According to Rigger 3, a pop-up remote micro turret takes one firmpoint, has a weapon value of 1, and takes up 1 CF (R3 141). I'm mounting the turret on a Gaz-Willys Nomad, so free space and load are not problems, and the vehicle has a roll bar factory installed.

What I'm not clear on is does the micro turret have any internal space for ammo and/ or gunnery recoil adjustment (which takes 1 CF per R3 137). I can't find anything that specifically states what else can be inside a micro turret besides the weapon. Also, should the turret be obvious to someone looking into the vehicle when the turret is retracted, say, border patrol or Lone Star?

The rules also don't seem to state whether a firmpoint needs to actually be installed along with the turret, or if the turret just occupies the space that could have been used for a firmpoint.

Based on the fact that the Mini Turret has 1CF of internal space and takes 6CF (12 for Pop-Up), while the Micro Pop-Up Turret takes only 1 CF total, I'd say the implication is that it has no internal space. If it were to have internal space, it would be on the order of 0.1CF.

That said, it has also been my interpretation that such accessories don't need to fit into the turret space; in fact, for Ammunition Bins this interpretation is canon (R3 p135, "Ammo space for turrets will consume the turret's internal CF space […] first, and then CF from the vehicle itself"). It's not unreasonable to rule that something like gunnery recoil adjusters would need to be in the turret, but the passage in question (R3 p137, "Gunnery recoil adjusters are available for fixed mounts and turrets only.") is more likely intended to forbid applying GRA to Ring/Pintle mounts than to express that GRA needs to fit inside a turret.

Actually, on reflection the fact that fixed mounts don't have separate CF allocations means that it'd be pretty difficult to argue the latter interpretation.


R3 p140, "Pop-up turrets remain concealed from plain view until their weapons are used." Of course, with classic Shadowrun attention to detail, this suggests that if you pop the turret up, it's still concealed until you actually fire it.

Based on the words "plain view" I think the implication is that a Perception test can locate the turret, but I don't remember any guidance as to what the TN should be. Another thing for SR3R, I guess.


I don't think the concept was hammered down by the designers; despite references to installing firm/hardpoints and the Body rule giving a limit, there are no costs, masses, CFs, or installation times for foopoints (at first I thought SR3 p312 might have them, but those turn out to be fixed weapon mounts). I treat them as a bookkeeping tool rather than as an in-universe artifact.

~J

is the rule of using the vehicles body for recoil compensation for the weapon already in SR3 or is that new to SR4?
If it's in SR3 already, don't worry about gunnery recoil adjustment. Stuff like that is probably only for things like miniguns.

SR4. Recoil on SR3 vehicles is halved before compensation, but you still need a little.

~J

ah, okay.

Kage, your conclusions are pretty much what I came up with myself, but I wasn't sure if I was missing something. I'll probably go with no internal ammunition space, even though I'd like having that space if I were a player. As far as the recoil adjustment goes, it's really a moot point since the heaviest weapon that can be installed is a rifle or shotgun, although one could make a full auto shotgun with really stiff recoil. I may look at the 4e rules for body and use that as a house rule.

I don't think it's necessary, the SR3 vehicle recoil rules are if anything a little overpowered. Unless you mean to replace those, but I'm not sure what would be gained.

~J

Yeah, I meant as a replacement. I still will have to look at the rules first to see if it would be worth the hassle.

`

Out of interest, what do you find lacking about the way SR3 currently handles vehicle recoil compensation?

~J

I'm mostly intrigued that the designers felt the need to change the rule, rather than feeling a need to change it. For heavy military vehicles, however, it seems that saying recoil is cut in half is a little skimpy. I recall my NCOs in the Army talking about gunnery and how the 240 coax was like a laser when they got it zeroed properly. The weapon mount for the coax on Bradleys and Sheridans that I trained on was just a really sturdy bracket, not "high-precision micro-actuators." So in that respect, having the vehicle's Body count against recoil penalties seems appropriate. For pintle mounts, I think 50% reduction in recoil is plenty fair.

They felt the need to change absolutely everything else, why not that?


I think in actual practice that's going to be less recoil compensation in practical terms. Vehicle recoil in SR3 is halved and rounded down before recoil compensation, so a Gas-Vent III is enough to fully suppress seven rounds. Actually, the Gas Vent IV whose existence I'm always forgetting about suppresses up to nine rounds. You really have to be skimping on the recoil compensation for typical Vehicle body (probably 5 or less for Shadowrunner vehicles; 6 gets you APCs and Heavy Tranports) to start adding enough to be an improvement.

~J

For SR, sure, you could just use Gas Vent. IRL machineguns don't use gas venting as described in Shadowrun. The most you might see is a really fancy flash suppressor that won't do much of anything to compensate for recoil during full-auto fire. The smallest weapon I know of off hand with a muzzle brake is M82 Barret rifle.

