Multiple fire modes for turrets?

Annatar Giftbringer

Emperor Mongoose
Greetings,
I had an idea for turrets, and I just wanted to toss it out for everyone to see and comment on. Not even sure if it's a good idea or not, but here goes:

As everyone knows, a multiple turret can fire all barrels together as long as they are the same type of weapon. This increases the damage via a modified/enhanced burst fire mechanism, where each extra barrel firing adds +1 damage per dice (so +1 per additional beam laser, +2 per pulse and so on).

When using a multi-turret defensively the extra barrels increase the to-hit chance by +1 per additional barrel instead.

Would it be a good idea to merge these two together, so that when attacking with a multiple turret the gunner can choose between maximum damage/focused fire to deal extra damage (the current rule), OR better chance to hit/maximum spread (the to-hit bonus from defensive fire)? It could be useful for those times you really gotta hit something, or one might opt to deal additional damage upon succesful hits.
 
The problem is here is you're introducing an option that makes the first completely useless :)

A +2 to hit is at worst, just as good as +2 damage, and at best, infinitely better. Extra bonus to hit translates into extra damage due to effect. It also allows you to hit, when you would obviously have missed.

Not only that, but to hit bonuses already out-strip negative penalties. Lets not make it even easier to hit. Especially when pulse and beam already have such strong inherent to-hit bonuses.

Definitely not in favour of any more to-hit bonuses :)
 
Of course. You are quite right. I somehow managed to miss that little detail :oops:

Though I did say it wasn't necessarily a good idea :)

My idea could work for other turrets than lasers though. Even a pulse laser would lose damage when trying to maximize to-hit chance, and for particle turrets the damage loss is even higher.

But I definitely see your point, and while I like my idea from a thematical standpoint it dissent quite work from a rules-perspective for the reasons you noted.
 
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