Burst fire?

[Annatar Giftbringer]

What are people's opinion on burst-fire?

I myself feel that it's a bit weird that a burst of four bullets increases damage so little compared to single-shot, Though I understand that it takes recoil and bullet-spread in account as well as being a simplification for gaming purpose and tied to armor-penetration in a way that makes it tricky to fiddle with too much.

I have a few ideas and suggestions on alternative burst-rules, but I'd love to hear other people' ideas first.

My main issue with burst fire though is that it doesn't matter which weapon bursts, the damage-bonus is always the same. For a weak weapon, 1-2D, this bonus is significant, for a 3D rifle it's ok, but when we look at 4D and above it starts to feel not worth it... Sure, every shot in the burst won't hit perfectly, but for the old version of PGMP it just gets silly when base damage is 10D or more and a four-shot burst only adds 4 to that. Even a near miss should hurt more than +1 damage, or?

The problem is how to adjust burst-damage without making armor completely useless... I had one though about making burst-damage 1 per full 2 damage dice, meaning that a 2D weapon with auto 4 deals 1x4 extra damage, a 3D auto 6 deals 1x6 extra, but a 4D gauss gun auto 4 deals 2x4 extra, a 6D auto 8 3x8 and so on, but I think I'll have to increase armor for that to work - or let this extra damage only be applicable to unarmored targets, and use the regular rules for armored ones.

 

[sideranautae]

The problem is how to adjust burst-damage without making armor completely useless...

Easy, define how many of the bullets hit in a burst and apply damage separately to the armor as the bullets hit different places.

I am working on something like this for my game.

I'll have the player roll both sets of dice at once. 1) the to hit D20 and the #hits D20.

(on a 3 round burst)
D20 roll

1-12 = 1 hit
13-18 = 2 hits
19-20 = 3 hits

You can do charts by range band and # in the burst. Always just roll 2 dice.

 

[Galadrion]

Well, if you switch to using the new rules (second edition of Book 1: Mercenary, burst fire and autofire get much nastier for these weapons (the ones which are now classified as destructive). True, the PGMPs are now "only" one-die damage weapons... but damage is multiplied by ten. Which, I would guess, would also include bonus damage... such as the burst fire/autofire damage bonus. (Here's a question: when you add the effect of your attack roll to the damage done, would that be before or after the multiplication? Makes those weapons much scarier, neh? Personally, I would rule that this is the case - these weapons should be scary.)

 

[dragoner]

What are people's opinion on burst-fire?

It works I guess. Combat as a whole is an abstraction; personally I'd like to remove the turns and stat damage as well, but I don't really feel like reinventing the wheel either.

 

[Annatar Giftbringer]

One idea I came up with for alternate burst fire is to base it on the autofire-rules. An auto 4 weapon would thus roll four dice and pair them up for the attack(s). This would mean that there'd be a larger damage bonus for bursting with a more powerful weapon, since there would be an extra attack.

It would make bursts much more powerful (which I don't see as a problem, at least against unarmored targets) and I'm not sure if the damage dice should be allowed to split between targets. I'm thinking either

A) yes, but the targets need to be close together (1-2 m at most)
B) yes, but apply -2DM to the attacks due to spread
C) both of the above
D) no

To keep full auto worthwhile I'd need to tweak it too, obviously. I found an idea here on this board about rolling auto number of dice, and the. Add he highest to each of the others, potentially allowing more attacks than the official rules. Example: auto 4, full auto. Dice come up 3 4 2 6. Add 6 to the others: 9 10 8 = three hits.

Full auto would also be the only way to target opponents that are spread out (up to six meters).

I'm also considering a 'focused autofire' that targets everyone within a target area, perhaps one meter per 2 auto or something like that.



And somewhere around here I start to think: what if I make combat too deadly with my tweaking and bending? Perhaps the problem with burst is only in my head?