Best way to handle automatic fire.

[beachhead1973]

Cutting a compromise between ease of play and useful application, what is the best way that you have seen to handle automatic fire/bursts in an RPG.

[Baniff]

Star Wars Saga Edition does it well.

[beachhead1973]

how so? what makes it so good? I played it once, but it was really a tutorial and I never got a great idea how the rules work.

[ArcturusV]

I always liked how it worked in Robotech. You didn't want to spray and pray, but could if you had to.

General way it worked? Say you were in a VF-1A or something. You have your GU-11 gunpod. You can fire a single round, doing 1d6 damage or something. A short burst as a single attack against a target for 2d6 (But you use up 10% of your magazine). Or just go full auto jackhammer with a single attack, use up your entire magazine and do 1d6 x 10.

Simple, to the point. It's high risk to go full auto as you only get a single attack roll, no bonuses, and if you miss? Well... either no more gunplay for you or you gotta reload if you're in a VAF or the like, which burns a turn.

Only thing they really missed was a 'Strafe' option. Wouldn't be too hard to do it. Say use the full magazine, deal make an attack that deals 1d6 damage against all targets in an area. But since the focus of the game was on vehicle combat, rather than infantry, it made sense they didn't add in a "strafe", no call to really put rounds into an entire company of infantry.

[Baniff]

Autofire is treated as an area attack in the game. What game system do you want to use, and what do you want auto fire to be used for? The more info we have, the better we can help

[BWR]

As mentioned, SWSE is pretty decent. The Robotech method sounds simple.

I liked how Dragonstar (a d20 setting) handled it. When you fire a burst (usually 3 rounds, but sometimes 5 rounds) you roll a single attack roll. For each 5 points your attack roll exceeds target's AC another round hits. A natural 20 results in all rounds hitting, but if you crit only the first round is multiplied.
You could take feats to reduce the autofire penalty.

[beachhead1973]

Autofire is treated as an area attack in the game. What game system do you want to use, and what do you want auto fire to be used for? The more info we have, the better we can help

I am doing a home brew.

I want to be able to do;

suppressive fire;

beaten zones;

single-target bursts;

spray and pray/hose/multiple targets.

[Carl]

Most important question, what specific system are you using. I'm assuming some sort of D&D variant but still without understanding the rest of the system it's hard to give an accurate answer. Also how many shots are you going to be firing per round, what's the range?

[DefKab]

I'm creating a homemade system to handle modern combat, and these are the very mechanics that I'm focusing on for the game. Now, naturally, my system will be incompatible, but I had a few general ideas for handling those...
I'd like to see what others come up with first. Mine is much more prototypical.

[Epsilon Rose]

I recently had the same problem, and I didn't really find a good solution, so I'll be keeping a close eye on this thread.

A litle while back, I started this thread (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=11343.msg191461#msg191461) on Min/max to come up with a solution.

Here's what came of it:

Autofire is really inacurate. In that thread there's a video of a guy shooting full auto at a bunch of water jugs and missing most of them and then switch to single shot and hitting most of them.
It's still really scary to come under full auto fire.
In the end, I tentatively decided to go with: When using auto fire, you attack a 10x10 area with an ac of 10. If you hit, every one in that area must make a will save with a dc=your attack roll or take 1/2 weapons damage and either suffer the shaken condition or move at 1/2 speed for the duration of the round, at their choice. If they choose the movement penalty, they must move.


I kinda don't like my solution, becaues it doesn't make going down a narrow hallway with a bi-pod mounted lmg quite as scary as I think it should be.

[ArcturusV]

Hmm... Modern Combat is weird.

One thing to keep in mind? Something like the Robotech style MDC/SDC split. Because that is going to come into play. No matter how many rounds you belt out of your machine gun... the tank is going to laugh at it. I mean you'll shred up a car eventually, but a tank, or even just a simple concrete building is likely to just laugh at you.

Similarly the concepts of Hard Cover, Soft Cover, and Concealment matter obviously. While having a LMG jackhammering in your area might be scary, less so if you're camouflaged and think that you're not spotted. Or if you've got a bit of cover to hide behind, or a tank you're crawling along behind, etc.

