Vehicle Turrents

I'm having some problems working on incorporating a weapon turret into a vehicle and I'd like some help. I've written out what I can work out, help would be appreciated.

The desired outcome is a concealed medium machine gun on a Body 4 SUV chassis.

A MMG has a weapon value of 2, which requires a Mini turret, which has a requirement of one hard point. A pop up torret lowers the weapon value by one, however requires double the normal CF consumption.

So (P139 - 141, R3 revised)

MMG w/ standard mount has a weapon value of two, which is a Mini turret (One hardpoint)
MMC w/ pop up turrent has a weapon value of one, which is a Mini turret OR a micro remote turret (one hardpoint)

The problem is that an earlier section discusses the cost of internal/external hard and firmpoints, yet the turrent page only says how many each turrent requires. Now, the question is whether or not one has to purchase them seperately, or if the page only talks about it because of how many hard/firm points a vehicle can have dependant on the body of the vehicle.

Question two, how easy is it to swap a weapon in a mount for another one? Does it have to be the same type (MMG for MMG), or can one also include other weapons up to the max value of the turret?

Question three, how does a smartlink intergration kit work with a drone brain? Assuming that a rigger hasn't jumped into the drone and its piloting itself, does it get the standard bonuses for either smartlink one or two?

First, MMG w/ standard mount takes 1 hardpoint, or a mini turret, correct.
MMg w/pop up turret still requires a weapon value of two, however pop-up turrets get -1 to their weapon value, required a Small turret to fit (3 weapon value -1 popup = 2).

So you can add a pop-up small turret (requirement 2 hardpoints (4 body)) onto the SUV, and have a MMG on it. Or you could add two mini turrets, and have 2 MMGs on those, but have them be obvious.

Two: The weapons have integration kits, so very easy. As long as it fits in the turret, make your b/r checks, you're fine.

Lastly: It gets the standard bonuses for smartlink 1/2 provided it has a smartlink integration kit, and the weapon itself has a smartlink accessory. Keep in mind that drone brains must use sensor enhanced gunnery, so every new target they want to shoot at takes at least one complex action to lock-onto first before fireing.

Woah. Deja vu; anyone else remember a topic about a year ago that was more or less identical, right down to the use of the misspelling "turrent"?

Incidentally, Sensor-Enhanced Gunnery owns manual gunnery on anything without ED or Sig+ECM 7 or under. As far as I know, the smartlink doesn't aid in sensor-enhanced gunnery, though.

~J

Changing to a pop up turret reduces the turrets capacity to hold weapons by 1 weapon value.

It dose not (as you interpreted) reduce the weapon value fro the weapons within the turret.

An easy enough mistake to make.

Thank you for clarifying what I was trying to say edward.

Kage, the smartlink does aid in sensor-enhanced gunnery, provided the gun has a smartlink acccessory and the mount is configured with a smartlink-integration kit. Since the dogbrain (Drone Pilot Rating) already is aiming with sensor data, the smartlink simply provides it better and more accurate sensor data, allowing it to aim better, and getting the normal -2 to the TN.

Sensor-Enhanced only owns provided you think you can lock on reliably. Most drones have pilots in the range of 2-3. So, 2-3 dice vs TN of 7 or less as you said, has some chance of getting successes. I couldn't find any probability charts quickly, so someone here can figure it out. Regardless, I don't like the odds. What happens if you fail? Oh, you wasted a pass. Also, just a note, the drone can't determine one thing from another until it starts getting 4 successes (or is it 5). 1 success tells it "Something here!". 2 is "Person/Car/Helicopter here!" 3 is "Troll/Ford Americar/Dwarf here!" 4 is "The troll in the picture I saw/Joe bob/My rigger". So, sure, you got a success on your sensor test. Whoopidy doo, now you know something is there. Oh, you got two? Well, at least now you know you're not locked onto his car instead. But all it gives you is "metahuman" so, unless you have smartlink integration kits, and give your teamates mini-traceivers to let it know don't shoot these ones, I'd just randomly (with a dice roll) pick which metahuman you wanted to shoot at. Depending on signatures, you'll probably pick up all the trolls first, and the others with a 6. So, I might go, you see 4 metahumans on sensors, which one do you want to shoot. I suppose you could have it shoot the farther away ones first, but that has its own issues. This is why its good to have a rigger controlling, as after you say, well, I want it to pick that one, its a pilot test to see if it decides in your favor or not. It might decide to shoot the closest one, as thats the one its most likely to hit, (result of bad interpretation) without the friend/foe transmitters, you just geeked your own mage.

