The barrel may rise due to recoil as you fire, but if you know how to control the weapon this won't cause a meaningful reduction in accuracy. The first bullet would go exactly where you pointed the weapon. The other bullets would form a pattern around the first.

SR autofire rules have always been unrealistic.

Yeah, but the caveat is that 1.) at great range the small perturbations of your barrel become more important and 2.) short bursts versus the garden hose of love.

It is so true. the recoil perturbation on the barrel could be mesured as an angle.
The loss of accuracy caused will then be proportionnal to the distance of the target.

Actually, that's not the most you can do with it.

Under SR3 rules, I can get it higher. Gas Vent 4 + Shock Pad + Customized Grip. Total of 8 points of RC. Add in the modifiers for a rangefinder and the SL-2 and it becomes nearly impossible to miss a shot on full auto. You don't even want to know about my recoilless belt-fed HMG.

So, what relevance does this have to the conversation? Simple. Under SR3, there was always more advantage to piling on as much RC as you could find in a full auto weapon and then shooting it than there was in burst fire. Yes, you could make a completely recoilless burstfire weapon, but you always did more damage with more bullets. Conservation really isn't that much of a problem if you shop smart.

Now, what about SR4? Well, the penalties that encouraged it in SR3 are even worse now. Instead of being a damned good idea to pile on as much RC as possible, it's now almost a requirement. If anything, I fully expect more people to be walking around in SR4 with guns that can fire 6+ rounds without recoil than I did in SR3.

They didn't all hit the same spot (if they did it wouldn't be any harder to dodge), so it is quite possible they didn't all hit.

P.S. This is abstracted combat after all.

"Only" +5 DV? Normally, to get an extra 5 DV you'll need 15 dice. It's an extremely good trade-off.

Systems that actually resolve burst fire on a bullet-by-bullet basis tend to have armor DR, which gets subtracted from each and every shot, and they also make it quite hard to hit with more than one or two bullets out of a burst because they don't have the fantasy recoil comp rules that SR does.

The entire SR3 and SR4 firearm systems are abstract things barely grounded in reality, but they sure as hell aren't stingy when it comes to the effects of burst fire...

Says who?

I think the truth is that you are both correct:

The -5dp represents loss of accuracy, and the low(?) +5 dv represnts that with a basic hit with a burst, not all of the bullets actually hit in a way that is very damaging to the target.

With more successes, however, you managed to get a good hit, thus raising the damage indicating that more of the bullets hit in vulnerable places...

It's a bad trade-off only if you have the time to empty your gun one bullet at a time, and the target is not wearing armor.

Game mechanicly, multiplying damage by the number of shots fired would make burst-fire unrealisticly effective unless you also multiplied the targets armor and body by the same number. If you fired one shot at a time, the target woul get to resist each one, so the same should apply with a burst. This would lead to rolling handfulls of dice, and slow the game un-reasonably. It's simpler just to apply a modifier then roll each bullet.

For example. Shooting your RC 3 Hn'K at a Bod 3 human in an 8/6 armor jacket:

Semi auto: Roll 10 dice, get 3.33... successes average for 8.33.. DV (5 base) x2 = 16.66.. (8.33 each)
The target rolls Reaction to avoid GETTING hit (avg 1 success, dropping the DV of each to 7.33) then Bod + Armor to resist damage. He gets (assumeing all 3's for attributes) 1 success to avoid and 3.66.. successes to resist for each shot. Total damage reduction = 9.333..
Total Damage taken by the target: 7.33.. STUN! (your DV for each shot is below his armor value)

Let us now consider fireing a pair of short bursts at the same target, to maximize effectiveness and demonstrate the advantages of burt-fire, both will be narrow:

You roll 10 dice to hit (full compensation), avg 3.33 successes for a DV of 10.33

Target rolls 3 dice, avg 1 success. He takes 9.33 resisted by 11 dice avg successes: 3.66
Target takes 5.66 boxes of physical damage (9.33 > armor of 8 )

Second burst: roll 7 dice (recoil. Ain't life a bitch) for an average of 2.33 successes. DV: 9.33

Target rolls.. 3 dice to dodge gets 1 successes. Resists 8.33 damage with 11 dice for 3.66 successes. takes 4.33 physical damage.

Total damage is 5.66 boxes of Physical plus 4.33 boxes physical = 10 physical damage and one dead Bod 3 human.

Now 10 physical is greater then 7.33 stun in my book.

I have neglectied to include wound penilties or statistical models (sensitivity anailisis) in this to keep things simple, but the odds are decient that if you fired six individual shots with an SMG, in the situation described above, some would hit and be stopped by armor (stun dmg). Some would penetrate (unlikely, but if you got a good roll and he missed his reaction roll, you need 4 net successes which is hard to get on 10 dice vs. 3) , and some would miss completely (ok, maybe 1 near the end. 7 dice vs. 3 is good odds). The chance of bullets missing goes up as the recoil increases. If you fired two long bursts the last rounds would be quite unlikely to hit at all. (2 dice vs. 3 and you need to win, not tie)

The trick here is that would make the game less fun.

I realise this is unrealistic. I accept te system is abstract. You want perfect realism? Join the army. There is a "campaign" going on in Iraq in right now that is looking for "players". I hear the system they use for modeling wound balistics is very true-to-life. There is even a complex political system you can get involved with if you like that kind of thing.

I tried that, but they hung up on me when I said I could make it from 4:00-10:00 PM EST on Sundays.

~J