Re: Heavy AV Rifle... abuse?
Compendium 2e (1996):
p. 38:
Hand weapons fired from a car have a right or left arc of fire, depending on what side they're fired from.
p. 72:
Driver sits on the right or left, assigned at build time.
No word on whether the gunner has an assigned side.
Passengers can use hand weapons. [No further qualifiers are provided.]
So my read is that anyone you want to be able to fire hand weapons needs to be assigned to a side of the car - left or right.
Given that, there's no limit on how many crew can fire out of one side of the car, but they're stuck to their assigned seats. You could have a driver, a gunner, and 8 passengers all sitting on the left side of the car, assuming you've allocated spaces and weights for them, and they could all fire out that side of the vehicle. No front or back arcs though.
p. 108:
"Component armor ... can protect anything else in the vehicle."
Despite one reference distinguishing between components and occupants, several sections clearly use the word component to include crew, so yes, you can component armor crew. and no, not a single word implies that component-armored crew can't fire out the side they're sitting on.
So yes, large numbers of component-armored gunner/passengers firing hand weapons out of the side of your vehicle. Left or right, but only one, and you have to allocate them at build-time.
Driver fires at -3, gunners and passengers fire at -1. Laser scope and handgunner skill give +1 each - your math looks correct that it settles in to a base to-hit of 7.
p. 73:
"No more than 1/3 of the spaces in a vehicle can be devoted to weapons that fire from any one side." Comnponent-armored passenger seats are manifestly not weapons.
Passenger: 1 spaces, 150 lbs, no cost
Heavy AV Rifle: No spaces, $900 fully loaded wiith 10 shots, 25 lbs
Laser Targeting Scope: No spaces, no weight, $500
Component armor: 1 space, 2 lbs per point, $5 per point
So for a total of 2 spaces, 175 + 2xarmor# lbs, and $1400 + $5*armor# , you've got a "weapon" system that you can stack as many of as you want in a broadside on the side of your vehicle, completely circumventing the 1/3 spaces rule.
Ar 1d+3 damage, base to-hit of 7, 10 shots, 2 spaces, and $1415 for 6 damage points (3 points of armor plus the person's 3 damage points), it compares /very/ favorably to a standard machine gun, even before you take into account the broadside capability.
Yes, yes, you're very clever. Your fellow players will spend the entire evening tearing their compendiums apart trying to find verbiage that prevents this, instead of actually fighting your car :D
|