Can you aim a gun you can't see?

[Otaku]

Would it help to concoct another "mundane" example, or at least, one that does not rely upon the fantastic (like being invisible)?

Firing from some form of partial cover. Maybe you're sticking your arm and firearm around the cover, or there's enough of an opening in the cover that you can stick your arm and weapon through it. You're not firing totally blind, though; like I said, it is partial cover, so you can see over it. The cover just obstructs your view of your own arm and weapon.

Maybe that makes zero difference, and I cannot reality test this. As someone who barely every shoots a firearm and has a poor track record tossing things into the bin, it doesn't make sense that aiming requires you're able to see your weapon... but quality aiming would. So some bonus ought to be allowed, and it is probably being eaten up by additional penalties.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Otaku

Would it help to concoct another "mundane" example, or at least, one that does not rely upon the fantastic (like being invisible)?

Firing from some form of partial cover. Maybe you're sticking your arm and firearm around the cover, or there's enough of an opening in the cover that you can stick your arm and weapon through it. You're not firing totally blind, though; like I said, it is partial cover, so you can see over it. The cover just obstructs your view of your own arm and weapon.

Maybe that makes zero difference, and I cannot reality test this. As someone who barely every shoots a firearm and has a poor track record tossing things into the bin, it doesn't make sense that aiming requires you're able to see your weapon... but quality aiming would. So some bonus ought to be allowed, and it is probably being eaten up by additional penalties.

Given weapons without any real way to use the weapon to aim, like slings, bolas, shuriken, etc, not only allow the Aim maneuver but in many cases have a non-zero Acc, I'd say you don't need to use the sights to take an Aim maneuver. Tactical Shooting certainly disagrees - it won't let you Aim if you're wearing NVG's, for example - but that implies in any campaign using Tactical Shooting (or similar levels of grittiness) non-firearm ranged weapons should generally either be impossible to Aim (or use All Out (Dedicated) Attack) or have Acc 0 (such as a bow or crossbow that you sight along the arrow rather than having formal sights).

[Plane]

Rather than "no Acc if no sights" I'd rather something like we assume that Acc is just the weapons' balance and then add even more Acc for weapons w/ sights (which obviously doesn't help throwing axes)

If this makes ranged combat seem too accurate, there's always bringing down people's hit bonuses via Anti-Talents like non-combatant which TBH the majority of modern peaceful societies ought to start with and buy off if they had any brawling experience (even if not enough to get the brawling skill)

If we just assume all newborn humans start off with Non-combatant 4 (-4 to hit) and many don't buy off that Anti-Talent as they grow up, then giving sighted shooting better Acc would make taking Aim maneuvers all the more important and discourage snap shooting, which probably makes a huge amount of sense for beginners.

Plus there's situatioanl penalties to hit which I think apply when you fail fear checks or have mental disadvantages related to combat?

[Black Leviathan]

It's sort of possible. If you're not illuminated you don't gain much from a modern barrel sight, it's harder to sight in a scope. I'd say you gain the acc bonus but perhaps you have a -1 or -2 circumstance penalty on the roll.

If your gun is invisible you're not using the sights, can't functionally align the barrel for the shot even with a scope, but you're still taking a second to line-up your shot and taking advantage of the accuracy of the weapon. I'd say even if you cant' see your gun you could have half it's accuracy on an aim but no bonuses for scopes or other aiming tools.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Black Leviathan

If you're not illuminated you don't gain much from a modern barrel sight, it's harder to sight in a scope.
I'd say you gain the acc bonus but perhaps you have a -1 or -2 circumstance penalty on the roll.

This seems like a good place to incorporate those "On Target" rules from Pyramid which involve rolling for your aims, then you can just apply lighting penalties to those rolls to try and use your sight, making it less likely to use sights properly in bad lighting.

Originally Posted by Black Leviathan

If your gun is invisible you're not using the sights, can't functionally align the barrel for the shot even with a scope, but you're still taking a second to line-up your shot and taking advantage of the accuracy of the weapon. I'd say even if you cant' see your gun you could have half it's accuracy on an aim but no bonuses for scopes or other aiming tools.

People with innate attacks are also firing with "invisible guns" though, should we halve their bonuses as well?

Although it makes to distinguish rules for using the sights, I don't want Tactical Shooting to just penalize gun Acc without penalizing other Acc.

One thing that comes to mind though is you might be able to emulate sights using your bare hand (just gazes where your finger is pointing) for supers who just shoot energy blasts from their fingertips.

You can't do that while one-handed shooting an invisible pistol (your fingers are wrapped around the handle or pulling the trigger) but maybe with 2-handed shooting a invisible pistol you could hold up a index finger along the barrel to emulate a sight?

That's probably only good for occasional shots though, not constant combat, given how the barrel will heat up and burn your finger, unless you have DR from gloves or some kind of power to absorb burning/heat damage.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Plane

If we just assume all newborn humans start off with Non-combatant 4 (-4 to hit) and many don't buy off that Anti-Talent as they grow up, then giving sighted shooting better Acc would make taking Aim maneuvers all the more important and discourage snap shooting, which probably makes a huge amount of sense for beginners.

A better option is just to give most civilians Pacifism (Reluctant Killer), at least in a modern setting. As for other interpretations of Acc, you may find this post to be of some use; as noted at the beginning, it's designed for use alongside the "On Target" Pyramid article.

