Real Full Auto Fire?

MrMorden · #1 January 24th, 2006, 02:01 PM

Hey folks...I'm a little confused about the automatic fire rules for T20. In the weapons table, burst sizes are written as these examples:

SMG 0/4

Gauss Rifle 1/4/10

So far so good. an SMG does ONLY 4 round bursts, and a Gauss Rifle can fire single shots, 4, or ten round bursts.

BUT...what about real full auto fire? In a six second combat round, just about any full auto weapon could easily empty its magazine. CT book 4 (Mercenary) used to have a rule for this, called "panic fire". You'd empty your weapon and get one attack at a big bonus to hit (if I remember correctly).

Does T20 just use different burst sizes as a concession to different weapons' RoF, and does away with real full auto fire? Or is there a rule out there I'm missing? I'm not trying to encourage my players to go nuts on full auto, I just want to know if I'm missing something.

far-trader · #2 January 24th, 2006, 02:25 PM

[img]smile.gif[/img] Coincidently the page I printed in testing for your PDF troubles references exactly what you're looking for here. TA#1 page 41 answers this with it's Panic Fire rule for T20. Not sure it's in the Handbook but basically any autofire, burst-capable, or semi-automatic weapon with 10 or more rounds in the weapon, may be emptied at a single target in a single action. This action uses up all the remaining ammo in the weapon and can be done even while the character is moving! The full details of the rule are beyond the scope of fair use so you'll have to get the TA (highly recommended anyway!) if it's not in the Handbook somewhere. It's very similar to the CT rule from Book 4.

Hyphen · #3 January 24th, 2006, 03:28 PM

Dear Folks -

Quote:

Originally posted by far-trader:
The full details of the rule are beyond the scope of fair use...

"Fair use" is "about a page at a time". One paragraph snippet containing a rule should be fine; I've posted longer than that when discussing fixes to Book 8: Robots on my site.

(If a Panic Fire rule is longer than that, it's way too detailed!!

)

far-trader · #4 January 24th, 2006, 03:51 PM

Yeah it's about half a page, 5 paragraphs, right at my borderline for fair use [img]smile.gif[/img]

I wouldn't call it too detailed, just a little involved

I'll have a look at the Handbook later and see what it says about it, maybe it has something close enough that I can call it valid fair use posting for clarity. I still think everyone should buy TA#1 for a lot more stuff and it's a steal of a deal [img]smile.gif[/img]

MrMorden · #5 January 24th, 2006, 04:00 PM

Ha, great thanks! Now if it would only print...

Crashlogic · #6 January 24th, 2006, 05:10 PM

well I should think panic fire would fall under the suppresive fire rule. You aren't really aiming just throwing a lot of fire in a particular area to get the enemy to go heads down. Intentional or panic, the result is basically the same.

MrMorden · #7 January 25th, 2006, 12:38 AM

Well, but panic fire is *at* a target, instead of just surpressing an area. It's basically like saying "oh crap, I need to stop this one threat right NOW" and just laying waste to it.

Of course it's not very accurate, but it's not quite as random as surpressive fire either.

archhealer · #8 January 25th, 2006, 02:59 AM

I ran into a little trouble with this... My players have a vehicle-mounted autocannon with a rof of 70. Now, I did get an expanded list for autofire bonuses from Tjonslo which works fine, but now I'm having trouble with area and suppresive fire, specifically, vs. a swarm of gian dragonfly-things chasing them in the vehicle. Using area fire... how many of them got hit? a 6m area... I suppose it would have been easier had we been using a battlemap, but still..

MrMorden · #9 January 25th, 2006, 09:18 AM

I don't have my handbook handy, but I think the rule is that every critter in that area has a *chance* of getting hit. I seem to remember something about rolling a normal attack at -4 for all targets in the area, but I'm not sure about that...

I'm also not sure if you can increase the chance of getting a hit on the critters by increasing the burst size.

BetterThanLife · #10 February 13th, 2006, 01:50 PM

One thing to poiint out. "Real Autofire" is excessively ineffective. (Which is why most modern weapons have burst limiters.) Firing 30 rounds from your Assault Rifle, SMG, even Machinegun, is unlikely to create more hits than a 3-4 round burst, in fact it is less likely to create hits than that same 3-4 round burst. (Though a true Machinegun the ideal burst size is closer to 6-9 rounds.) Recoil is going to cause your weapon to rise to the point that indoors you are almost going to be picking plaster out of your hair.

(It isn't, literally, quite that bad but an M-16 on full auto fired at a target at 100 meters clamped to a bench, the second round tends to be about 1.5 meters high. For game effect I have had characters empty their magazines into the ceiling. Lesson learned and the looks on their faces was priceless. [img]smile.gif[/img]