[John_A_Tallon]

One option your player might want to consider is using multi-ball ammunition of some sort, per the rules on p. HT173. He'd be trading some damage per projectile and overall range, but he'd get Recoil 1 from it. I don't see any reason why there couldn't be multi-ball caseless rounds.

As I understand it, the recoil statistic represents the mechanical accuracy of the gun. As in, if it were fired from a bench rest without consideration for the strength or habits of the shooter. I could see a reasonable argument to be made for a high quality closed bolt gun with some sort of mass dampening system and a lower impulse round achieving recoil 1 (as the TDI Kriss Super V SMG in Tactical Shooting does). Your player's ETC storm rifle isn't really that though: it's doing per-shot damage comparable to a Barrett M82A1. It gets that at a much lower ST requirement, with better rate of fire, and in a weapon that weighs a third the Barrett. I suspect that a lot of recoil mitigation is already assumed to be integrated into the gun.

Still, I would say that it's reasonable to assume that active mass dampening technologies (as opposed to tuned mass dampeners like what's in the Kriss) will eventually be applied to handheld weapons. The gyrostabilized weapon harness on p. UT150 is probably a good starting point for building an AMD from a rules perspective. Once the weight from the AMD was added to the gun I would worsen bulk by -2 and decrease recoil by 2 with the provision that the gun must have a computer targeting aid of some sort: either the Targeting tactical program or a proper computer sight as in p. HT157.

This effectively doubles the weight of the gun and puts something like a weird looking box containing high power motors and a couple of dense chunks of mass on it. Stylistically it might be a replacement stock and handguard, or an after-market part that bolts to the gun's rail system. In effect, between each shot, the high speed motors will be throwing the masses in the direction opposite the recoil force and, critically, in such as way as to also further correct the shooter's aim with the help of the computer program (thus justifying the modification to recoil).

You get a lot with the recoil improvement, but you're giving up a lot in terms of expense and loss of weight savings. It seems like it would roughly even out, though it's certainly something I'd want to test in a game with the disclaimer to the player that it might be too good and require adjustment.