I have. If I've got my laser sight, I don't really need to be even looking down the barrel to aim.

"Bullet goes where the red dot glows", and all that.




-k

Fine; I've edited the posts out of respect for your delicate sensibilities. And yeah, fine, you're right.


Clearly the rulebook is wrong, and Yerameyahu is right. Forget about real-world shooting, game balance, sensible game mechanics, or any factor other than the fact that Yerameyahu says so: dual-wielding with smartlinks should give you +4 dice, and everybody should be doing it.


Happy now?

Have you tried it with two laser sights? Apparently anything that works with one works twice as well with two. I can't wait to try driving two cars at once. I'm pretty sure if I hook up two separate GPS machines, I'll be fine.

Why do you have to lie with every post? I didn't say anything like that ("Clearly the rulebook is wrong, and Yerameyahu is right. Forget about real-world shooting, game balance, sensible game mechanics, or any factor other than the fact that Yerameyahu says so: dual-wielding with smartlinks should give you +4 dice, and everybody should be doing it."). In fact, I have repeatedly said the opposite.

Hyperbole much?

All he was saying is that the Smartlink bonus should not be COMPLETELY negated. That having a Smartlink should be slightly better than NOT having a Smartlink.



Well, hold on, I'll try it at the range this afternoon.

I suspect that hitting the target with two pistols WITH the laser sights is going to be easier than shooting two pistols WITHOUT the laser sights, though.



-k

Ooh, record the data, would you? Also, do trials of 1 gun, 2 gun; 1 target, 2 targets; and 0, 1, 2 lasers. Not the most rigorous design ever, but hey. Hope you have plenty of ammo.

No no, I understand now. Bonuses for everyone. I'm pretty sure you should be able to tape another two smartguns to your existing smartgun...twice the bullets! And +8 dice on that firearms test, since more targeting reticles = more targeting!

Uh oh, he's snapped. Just for the sake of completeness, I'll re-repeat that I've never said anything like that.

So it doesn't matter if I agree with you or not, whatever I say you'll just say the opposite? Awesome.

You're not agreeing with me. You're quite childishly mocking a straw man of my position. Lying about my statements has been your running theme, but this is a new and interesting turn.

Hyperbole is not a valid argument.




-k

Ha, Karma, that made me think of the Argument Clinic (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y , if anyone hasn't had the pleasure), which actually explains this whole thread: we wandered into the room for Abuse by mistake!

Just ignore the Troll, your life will be easier, as he has very clearly show that he's nothing but that with his latest half a dozen or so post

Just so I have this clear, "lying" is defined as:

- Disagreeing with you.
- Agreeing with you.

So no matter what I said, I'm "lying", as far as you're concerned? Good to know. And to think you guys were accusing me of resorting to ad-hominem attacks. I guess "liar" is the new "idiot", eh?

Nope, lying is quite clearly defined as claiming that someone else said something that they didn't say, witch you have done multiple times in this thread.
Yes,yes i know what i said, but i had to reply to this.

JC, do you honestly believe people do not see what you are doing?

Taking some small piece of what people say, extrapolating and blowing it completely out of proportion so it is a mere silly caricature of what they actually said, and then agreeing with that twisted version?

It's called a "straw man" argument. And it holds no water at all.

Anyway, heading out. I'll let ya'll know what I find regarding the laser sights.



-k

Examples?

What the...

big fuss for a simple topic.

I can provide anecdotal evidence that rail shooters with two light guns (actually the Wii derivative thereof, where actually aiming the gun via the the sights alone does NOT work) are most definitely possible/easier with crosshairs. In fact, you can aim at two close targets - albeit slow-moving targets, or at one.
What's also possible is keeping up shooting at one target and them aquiring another one with a quick shift of one of the crosshairs. Actually aiming at two small or rapidly moving targets does not seem to work too well - but then that's not even a given with just one crosshair.

Obviously you can't actually focus at two points on the screen at the same time. However, in SR you obviously CAN, or else you could never even try shooting at two targets simultaneously.

Now I want to add one more thing: I think the disallowing of smartguns for akimbo guns is largely a historical thing: In the past, and I can only speak for SR3, the smartlink gave a HUGE boost to to-hit probability. -2 to TN was MUCH bigger than +2 dice. So this would clearly have created balance issues if people had been able to fire two guns at a TN of 2, which was the base TN for smartgun at close range. At this point I think that +2 dice isn't that big of a deal, and I for one would not be opposed to house-ruling this.

