation. a 3 pass guy will be able to assess and engage more targets based on neural processing speed compared to the 1 pass guy.

True, but "Suppression Fire" would assume saturation fire for the most part, I guess. Obviously you can provide cover fire in short controlled bursts to specific locations as well, but the "Suppression fire" rule is more of a "saturate the area with bullets, so no one will stick out their head while the bullets fly" mechanic:



You basically pull the trigger until the mag is empty, if you keep it up long enough. At the max IP alotment, that makes for 80 rounds fired per combat turn or a cyclic rate of 1.600 rounds per minute as the absolute top (which then applies euqally to machine pistols as well as miniguns).
If you wish to argue that the suppression fire rule is flawed in that regard, I am happy to agree, but that's not really the point here.

Indeed. hobgoblin, I'm only saying that all the CIWS mentioned on the wikipedia page fire in excess of 4000 rounds per minute (with ammo cap of 2000 or less). If you suppression-fire a minigun (I know, they're not 'miniguns') with 5 IPs (super-rigger), it's still not enough ammo being used up, and that's not even the realistic use-case, right?

yep, the suppression rules are indeed the odd duck out here.

makes me consider tracing its origins from SR2 onwards, as i think it has basically stayed the same while the SR initiative rules have changed around it.

Edit:
did a quick flip through SR2 and SR3, and neither actually holds rules for suppressive fire. So it seems it may have been added in SR4, unless it hides out in one of the advanced combat rules books.

Fairly certain it first appeared in FoF.

Ok, so SR4 is the first version where it got moved into the main book rather then kept as a "advanced" rule?

sr2: FoF
sr3: Cannon Companion

Ah yes, CC. Checked, and it seems a fair bit more reasonable (and more controlled then then spray and pray). I guess something was lost trying to cram it into SR4 proper. Also CC holds a rule that would make somewhat more sense for use with CIWS, searching fire. Tho now that i think about it, that would be a wide burst in SR4 terms.

Checked a bit and the autocannons in Arsenal use minigun rules.

Their extreme range of the heavy is 2400 meters (rest of the range bands are heavy machinegun based).

fire off a wide burst and the cruise missile gets a -14 to dodge. With a damage of 11P -6AP.

Yes?

As I said earlier, the cruise missiles with stats from War! you can shot down with man-portable machine guns.

You can use a heavy machine gun (yes, even a hunting rifle) to shoot down a plane in real life, so what is the big deal?

What kind of plane? A WWII prop fighter? You can, theoretically - in practice, you got an order for such a shot in Soviet Union during the War.
A modern fighter jet, or even worse, a hypersound cruise missile? Absolutely not, you're just not getting a shot. Especially not with a hunting rifle.
You could try shooting a copter down with a lot of concentrated machine gun fire, but even that endeavor is likely to end bad - since a gunship copter has a chin mounted 30 mm automatic cannon, some four missile pods and a bunch of armor around everything vital, and you're soft and oh so squishy.

You can indeed shoot down a fighter jet (there was one in the 80's I think) with a Rifle... Most jets downed by ground fire, in a war zone, are not traveling at supersonic speeds after all...

Never said it would not cost you (the shooter) in the end, just said that it can be done.

And yes, Nowadays, there are not a lot of pilots that fly that close to the ground with Fighter jets. That is what the atrtack choppers are for after all (they cost a lot less), and yet, even the Attack Choppers are subject to such things as ground fire from small arms and machine guns, rockets, and even Wire Guided Missiles that cost a bare fraction of what the vehicle they are targeting cost...

Minding that a ground attack plane is capable of flying without one wing and one engine, but with 800 bullet holes in the rest of it; the pilot's cockpit is armed like a goddamn tank; and it still goes at some 800 km/h, I just don't see anyone turning his machine gun that fast. Looking at the Russian losses in the three eights war for a recent example, the planes downed mostly got hit by the old Soviet SAM missile complexes, often repeatedly. Can't see anyone downed by handgun fire.

As I said, yes, you can shoot down a copter with a machine gun, sure (not with a sniper rifle, unless the pilot is retarded or you're watching a Hollywood movie). But it'd be a risky affair.

Now, shooting down a cruise missile with a heavy machine gun in Shadowrun is a guaranteed success. It stays in range fore the bare minimum of two turns, it has no Defense autosoft, so it can't even dodge - what's the problem hitting it? It has what, 8 armor? Any heavy machine gun hit penetrates that. And what, 12 condition boxes? A single burst downs it. Every. Time.

