Step away from the crunch for just a bit. Does it really make sense that a person with reflex boosting cyberware could flip a light switch more times in 3 seconds than a non-wired characters? Are we back to it being a flat speed increase?

Looking back actually, I never brought that up for that purpose really... Ultimately though, that discussion has been transplanted from the Speed thread, which is why I for one am getting confused.

If you are complaining about bullet time, put it in the speed thread and explain why a wired person shouldn't have more Simple Actions than a non-wired.

If you are complaining about the maximum ROF of a handgun, explain why an SA gun should operate at the same speed regardless as to the speed or skill of the shooter (in other words, assume the SR3 rules stand as written in regards to initiative, and explain why guns should shoot only this number of bullets within 3 seconds).

This thread is NOT about initiative, so please don't bring that debate here.

Indeed. I'll try my best to restrict my comments to the pertinent thread.

In progress.

First off, there is a maximum rate of fire on automatic handguns IRL because of the speed of the action. After squeezing the trigger, the hammer has to be released, which strikes the firing pin, which strikes the primer on the cartridge in the chamber, which causes the powder in the cartridge to ignite, which creates an ass-load of pressure, which pushes the bullet from the casing and down the barrel, which all pushes the cartridge case back against the bolt face, which pushes the bolt back, which causes the chamber to open up to the air outside the weapon (with the bolt pushing back on the hammer and re-cocking it), which allows the cartridge case to be ejected, which makes room for a new cartridge to be loaded, which allows the next cartridge in the magazine to pop up in line with the bolt face/chamber, which gets pushed into the chamber by the bolt returning from the blowback, which results in the round being loaded in the chamber, the hammer being cocked, and the weapon being ready to fire. <forgive my run on sentence>

All of those things need to take place before the weapon is mechanically capable of firing again. Regardless of the user's skill or speed, a firearm operating in SA mode cannot fire any faster than the time required for these operations to take place.

Now, IRL, all of those things happen REALLY quickly. But the mechanics of an automatic weapon will limit the upper end of the weapon's ROF.

As a side note to this, I like the idea of a person's SKILL being able to influence how rapidly they can engage targets with a semi-automatic firearm. But in SR, skill has nothing to do with it. A person with Pistols 3 and Wired Reflexes 3 can engage 4 times as many targets as a person with Pistols 10 and no 'ware.

So by all means, lets come up with rules that limit the number of SA shots a character can fire based on his/her Firearms skill.

That's a lot easier said than done when the whole idea of a mechanically determined ROF is broken by concept of more than one initiative pass.

Actually, i disagree somewhat. The difference between the likes of a SA and an FA is the fact that the trigger has to be pulled, that is something that the user can effect. Otherwise how can you get the rate of fire from SMG's or Assult rifles? The mechanical action of the weapon is quite capable of moving that fast.

Now if you want to cap the amount of Lead a FA weapon can dish out while being used by the likes of a wired person, cool.

IRL, there is. But a skilled shooter can compensate for all of those things and still manage to accurately fire more than two shots every three seconds from a semi-automatic handgun.

That's a jury-rig fix. It's better than the RAW, but still doesn't reflect the fact that a reasonably skilled shooter can accurately fire several rounds from an automatic handgun.

Here is an example of what I'm talking about. The International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC, pronounced IPP-sick) has shooting competitions that involve challenges like the "el Presidente".

For this challenge, the shooter stands with his back to three targets. Each target is a small hexagon, 18" across. The "A" zone (bullseye) of each target is only 6"across. These targets are 10 meters away from the shooter. In SR a 6" target that's 10 meters away is probably ruled as a "called shot" on a Medium range target when using a Heavy Pistol.

When the cue is given, the Shooter must turn to face the targets, put 2 rounds into each target, eject his magazine, load a fresh magazine, and then put two more rounds into each target. And all of this has to happen in under 12 seconds.


All of the shots MUST hit the target, and at least 50% of the shots must hit the "A" zone if the shooter wants to progress to the next stage of the competition. This is a part of the normal IPSC course, and is far from the most challenging stage.

To do something like this in SR would require the expenditure of 14 simple actions (1 for each shot, one for ejecting the first mag, and one for loading a fresh mag). That's impossible for a mundane that only gets two simple actions every 3 seconds.

Also, in SR, you would be looking at a Base TN of 5 for medium range, +4 more for making a called shot. So that's a TN 9 before you even get to recoil modifiers (which can be reduced) and modifiers for changing targets. And people in real life can do this without cyberware, without magic, and without smartlinks.

Nope...I think you've got it mostly. In fact, you are offering possible solutions rather that just offering problems (like me)

Amongst other things, yes. And that would mean that the theoretical limit of ROF of a semi-automatic weapon would be the same as the identical weapon, but modified for full auto. You'll notice I never said this wasn't the case. In fact I stated that the mechanical operation speed dictates the upper limit of the weapon's maximum rate of fire. And even if the user can squeeze the trigger as fast or faster than cyclic operation of the weapon, it sill will not increase the weapon's rate of fire beyond what it would be MECHANICALLY CAPABLE OF IF IT WERE FULLY AUTOMATIC.