On the strategic wargame scale, it's pretty easy to handle with simple Morale checks and casualties. On a RPG single unit scale, it's a hard problem to tackle.

So the factors needing to be covered:

Morale. (Including effects of Cover and Concealment on it)
Overwatch.
Targeted Bursts.
Blindfire.
Strafing.
Full Auto Jackhammering.

Hmm...

[Epsilon Rose]

Hmm... Modern Combat is weird.

One thing to keep in mind? Something like the Robotech style MDC/SDC split. Because that is going to come into play. No matter how many rounds you belt out of your machine gun... the tank is going to laugh at it. I mean you'll shred up a car eventually, but a tank, or even just a simple concrete building is likely to just laugh at you.

Similarly the concepts of Hard Cover, Soft Cover, and Concealment matter obviously. While having a LMG jackhammering in your area might be scary, less so if you're camouflaged and think that you're not spotted. Or if you've got a bit of cover to hide behind, or a tank you're crawling along behind, etc.

On the strategic wargame scale, it's pretty easy to handle with simple Morale checks and casualties. On a RPG single unit scale, it's a hard problem to tackle.

So the factors needing to be covered:

Morale. (Including effects of Cover and Concealment on it)
Overwatch.
Targeted Bursts.
Blindfire.
Strafing.
Full Auto Jackhammering.

Hmm...

You might want to split the Full auto into mounted and not mounted. I imagine an lmg that has it's bi-pod deployed is going to be a lot worse than if a soldiers just holding it. A hydraulic turret would be worse still.

[ArcturusV]

Probably be a simple matter of scale and effectiveness. e.g.: Having a bipod/tripod set up provides a +X bonus to (effects). Having a mounted turret provides a larger bonus and probably increased ammo counts.

Or in the case of Full Auto Jackhammering more like: -X to hit when hip fired, -X/2 to hit when shoulder fired (Only useful for things like Assault Rifles, SMGs with a proper stock, etc). -X/4 to hit when properly using a bipod/tripod bracing setup, +0 to hit when it's part of a turret or similar mounting.

So on a d20ish system probably something like -8, -4, -2, +0. Same penalty to morale checks (Wildly inaccurate fire just ain't as scary).

Granted, if it was a d20ish world for a modern game I'd probably use an E6/E8 baseline, so a -8 for going Rambo would still be a significant penalty. As opposed to having some level 20 guy.

[Carl]

@ArcturusV: I';d like to point out that most real life stuff i've read about combat, (if you have personal experience then feel free to disregard), tends to be pretty clear on the idea that any kind of incoming fire makes soldiers keep their heads down to a degree. More concentrated fire has a greater effect but it's not really a direct relationship to the intensity of the fire.

Another factor to bear in mind is a fair number of weapons are designed to be accurate when fired on full auto. as long as the soldier knows the weapon and has a good basic aim they can pour an entire magazine into a target on fully automatic quite accurately. Even weapons with poor full auto accuracy can generally be fired with extreme precision by using short bursts, the result is still often close to or in excess of half the cyclic RoF of the weapon but at an incredible level of accuracy, (depending again on the wielder).

Accuracy is rarely the main reason to not go full auto. Ammo consumption is a much bigger issue. Ammo carried varies greatly but i've heard in extreme cases as much as 20 mags might be being carried. That's still only about a minute of sustained firing, (it adds up to more real time due to reload times obviously), Even things like LMG's only have a few times as much ammo and sustained firing power at the extreme end.

Another factor that might wish to be modelled is the inevitable fact that when suppression fire is being done with a sustained fire weapon like an LMG/MMG, if someone pop's out of cover in the target area the aim is likely to be shifted in their direction. Depending on how fast the shooter is and how carefully he picks his moment the gunner on that MG might be able to get them in his sights before they go back into cover.

Anyway that's the thoughts you've prompted.

[Veklim]

Carl hit it on the head when he mentioned ammo. The entire basis of the gun system should revolve around ammo imho. That way abilities have a direct cost ratio and effect on resources whilst you get to shoot stuff. Everyone wins!

Morale has a big part to play in automatic fire too...the Germans in WWI thought the British had automatic weapons when they were actually firing highly trained volleys from many bolt action rifles. Thing is, it's not all about how many bullets will hit a target, it's also about how many bullets MIGHT hit you. Autofire is for when you want to remind someone they don't wanna be shot a lot. The rules should reflect this too.