I'm not touching any of these other questions, about rules, about game balance, about the capabilities of the human brain, about multiple targets, none of it. I'm just curious in answers from first principles:

If you had two weapons with rangefinders and gyros, and a ballistic computer with sufficient power to make two sets of computations, could such a system project two - perhaps visually distinct - targeting reticles onto the user's view, each of which is an accurate representation of the destination of a bullet fired from each weapon? If it can, can these reticles always appear to be in focus, if you have direct access to the user's brain?

The answer is 'totally yes' to the first part. Second part: based on tech like the eyeband, my thought is that the tech doesn't exist to have more than the natural 'brain focus'. But, it shouldn't matter for this question.

It seems to me there are three kinds of focus that would be topical here.

1. Concentration: the ability to usefully do something with more than one simultaneous stimulus.
2. Foveal: of or pertaining to increased visual acuity in the center of the visual field
3. Optical: the focusing of light into a distinct image.

The ability to usefully concentrate on more than one visual stimulus isn't something a smartlink does, or is intended to do. You could argue that there are some augmentations that might serve that purpose, but that's beyond the scope of our inquiry for the moment.

I have no idea what cybereyes would do to foveal focus; we talk a lot about sensory overload and such, but the fact is that the brain is very plastic, and it'll adjust to a broad spectrum of alterations.* That said, I don't think foveal focus matters much in this case, unless you're trying to target two individual targets not within the center of your vision, and as you've pointed out, that's hard irrespective of the smartlink.

Optically, I don't see where it would be a problem for people with cybereyes, because the signal from the image link is going to be dropped into the data stream long after the optical data, anyway. So you should be able to have a set of razor-sharp dots, or crosshairs, or fuzzy slippers, in whatever colors, blinking whatever pattern, dancing whatever polka you'd like, as far as that goes. As far as shades and goggles go, well, that's an optical focus issue, but that's the same optical focus issue you'd have with one smartlink, and the same optical focus issue you have with scopes today.


I'll confess I'm not certain how any of this could matter at all. The smartlink, in my understanding, is nothing but a ballistic computer and a rangefinder [and other senses if you'd like; there's no reason not to allow such a thing], which figures out where, if you pulled the trigger right now, a bullet would end up, like a laser pointer with a rangefinder and a servo on it, constantly adjusting trigonometry. And only you can see it. Does everyone agree that's what the experience is like? I read some stuff upthread about cameras and two video feeds, so I'm not sure my understanding of the hardware is the same as everyone else's.

*Build yourself a set of goggles with cameras on them, but with the image inverted, so that when you look through the goggles, everything you see is upside-down. Blacken the windows in your bedroom, and see nothing without the goggles for, say, a week or two. You'll find very quickly - like, crazy quickly - that you'll stop noticing the goggles, and your view won't be inverted, because [as I'm sure you know] the goggles are just undoing the brain's inversion of our visual input. Take the goggles off after a couple of weeks, and you'll be again stuck with inverted vision, until the brain re-orients itself. My point being, I don't have any difficulty with the concept that, with cybereyes not having a foveal acuity increase, the human mind could deal with having no "periphery," and would do just fine. I, for one, wouldn't mind being able to read without looking right the hell at things. Anyway.

Sure, but we do know that in SR, it doesn't work. Eyeband, etc. For some reason, blah.

I agree it'd be awesome, and sounds at least plausible. At minimum, people would run around with a net of cameras and trodes.

So, I tried out paired pistols with laser sights at the range today. Fortunately the range owner is a friend so he humored me.

Firing a 9mm Glock 17 and a Taurus PT840 .40, each with lasers and properly sighted in, at a 10 yard range at human-shaped paper targets spaced 20 feet apart:

2 targets, 2 pistols, no lasers: Damn that's difficult. I ended up really focusing on one and then the other much of the time, really. Missed most shots.
2 targets, 2 pistols, with lasers: Easier but still a pain. I could get some body shots on both targets but any more precision (like specific body areas) was about impossible.

1 target, 2 pistols, no lasers: Moderately difficult as sighting down the barrels of two pistols required more things to keep track of than usual. Missed a number of shots.
1 target, 2 pistols, with lasers: Again, easier. I could consistently group within a one foot circle. Which is much worse that my usual single-pistol groupings, but hey.

Each test was performed with 6-8 shots per pistol.

Really, my biggest observation is that when firing with iron sights, you have to keep track of at least three objects, the rear sight, the front sight, and the target. To hit you need to line up all three. With the laser sight you only have to keep track of two, the laser dot and the target. Aiming using laser sight is almost instinctive, rather than the conscious thought that goes into lining up iron sights.

In all cases, shooting with the laser sight was easier than shooting without the laser.

That was a fun twenty bucks worth of ammo to spend.



-k

Damn I wish I could go shooting...

I wish I owned those pistols! I borrowed them from the range owner.

