My team and I are surrounded by 10 orc gangers. Negotiations go sour, guns are being drawn. I had stuck RFIDs on my teammates and myself. The ruthenium cloaked, LMG equipped Crimson Samurai on a rooftop 50 metres away opens up full auto, spraying the entire area with a hail of bullets. Are my mates and I going to get hit? Can Safe Target System begin a full auto spray at the left, shooting towards the right, stop firing when it encounters our tags, then resume the spray as it continues into the crowd on the right?

PS I realize any ganger standing between the gun and the tags (or behind) would not be fired upon

It does not create a Zone of protection. The GUN cannnot actually fire at YOU. Anyone in between you and the gun is still a valid target.

From AR pg 33, "Note that this feature also prevents the weapon from shooting if anything marked as safe is in front or behind of the actual target."

My question is more about whether I'd be safe while standing smack dab in the centre of a full-auto wide burst from a friendly using the Safe Target System.

Hmmmmm... Missed that from Arsenal. Shows how often I actually use it, and obviously my memory is a bit faulty. It did not used to work that way.
Seeing that, I would say that the gun would not fire in your "zone" or those "zones" of your comrades. It might even cause the gun to not fire at all depending upon density of the encounter.

Note that the Arsenal "Safe Targeting System" has a safety zone of 1 metre as well, IIRC.

But, yes, someone could unload suppressive fire CENTERED around you, and you'd not have a single shot hit. As the muzzle swings around, "Hey, not in the safety zone any longer, you're free to engage Mr. Firing Pin!" "YAY! I get to bust some caps!"

This is true.

There is a Smartlink upgrade in WAR, which uses a tacnet to define the safe targets.

Excellent. I'm making a "hybrid" close combat build. Augmented close quarters specialist that also has a control rig and two very nasty and very heavily modified Crimson Samurai friends named Rocksteady and Beebop providing fire support. They both have black market fuzzy logic chips that give them all kinds of personality. I want to be able to kung fu people while having hot lead rain down around me, never touching me.

I have a character for Missions that used to hand out safe target friend or foe transponders to teammates.

What he didn't mention were the explosive charges hidden in the transponders.





-k

Note that a perfect "auto-aim/hit" system has not been invented in shadowrun. Based on that, I'd say such a system would have to shut off fire when modified weapon is pointed in the general direction of safe targets. Spray a thick melee including safe buddies? The gun would only strafe the edges.

Magical smartguns!
It sees the future! it bends bullets! it have surgical precision in the face of physics!

No but seriously, how the hell does that work?
It has to calculate the trajectory of each bullet and every possible action by several lose variables (people) picking the correct outcome for it's prediction every time... Basically looking into the future.
and most drones in SR wouldn't get past a doorknob on their own. Does not compute

Im not arguing rules here, im just pointing out how ludicrous it is

Yes, it is stupid - but it is RAW.

Probably some hype in the fluff too - but with a riffle bullet usually going and something like 600 to 800 m/s, it takes 1/10th of a second for the bullet to reach it's target at 'urban' ranges. which means that having the gun holding fire when a friendly target is straight ahead should work in most cases. And if you want to err onthe side of caution, use the IFF tag to get the range and increase or decrease the safe permimeter accordig to the range to account for the friendly target moving around.

A high end version may even include some sort of motion sensor into the IFF beacon to tell teh gun wher the firendly target is headed to expand the bubble only in that direction - but a long ranges, it starts getting chancy as you're likely to change direction durng the bullet's travel time.

On the other hand, the system will probably work beter with a railgun and evenbetter with a laser - the les projectle dispersion and travel tim, the better.

Oh nd i just spotted important word in the description : confident that his allies would generally not be affected. Doesn't sound like the thing is totally safe.

No. It is WAR!
scnr

Nil_Fisk>> Quote what you like, there is no skill, system or augmentation in SR4E that makes you automatically hit a target, only increase the chance of doing so. Therefore, I can't really see this system working out without at least an unacceptable margin of friendly fire.

You are applying common sense to RAW, esp. from WAR!.

Let's ask Mr. Zorg! Science!

~Umi

*Pushes the red button*

Well, it seems that it's easy to figure out the consequence of a glitch on the mark 74 smartlink.

"Don't worry Mungo, I have a Mark 74!"
*Critical Glitches*
"Mungo don'tn't feal guud."
*Mungo's Docwagon bracelet starts screaming*
"I'm so, so sorry Mungo. So very sorry. Please let me go. My... Neck..."

Crit Glitch is of course setting teammates as the only targets, rather than the only ones that are not targets.

Arsenal says, "If the gun is pointed at or within a radius of 1 meter of a target marked as 'safe,' the system engages the gun’s safety and prevents or holds fire." So you're looking at a two meter diameter that the gun won't fire into, in front of, or behind. This is hardly a "general direction", especially if the Safe Target shooter is 70 meters away. More-over, it would force people into my "sphere of protection" where I can put my fist into their squishy little heads. The scenario I plan on using this for is a larger engagement, and not a Jackie Chan style brawl where 10 people are crawling all over and around each other.