Thoughts on Autofire - what am I Missing?

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Thoughts on Autofire - what am I Missing?

 

It seems to me that the problem is that "armor" in most video games just means extra hit points, and in some cases Damage Reduction. In most cases, a video game character with a lot of "armor" will still take damage from even the smallest attack, to maintain game balance.

 

That's not the way Hero works and it's not the way the real world works. If I have a motor-driven .22 LR gatling gun, I'm still not going to be able to chew through a bank vault door or destroy a tank. Sure, I'll be able to erode all the bits on the tank that are outside the armor, but that's it.

 

 

On a slightly different note, does anyone else find it odd that Autofire, no matter how high, never increases you chance of hitting the target? Off the top of my head, something like +1 OCV for a five-round burst and +1 OCV for every full doubling of the ROF would probably be a welcome addition.

 

I suppose REALLY high rates of fire could be simulated with some kind of AOE.

 

Anyway, just some thoughts.

 

Zeropoint

 

There are ways, mostly cribbed from older editions, to do this.

I am formulating a wee essay on the topic in my head. I'll post it when I get back from the store.

[Erkenfresh]

Re: Thoughts on Autofire - what am I Missing?

 

When I started reading I thought up Lord Liaden's solution before I got to it. So, I second that idea.

 

But, I'd also add that you could have the Autofire advantage AND the SFX of shooting 2-5 bullets per "bullet". 5x Autofire and 4 bullets per "bullet" would still give you a 20 bullet spray per attack. This would give you the added bonus of making Autofire skills worth something when using those Autofire weapons.

[prestidigitator]

Re: Thoughts on Autofire - what am I Missing?

 

On a slightly different note, does anyone else find it odd that Autofire, no matter how high, never increases you chance of hitting the target? Off the top of my head, something like +1 OCV for a five-round burst and +1 OCV for every full doubling of the ROF would probably be a welcome addition.

 

I suppose REALLY high rates of fire could be simulated with some kind of AOE.

I allow Autofire attacks to be spread in a way that is similar to the way you spread Energy Blasts. Substitute shots for DCs and you are pretty close. There are some other minor differences because you still have a finite number of shots that can hit and such. I have more details squirreled away somewhere....

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Thoughts on Autofire - what am I Missing?

 

Right then...

A brief essay on the effect of Autofire weapons.

 

Autofire weapons are currently modeled under slightly faulty premises. Most of this can be traced, systemically, to alterations made for the unified 4th edition BBB. At this time the base ROF for autofire attacks was reduced to 5 round bursts, from the original 10 round model.

 

This was a good thing.

 

The BBB also removed the OCV bonus for autofire attacks. Once upon a time, you got a +4 OCV for autofiring against a single target. While I don't claim to be a member of the design staff, I have long suspected that this change was made due to the fact that it made agent level mooks far too effective against Martial Artists, Speedsters and other character archtypes that rely on high DCV as their primary mode of defence, due to the nature of the bell curve attack roll (The bell curve is a harsh mistress, as any public school student can tell you). Now, with the 5th Edition, it has been recognized that even without OCV modifiers for autofire, it is still next to impossible to model a pure DCV character with the same kind of survival rate as similar comic book and action film characters, because games doing include writers fiat. Thus the Talent Combat Luck was introduced, which is effectively a mechanical way to represent said writers fiat. However, no shift was made in the function of autofire, which means it has been pulled away from the realities of how such attacks work in the real world.

 

Now, in R/L, automatic weapons have served several purposes, and their use, function, and deployment have changed over the last 150 or so years since they were first introduced.

 

Intially they were designed as force multipliers, to allow small numbers of well armed soliders to compete with much larger groups of lower tech opponents. This is the first function of automatic weapons... to inflict high casualties on large masses of enemy troops. Related to this is the fuction of an area denial weapon. The current rules for spreading autofire attacks and suppression fire model these functions well.

 

Later, as the use of automatic weapons became more prevelant, other design features were considered as they were applied to differing tasks. Ballistics design has always followed the same rough guidelines... a projectile is built to fufil certain performance requirements. Early automatic weapons used the same projectiles as small arms, and were generally intented for the same purpose... to kill or disable infantry with a single hit. As the scope of automatic weapons increased the purposes to which they were intended changed. The .50 cal browning was designed to be lethal or incapacitating against soft targets under hard cover... specifically brick or brownstone building such as were common in the European theater during WW1. the various cannon shells fired by the Hotchkiss revolving cannons were intended primarily to engage small fast moving torpedo boats that were to fast to be engaged with heavier naval guns. The addition of aircraft introduced a new theater in which the automatic weapon was used. This is where we begin to see the intent of increasing the rate of fire for purposes of scoring a single, or few, damaging hit by sheer volume of fire. Engaging small or fast moving targets. This is something that is NOT currently well modeled in the Hero system.

 

Most modern applications of Automatic weapons are not intended for, and do not rely on, multiple impacts to damage their targets. Rather, they use volume of fire to increase the odds of scoring the all important damaging or disabling hit. David mentioned that "Spray and Pray" is notoriously unreliable. While this is the commonly held veiw, this is a misconception. The accuracy of an automatic weapon is a direct fuction of the stablity of the weapon and the accuray of the targeting mechanisim. In the case of infantry carried automatic weapons... the common wisdom is totally correct. This is a "User interface flaw" rather than a design flaw of the weaponry. The basic premise of spray and pray is precisely how the Phalanx point defence system and the various rotary cannon carried by combat aircraft work, and the philosophy carries down to infantry rifle design. The current standard of 3 round burst capacity in infantry battle rifles is a product of scientific studies and trial and error to reach the best compromise between volume of fire (and resultant fire pattern spread) and user control. Very few, if any, automatic weapons are intended by design to apply cumulative small amounts of damage towards the ultimate goal of destroying a target.