Remember to draw a clear line between reality and RPG, sometimes things don't simulate well, or create issues you have to work around which throw the rest of your system off. Sometimes it's still ok to say 'screw reality for this bit', just do it for the right reasons.

Will keep an eye on what you come up with!

[DefKab]

@ArcturusV: I';d like to point out that most real life stuff i've read about combat, (if you have personal experience then feel free to disregard), tends to be pretty clear on the idea that any kind of incoming fire makes soldiers keep their heads down to a degree. More concentrated fire has a greater effect but it's not really a direct relationship to the intensity of the fire.

Another factor to bear in mind is a fair number of weapons are designed to be accurate when fired on full auto. as long as the soldier knows the weapon and has a good basic aim they can pour an entire magazine into a target on fully automatic quite accurately. Even weapons with poor full auto accuracy can generally be fired with extreme precision by using short bursts, the result is still often close to or in excess of half the cyclic RoF of the weapon but at an incredible level of accuracy, (depending again on the wielder).

Accuracy is rarely the main reason to not go full auto. Ammo consumption is a much bigger issue. Ammo carried varies greatly but i've heard in extreme cases as much as 20 mags might be being carried. That's still only about a minute of sustained firing, (it adds up to more real time due to reload times obviously), Even things like LMG's only have a few times as much ammo and sustained firing power at the extreme end.

Another factor that might wish to be modelled is the inevitable fact that when suppression fire is being done with a sustained fire weapon like an LMG/MMG, if someone pop's out of cover in the target area the aim is likely to be shifted in their direction. Depending on how fast the shooter is and how carefully he picks his moment the gunner on that MG might be able to get them in his sights before they go back into cover.

Anyway that's the thoughts you've prompted.

Actually, being a former M249 carrier in the army, I can state that accuracy on a LMG is an issue. However, anything heavier than your standard rifle/carbine isn't intended to be shooting at fleshy things. The 249, 240B, and M2 (.50 Calibur) are all built to be accurate, yes, but only against large area targets, like vehicles. Putting iron sights on a fleshy target from 300 meters while your gun jumps around like a bean isn't good for accuracy.
Another point to mention is that cyclic rate-of-fire is a lie. Yes, my 249 can put 600 rounds down range in a minute, but then you're IMMEDIATELY changing barrels. Sustained fire with any automatic weapon can incur a large amout of damage to the melting barrel, and even cause catastrophic destruction of the weapon if you refuse to replace the barrel. Full auto isn't advised for that singular reason.

[beachhead1973]

Most important question, what specific system are you using. I'm assuming some sort of D&D variant but still without understanding the rest of the system it's hard to give an accurate answer. Also how many shots are you going to be firing per round, what's the range?

I'm using a percentile system. Explicitly not D20.

Skill: %, roll under that after modifiers.

Does that answer your question? I'll be posting the basic mechanic later today if I can.

[Carl]

@Defkab: I was fully aware of the barrel heating issue, but i figure that's a level of simulation we don't want here.

I'm happy to be corrected on LMG's i've heard little about their specific accuracy but assumed they where as accurate as rifles since they're heavier variations on the same principle designed for more sustained firing. Though TBH i was thinking ranges shorter than that, I've heard it described as most infantry combat taking place inside 100-200m's. Obviously as i already said MMG's and above are pretty bad on full auto. (My dad was an MMG gunner in the RAF regiment so I've heard the odd story about how to get accuracy out of one from him).

@Beachhead1973: Well that does help in a way, i guess. But have you got things like morale and how that's going to work in other situation's sorted, what about how many shots per round/action you expect, what about the scale. Trying to create an RPG where your fighting at anything from across the room to out to a couple of KM is very different from trying to create one that takes place strictly at across the room ranges.

Also what about your stat's system, what stats do you have and what does each effect?

[DefKab]

@Defkab: I was fully aware of the barrel heating issue, but i figure that's a level of simulation we don't want here.

