Reality-testing / Playtesting the Guns Default . . .

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Regarding the 'precisely known range' bonus:
If we go by the fact that at a couple of tens of yards the trajectory is flat anyway, I'm not sure what benefit precisely-known range should provide (i.e. someone could advocate a harsh-realism houserule making the answer 'none').
But even by RAW, the Eye For Distance perk provides a 'built-in' rangefinder with an error margin of ±5%, and is considered good enough to allow Precision Aiming but not to enjoy a Rangefinder bonus. So 'approximately 15 yards or metres' is already a precision level with an even worse error margin (at least ±10%).

On the first part, I don't think that negligible bullet drop over the range justifies being denied the range-finding penalty. If anything, it justifies getting it automatically without needing any ranging as a point-blank (in the technical sense even!) bonus. If point-blank range made you lose the bonus, you'd have cases where your effective skill would increase as the target was moved away and you started having to adjust for bullet drop, which is nonsensical.

As for Eye For Distance, I'd note that that, like the rangefinding bonus itself, is most likely designed with a focus on longer-range shooting. Beyond 20 yards, ±5% is more than 1 yard of error and therefore doesn't make you eligible for even the +1 partial rangefinding bonus.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Regarding Defaults:
If we don't have a consensus that someone picking up a real pistol for the first time in one's life is working at Default, then the results of the reality-test become irrelevant. So I want to ask: what do you consider to be the criterion of having 0 points in a DX/Easy skill (i.e. working at an actual default while having a default)? Back when I posted my impressions with the driving default, I don't recall anyone insisting that I have a point in Driving from playing Death Track on the computer.

I might allow a sufficiently intensive non-real training regime to give above-Default results in some cases...particularly, say, a UT VR training program.

But that's tangential, I don't see any reason to doubt that your trial reports on a standard Default level unless one basically rejects the entire idea that a standard Default level exists.