Yeah, but isn't direct LoS on a target is a -3 TN and you pretty much want direct LoS if your using an MMG. If it's all on a Smartlink 2 then the rigger can designate a target with a spotter drone and have everything else go apedrek on it.

K10, yes, direct LOS is -3. To achieve direct LOS you either need to be on an open field/road with you and the target and no obstructions (including smoke) in the way. Note, a city street doesn't give you LOS, if theres other cars, even off to the side between you and the target, not direct LOS, etc. That, or be airborne, as airborne drones typically always have it. If they don't they can't target the thing.

Also, no, smartlinks (or sl2s) do NOT allow indirect fire via a spotter drone. That takes the battletac fddm control unit on the deck, the transmitter on the spotter drone, and another one on the fireing drone. Keeping in mind the master unit has an availability of 10, and you can't start out with indirect fireing drones. Don't even look at the costs, you'll cry.

Its usually easier to have recoil compensation on the turret for dealing with the recoil of the big guns. I think depending on the size of the turret decides how much recoil comp you can get... if I remember right, its 8 or 10 for a small turret, and 6 or 8 for a mini-turret, but don't quote me on those, no books atm.

My usual solution to the witch object is a target if I have multiple drones is to sit in captions chare mode. The drones identify “things” I tell them witch they can shoot.

Edward

Witch: What they burned in Salem
Which: one thing out of a number of them.

Now that thats out of the way, yeah, thats nice, you see 6 things, one is 2 meters in front of you, the next is 2.5 and slightly to the left, another is 3 and to the right. Theres another one 4 meters ahead of you, with the other 2 things behind it. Which do you shoot?

I believe they're for things like guided missiles, which can follow a laser/microwave designator that is painting a target and be indirectly fired that way. However it simply locks onto the painted target, not getting any targetting information passed between the drones.

Well, in theory, though not quite by the rules, indirect fire with a MMG using a spotter drone and smartlink2 would provide a -3 TN to the +8 Blind Fire, but still nerf the attack by making the drone use only it's pilot rating to fire.

Again, no, because you can't indirect fire with only a SL2. Also, you wouldn't get a -3, because its from the fireing drone, not from the spotter. Unless you had LOS from the drone fireing, you don't get -3. You do get the OPTION to use the MMG for blind-fire without having any los (direct or otherwise).

The drone would also get the complementary dice of half the spotters sensor rating with its pilot ala sensor-enhanced gunnery for fireing though.

I'm reading the rules now. Indirect fire can happen with a designator OR battletac. Using a spotter drone with battletac (or in theory a designator - sensors can read reflected lasers, that's how the missiles work) can reduce the blind fire penalty on direct fire wepaons by -2 and Smartlink2 provides a -1 on indirect fire. In theory, that's a -3 TN to the +8 blind fire.

Yes, -3, but not due to direct LOS, and thanks for clarifying up that last little bit. I'll have to go over the indirect-fire rules in R3R/CC when I get home.

I suppose, technically, it's not indirect fire and thus wouldn't gain the -1 from the smartlink2. And, by the rules, only the battletac provides the -2 blind fire with a spotter drone.

Spotting with another drone ALLOWS you to indirect fire a direct fire weapon AE. That is what it LETS YOU DO. Thats about all it lets you do, you still get +8 blind-fire, and its quite unlikely you'll hit anything most of the time, but you get the chance to try. The battletac gives you a -2 to do so, dropping it to +6 for attempting it. At best, since it still is indirect fire, you might be able to get another -1 from a sl2 on the gun and sl2 integration kit. Thats still +5 for indirect fire, add on recoil, feasibility, and usefullness, and it almost never comes up in a game. If it does, its usually to shoot someone through a wall, get a micro-roto drone behind the wall spotting, and the armed drone can now shoot at the people through the wall, and with a MMG, you might actually have a chance of getting THROUGH the wall in the first place to hit them, much less actually hit them.

There is acutally a funny shift between Uniterrutpred LOS (-2 Sensor) and Direct LOS (-3 TN) which make Tarantula correct. Just read it.

"indirect" means somehow hitting a target you have 0% visibility on. As far as indirect vehicle weapons go.

