05-26-2016, 10:29 AM | #31 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: Recoil for Single-Shot Weapons
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Rcl 1 pretty consistently indicates 'this weapon has exceptional properties that mean felt recoil won't affect shot distribution'. Whether that's because the recoil is negligible (beam weapons, multiple rocket launchers) or because the shots are away before the recoil is felt (shotloads, high-cyclic bursts). Rcl 2 is characteristic of any guns that don't have such exceptional properties, unless they've got particularly strong recoil-to-weight, in which case they wind up with Rcl 3+.
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
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05-26-2016, 11:21 AM | #32 |
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Southern New Hampshire
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Re: Recoil for Single-Shot Weapons
The more I think about this, the more I want there to be some mechanism for carrying over from one round/turn/second to the next. Firing on round 1, and then firing again on round 2 seems like continuous firing to me. Why would the Rcl reset? As it stands, the rule is basically a way to have a penalty for consecutive shots in one round without having to roll the dice for each shot.
If you have something with full automatic fire that has an RoF of 10 and a Rcl of 1, each subsequent shot is less likely to hit than the previous. I know that the rules say it doesn't matter which shot it is that hits. If you make your attack roll with this example and you make it by 2, any three of the 10 shots hit (could have been the 3rd, 4th, and 10th for example). Now if you fire on full auto one one round, and then again on the next, why do the numbers reset? The spray of bullets hasn't stopped. Why would the probability of hitting on each round be the same? The rules as they are now mean that the shots you fired on round 1 have no bearing on the shots fired on round 2. That makes no sense to me at all. Based on this thread/discussion, I'm coming to the conclusion that I dislike the Rules As Written for Rcl. |
05-26-2016, 11:33 AM | #33 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: Recoil for Single-Shot Weapons
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It's true that a rule that did represent that might look the same. (And yes, that is indicative of a problem with the rule.) But trying to make the rule a better fit to a model that is neither what it's meant to fit, nor a good model, is not a fix.
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
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05-26-2016, 11:59 AM | #34 | |
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Southern New Hampshire
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Re: Recoil for Single-Shot Weapons
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An off the cuff house rule for Rcl Rcl works as normal such that each multiple of Rcl your Margin of Success accounts for means another shot hit the target after the first one at MoS 0, and up to the RoF. If the weapon is fired on the following round, subtract Rcl from the skill as a penalty to model continuous fire without recovering. Otherwise, the character firing the weapon can use a ready action to recover and reset the penalty. |
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05-26-2016, 12:14 PM | #35 | ||
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: Recoil for Single-Shot Weapons
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And it's a horribly wrong model for many weapons. I don't really have anything to add to what I posted previously: Quote:
And, well, a light semi-automatic pistol also doesn't start flailing around like a dropped fire-hose when you fire it rapidly. That's not really distinct, since my sentence was a conditional form.
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
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05-26-2016, 12:17 PM | #36 | |
Join Date: Jun 2008
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Re: Recoil for Single-Shot Weapons
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That is what you get for playing Car Wars and drinking beer when you should have been studying quantum mech (plus it was all 25 years ago in a university far far away and those equations still give me the willies). As for the rest I am content to chalk it up to the Rcl stat not being what it purports to be (or not being very good at simulating what it wants to be). Last edited by swordtart; 05-26-2016 at 12:20 PM. |
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05-26-2016, 12:21 PM | #37 |
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Southern New Hampshire
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Re: Recoil for Single-Shot Weapons
Then why make the distinction between rounds? On one round the more accurate way to model it in game would be to skip the Rcl entirely and have the player roll for each shot, since what you're saying is that the previous shots don't affect the aim. I've never fired a full auto firearm before, but with pistols (9mm mostly), I notice that if I fire as fast as I can, I'm much less accurate than if I pause after a "burst" of three (three consecutive trigger pulls), or even better, pause after one shot. I get that this is anecdotal evidence (and therefore not useful scientifically), but it's what I have to go on.
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05-26-2016, 12:50 PM | #39 | ||
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Recoil for Single-Shot Weapons
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That said, I actually did experiment a bit with the idea of taking a penalty based on Rcl for not pausing between shots in my Initiative Overhaul. That has the disadvantage of being chained to the bulky Initiative system, however. You could probably excise it, although that still means a character might be rolling upwards of 5 times for a single attack. |
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05-26-2016, 12:56 PM | #40 | ||
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: Recoil for Single-Shot Weapons
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Main reason: because they don't want that many rolls! I'm given to understand that GURPS 3e did something like that (rolling for small batches rather than single shots I think) and that this was something they wanted to get away from. So, roll for each shot is right out. There are other reasons. The autofire mechanics are covering a lot of ground, probably too much for any single mechanic to cover without a loose fit. For some weapons, previous shots likely do affect the aim significantly. If a gun has rcl > 2, that's probably why, and some light rcl 2 full-auto weapons may suffer as well. These are probably why the stat is called 'recoil'! For those guns some kind of cumulative penalty on consecutive rounds of rapid fire might be correct. Even for a gun where recoil is easily controlled from shot to shot, firing more discrete shots in the second means less time to aim (within the Attack maneuver) each one. So something making 3 semi-auto shots less accurate than 1 semi-auto shot is appropriate for any weapon. For heavier full-auto weapons where recoil doesn't really mess up your aim, you're still not usually going to hit a target with all of your shots in a burst, unless it's a pretty big target. Your shots are spread over a cone which, at the ranges the weapons are meant for, is usually bigger than an individual target. For even better fit, in at least some cases the scatter in the cone is in part from the working of the gun during automatic fire, so if you fire a single shot it really is much more precise. (Vietnam sniping with M2 HMGs...) Quote:
So if what you want is for one shot every other second to be the most accurate way to shoot, you've already got that.
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Tags |
firearm, flare gun, help me out here, question, recoil |
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