I never stated any hard numbers as the maximum ROF of SA weapons. Indeed, the mechanical action of a weapon like a 9mm HK MP5 is capable of firing 800 rounds per minute. I would assume that, in theory, if one could pull the trigger as fast as the weapon's action operates, one would get a ROF close to 800 rnds per min.

That MP5 will fire at 800 rounds per minute as long as the trigger is squeezed, regardless if it's being held by Hatchet-Man with his Move-by-Wire 4, or being held by Grandma Esmeralda with no cyberware and no training. That's not "cool", it's physics.

Very good point. I haven't played SR3 since SR4 came out, so I suppose I got a little turned around. But yes, I would HIGHLY doubt that most IPSC competitors would be rated with a Quickness AND Intelligence in the 5-6 range, which is what you would need to be capable of rolling an 11 or 12 for initiative, right? Then you'd have to max or close to max your roll 3 out of 4 times. Yeah, that's not something that someone with a 6QUI and 6INT could do consistently in SR.

You are probably right. Then again, that's not much bigger than a human head, either. And I've never met a GM that wouldn't require a called shot for that.

Yeah, way difficult, and impossible to pull off "consistently" with an uncybered, mundane character.

So the MP5 might run into trouble if Hatchetman rolls well and somehow has his weapon belt-fed, since if you do the math you'll realize that someone with four passes a turn using every single pass to fire 10 rounds full-auto will have fired 800 rounds after twenty turns (one minute).

Y'know, I'm really not getting the feeling that excessively fast fire rates are what need fixing. I think doing something about the fact that a minigun ought to fire 300 rounds a turn, which requires an initiative of 191 to do right now, is probably a better place to spend our time.

Edit: ok, I've reread that post and there's a few things going on there, so I'm not sure if I addressed a primary argument or not. When I have time to check, I will.

~J

Give diminishing returns on full auto damage so 100 times as many bullets don't do 100 times the damage?

But at absolute cap on full auto damage? After a certain point hitting something with more bullets is not going to make the target any more or less dead.

Put a cap on suppressive fire damage? The minigun hits a damage cap inflicted per square meter covered, but it can cover a lot MORE area per action, leaving it with a legitimate purpose.

I admit I haven't given it much thought, but I think any of these would be more realistic than arbitrarily declaring that the weapon stop firing bullets after the first 15 (or whatever it is for the minigun) or giving it a damage code of 312Dx150 (or whatever absurd damage you get from 300 bullets)

Hmm, rules for engaging an enemy where you have plenty of time to prepare, the enemy can't capably strike back, and you have a clear sight picture on your targets...

Hey, sounds like an ambush to me! Whatever we decide on here in terms of initiative boosting and timing considerations, maybe we can adapt that to improved rules on Surprise and Ambushing. That way a 12-second competition shooting match would effectively be 4 full Combat Turns where the competitor freely gets the Ambushing benefits vs. the targets.

LOL, nice typo/pun.

Then don't use AV rockets. For $500 less you can get a high explosive rocket, which has a blast radius of 16 meters. And rockets do explode if they miss their target, they just don't explode if they don't hit anything at all (assuming they don't have something set to go off at a certain range). So if you're aiming for a person, don't shoot at the person, shoot at the ground at the person's feet.

It occurs to me that rockets really are not meant to directly hit man sized targets, and unguided rockets are fairly useless against medium sized vehicles (which is why we don't use them, for the most part). This isn't quake. Rockets continue to be quite deadly as it stands, since an HE rocket fired by an unskilled shooter will likely inflict 9D of pain on the target and anyone around them. Really, the only way to keep rockets from being one-hit kills (which arguably they are right now, although perhaps one-hit TPK is more accurate) is to make it really really hard to hit a man-sized object straight on.

I still say that the current rules should stand, for realism and for balance.

Well quite.

Nezumi,

Check the rules for AV rockets and missiles in the BBB, it clearly states on pg280 that they do not explode if they miss. (Dumb I know, but it's canon).

Also, if you take a look at the rules for grenade scatter, launchers/aerodynamics get -4m per success, and standard grenades get -2m per success. I can see that what the rules are trying to get at is probably the range disparity. Obviously, at long and extreme ranges, if you're going to miss, you're going to miss by a very long way, I have no problem with that. What I take issue with, is the inconsistancy with any other test in the game regarding the number of successes. That includes Grenades, whereby half as many successes gets you an average direct hit regardless of type and manner of launch.

Edit.

And like I said, I've never had any balance issues in game in completely ignoring scatter, simply because they're so big and unweildy. A Character can expect to be able to lug the launcher, and at best 2 extra rockets, for that reason alone my group don't use them lightly. OTOH, Assault cannons and Sniper Rifles are much more portable and offer much more effective one-shot-one-kill opportunities.

I'm not going to pretend I know how to calibrate the targetting systems of a helicopter, suffice to say that at the 10km max range of the hydra system, the sights of anything only need to be misaligned by 10 degrees to miss by 1km. How easy it is for the system to get that far out I have no idea.