Dodgin' Bullets

HANS · 03-22-2016, 02:05 AM

We have been over this several times, a search of the forums and the relevant books will bring up more details. Summing up:

Rounds per casuality figures are completely USELESS for this kind of discussion. They represent the rounds expended over time rather than per target. You can learn things from these statistics (tactics, prevalence of automatic weapons, etc), but NOT how good the shooters are.
Overall, shooters have atrocious hit rates IN COMBAT. And by atrocious I mean mainly seen from a game perspective, which is set by our own expectations how these things should turn out. Some shooters have much better average hit rates (especially snipers), but these are usually operating under specific conditions (shots from ambush, really, where the shooter controls most of the parameters -- including the target's inability to Dodge!). In a standup fight with people who shoot back at you, most shooters miss most of the time. And that means shots intended to hit, not just suppression fire. There is a huge amount of data to back this up, from police shootings and military analysts.
Now, the reasons for all those misses are NOT necessarily that the shooters lack suitable Guns skill -- although Guns 15-16 is extremely unlikely for troops of the line (Tactical Shooting, p. 42). Rather, the reasons are that most shootouts occurr under unfavourable conditions, in darkness, when you are tired, in poor weather, in surprised ambush situations where you can't clearly see the other, in confined spaces, etc, etc.
And yes, Dodge is also one of those reasons. Opponents will NOT stand still like a paper target. However, Dodge against firearms, and I cannot stress this enough, does NOT mean you are dodging the bullet. Any comparisons with dodging baseballs or melee weapons are completely missing the point. It means not being where the other shooter thinks you are. This can mean dodging the presentation, dropping to the deck, being on the move, etc, etc. It is an abstraction of the difficulty of hitting a target that does not stand perfectly still. The Dodge figures for ordinary PCs might err slightly on the high side, but that is a question of giving the players agency over their PCs to make the game fun. You can smooth that out a bit with the Tactical Dodging rules in (Tactical Shooting, p. 17), but frankly I don't even think that is necessary.

Cheers

HANS

03-22-2016, 02:05 AM	#17
HANS Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Berlin, Germany	Re: Dodgin' Bullets We have been over this several times, a search of the forums and the relevant books will bring up more details. Summing up: Rounds per casuality figures are completely USELESS for this kind of discussion. They represent the rounds expended over time rather than per target. You can learn things from these statistics (tactics, prevalence of automatic weapons, etc), but NOT how good the shooters are. Overall, shooters have atrocious hit rates IN COMBAT. And by atrocious I mean mainly seen from a game perspective, which is set by our own expectations how these things should turn out. Some shooters have much better average hit rates (especially snipers), but these are usually operating under specific conditions (shots from ambush, really, where the shooter controls most of the parameters -- including the target's inability to Dodge!). In a standup fight with people who shoot back at you, most shooters miss most of the time. And that means shots intended to hit, not just suppression fire. There is a huge amount of data to back this up, from police shootings and military analysts. Now, the reasons for all those misses are NOT necessarily that the shooters lack suitable Guns skill -- although Guns 15-16 is extremely unlikely for troops of the line (Tactical Shooting, p. 42). Rather, the reasons are that most shootouts occurr under unfavourable conditions, in darkness, when you are tired, in poor weather, in surprised ambush situations where you can't clearly see the other, in confined spaces, etc, etc. And yes, Dodge is also one of those reasons. Opponents will NOT stand still like a paper target. However, Dodge against firearms, and I cannot stress this enough, does NOT mean you are dodging the bullet. Any comparisons with dodging baseballs or melee weapons are completely missing the point. It means not being where the other shooter thinks you are. This can mean dodging the presentation, dropping to the deck, being on the move, etc, etc. It is an abstraction of the difficulty of hitting a target that does not stand perfectly still. The Dodge figures for ordinary PCs might err slightly on the high side, but that is a question of giving the players agency over their PCs to make the game fun. You can smooth that out a bit with the Tactical Dodging rules in (Tactical Shooting, p. 17), but frankly I don't even think that is necessary. Cheers HANS __________________ I blog at Shooting Dice.