Minding that I am only familiar with a single plane where that occurred (The A-10 Warthog), I am betting that if you removed the wing from an AV8/B, F14, F16 or F18, you would have a downed plane in no time. And the Warthog is still not travelling at 800km/h while actually attacking (they actually fly really slow... it does no one any good for the Ground attack fighter to fly by at 800+ km/h, as they are then not supporting the ground troops all that well)... And no, the F14, F16 and F18 are not true ground attack planes (I know that), but air superiority fighters, so their flight requirements are vastly different than the Warthog or Harrier.



I would say that it would not be a sure thing, but that it is still possiblle... Which is why you tend to not send those types of vehicles into a zone that is hotly contested, and definitely not into a landing zone with active hostilities unless you cannot avoid doing so...



And again, I say, so what? You would still have to pervceive it before you can target it... assuming that you had the targeting capabilities and the reaction time to do so, I have no problems with that in the game...

As a comparison, you do realize that you can actually watch a Dragon or TOW Missile during its flight trajectory (unaided even) as well as most Rockets fired from ground personnel. Hell, even some Surface to Air Missiles can be perceived with no real difficulty. Assuming that your reaction time was decent, you could probably shoot those down as well as long as you had a weapon with an appropriate rate of fire, and you were at least somewhat skilled in it. But honestly, even stating that you can watch the munitions as they travel, you will still likely opt for the "get under cover" reaction ( I know that I would) rather than the "Shoot it out of the Sky" Reaction. Those who would choose the second option are those rare individuals who often end up earning the Medal of Honor, or you know, die trying to...

Anyways...

The original "one wing" plane was actually an Israeli F-15 that was in a midair collision during maneuvers. The -10's can fly with up to 60% of their airframe gone (and nobody can make them anymore, the contractors went out of business and the plans were lost).

Yeah, the A-10 is an awesome piece of machinery... Loved them in the Gulf...
Of course, the Apaches, Super Cobras, and other GA Helicopters, were pretty awesome as well...

Ah, no. I suppose it's theoretically possible but giving in for speed and altitude, I just dont see it. Even leeding the target. by the time the rounds left the barell the missle would already have flown by. I would say you'd need to role 10 success or better to hit that, added in edge to make sure, shooting down a cruise missle is luck not accuracy. Thats why the CIWS throws up a wall of lead, a normal HMG could not accomplish that wall of lead. I've been on a .50 cal crew, have fired the thing plenty. Just doent see it with a metahuman behind the trigger. Not saying you cant, luck and all, but as a GM I'd make that target number very high. Adding in a perception test to see the missle so you can fire at it, with a nother high target number. Let the automated systems take care of it.

If an automated system can take care of it, so can a cybered up human. They're pretty much one and the same. Give the guy wires, an attention co-processor, a math SPU and a smartlink and he'll be just as accurate as the dedicated weapons system, if not more so.

Protip: the world's arms are not limited to what USA produces. And Su-25s fly after taking a SAM missile into one of the engines.

What is stopping you from seeing a Large vehicle coming right at you, staying in your zone of fire for two to three turns? It doesn't have any masking methods.

Projectiles are not vehicles. MDS is the only thing to be capable of trying to shoot those down, far as I know the RAW.
Oh, and I don't think doing your job instead of cowering like a scared child is reason enough for a Medal, but it could be a cultural thing, of course.

This is all well and good, but you're going with common sense here. Common sense, sadly, is not part of the RAW, and by the RAW, you see a Large vehicle coming right at you without any means to mask its approach pretty much 100% of the time, and not that the target numbers to hit it depend on its speed.

*Curses the Diefenbaker Government Under My Breath*

So give it Armor or something, if you want it to be harder. If it's a vehicle, then it takes a lot of punishment to fill the Condition Monitor. I don't know what the cruise missile stats are in WAR!, but what're the odds that they're right?

Yerameyahu, see, that's precisely my point.
The stats given for cruise missiles in War! in no way reflect what they are like, neither by RL logic, nor by SR one.

From my understanding of War!

...

Is that I need to shut up until I read the thing for myself.

