Multiple projectiles and the charging horde

[chandley]

Our brave hero (having just purchased High Tech on PDF) is facing the charging hordes of four-armed green-skinned Martians, sword in one hand, the firing line for a Schneider Mle 1897 (pink-skinned martian copy) in the other. Smiling in grim humour, our naked (but for his bandoliers and pistols) hero uses his stronger earth-born muscles to pull the cord, firing a round of shrapnel into the enemy!

Our hero is initially heartened, as his efforts produce a blast of 270 musket ball sized shots square into the teeth of the enemy, each doing 2d-1 pi+ damage! The carnage shall be awful! Rolling his Artillery(Cannon)-15 skill, he cannot believe his luck. A 5! With the +8 bonus to hit for his ROF of 270, the fist savage in the path of this wall of destruction is rent to pieces by 18 hits. Gleeful, our hero looks to the next victim! Only... There is no next victim. Thats it. 270 shots, one very dead savage.

Desperately, our hero searches pages 408-410 for answers. Shotguns and Multiple Projectiles? No, no, thats what hes done already (1x270 ROF). Rapid Fire vs Close Stationary Targets? Look man, the savages are charging across the red Martian plain, hooting and hollering. Spraying Fire, surely! Okay, ROF 5+... well 1x270 surely qualifies, even if its not exactly WRITTEN that way. Ignore it. Engage in succession... okay, surely an artifact of the rules... Separate attack rolls yes yes, tedious but doable... add +1 Recoil for your attck on the second target, +2 Recoil when you engage the third target... Now wait a damn minute. Even his heroic roll of a 5 will affect no more than 17 targets, but hes unlikely to roll that well for each target, and besides, he has to split that 270 over all the targets, reducing the +8 bonus in any event. That doesnt seem right... Suppression Fire maybe? No, that takes an entire second and an All-out Attack, and all hes doing is pulling the trigger once here.

In despair, our hero uses his mighty earth born muscles to lift the cannon out of its carriage. Perhaps it will be more effective as a giant club...

Anyone care to help our hero out here? The best I can do is spraying fire, which doesnt seem to be written for the kind of attack a shrapnel shot (never mind Behive with its _thousands_ of shots) does. It seems like theres a rule missing here somewhere, and I cant find it in Basic or in High Tech (Which, honestly, was where I hoped to find it).

Chandley

[Crakkerjakk]

My first instinct would be to check the stats provided for the Claymore mine. I'm AFMB at the moment, so I can't give you a page reference, but as I recall it has rules on how to deal with a wide shot pattern, in approximately the same quantities.

[Captain Joy]

Originally Posted by chandley

...a Schneider Mle 1897...ROF of 270...wall of destruction....Thats it. 270 shots, one very dead savage.

I see several possibilities.

Possibility 1: The martian savages are not shoulder to shoulder and the situation occurs exactly as you have described. As a GM, I'd do it this way if my PCs were attacking competent foes.

Possibility 2: The martian savages are not shoulder to shoulder, but within a few yards of each other and the Schneider's "wall of destruction" is wider than this, in which case you should use the Suppression Fire rules on p. B409. As a GM, I'd do it this was if my PCs were attacking martian savages.

Possibility 3: The approaching martian savages are effectively a Close Stationary Target (p. B408) and will be hit by half the shots. As a GM, I might do it this way in order to speed up an unimportant combat.

It sounds like you may be imagining a situation between possibilities #1 and #2 and neither by itself seems perfect. I would offer a hybrid solution: apply Possibility 1 vs the lead/center martian savage and apply Possibility 2 to the closest near-by foes.

[CrimsonDawn]

P. 389, Hitting the Wrong Target?

"If you hit with a ranged weapon and miss, you may hit someone else."

So you missed with 252 shots, and the guy behind the one you did hit gets attacked by those shots. Although the above quote continues "You must check for this if you fail your attack roll", but that's how I'd go with it.

It would work nicely if you'd also spread your fire, and there are lots of other martians behind each of those initial 5 guys.

[chandley]

Originally Posted by Captain Joy

I see several possibilities.

Possibility 1: The martian savages are not shoulder to shoulder and the situation occurs exactly as you have described. As a GM, I'd do it this way if my PCs were attacking competent foes.

Thats quite a bit of "not shoulder to shoulder" going on there. If I go with the spreading fire rules, I get to choose whether to start left to right or right to left, and then begin applying ROF to individual targets. Now, for ROF 16+, I waste two shots per target if they are more than one yard apart. So, if I put 1 shot on target and waste 2, I can shoot 90 savages, though Ill be shooting at the last one with an effective RCL of 89, and since I have to roll to hit each one, Im likely to miss a few. On the other hand, they can be _any distance apart at all_ in this scenario, as I waste two shots to span any gap larger than 1 yard.

