Autofire alternative

[Sean Waters]

I've been out late and, driving home, started pondering autofire.

 

We mainly use autofire fore building stuff like machine guns. Now I don;t know much about guns, and I appreciate you do need skill to use a machine gun, but it seems to me that the main purpose of a MG is to make it more likely that you will hit a target and more likely that you will do more damage, if you get multiple hits.

 

Autofire, the advantage, only allows for multiple hits by skillful users or lucky ones, and has no effect on the chance to hit.

 

So, I got to thinking - what if we built autofire, instead of using the advantage? it might look something like this:

 

 

 

8 Double tap: (Total: 10 Active Cost, 8 Real Cost) Energy Blast 1d6 (5 Active Points); Increased Endurance Cost (x2 END; -½) (Real Cost: 3) plus +1 with Ranged Combat (Real Cost: 5) 2

7 Burst fire: (Total: 10 Active Cost, 7 Real Cost) Energy Blast 1d6 (5 Active Points); Increased Endurance Cost (x4 END; -1 ½) (Real Cost: 2) plus +1 with Ranged Combat (Real Cost: 5) 4

6 Full auto: (Total: 10 Active Cost, 6 Real Cost) Energy Blast 1d6 (5 Active Points); Increased Endurance Cost (x8 END; -3 ½) (Real Cost: 1) plus +1 with Ranged Combat (Real Cost: 5) 8

 

 

So, basically each 'level' of autofire doubles the number of 'shots' and increases the damage by 1DC and the chance to hit by +1 OCV. If you want to hit mulltiple targets, spread the attack. I have not worked it out by charges, but I'd probably just rule that each doubling of END doubles the charges, so double tap is 2 shots, burst is 4 and full auto is 8.

 

I also worked out that 16x END should be a -5 1/2 limitation, but by that stage the extra damage will always just cost 1 more point. Might be worth it for weapons that are ONLY 'Unleash Hell', the next level of autofire

 

Anyway, I thought I'd share.

[braincraft]

Re: Autofire alternative

 

Alternate ways of simulating autofire:

 

- Spread an Energy Blast, or allow spreading of RKAs

 

- Larger attack, with Reduced Penetration

 

- AoE advantage

 

- Some combination of the above

 

Frex, you could simulate a big honkin' minigun with a 6d6K RKA AoE Cone Nonselective No Range Reduced Penetration (I recall Surbrook did this for one of his writeups). You could simulate an autofire blaster with a simple 12d6 EB, with the full DCs simulating concentrated fire and spread dice simulating 'walking' your fire.

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Autofire alternative

 

Using a mechanic where the # of shots that hit increase the base damage of an attack has one major pitfall vs. the current RAW. It has the potential to do damage past defenses than would otherwise stop any single shot. I'm sure there are ways to build additional limitations to keep this from happening but then the cost vs. benefit of learning to use such a mechanic starts getting steeper and steeper.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Autofire alternative

 

Using a mechanic where the # of shots that hit increase the base damage of an attack has one major pitfall vs. the current RAW. It has the potential to do damage past defenses than would otherwise stop any single shot. I'm sure there are ways to build additional limitations to keep this from happening but then the cost vs. benefit of learning to use such a mechanic starts getting steeper and steeper.

 

That's right. I'm pretty sure that if you hit something in the same spot 4 or 8 times in rapid succession you are justified in treating the impact as a single thing rather than a series of individual impacts. Whilst one bullet might not penetrate a BPV, half a clip can probably chew through nicely, if the burst is tight.

 

In addition I know that a large part of the reason for building automatic weapons is that you get several shots to hit with, so your effective OCV increases, at least for the basically competent. If you want that in Hero you have to build it, so why not build the whole thing?

 

I suppose the problem I have with Autofire is the problem that runs though Hero with trying to relate the success of the roll to hit to damage delivered - it makes DEX far more useful. A 2d6 RKA x5 round autofire does more damage in the hands of a 30 DEX character than a 20 DEX character. That changes the balance of utility toward DEX. Of course even a single shot weapon will cause more damage on average because the 30 DEX character hits more often, but it seems to me that 'building' autofire rather than using the advantage gives a fairer and quite possibly more accurate result.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Autofire alternative

 

Alternate ways of simulating autofire:

 

- Spread an Energy Blast, or allow spreading of RKAs

 

- Larger attack, with Reduced Penetration

 

- AoE advantage

 

- Some combination of the above

 

Frex, you could simulate a big honkin' minigun with a 6d6K RKA AoE Cone Nonselective No Range Reduced Penetration (I recall Surbrook did this for one of his writeups). You could simulate an autofire blaster with a simple 12d6 EB, with the full DCs simulating concentrated fire and spread dice simulating 'walking' your fire.

 

I quite agree - there are a number of ways of doing it, some possibly better than others. The trouble is that my experience is that, because we have an 'autofire' advantage many less experienced players opt for that - understandable as that is how every autofire 'real' weapon is built in 5ER - and do not consider other options. Personally I like spreading a larger attack as you can sacrifice damage for accuracy or additional targets - but you can only really spread ranged attacks so, without handwavium you can not apply the same principle to, for instance, punches. Perhaps an adder (5 points) allowing you to spread atatcks you can not otherwise spread might be appropriate.

[Lucius]

Re: Autofire alternative

 

At one time, the Advantage of Autofire did carry an automatic OCV bonus, if I recall correctly.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Automatic Palindromedary

[Sean Waters]

Re: Autofire alternative

 

At one time, the Advantage of Autofire did carry an automatic OCV bonus, if I recall correctly.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Automatic Palindromedary

 

You do recall correctly.

 

Well, you do if I do. If I don't then you don't, but hey - sounds like it will all balance out

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Autofire alternative

 

That's right. I'm pretty sure that if you hit something in the same spot 4 or 8 times in rapid succession you are justified in treating the impact as a single thing rather than a series of individual impacts. Whilst one bullet might not penetrate a BPV' date=' half a clip can probably chew through nicely, if the burst is tight.[/quote']

 

Ah... but you are assuming that the "something" has defenses with an 'ablative' quality about them (which in the real world is true more often than not) but may not be true in all games.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Autofire alternative

 

You do recall correctly.

 

Well, you do if I do. If I don't then you don't, but hey - sounds like it will all balance out

 

Yeah, AF used to give a +4 OCV.

 

Sean, I TOTALLY agree that Autofire needs to be tweaked, but I'm unconvinced that adding damage is a good approach. For me it always comes back to the fact that if you, for example, Rapid Fire two shots at a target and both hit, you roll damage twice. If you PURCHASE an advantage for autofire and hit twice, you add an extra die instead? So, you're paying more for less potential damage, and the only situation where it might have a HOPE of working better is RIGHT at the Damage/Defense threshold?

 

As I see it, the two main problems with autofire (at least in terms of simulating something resembling a realistic depiction of autofire) are as such:

 

#1) It doesn't increase the chance of a hit in any way, which is almost completely opposite how real AF works

 

#2) Increasing the number of shots barely increases utility, other than allowing a few more options with various autofire maneuvers. Most of this is due to the limits of a 3d6 bell curve, thus forcing a number of hoops to be jumped through to model a high ROF autofire weapon, many of which skip AF entirely. This is, IMHO, a sign that the rules are flawed, because if one is building a high rate of fire automatic weapon, the first thing you do shouldn't be to skip the rules for creating an attack with a high ROF.

 

 

I'm pretty sure I've posted fixes for both these problems before, but my search fu is weak this morning.