I used to live in Texas, Land of the Gun, and had about a half dozen firearms while there. I eventually moved to New York, where They Hate Guns. So I had to sell most of them before I moved. Kept just the shotgun because that is much easier to get a license for in NY.





-k

OUCH! Is it just major cities, or is it something cultural?

'Course, then again, they shut down my old school because someone didn't find all the sticks of dynamite while prospecting on the weekend and it rolled out from under the seat when he parked the car.

Still trying to figure out why my hometown has a SWAT team.

NY (& mainly NYC) is very anti-gun due to history & age of the place. I live in NYC, & getting a pistol/handgun license is a trial & a half. Rifles are a little easier. I think (and this is all my own perspective & skewed recollection of history) that Texas loves guns due they had a wonderful working relationship with guns in it's past. Texas was a wilderness/territory that needed pacification & civilization. The gun was a tool for that purpose. NY doesn't have that. NY was already a major metro hub of cities & such, there was no need to own a weapon, except for self protection. However, most of the people who owned/used guns weren't "law abiding" folk, so gun violence & criminality was much more common.

Wait, so it IS possible without being a celebrity and/or the commissioner's friend?

For what it's worth, your experiences match those of police officer and experienced shooter who did the same test probably almost a decade ago when this issue was brought up here. He also remarked that it'd be somewhat easier to do both independent and paired shooting if the reticles were different colors and/or shapes. The consensus at the time was that it was independent targeting, not paired reticles, that made shooting akimbo difficult, and that penalties for shooting akimbo should be high, while penalties for using two smartlinks should be low. Clearly someone's opinion wasn't swayed when SR4 was written.

Yay! Thanks for that cool work, KarmaInferno.

NY is hard on hand guns, you haveto have a reason for carrying it beyond 'self defense.' I know a dentist who has a caryr permit because he has large amounts of drugs in his office. Long arms are fine, outside of NYC. But it is easy to get booze.
By comparrison, Pennsylvania where I live is much more gun friendly but it is harder to get a drink. My conclusion is that NY would rather you be drunk than armed, PA would rather you be armed than drunk. I'm a New Yorker.

That having been said the problem in the thread- using two weapons each with targeting aids is not the system it's the soft squishy bit between the shooters ears. Just imagine it, you have two dots on the target, but which dot is which gun? Sure it's easy to think - one on the right is the right gun, one on the left is the left gun. But what if the beams crossed? What if one's too high and the other's too low. you can spend a momment playing with it to test- jiggle the right hand and see what dot moves, BUT all that takes time and while you're playing with the laser the guy you're pointing it at is going to be shooting back at you, sending lead back down the beams while you're still playing with the fine tuning.

speaking personally and having read Wyatt Earp, shooting two guns at once is not going to be accurate and is just flashing, supression fire at most. aiming at anything bigger than a crowded street or a body on the floor before you, you're not going to hit by skill but just dumb luck.

I've been assuming the reticules are different (color or otherwise). You can have different lasers, and smartlink output is AR—that can be literally anything.

I agree: akimbo should not be a normal tactic for hitting things with bullets. Truly exceptional people can do it (in SR!), if the situation isn't too crazy, because that's cinematic.

Without knowing too many facts I guess there is a history of actually using a gun in each hand - it stems from the time of muzzle-loaded pistols. Even in the age of revolvers, the main reason would be more ammo - if you're reasonably ambidextrous, lining up your left and right hand - independantly and not simultaneously, probably each time supporting with the other arm - shouldn't be that different. But that's a long way from firing Hardboiled style.

I keep coming back to the initial answer to this question: It's a balance thing. If the authors had thought it ok to shoot two weapons simultaneously with smartguns, then they would have made it possible. Simple as that. It's Scifi where you can boost your brain power with cyber- or bioware. Changing the visual cortex to something akin to a Chameleon to independantly move and focus - and interpret - either eye should be a simple enough task. You don't even need 3D vision when using a smartlink, because that's what the rangefinder and ballistic computer is for. From an evolutionary perspective, eyes with overlapping 3D vision are a thing of the predators, whereas a wide field of view which is largely not three-dimensional is common among herbivores. So the reason to even have a foveal is to accurately aquire your prey. But you don't need that when you have a computer to do the distances for you. You could even have two mini-cameras in each cybereye so that each cybereye produces an independant 3D image. It's a question of game design that we don't have this.

It's really the same as drones not being able to track multiple targets and fire two or more weapons simultaneously - you don't want that to happen, because it tends to make hamburgers of people really easily.

So really the only problem I'm seeing with the rules as they are is that the writers ignore stuff already in the game in order to enforce their balance policy. You can't argue realism, but you CAN argue game-world consistency, where it just doesn't make sense that you can't paint two dots, and therefore make it easier than without dots.