Edit: Im incorrect here. They cannot be any distance apart at all. Its 2 shots per yard. So this gives a maximum spread of 135 yards for my 270 pellets, and the rather bizzare case that cannister or beehive with more shots can spread farther, regardless of the range to the target. Which fails my sense of reality check anyway...

This fails all kinds of tests, but the most iimportant is that canister/shrapnel rounds from cannon are NOT "walking automatic fire", like what the rules on Spraying Fire, B409, are meant to cover. So, this ones out.

Possibility 2: The martian savages are not shoulder to shoulder, but within a few yards of each other and the Schneider's "wall of destruction" is wider than this, in which case you should use the Suppression Fire rules on p. B409. As a GM, I'd do it this was if my PCs were attacking martian savages.

Suppression Fire doesnt really work either. The mechanics seem somewhat usable, but it requires an All-out attack and takes up a full second, and a cannon shot of this type is a single pull of the "trigger".

It might be possible to waive the All-out attack and full second requirements and kit-bash suppression fire into something appropriate. Of course, the shooter STILL gets to pick his 2-yard target zones (though multiples must be adjacent), which basically means the character could decide to fire on one 2-yard zone with one shot, twenty-seven 2-yard zones with the next.. which is not how canister shot really works.

Possibility 3: The approaching martian savages are effectively a Close Stationary Target (p. B408) and will be hit by half the shots. As a GM, I might do it this way in order to speed up an unimportant combat.

They are charging over the plains, hooting and hollering man. Its in the story :). I did go through the options on B408-410, and found them lacking, so Im looking for suggestions BEYOND those.

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

My first instinct would be to check the stats provided for the Claymore mine. I'm AFMB at the moment, so I can't give you a page reference, but as I recall it has rules on how to deal with a wide shot pattern, in approximately the same quantities.

Here your on to something. Bacially the claymore mine uses the "Cone Attack" rules with some modification. So this would work great except... whats the cone on my cannon? 60 deg? ALL cannons shoot a perfect 60 deg cone? A 60 deg cone that extends for 6,900 yards (the max range for shrapnel?) Though maybe shrapnel doesnt work that way, since it supposed to be some kind of air burst. But even a 37mm cannon can shoot cannister to 1,200 yards, which, with a 60 deg cone, implies a hell of a lot of spread.

But this seems the way to go. Now, are there resources anywhere that give approximate arcs for the cones of cannister, shrapnel and beehive rounds?

Chandley

[The Wrathchild]

High-Tech goes into some detail here on p. 172-173, requiring followup reading on B409 and 414 (shotgun rules, spreading attacks incl cones) - but I cannot find one essential piece of info: the max width of the cones mentioned. Without this we basically don't know the shape of the cones. This should probably have been included with the stats on each individual gun (as other such stats are), but isn't, AFAICT. Can anyone see this stat somewhere?

[alaph]

treat it as a cone shaoed attack?

I would type more but I hsave a three month old in the other hand.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by The Wrathchild

High-Tech goes into some detail here on p. 172-173, requiring followup reading on B409 and 414 (shotgun rules, spreading attacks incl cones) - but I cannot find one essential piece of info: the max width of the cones mentioned. Without this we basically don't know the shape of the cones. This should probably have been included with the stats on each individual gun (as other such stats are), but isn't, AFAICT. Can anyone see this stat somewhere?

I can't, so I did a bit of a search online to see if there was any data on the rate of spread of grape or canister shot, and I have found no figures at all.

[Rupert]

Ah, having read the OP more carefully, I see another problem - shrapnel doesn't work work like a shotgun anyway, but instead is an airbursting frag round in effect. Exactly how this works with the stats given I'm not sure, but presumably you'd treat it like a normal airburst, but with a better 'Rcl', 1 rather than 3.

[chandley]

Originally Posted by Rupert

Ah, having read the OP more carefully, I see another problem - shrapnel doesn't work work like a shotgun anyway, but instead is an airbursting frag round in effect. Exactly how this works with the stats given I'm not sure, but presumably you'd treat it like a normal airburst, but with a better 'Rcl', 1 rather than 3.

Im interested in the spread rates for Canister and Beehive too. All these rounds seem to be missing something fundamental to their proper use, rules wise...

Chandley