If your the GM, house rule it, that't the perk of being a GM, you can change the rules that make no sense and apply RL to them. Rememeber the RAW are guidelines, feel free to change as your individual game needs require. Sides the only place I'd say RAW really comes into play is at a CON or an event where your scored for using the RAW like at the SR tourny at GEN CON. As long as your ruling makes sense and your players agree change the rule if it's to silly to use. As a former Infantryman combat is harsh, no game rule in any system have ever come close to RL, sometimes they make little sense, so change them, make a house rule and stick to it. IMHO though I'd say allow for the attack and include smartlink, aiming, radar, and whatever else you can throw on top plus edge, but make the taget number to hit very high 10-14 range. Yes cruise missles are vehicles but they are moving at high speeds and hard to see without some type of guidence lock or mechanical means, so add on a perception test, with a high difficulty number, adding in all the visual measures you can to see/target the missle, then roll the hit. I'd do the same for an aircaft moving at high speed too. now if you are the center of its attack, say like a straffing run or a combat aircraft shooting at ground targets, maybe lower the number as its efferts are focused on the player. I'd still house rule this as an extremely difficult test both for perception and to hit. if the rule is lacking make one that works for your game

ProRebuttal: Not as knowledgeable about Russian Airplanes, so I do not feel I can competently comment about their capabilities. I AM familiar with American Planes, so there you go. Same reason I rarely comment on German, British, French or anyother power's Military Hardware. The one comment I CAN make about Russian Hardware is that the T-72 sucks... had an opportunity to actually capture one and play with it, working through all its components and whatnot, taking it apart... NOT Impressed.



Well, the fact that it might have armaments on board that could turn a person to mush. Do not get me wrong here, I have no issues opposing a vehicle at range, given the appropriate weaponry is available. Lack of a weapon that will actually hurt a vehicle will cause me to NOT attack said vehicle. Just common sense here. Visible people on the vehicle are a different matter, though.



No, projectiles are not vehicles, but many man-portable weapons designed to destroy vehicles travel at speeds that approach or exceed the vehicle's speed. So my point will still stand. As for Cowering like a scared child, you obviously did not understand my point. Medals of Honor are not passed out for simply doing your job/duty, at least not in the Marine Corps. It takes a special breed to earn those, and they are the ones that tend to take on overrwhelming odds with inappropriate gear and weapons, because that is how they are wired. Not everyone can earn a Medal of Honor.



I do not know about you, but i try not to metagame the system so much as to break it all down to the mechanics. I do try to see it from the character's point of view. And honestly, if I have a Missile Inbound (or a Large Vehicle), I am NOT going to try to shoot it down on the off chance that it may succeed... I am going to find the hardest cover around and hope that it will absorb the damage enough that I can stay alive and keep on Mission.

Thanks... Enjoy the Discourse...

For reasons to be awarded MoH and VC, see the post about the fellow on the train who took on 40 gunmen/swordsmen/knifemen with a knife.

OK, he was a Gurkha with a Kukri, but still, balls.

No Doubt...

Plenty of planes can fly after taking one up the tailpipe. Will the -25 fly if it's lost a whole wing?

That was the example we were going off of. The F-15 has a cross-section large enough that it can keep aloft with a wing missing.

I really did not need to know that much about the sexuality of airplanes.

Now you know where new airplanes come from.

After a mommy aircraft and daddy aircraft have a coolant-soaked tryst at 30,000 feet...

...the design team pulls their hair out and draws up a new set of blueprints to send to the government.


HAAAA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAA

When I GM, I can (and do) houserule many things. When I write a book that others might be using, I must be writing the rules I suggest as usable and making as much sense as possible. So that nobody has to houserule.

You liked Abrams better? Think the loaders do?
Besides, don't forget that 72s have been through a lot of upgrade iterations by now.

The thing is, a SR cruise missile does not have weapons to mush you. And you can hurt it with a machine gun.

I'm talking RAW here. You can't shoot down a missile launcher shot with a machine gun by RAW (unless said machine gun happens to be a part of a missile defense system). You can shoot down a drone (which is a vehicle; and which a cruise missile is by RAW).

I'll repeat my point from earlier in this message: yes, when GMing or playing, you do things the way that makes most sense. When writing rules, you make them as realistic, believable and consistent with other rules in the system as possible (see my first post in the topic). Just so that somewhere out there, when a GM tries to use your work for his campaign, he wouldn't have to say "No you can't do it" when a player tries to do something completely unrealistic while following the rules you wrote precisely.