Houserules?

[El Cid]

If your ship is a large warship, there are many weapons and crew to handle each of them. On a fighter, with only the pilot I'd go with the one weapon idea.

Sidney

 

[PottsBr]

I would think that the pilot of a Starfury would be a lot more likely to be able to fire multiple weapons at the same time. It would largely depend on how the controls of the fighter were set up of course. We don't have any good information on that.

For an example though, in the old Wing Commander games you could arm multiple weapons to fire together with a single pull of the trigger. Several of the fighters had two sets of guns. You could set it to fire one set, the other set, or both at the same time. Often the power drain was too high to allow you to reliably fire all the guns at once. The only reason not to link them all together.

In one version of the game, you could even arm multiple missiles to fire all at once in an attack referred to in the manual as a salvo. It was not difficult to fire both the missiales and all the guns at the same time (pull the main trigger for all the guns and double click the thumb button to fire the missiles).

There is no way to tell if the starfury's controls allow this kind of control, but considering you can pretty much tell the computer to do whatever you wanted, I expect it is very possible.

I agree that attacks per round is really relevent in the fighter. You get a lock and hold the trigger down. The guns cycle as fast as they can at the locked target and you just have to keep the bad guy in front of you.

 

[psychoadept]

Well, that's the whole point of linked weapons, right? I think the assumption is, as you say, that beyond a certain point it becomes too much of a power drain to fire that many weapons at once. I would consider letting a Starfury pilot fire both his guns in the same round, but not on the same attack action. He could still use the point-and-shoot method you describe, he'd just alternate his guns. This assumes, of course, that the guns cycle separately, which according to the rulebook they don't.

Campbell

 

[PottsBr]

Again, I think it comes down to the way the controls are set up. Going back to my Wing Commander example, the fightsers in question had four guns, for instance two lasers and two mass drivers. The laser were linked, always firing together. The mass drivers were linked, always firing together. The gun sets were not linked. They were separate systems, firing at different rates, sometimes with different targeting systems. You could, however, tell the computer to have both sets of guns active at the same time so all four guns would fire with a pull of the trigger.

Due to the weapons having different ranges and volocities, you could hit with one set or both sets. Usually both sets would hit only if the target was not evading, or was at very close range where the differences in the weapons did not require you to lead the target significantly.

If you held the trigger down, all four guns would keep firing, but they would not cycle at the same rate. This is different from the B5 game definition of linked guns where all the guns fire together and all hit or miss together.

Generally, in Wing Commander, you set the control to full guns and fired in short bursts to conserve weapons power, as full guns quickly drained the reserve.

What I can't see is a pilot using two sets of guns requiring multiple actions to fire. This would be awkward and distracting, resulting in a lot of missed opportunities. If you can't link all the guns to the same trigger, the pilot is going to pick the set he likes best and user them, only switching the the other set in case of damage or special circumstances where the features of the second set make them better.

The show demonstrates the pilots using the main armament excluively, with a high rate of fire. From that, it looks like they consider the main guns to be superior, cannot link all the guns together at once, and may even consider them a waste. The Aurora's replacement doesn't have that second set of guns, after all.

 

[psyclonejack]

Good Points all, I would just like to add that on page 96 of the B5RPGnFB you will see that:

restrictions in the Starfury's fusion reactor output means both sets of weapons may not be fired simultaneously.

Hence the logic, one could unlink the light uni-pulse cannons and fire them at two different targets if they had two base attacks. But one could not unlink all weapons (uni-pulse and light uni-pulse) and make 4 different attacks.

Of course a GM can change this at will . . . Ie: Once, and only in a desprate situation where a shuttle full of explosives was on a collision course with the mothership I allowed a character to manually override safeties and link all his starfuries weapons together doing a single attack roll that fired a bolt from all 4 weapons. I then ruled his reactor was going to blow forcing him to eject. Extra roleplaying drama was added as the day was saved, but at a hefty loss. The pilot was unable to launch in a fighter until the mothership docked back at base and took on supplies.

But again this is only with starfuries. A minbari flyer with a tri-linked weapon would in my mind be able to unlink them and make 3 attacks per round IF the pilot had 3 attacks per round.

Okay, different direction . . .

Rapid Fire = 3 attacks a round, simulates holding the trigger down.
Therefore, in my mind, the machine (light uni-pulse cannon) is only able to cycle so fast. And thus, 4th and 5th attacks are wasted, because the weapon doesn't fire that fast.

Yet, another direction . . .
Lets look at a catapolt. Is it possible to fire it 5 times in 3 seconds? Nope, due to the reload time of the weapon.

Its all a matter of perception,
PsycloneJack