Can someone clear this up for me?

If you have the Smartlink2 what do you need to get the range modifier.

ie. Do you need just the Rangefinder Cyberware OR do you need just the Rangefinder Firearm Accessory OR do you need both?

Thanks.

Either one will work. Eye magnification and scope magnification, that kind of thing, y'know?

My interpretation was at first 'Just the rangefinder cyberware'. Then at some point in the past, I decided that you need would both the cyberware AND the accessory.

If you look at the chart on the Weapon Record Sheet, you'll see that they only list the range finder as With Smartlink-2. So whatever interpretation you come up with, you do need a smartlink-2 to use it. However, you'll note that they just say 'smartlink-2'. It would be totally valid to say 'You need either the accessory OR the cyberware rangefinder to get the bonuses'.

I can't think of any real reason to pick one over the other, really.

Read the errata. You need the weapon accessory and the cyberware to get it to work. The cyberware appears to be something along the lines of a coprocessor for the SL rig that interprets the range data.

To be specific:

Thanks everybody.

Its kinda funny the progression of the thread is the same as what went on in my head...

One more thing (that I should have put in the original post): Do you need a display/image link. I think you did back in SR2 but can't remember if you need it now.

Thanks again. I figured the sub system eye display would do the trick.

Bleagh. Foiled by errata.

One bit of Errata that I happily ignore, since the weapon accessory range finder itself nowhere demands that you also have a SL-2 plus SL - range finder accessory for ...

It's not like it's a big price to pay for the benefits...

No. But it's a stupid concept all around, and completely senseless that it somehow needs to be a separate attached component from the standard SL-2 system.

If you go around changing everything that doesn't make sense with cyberware, you might as well rewrite the whole section.

This is one of those cases where it does make a kind of sense. Your smartlink does basic targeting and little else. You add in a rangefinder on the gun and that feeds into the smartlink system and... doesn't do much of anything since the basic system isn't designed to do anything with it. You add on a little coprocessor and it makes the minor adjustments related to long ranges.

The wierdness is more to do with bullet ranges than anything else. The above makes a lot more sense for, say, rifles, than it does for pistols.

Actually, what good does a rangefinder do in real life? Do people with a sniper rifle adjust their shot upwards going by distance or something?

I think its kind of goofy. But just kind of.

The Smartlink system has to have some form of rangefinder bundled into it for it to work. So, I think of the the additional Rangefinder Cyber as the processor for the rangefinder weapon accessory which provides rawl data.

Scopes can also be adjusted to take into account windage. Which isn't something the smartlink does, really.

Right. Until I saw the errata I assumed it was just like Vision Magnification vs. Magnification Scopes. One usable by anyone with the implant, the other usuable by anyone. One lowers Essence, the other lowers Concealability. (EDIT: Hmm, I guess it doesn't lower Concealability afterall. Oh well, so much for assumptions. Seems odd, nonethless, that they didn't include the Rangefinder weapon accessory in M&M if it truly was a requirement to use it -- they included Smartgun-2 modifications for weapons, but not Rangefinders.)

I have no idea why they changed it in the errata like that. But then again, I've always felt a little weird about the errata/FAQs. Half the time they seem like snap decisions instead of someone double-checking all of the related rules to make sure it makes sense with the rest of them.

I hear what your saying but at some point range has to factor in, right?. How else would the processor know if the target is 10 meters away or 100 meters?

For 12% (or so) of my Essence that chip should be able to tell the difference between a poster of a man on cliff 65 meters away and thug w/ a Pred that is right in my face.

[edit: the poster is of a man that is on cliff and the shot is taken from 65 meters away.]

So then why does a smartlink work as well with a pistol at 5 meters as it does with an assault cannon at 2400 meters?

I don't even know how you could see that far but by canon your smartlink would still give your a TN mod.

uh, if it projected where the bullet would go without gravity, you'd end up always firing too low (since you'd still have bullet rise).

and, i hate to do it, but i have to disagree with raygun on the flat-trajectory issue. bullet rise and drop within 300m is enough to make you miss, if you don't account for it when you're lining up your shot. granted, as you become used to shooting, accounting for it becomes as reflexive as not jerking the trigger, or timing your breathing. but it's still a factor.

Bullet rise? what? If a gun is sighted on for close range the bullet does not rise at all, it comes straight out the barrel and drops at a speed affected by gravety. The distance the bullet travels per inch of drop is only determined by the speed of the bullet. The only reason a bullet would rise out of the barrel is if the gun was actually sighted to shoot high, either accidentally or on purpose.

bitbasher, bullets rise during the first half (or so) of their flight, and fall during the secon half. raygun can explain why better than i could, but it does happen. when firing at 25m targets during basic training, i had to learn to aim a few inches below my target in order to hit it.

raygun, my take on it has always been that the smartlink system uses the simsense link to figure out how far out your eyes are focused, and plops that guestimate into the firing equation. a rangefinder, on the other hand, uses lasers or whatnot to actually measure the distance, and is therefore more accurate at ranges where your eyes just aren't good enough to provide good data.

raygun's stance is, and always has been, that there are a few easy fixes that can be made to SR's combat to make it more realistic, but that making it truly realistic would require a massive rewrite. his statement abover reflects the point at which--to him--it's not worth the effort of rewriting the rules to reflect reality.

Gotcha. That works for me.

Here you can see the complete criss-cross of line-of-sight vs bullet trajectory.