Somewhat off-topic, this reminds me that the designers ignored one of the key subsystems on a military vehicle: stabilization. Good weapon stabilization makes a world of difference when your gunner is trying to hit something while the vehicle is moving 40mph over rough terrain.

R3 has Vehicle Gyroscopic Stabilisers (p142).

Sure, but Shadowrun's firearms rules simply don't stand up to that level of scrutiny. See the fire rates, for example, or the all-or-nothing nature of autofire. If you're going to do a comprehensive rework of the system more power to you, but if not it seems weird to me to draw the line at needing the standard SR recoil compensation.


They ignored more than that. Read the Rigger 3 description of diesel engines sometime. I love this game, but it's a… qualified love.

~J

Your right, they did.... I somehow misread that the half-dozen times I've looked at it over the past few days. I kept reading it as stabilizing the vehicle itself, as the setup on p129 for motorcycles. Critical failure, Literacy.




Yep. The sad thing is that even with SR's issues it's still a lot more realistic than a lot of other systems.



Ouch.... Diesels are two-stroke engines? Jet propellers don't provide thrust?

Hah, I'd forgotten about that. At least being all two-stroke is possible, if absurd; I was thinking about the claim that diesel fuel has a lower flash point than gasoline, as well as the associated bogus rationale.

It doesn't look to me like R3 claims that jet propellers don't provide thrust; are you perhaps misreading "with forward thrust on the side" to mean that something else is placed adjacent to provide forward thrust? My reading of that is that it provides thrust in addition. I'm more dubious about the claim that they provide lift, but I don't have time to research it properly now.

~J

I guess you could make a two-stroke diesel engine, but all of them that I've seen have been four-stroke. Diesel is supposed to have a lower flash point than gasoline; that's why the military likes it. I'll look up the MSDS's later when I have more time.


What got me here wasn't the claim of providing lift via propwash, but that providing lift was the primary function. Thrust is the primary function; otherwise, propellers would be useless on a blimp, hovercraft, or swamp buggy airboat. Helicopters also use propellers to provide thrust, but the thrust is mostly used to keep the vehicle airborne (a gross simplification, I'm sure). There's also basic word etymology working here: propel-ler.

Two random providers: conventional gasoline, listing a flash point of -43°C, and diesel fuel, listing a flash point of greater than 52°C. Curiously enough, despite having the direction backwards you're correct that that's one of the major reasons cited for military use of diesel (the other being more energy per unit mass/volume).


I think that was just the writer being overly cute with phrasing.

~J

Yeah, many Diesel engines can run on stuff like filtered cooking oil specifically BECAUSE they provide a higher ignition temperature.




-k

I'm pretty sure that a higher temperature flashpoint is better / less flammable, so that would make the gasoline the less desirable fuel by a wide margin. Also, gasoline rates a "3" on the hazard scale, while diesel is a "2."

It looks like the ignition temperature is separated into flashpoint and autoignition temperature on an MSDS. Taking the data on the MSDS's, gasoline ignites easier than diesel in the presence of a source (flame, spark), but diesel ignites easier than gasoline without a source. As I understand it from my time in the Army, the first scenario is the greater concern because having fuel ignite from incoming fire is a Bad Thing^TM.

For the writing, maybe the writer was being overly cute. Dunno, and it really doesn't matter because most people probably don't know any better anyways. They could write just about anything regarding the medical stuff and I wouldn't know better unless it was something ridiculous, like coffee causes HMHVV.

One of the reasons they're so well liked by the military. Fairly simple to maintain, too. If you get the right kind.

Nothing better than a german Diesel.
After WWII, german submarines captured were left unattended for months on end . .
And they simply started up again as if they had been under full power just yesterday again.

Russian T34s as well. One was just pulled out of a swamp where it had been abandoned in WWII. A little bit of work, and off she goes!

I wish we could still build things like that today. POS designed to break garbage!

Ah, yes, the good old T34 . . A Pawn could use it, a pawn could repair it. You only need 2 Tools. One wrench, one hammer.

*Bad Russian Accent*: "If wrench go missing, get bigger hammer."

*pitr accent* Da Comrade.

I... play a Communist Hero in the City of Heroes MMOG.

I need to recreate him for Shadowrun.





-k

Was his supervillian "The Union Buster"?

Capitalist Pig.



And it wasn't just any old Communist Hero, it was a Robot Communist Hero. Powered by mighty alcohol turbines, dedicated to smashing Fascism and protecting the proletariat wherever he goes!

Haven't played him in ages. I miss the guy.





-k

The fun part is that if they're from the same age, both would think they're heroes.

Never got to enjoy a Superhero game. Yet another on my list...