But, you could easily keep those bonuses and increase the penalties for 'akimbo' (I hate calling it that, but it's so much easier to type). Net result: same or better.

Rural Canada: Drunk and Well-armed!

And you might even have the ancestral distillery dating back from Prohibition.

*Skips last two pages*

Alright guys.

Here's the deal.

If you have two red dots, each controlled by one hand.

And they're both dead center aimed at something, and one hand slips a little and the dot moves off target.

Which hand do you have to move to get it back on target?

The one that slipped, but seeing two red dots out in the field, you don't know which one is which.

Except that I would say that is exactly the end result of what they did. You argued for a -2/-4 mechanic earlier (Primary/Secondary), and allowing the Smartlinked shooter the use of his/her Smartgun. This results in +0/-2, which is EXACTLY what we have now. So why go through all the math (some people HATE math with a passion) when it works out the exact same way. Disallowing Smartlink Bonuses and applying a -2 to second target is Identical to your suggestion in result.

You don't have to be a total and utter moron and use two dots that are same color.
Even currently Lasers sight are available in colors other then red.
And the smartlinks hit indicator can be what ever you want it to be.

Except for people who only have a laser pointers or not even those

Probably shouldn't have skipped the last two pages. This was discussed rather a lot therein.

Having played a vertically scrolling shooter that has hot-seat coop (like an arcade game) that can detect multiple mice, I plugged two in (this was some time ago). Each "player" is a different color.

Blue was left hand, green was right hand.

I still flew into things because I moved the wrong mouse.

It's really frakking difficult especially in the heat of combat.

Oh, did I mention that the game was running slow because I was doing it on my laptop, not my desktop?

So despite running at 1/10th it's normal speed I was still flying into things. Using only 1 hand (and 1 ship) I can beat the hardest difficulties without dying at that speed (and the ships are One Hit Point Wonders).

True, which is why I prefer the rule as it is. It gets rid of all the mumbo jumbo. I am okay with the fact (in game) that you cannot use Smartguns or Laser Sights/Red Dots/etc. to add dice pool creep to something that is inherently impossible (in game - specifically the use of such devices to aid in guns akimbo) to accomplish in the first place. I have yet to see it cripple a well built gunbunny (and in fact reigns them in a bit), and am okay with it crippling a poorly built one. It should not be your go-to tactic.

But that's the real beauty of his solution, there's absolutely no dicepool creep(those who don't have smartlink actually lose dice), just a more consistant set of rules without tech that magically stops working if you try to use it for certain purpose.

There IS dice pool creep (you get more dice for Sual weilding than you would have originally).
And Dual weilding already looses a ton of dice. You go from a Gunbunny with 18 Dice on a target, to gunbunny taking 2 shots at 9/7 dice on a target, you have lost 9/11 dice (and though you do get to shoot twice, both shots will be far, far less effective than that single shot would have been). In fact, you lose more dice (20) than your total original pool actually had (18) in the first place.

TJ, … I think Mäx handled it. It's consistent and no balance change, except more 'realistically' bad on the tech-less. And it's *not* more math, because you never have to add/remove the smartlink. It just stays put.

Akimbo *should* lose tons of dice. So? Again, rejiggering the smartlink regulation doesn't alter that. Again, I'm definitely not in favor of akimbo (period), and I'm not suggesting this as a 'fix' for boo-hoo gunbunnies. It's purely about consistency.

Draco18s, again, it's not that it's easy with two dot colors. It's that it's easier than *zero* dots.

Where?
Dice pool of 20 as example, both guns have smartlink:
Current system:
One target 10 dice per gun, two targets 10 for first and 8(10 -2 for second target) for second
his sytem:
One target 10 dice per gun, two targets 10(10+2-2) for first and 8(10+2-4) for second

If there's creep, just change the numbers. My -2/-4 was more a D&D analogy than anything else. You might want to add a penalty for akimbo in general, though the whole Ambidextrous ecosystem pretty well has that covered?

The Penalty to Guns Akimbo is a Split Dice pool. That already exists.

And obviously I know that, and I know *you* know that, which is why I didn't mention it again. So, if you'd assume that I'm not dumb, you'd conclude that I'm talking about a penalty to offset the smartlink in akimbo 1-target situations. Because adding it gives +2/+2 in that case, which is not necessarily desirable.

If you're aiming at the same target, maybe. But I see that distinction as being a rules-wise game balance thing.

(If it works for a single target, why not two guys standing next to each other? And if works for that, why not two guys 30 meters away from each other?)

It does. Having the dots is easier than not having them, for 1 or 2 targets. (Is my claim.)

It's just that there's no chance of confusion with 2 targets, so we didn't mention the colors with them.