I'm thinking of making a biker character, and I'm trying to figure out something about attached weapons: how do they fire? Does the rider press a button on a dashboard, pull a trigger on a handlebar, or what?

BTW, I don't have Rigger 3, so any references to that won't be understood automatically.

if the pilot isn't a rigger? Sure, those methods sound good. It can be whataver ou want in reason, it isn't directly detailed.

Aren't there rules for smart-linking vehicle mounted weapons? I suppose you could use properly modified smart goggles or 'ware to aim and fire mounted weapons. Just look at the target and think the command, or press a button.

Button on the handlebars, I would assume. Like that one arcade game...

a cybernetic smartlink can fire smartlinked weapons by mental command, but smartgoggles cannot. personally, i think the use of trodes should allow mechanical operation of a smartlinked weapon without any cybernetics at all, but i'm crazy.

Ok, another question: can the weapons be rear-facing?

Yep.

Only real restrictions on placement are that if you fire side-facing weapons or unbalanced weapons things get screwy.

Which is an interesting contradiction. IIRC the fluff suggests that not firing weapons mounted on the sides of a vehicle in tandem causes the handling to degrade temporarily due to unbalanced recoil, but the rules have no way to fire more than one weapon at a time.

~J

Weapons can face any damn direction you want. They will be very hard to use if you are not rigging.

You’re right, there’s nothing in the rules against that. I was thinking inside the rigging/drone box, where it is impossible to have more than one weapons system active.

~J

I asked about this at GenCon last year. (not this most recent one, the one before it) They suggested that you use some type of bastardization of the burst fire and full auto rules. They didn't really come up with anything exact, they just suggested the GM 'figure something out'. Which, for me, is a fine answer, but maybe we want to try to come up with a system for it?
Obviously, if you had three guns firing one shot each together you could just count it as a burst, but different types of guns and different numbers can get weird.

Job Bob Testosterone goes and gets his favorite assault cannon side-mounted on his Harley.

He goes out riding. Real Fast.

Seeing a Lone Star roadblock, he decides to do the Manly Thing™* and bust it.

He fires one round from the cannon. Since he sucks at vehicle mounted weapons, he misses wildly and takes out his favorite Stuffer Shack. Oops.

Unbalanced weapon loadout. Crash test time. Did we mention he also sucks at driving?

He fails horribly. Losing all control, he tumbles and proceeds to smear himself across the next 200 feet of pavement. The Lone Star cops saw him coming ages ago and have moved out of the way, watching in bemusement as he flies by undergoing a total face re-tread.

One Lone Star cop shrugs and eats a donut.




-karma

* - not to be mistaken for the Smart Thing

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Usualy, when weapons are mounted in tandem they are fire-linked and zeroed fairly close together. In such a case, It probably should be treated as a burst.