As for why Smartlink helps even at extreme ranges: It still shows you where your gun is pointing. Instead of having to use iron sights on a weapon, you can aim the Smartlink pip (if that's how you see the Smartlink working in your game) the necessary amount above the target. It's not that much of a help, because at 2,400 meters with an Assault Cannon you're looking at a base TN of 9 - 2 = 7, a "Difficult" shot, compared to the 4 you'd have with a high-rating scope.

The problem here has very little if anything to do with the bonuses conferred by the Smartlink system, much more to do with the relative ease with which characters can hit at extreme ranges in SR. Hitting anything at 2.4km, even with the biggest RL weapons, is extremely difficult. You need good conditions, an immobile target (or something very, very easy to take a lead on), solid rest and a lot of aiming to stand a chance of hitting something at those ranges. In SR, all you need is a Rating 3 scope and a skill of 3 for a 98.4% chance of hitting a walking human at 2.4km with an Assault Cannon, without Taking Aim or having any support.

On the other hand, a Smartlink should probably make hitting with pistols at longer ranges easier than they do currently. I'd expect a .440 Cor-Bon Magnum Desert Eagle with a 10" barrel and a Smartlink would be rather easy to hit a human with at 100 meters -- far easier than hitting a human with a Smartlinked sniper rifle at 1km, anyway. For perfect realism, you'd need several different modifiers for range and conditions which would be connected only partly -- and that's way beyond what most sane people want out of their RPGs.

regardless, most weapons are sighted so that the bullet rises as it leaves the barrel--if you subscribe to the idea that smartlinks are not able to take range into account at all, one would assume that they're calibrated the same way by default. the statement still applies pretty much across the board, because that's how most people set their sights (and therefore their smartlinks) for combat.

or, you can use my model, which eliminates all this silliness.

It's also possible that a smartlink does not inherintly account for bullet drop but makes you do it yourself without the rangefinder by having hatch marks under the main crosshair at the amount the bullet will drop every set distance, like a good quality scope does. If you have the rangefinder, it eliminates this and just puts a single crosshair out there. Makes sense in context.

On the topic of rangefinders in shadowrun, in cannon companion it indicates that rangefinders are compatible with external SLII systems, without any additional hardware or the like. IMO that seems to indicate that the errata is the odd man out, considering that nowhere outside of it, to my knowledge, is any refence made to the cyberware r/f and accessory r/f having to be paired.

Your point's there, but it may not be there. Zen man, zen.

It took me a while to grasp your point, so let me lay it out so no one else misses it.

1. The errata says you MUST have the rangefinder upgrade AND the gun accessory in order to get the benefits.
2. The CC listing says you can use with a "...a smartlink system, either cybernetic or external."
3. There is a listing for Smartlink-2 goggles in MM. They cost the same as the cybernetic Smartlink-2.

My solution is simple - There should be another listing in the M&M for smartgoggles that cost 2,000 more nuyen. Those goggles give the benefits of a Rangefinder so long as you also have it on your gun.

The alternative solution is to just say they include the rangefinder by default, but I don't like that as much.

Personally, I'd rather turn off such a Guess Range option. If the shooter happens to know the range better than the Smartlink processor, he's screwed because he doesn't know how much the Smartlink is already compensating for drop. Even if the system displays something like "300 meters", it's a whole lot harder to compensate for the drop between 300 and 400 meters than it is to just compensate for the whole drop from 0 to 400 meters.

However, I would not at all mind the Smartlink showing the guesttimated range to target in the field of view, even if it doesn't adjust the targeting pip accordingly. And I suppose adjusting the pip based on the guesstimate would be OK for someone who hasn't got a clue what sort of gun he's firing.

well, that's the nice thing about the system. it determines the range according to how far out you think the target is--if you think the target's 300m away, it tells you how high you should aim to make a 300m shot.

How far away you think the target is is definitely not the same thing as how far away your eyes focus. I'm not that good at human physiology, but I'd expect there to be a very large "error range" between what your brains figure out the range to be and the angulated range your eyes focus to.

If you consider the Smartlink system to read your thoughts on the range to the target, that's another thing entirely. I don't, though.

i would be surprised if the error range were high enough to make a hit-or-miss difference; as Raygun pointed out, bullet drop at 300 yards with an M16A2 is 'only' a bit less than a foot; if your eyes (and therefore your Smartlink) are only focusing at 250 yards, you're still likely to hit--at least, i don't change my point of aim between 250y targets and 300y, and i'm a pretty good shot. at closer ranges, it's almost certainly going to make no difference at all; at longer ranges, more exact data--like that provided by the rangefinder setup--will help negate that error.

It would be nice to know what sort of error there really is. I was thinking 20-25%, which would easily be a difference of +/- 20 inches at 400-600 meters with a 7.62x51mm rifle. At short ranges and when the trajectory is very flat, sure such a feature would be useful -- assuming the error isn't greater than that 25% and it can reliably be measured on the fly.

It would require some good prediction-work, though, because in a combat situation you are likely to keep focusing your eyes on a whole lot of things. Although, I suppose it wouldn't be too difficult for the simlink and the processor to figure out what you're trying to focus on.

Still, it is a very interesting piece of fluff which makes at least as much sense as anything else about the Smartlink system. It is simple to adopt into any game, too, because it doesn't require one to change the Smartlink rules in any way, regardless of how well if at all the range-prediction works.