The new recoil/multi shot system is broken

[Sam Baughn]

o_0

Why would they do it like that? Unless they have some real world data to support their numbers I would have though that a simple formula would be the way to go.

In my third edition house rules I use the square root of the rate of fire. It does get a bit odd at very high rates of fire, but it's easy to calculate. A workable alternative would be to add +1 to skill for every doubling of the rate of fire. If that was too rapid an increase, they could take the numbers from the speed/range table, counting yards as rounds per second and using the number there as a bonus.

I don't like to criticise a mechanic which I haven't had a chance to look at carefully yet, but it seems that it could have been handled a bit more elegantly.

EDIT: that was in response to Lawman's first post. I have no idea how the new suppression fire rules work.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by lawman

50 to 99 is +6

and then +1 for every doubling....

It's a toss up, though. On one hand, I don't want high RoF to make someone super acurate replacing skill. On the other hand, I want it to work and be scalable to cinematic/super levels, too.... Skill seems to be the key word there.

Keep in mind a potential paradigm shift:

A) The purpose of filling the air with lead is to hit your opponent more times
B) The purpose of filling the air with lead is to guarantee you hit your opponent at least once

The GURPS autofire rules seem to be tailor made to cause B, rather than A. Consider--putting 50-99 bullets into the air is +6 to net hit chance. Or, looking at it another way, if you have a chance to hit a baddie once at, say, 100yds with one bullet, than you can hit with that same chance at 1000yds by firing 50-99 bullets. A +6 to skill is the same as bringing the range in by a factor of ten (1/2D aside).

Increased RoF is NOT an attempt to put a LOT more bullets on target. It's an attempt to ensure that at least one hits.

You may argue with this point of view as wrong, that GURPS really should simulate A better. but it seems clear to me it's designed for B

[Ronnke]

Very interesting point.

If that is the case then I would have tried to adopt a combination of A&B, a middle ground, something not quite A or B, or even separate rules for each case.

[lawman]

That may be what it was designed for, and it accomplishes that pretty well.

It still doesn't seem right to me, though. In a realistic game, I'm fine with it, and I mostly play realistic games. I doubt I'll ever play or GM a game where a weapon has a RoF over 15, (but it is always possible) so it is kinda negligable.

Like I said, there may be future rules on this when the G4 books with high RoF weapons are produced. The Basic Books don't have weapons that go above RoF 15.

My own idea, would be to use multiples of bullets for each factor of success. So with a RoF of 60, maybe each level of the RCL counts for (first guess) 3 bullets hitting. So that would be +5, with a RCL of 2 you've added 6 to 9 (rough) which is in the area of 10%.

Another idea is to make the number of striking bullets increase with each factor of success. So if you make it by 0, thats 1 bullet. If you make it buy the RCL (lets say 2), thats 3 bullets. If you make it by by 4 (RCLX2), thats 6, then 10 ....

Anyway, something like that.

I can see problems if you just stack on extra pluses to the skill. A monkey could hit a fly with 60 bullets. So adding more bonuses to hit doesn't really work.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by lawman

That may be what it was designed for, and it accomplishes that pretty well.

It still doesn't seem right to me, though. In a realistic game, I'm fine with it, and I mostly play realistic games. I doubt I'll ever play or GM a game where a weapon has a RoF over 15, (but it is always possible) so it is kinda negligable.

Like I said, there may be future rules on this when the G4 books with high RoF weapons are produced. The Basic Books don't have weapons that go above RoF 15.

My own idea, would be to use multiples of bullets for each factor of success. So with a RoF of 60, maybe each level of the RCL counts for (first guess) 3 bullets hitting. So that would be +5, with a RCL of 2 you've added 6 to 9 (rough) which is in the area of 10%.

Another idea is to make the number of striking bullets increase with each factor of success. So if you make it by 0, thats 1 bullet. If you make it buy the RCL (lets say 2), thats 3 bullets. If you make it by by 4 (RCLX2), thats 6, then 10 ....

Anyway, something like that.

I can see problems if you just stack on extra pluses to the skill. A monkey could hit a fly with 60 bullets. So adding more bonuses to hit doesn't really work.

One concept would be to use the RoF as a lookup on the speed/range table.

So, you fire at skill 18 at a baddie at 100yds (-10) with an Rcl 2 weapon. Normally, that'd be a net skill of 8, which means on average, with only one shot, you'll miss completely. To get a net skill of 10, enough to guarantee one hit, you need a +2 RoF bonus, which is to fire 4.5 shots (make that 5). If you fire 60 shots (look up on speed/range, 60 is between 45 and 70, for a +8 bonus) on average you get a skill of 16, which with Rcl 2 is four hits.

Effectively, on the speed/range table, for Rcl 2 weapons, each doubling of the number of shots fired increases the number of hits you make by one. Not a great use of bullets, but then, it's NOT a great use of bullets.

For cinematic play you could have Rcl adjusted using character points. So your Hero could either

A) spend a CP to cut the Rcl number in half for each CP spent

--OR--

B) Spend a CP to increase the number of hits per Rcl margin of success by (something)

[Sam Baughn]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

One concept would be to use the RoF as a lookup on the speed/range table.

The more I think about it, the more I like that idea. The progression isn't too steep and you need to check the table anyway to work out the range modifier.

I would use the same method when firing at a group of targets - just use the number of targets instead of the number of shots fired. Makes mass firefights pretty simple.

[sir_pudding]

Extremely stable high ROF weapons might get fractional ROF. For example a M134 (ROF 60) mounted in a Cheyanne might have ROF 1/2 so that for every point you make your roll by two rounds hit.

[lawman]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Extremely stable high ROF weapons might get fractional ROF. For example a M134 (ROF 60) mounted in a Cheyanne might have ROF 1/2 so that for every point you make your roll by two rounds hit.

That pretty much works out to what I was getting at, but it makes more sense your way. Good idea.

[Kuroshima]

I imagine that the cinematic minigun might have a RCL of 1/2 or even 1/4, so imagine the hypothetic case above:

Skill 18
RCL 1/4
Full aiming-> +8
RoF 120-> +6
Range 100 yeards-> -7

net skill-> 25

You roll a 10, you succeed by 15. that's 1 shot+15*4=61 hits. More than half the bullets hit, and vaporize the target.

If it was close, with a range penalty of -5 and you rolled a 3, you would get: 1+24*4=93 hits...

Point blank, you would surely hit with all them...

[PK]

Originally Posted by lawman

So, not only is it difficult to remember, causing me to look it up and slow down my game (where the rule was supposed to be streamlined and speed things up)

Why would you not just write it down in the weapon description? I put mine next to RoF in parentheses... "RoF 20 (+4)". Since even the most versatile weapons generally have only two settings (semi-auto (RoF 3, which gives NO bonus) and full auto), there's literally nothing to remember.