Yes, I realize that. And, incidentally, the "paper wall" example is the only situation I can think of where there'd be zero visibility from the MMG to the target and where indirect fire could reasonably help. Well, either that or sensor blackout of some kind. If there's any kind of actual obstacle inbetween, as is the case with anything called "indirect fire" outside of SR, that's when I'd start rolling up the CC.

So you reject the possibility of firing through hard cover?

~J

Something inbetween, use rules for fireing through a barrier. The spotter still has to be able to see the target in order to spot for the gunning drone. Basically, the spotter knows where the gunner is, and says (if you shoot your gun at x angle by y angle you'll hit the target, so the gunning drone aims at that spot and fires at it. Thats how I see it working.

Fair enough; I hadn't considered that part of it.

~J

Sure, but if you keep shooting, you'll start blowing a hole in the wall according to the rules, then you could shoot through said hole.

Assuming the target doesn't have a brain and stays in front of the hole.

And that also means you now have a direct line of sight at the enemy (through said hole), which means there's no need for "indirect fire" of any kind.

It might be creating a sensor-deadzone however, preventing a drone from having any line of sight through said hole, but able to shoot through it due to the indirect targetting through the spotter.

i've been pondering the same idea as a houserule, actually, in relation to suppressive fire. if the BR of the 'cover' you're hiding behind isn't at least 1/4 of the base power of the weapon that's suppressing you, it counts as a vision modifier--not as cover. that means that the cover TN mod isn't applied to the suppressing shooter's attack test. this ensures that hiding behind a bush is no more effective against suppressive fire than standing in dim light.

less useful for drones, i guess, since the vision mods still make it hard for the drone to get a lock.

I'm going to have to disagree with mfb on this one; shooting through barriers already covers this. Accepting your opponent's cover involves trying to hit someplace that isn't behind cover.

~J

Guess I should read through the Rules section of CC again some time...

it doesn't cover it for suppressive fire, though, kage. i mean, if you're just spraying bullets over an area, why should a bush or a curtain make you harder to hit than full darkness?

Because, you're surppressing around the bush/curtain. If you wanted to hit them, you'd surpress the meter the bush/curtain is in, then use fireing through barrier rules to hit whats on the other side.

uh. hm. actually, i think that may work. attacking through a barrier incurs a +8 TN for blind fire, which is a vision mod, which doesn't apply to suppressive fire.

this is hilarious. that rule makes so much sense that i'm having a really hard time accepting it.

It's times like this that I'm glad there's heavy Japanese influences in Shadowrun. Sliding ricepaper screens and the like, don'tchaknow.

back to turrets:
for the sake of imagery, ever put multiple weapons firing together on a single turret? ie: two belt fed machine guns that use the same attack roll. You can use the 20 round burst or whatever to calculate damage or area covered for searching or suppressing fire, but also factor in all of the recoil.
I've done this myself, have I missed rules on it somewhere?

Here's some modern commentary on indirect fire of mgs...

Linky

Interesting reading

That thread mostly talks about rather low elevation, firing above obstacles. That's slightly easier to accomplish, but note how the only specific mention of target area was "the size of a football field" and the amount of rounds fired was "60-70,000". Sure, that can in extreme cases be a useful tactic against unfortified or lightly fortified infantry, but it's clearly out of the scope of anything Shadowrun can portray.

It is interesting, though, that some modern militaries still do make some attempts at making this possible, re: the Australian MG platoon equipment on battalion level.

If your accuracy is measured in how many meters you're off target and a single-digit figure is considered extremely good, what kind of TN modifiers in SR would you consider "too harsh"? +30?

Well, considering that I'm using searchinf fire and firing a 1000 round burst, that ought to lower my target number some...

Dunno, with the very good ballistic and fire control computers of SR, even 20-50 round MG bursts might be useful... Assuming you want a 5 meter diameter beaten zone and put 50 rounds into it, that gives you roughly 2.5 rounds per square meter. Dosen't sound too healthy.

[edit]
The main problem would seem to be wind and drift, with the wind measuring targeting computers (as used on modern day tanks) you can adjust for this some at the time of firing. Assuming you are using 12.7mm and are limiting yourself to around 1km of range, the deviation probably won't be too bad. (Of coure, how bad is too bad? Several meters almost certainly... But beaten zones of 5 to 10 meters in diameter are probably doable...)
[/edit[

Scatter: 6d6, -2 meters/success?

~J