A properly aligned and placed 1kg underbarrel weight will compensate but not a grenade launcher. I used the M16/M203 combo before, and IMO, it was bulky and didn't help with the recoil.

Add to that the Gas Vent systems supposedly vent barrel gasses at specific points and angles to counter recoil. Not very effective when the barrel has no fixed location in relation to the rest of the gun, yes? I could see a gas vent system on a minigun actually increasing recoil unless it was custom-designed and perfectly installed (which IMO should be out of reach for Joe Runner)

So if you fired an Ares HV MP-LMG on full auto and pumped out 18 rounds, you'd need 9 points of RC from somewhere to make all of the recoil go away. If you didn't have 9 points, you'd only suffer +1 TN per uncompenated recoil, not +2.

A Small or larger turret or a fixed hard point would be sufficient for counteracting all of the recoil on a minigun. You'd need to buy 7 or 8 points of Gunnery Recoil Adjusters depending on which way your GM opted to round the 15 points of recoil.

No. When each barrel fires it DOES have a fixed position in relation to the rest of the gun. Only one barrel fires at a time, and it's always in the exact same position when it does.

Yes, all the way down to 270 pounds.

No human could possibly fire an support a firing minigun, which is why they're always mounted. Of course, real miniguns also fire 6000 rounds per minute, about 20 times a SR minign's rate-of-fire.

Not entirely true. Suppression with accurate, low volume fire can be much more effective at suppression than high volume, inaccurate fire. Admittedly, a major factor is training, in which hardened, experienced soldiers will know to stay down when faced with the former and will know that the latter is unpleasant and not entirely dangerous, but not nearly so dangerous as it could be. For your average, largely untrained soldier, any gun going off either sends him to the ground or sends him running, doing something stupid.

As for the gun being man portable, Predator required a truck of batteries and off camera ammunition to make it the thing work. No soldier can carry enough ammunition to make it worthwhile, nor, with present (or, in the case of Shadowrun, backwards) technology, power it. As a man portable weapon, at best, its ultility is questionable outside of the most specialized, defensive role, and only for the fantastically strong. But all that said, I suggest you forget real world figures, as this really isn't going to make sense until you do. It's just another example of reality and Shadowrun being dramatically incompatible, and you're only going to run into problems when you try and stick the two together. I've come to stand by this: it's one or the other.

I gotta agree with Seige here. Perhaps it is just me. My mentality is one of caution and survival. I'd much rather convince the large troll to go make sure that our Minigunman can't shoot for drek before I stick MY head out to see if he can play William Tell (minus the apple).

Your 'average, untrained soldier'...where do you find those? Are you meaning someone that one day puts on cammies and says "You know what? I'm a soldier now."

Grunts (infantry) are well-trained. Today. I can only imagine what 60 years from now will be like.

You're spot-on with the accurate, low volume fire thing, though. Any gunshots, aside from your own, quickly become only so much background noise. Its when the dirt starts getting churned up a few feet from you (or less), that it suddenly becomes quite obvious that someone is being thoughtless enough to shoot at you.

Although, seeing a huge amount of tracers coming in your general direction, and knowing that they are loaded every 5th round, can have the same effect. Its the ones you DONT see that prompt you to keep your head down.

Oh, and if you think that highly trained people are just going to stand there when the shooting starts near them, you need to re-think your opinion. One of the first things that gets pounded into your head in infantry training is to hit the deck, or grab whatever cover is available, when the shooting starts.

Spoken like someone who doesn't remember any countries beyond the First World.

That fourteen-year-old with a Kalashnikov, is he well trained?

~J

I remember the third world countries quite well, thanks. How about you? And no, Mexico doesnt count. Neither does anywhere in Boston.

You cant call that kid a soldier, even in the loosest definition of the term. You cant even properly call him militia, unless he's had some sort of training. And one of the first things that any training worth the name will teach you is, when taking fire, or even MAYBE taking fire, eat dirt or grab whatever cover is available. Stand there like an idiot, or do something foolish like try to charge that machinegun nest all by your lonesome and without some return fire from your buddies, and you're going to get chewed up in short order. Standing up is also a good way to catch some mortar fragments, and I dont care WHO you are, thats going to ruin your day.

Our soldiers and Marines in Iraq right now, when they get shot at, they grab some cover. OTOH, have you seen the video with the Iraqi that runs into the middle of the street to try and hit one of our AV's with an RPG, only to get cacked by a stream of autofire from an M249 or M240? Thats what untrained people do, they stand in the middle of an empty street, blazing away, and get hosed. Thats what 14 year old kids with Kalashnikov's do.

Nowhere in Boston is a country

And Mexico is decidedly First World: they couldn’t afford to be anything else. The Russian second-world army was often less than trained, and the Chinese perfected the human wave back in Korea: are you going to tell me that those soldiers were significantly trained?

The Third World need not even enter into this.

~J