[weby]

Originally Posted by Celjabba

While this would seem obvious,
there is the fact that throwing weapons, innate attacks, staff sling and various other ranged weapon can be aimed and get bonus acc without sights of any kind.

I think that innate attack is supposed to have some sort of "internal sight" maybe like a hud..

As for throwing weapons: the whole aiming for almost all of them actually totally different from aiming something like a firearm. The aiming is in those cases a question of stabilizing the weapon in its motion. For rotating weapons like slings it is the rotational stabilization, for things like spears it is usually move back and worth to get the path right.

You cannot really do such with an invisible weapon.

You can aim with a throwing axe, I would guess you could do so even if it was invisible, so why not with a rifle ?

I doubt you could aim at least fully with an invisible axe. Though it might be in the group of weapons I listed above where you might gets some limited help.

The question is, what kind of acc penalty do you get if the weapon innate targeting help (sight, ...) are invisible.

No acc.

Tactical shooting seem to say "zero acc if no sight" but that seem harsh.
If I have an invisible blunderbuss and an invisible sniper rifle, I would guess I am more likely to hit a target (after a zeroing shot or two) with the sniper rifle.

Not really. as you would still not hit anything outside a few yards at most. The Gurps accuracy score has little to do with the inherent accuracy of the weapon than with how easy you can hit with it at short/medium range and thus mostly about things like sight radius.

Tactical shooting tries to use the existing acc scores to classify weapons on how easy it is to hit with them when actually doing things like long range shooting and kind of goes wrong.

According to GURPS it is easier to hit at long range with a 4 MOA accuracy world war 1 rifle at long range than a under 1 MOA current AR 15 style carbine with acc 4, even though the second is both easier to shoot, likely has better sights, and is mechanically and ballistically much more accurate.

But in any case you should not use mechanical accuracy like the sniper rifle vs the blunderbuss. The mechanical accuracy has no bearing on your ability to hit at such short ranges.

Add-on targeting help are off (except for a laser pointer, I imagine), but what part of the +acc from a rifle is the innate accuracy, and what part is the built-in sight ?

As said above, inherent accuracy does not really matter at such short ranges.

Though if you have a laser sight, your problems mostly go away at short ranges, and are reduced a lot at medium if you can see the dot. In such case aiming with the laser sight you effectively have about the same as fixed sights. At longer ranges the difficulty of seeing the dot and the inability to adjust sight height will make it much more challenging, But at least even i such case if you actually manage to see the dot you have a reference point, so if the target has something that allows you to see the dot reflected form above it you might be able to hit something(not likely, but at least possible)

Gurps gun ACC seems to be mostly: How easy and well can you align the sights with the target.

[weby]

Originally Posted by Otaku

Would it help to concoct another "mundane" example, or at least, one that does not rely upon the fantastic (like being invisible)?

Firing from some form of partial cover. Maybe you're sticking your arm and firearm around the cover, or there's enough of an opening in the cover that you can stick your arm and weapon through it. You're not firing totally blind, though; like I said, it is partial cover, so you can see over it. The cover just obstructs your view of your own arm and weapon.

Maybe that makes zero difference, and I cannot reality test this. As someone who barely every shoots a firearm and has a poor track record tossing things into the bin, it doesn't make sense that aiming requires you're able to see your weapon... but quality aiming would. So some bonus ought to be allowed, and it is probably being eaten up by additional penalties.

Actually such a situation is worse than just not seeing sights. As you cannot even align the weapon by it's silhouette and also your shooting stance is likely unnatural.

[weby]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Tactical Shooting certainly disagrees - it won't let you Aim if you're wearing NVG's, for example - but that implies in any campaign using Tactical Shooting (or similar levels of grittiness) non-firearm ranged weapons should generally either be impossible to Aim (or use All Out (Dedicated) Attack) or have Acc 0 (such as a bow or crossbow that you sight along the arrow rather than having formal sights).

Note that tactical shooting deals with firearms. So the lack of sights applies to those. (And I would also apply them to other "look where you are shooting" weapons like crossbows)

Other types of weapons can be aimed in other ways.

[weby]

Originally Posted by Plane

Rather than "no Acc if no sights" I'd rather something like we assume that Acc is just the weapons' balance and then add even more Acc for weapons w/ sights (which obviously doesn't help throwing axes)

That is not now GURPS 4 does things, it is closer to GURPS 3, where weapon ACC was based on mechanical accuracy.

If this makes ranged combat seem too accurate, there's always bringing down people's hit bonuses via Anti-Talents like non-combatant which TBH the majority of modern peaceful societies ought to start with and buy off if they had any brawling experience (even if not enough to get the brawling skill)

If we just assume all newborn humans start off with Non-combatant 4 (-4 to hit) and many don't buy off that Anti-Talent as they grow up, then giving sighted shooting better Acc would make taking Aim maneuvers all the more important and discourage snap shooting, which probably makes a huge amount of sense for beginners.

That is just the reluctant killer that most people have.

Plus there's situatioanl penalties to hit which I think apply when you fail fear checks or have mental disadvantages related to combat?

Basically GURPS 3 ranged combat was based on the idea "Take mechanical accuracy as base and then give penalties to reduce odds to reasonable" but in actual play in most situations the GURPS 4 system of "take combat accuracy as base and then if target shooting give bonuses" actually works better. Starting with a number closer to the result you want in games makes things flow better.