 

Now, how do we solve the problem in game terms?

 

Not so easy. One thing I have proposed, and played with, is to allow, in the case of "spread" autofire against a single target for increased accuracy, the firing character to gain +1 OCV for each round they "spread" and thus lose that round as a potentially damaging hit. This would allow a basic Autofire attack to gain up to a +4 OCV, in which case the target could only be hit by a single round. With this shift, paying the huge cost so your minigun has a 40 round autofire attack (and the corresponding huge appetite for charges or END) actually gives you a pratical benefit... it will liquefy slow moving targets unless they are armored well enough to resist the attack, and it can be spread for the truely obscene bonuses needed to offset the velocity based DCV of high spped aircraft or missiles. This should probably, at least in a gritty or realistic game, also increase the STR min of the weapon in fairly substantial amounts to reflect recoil. As the OCV penalties accrue rather quicklyonce the STR min is exceeded, this models the "user interface" problem well. And mounted weapons don't usually take a STR min limit, this means that high ROF autofire weapons on stable platforms become fearsome. Which they are, as anyone who's ever got to see a demo or footage of an R2D2 in action can tell you.

 

Thanks for listening, and have a nice day

[prestidigitator]

Re: Thoughts on Autofire - what am I Missing?

 

Hmm. I think the Str Min is increased if you use Autofire. Doesn't it go up by 5 or something?

 

I had another idea. I have traded off shots for spreading (OCV bonus) before, but what if instead you increased the interval between additional shots. So normally if you hit by N you get N/2 damage rolls (sort of; it always rounds down, but you get the idea). How about if the OCV bonus adds to the divisor (the number by which you must hit to land another shot)? For example, if you spread the attack to get a +1 OCV and hit by N, you get N/3 damage rolls; if you spread the attack to get a +3 OCV and hit by N, you get N/5 damage rolls.... It makes it possible to still hit with all the shots, but very unlikely.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Thoughts on Autofire - what am I Missing?

 

Hmm. I think the Str Min is increased if you use Autofire. Doesn't it go up by 5 or something?

I know thats how it used to be, and without looking itt up I'd guess it's probably still in place.

I'm suggesting that it needs to be more on the order of +1 Str min per shot fired... standard 5 shot Af would have the same Str min pealty, but trying to go all AF20 on someone will result in a wild almost uncontrollable spray unless you're REALLY Strong, and/or braced six ways from sunday.

 

I had another idea. I have traded off shots for spreading (OCV bonus) before' date=' but what if instead you increased the interval between additional shots. So normally if you hit by N you get N/2 damage rolls (sort of; it always rounds down, but you get the idea). How about if the OCV bonus adds to the divisor (the number by which you must hit to land another shot)? For example, if you spread the attack to get a +1 OCV and hit by N, you get N/3 damage rolls; if you spread the attack to get a +3 OCV and hit by N, you get N/5 damage rolls.... It makes it [i']possible[/i] to still hit with all the shots, but very unlikely.

 

I've messed with the hit intervals before, and it can be a good mechanisim for varying the effects of autofire weapons. This is an intersting application of the idea, and one that certainly has merit. Due to the harsh nature of the bell curve, I'd probably go a bit more generous with the bonuses tho... say +2 per interval rather than +1.

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Thoughts on Autofire - what am I Missing?

 

Presto: Can you give that to me in Spanish?

 

Sorry, hold over from my childhood. I'd watch an hour of Sesame Street and whenever my parents used a word I didn't know, I would ask "Is that how you say it in Spanish?" In other words: Can you give me an in-game example of this?

[prestidigitator]

Re: Thoughts on Autofire - what am I Missing?

 

Presto: Can you give that to me in Spanish?

 

Sorry, hold over from my childhood. I'd watch an hour of Sesame Street and whenever my parents used a word I didn't know, I would ask "Is that how you say it in Spanish?" In other words: Can you give me an in-game example of this?

Sure. Speedotwang is notoriously difficult to hit, because he keeps jumping around and making that annoying BWANG noise. So you decide to take out your automatic fork sprayer (AFx10) and litter his area with forks. You spread the attack to get a +3 OCV (ha! THAT'LL do him!), and that will help ensure you get one or two hits, but increases the interval so that you only get an additional hit for every (2+3=)5 that you make the shot.

 

So if your OCV is:

7 (base) + 3 (spreading) = 10

and his DCV is 9, you normally need a:

11 + 10 (OCV) - 9 (DCV) = 12

to hit. If you roll a 12, you hit with one fork. If you roll a 12-5=7, you hit with two forks. If you roll a 12-10=2...well, you can't hit with three forks, but you're likely to stick at least one fork in that annoying little speedster's rear (and you have a small chance of landing two). Now if we had some 2-point CSLs with that fork sprayer, we might have a good chance of hitting him with more, but then we probably wouldn't need to spread the attack either, right?

 

How's that?