Full auto weapons, and Rates of Fire.

[Blue Ghost]

I hate to bring up this topic in light of recent events, but this has been a topic that's always bothered me. Just let me get this out of the way first, Traveller is more than just playing with guns in space. A lot of the adventures I'm writing deal with real scientific challenges, and little "gun play". They are, in fact, revisiting some classic themes of challenging men's intellect and values with real decisions about options for best outcomes. I've brought up a lot of military and weapon related topics in Traveller, but Traveller was meant as a generic Sci-Fi game, and not just a shoot-em-up adventure game.

Be that as it may, I do have some serious questions about Rates of Fire. CT and MT rules state that a weapon spits out four rounds per trigger pull, or you can go into "panic fire" mode, and rattle off a magazine. This has always bothered me because weapons, contemporary weapons, fire great deal more than that, and I'm wondering how it might be possible to reconcile insane rates of fire into a Traveller combat scheme of things.

Forget the experimental stuff. Stick with what is doable. How might it be possible to import real world specs and performance into a Traveller rule set.

[mike wightman]

In the real world there is this thing called heat.

Fire a submachine gun or assault rifle for too long and its barrel actually glows red hot.

Hence the training to fire in controlled bursts.

The other reason for firing in bursts is accuracy, after the first few rounds you don't stand much chance of keeping a stream of bullets on target - firing the smg and AR that is.

[Blue Ghost]

I've only ever fired semi-auto weapons, so I'm a babe in the woods on this, yet I've seen Combat-Cam footage courtesy of the pentagon of guys firing off several bursts at a time.

I guess in "Hollywood firefights" things are a little different, but isn't there a chance of hitting with unguided rounds? I thought that was kind of the whole idea behind firing more bullets.

[mike wightman]

Putting more lead downrange is called suppressive fire - the idea is not so much to hit something but to make the bad guys duck so they can't return fire. The chance to hit with such suppressive fire is very small - all down to luck really.

It's why a lot of militaries use the buddy system - you move in pairs, one lays down fire while the other scuttles to the next bit of cover. Often this is conducted by fire teams of 4 - 2 move and 2 fire. It allows for casualties.

Scale it up and you have fire teams/squads firing while others manoeuvre.

[nobby-w]

Originally Posted by Blue Ghost

I've only ever fired semi-auto weapons, so I'm a babe in the woods on this, yet I've seen Combat-Cam footage courtesy of the pentagon of guys firing off several bursts at a time.
[ . . . ]

Striker was a bit more liberal with this. For the most part it assumed that you were firing multiple shots. Semi-auto you used half a magazine, full auto you used the whole magazine. If you made your roll by 2 or more you go an extra hit for every two you make the roll by.

[Enoki]

The easiest fix in terms of the game on this is simply to impose ammunition limits on players. This could be as easy as every automatic burst from a weapon removes 1/3rd, 1/4, etc., of the ammunition in a magazine and you have X magazines available.

The player will quickly realize that it's pretty stupid to blow through all your ammo in automatic when you get nearly unlimited fire on single shot or semi-auto.

[kilemall]

I came up with kind of an interesting rule for ammo use.


For burst or auto type situations, you divide the rounds used by the skill of the shooter.
So a Auto-1 uses a whole clip, Auto-2 uses 1/2 of the clip, Auto-3 uses 1/3 at a time, and Auto-4 uses 1/4, etc.


Idea being the more experienced shooters will have fire discipline and get the same job done.

[Timerover51]

Originally Posted by Enoki

The easiest fix in terms of the game on this is simply to impose ammunition limits on players. This could be as easy as every automatic burst from a weapon removes 1/3rd, 1/4, etc., of the ammunition in a magazine and you have X magazines available.

The player will quickly realize that it's pretty stupid to blow through all your ammo in automatic when you get nearly unlimited fire on single shot or semi-auto.

I am nasty. The players have to keep track of ammunition expenditure. They learn not to use full auto, after being out of ammo a couple of times.

[aramis]

Sustained fire rate for an M-16 is limited by several factors -
it's 5 sec or more to change mags, and it's 700Rd/Min ful auto rate for a maximum of 30 rounds. (Certain individual rifles can be up to 900Rd/Min, due to variations in model, lube and wear.) 2.5 sec to fire off the clip, then 5-15 to reload, for a prepared sustained fire of 120-180 rounds per minute through full basic load... of about 120-210 rounds.

If, perchance, someone keeps feeding you clips, after a couple minutes of this, you've got a barrel that will boil water. Anecdotals online indicate 5 clips on full auto is glowing red. That's 100-120 rounds, in under 60 sec.


An M60 can bend the barrel with several minutes sustained maximum rate, too. 1000 sustained rounds is sufficient to damage the barrel. Given the 500-600Rd/Min rate...
Given 1500-2000 rounds, you should expect droop. Yep, 2-5 minutes of solid fire can result in a bent barrel. Depends upon current quality of the barrel. Also note: 1000 rounds is 10 standard 100 round belts.
Also note: on aircraft mounts, heating was MUCH less an issue - the flow of air resulted in MUCH more rapid cooling.

The Vickers MG was water cooled for a reason... keeping the barrel from heat softening.

Note also: a barrel at droop temp might continue firing without issue - until you stop. The rounds and gasses themselves can prevent the droop. Once you stop in that range, however, it's toast city.

Also, the chamber and action can overheat, resulting in premature detonation and/or "runaway fire"... if the chamber is hot enough, the round in the chamber will go off. I've seen this happen once - with an 9mm autopistol. The exposed barrel cooled nicely - the chamber didn't. And we put a couple thousand rounds downrange that day.

At the low rates traveller combat offers, you're not likely to melt barrels outside of vacuum. (Vacuum results in a lack of conductive/convective cooling.)

[SanDragon]

Originally Posted by aramis

At the low rates traveller combat offers, you're not likely to melt barrels outside of vacuum. (Vacuum results in a lack of conductive/convective cooling.)

Which begs the question:

Can CPRs be fired in vacuum?