I'm happy to be corrected on LMG's i've heard little about their specific accuracy but assumed they where as accurate as rifles since they're heavier variations on the same principle designed for more sustained firing. Though TBH i was thinking ranges shorter than that, I've heard it described as most infantry combat taking place inside 100-200m's. Obviously as i already said MMG's and above are pretty bad on full auto. (My dad was an MMG gunner in the RAF regiment so I've heard the odd story about how to get accuracy out of one from him).


Well, that's my point, I guess. As a game, it's best to make the rules focus on what's fun. Even if it's realistic, ammo counting can be monotonous. And if there aren't realistic downsides to using full-auto, then he should make some Gamist downsides. And that's why game's accuracy on things like that are prevalent.
Realistically, sending a 3-7 second burst downrange at a target is gonna send about 15 rounds in the general area of a guy. Likely one is gonna hit. However, realistically, a man can't shrug off a bullet from an LMG, so we're already beyond that.
In a percentile system, I'd claim that every 'action' you take with an LMG is a burst, and full auto would just be using every action on your turn to fire. If you have actions like that, just make full-auto a full-round action, and increase the damage.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I am doing a home brew.

I want to be able to do;

suppressive fire;

beaten zones;

single-target bursts;

spray and pray/hose/multiple targets.
Mutants and Masterminds (http://www.d20herosrd.com/6-powers/modifiers)does a pretty decent job of those things. (Scroll down to "Multiattack")

If you attack one target, you deal extra damage if you hit by a lot, representing extra bullets on target.
If you hose down an area, you attack multiple targets in an arc, and take an attack penalty equal to the number of targets you attacked.
If you provide covering fire, you grant an ally cover, which enemies can ignore at the cost of provoking an attack from you.

[NichG]

In a D&D-based campaign that had something like alchemical guns, my model for suppression fire was that within a suppressed region (assuming you weren't totally immune to the shots), you either had to spend your move action leaving the region or you lost either your move or standard action. This would mean that someone intending to move 'through' a suppressed region would sacrifice their standard action that round, since they needed their move action to enter the region in the first place.

Creatures immune to fear/morale effects would be immune to this effect as well.

[CombatOwl]

Cutting a compromise between ease of play and useful application, what is the best way that you have seen to handle automatic fire/bursts in an RPG.

Gurps, absolutely. You declare how many bullets you'll fire (up to ROF). If ROF 4+ (I.E. automatic weapon), you have a recoil score. For every full multiple of the weapon's recoil score that you have between what you roll and your adjusted target number, you get an extra hit. You can spread hits around to multiple targets, etc. You get a bonus to hit with large volume fire (meaning that the more bullets you fire, the better the chance that at least one of them is going to hit something useful). There's a lot of other more specific rules dealing with rapid fire in different circumstances.

Damage, like usual for gurps, depends on the bullet being fired.

[beachhead1973]

Most important question, what specific system are you using. I'm assuming some sort of D&D variant but still without understanding the rest of the system it's hard to give an accurate answer. Also how many shots are you going to be firing per round, what's the range?

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=310840

fixed, let's hope!

[Carl]

Well, that's my point, I guess. As a game, it's best to make the rules focus on what's fun. Even if it's realistic, ammo counting can be monotonous. And if there aren't realistic downsides to using full-auto, then he should make some Gamist downsides. And that's why game's accuracy on things like that are prevalent.
Realistically, sending a 3-7 second burst downrange at a target is gonna send about 15 rounds in the general area of a guy. Likely one is gonna hit. However, realistically, a man can't shrug off a bullet from an LMG, so we're already beyond that.
In a percentile system, I'd claim that every 'action' you take with an LMG is a burst, and full auto would just be using every action on your turn to fire. If you have actions like that, just make full-auto a full-round action, and increase the damage.

Indeed but that doesn't mean you can't use reality to inform basic concepts.

TBH a lot of how to do this depends on factors like expected engagement ranges, and outside modifiers and the like.

@Beachhead: your link's broken.

[beachhead1973]

@Defkab: I was fully aware of the barrel heating issue, but i figure that's a level of simulation we don't want here.

I'm happy to be corrected on LMG's i've heard little about their specific accuracy but assumed they where as accurate as rifles since they're heavier variations on the same principle designed for more sustained firing. Though TBH i was thinking ranges shorter than that, I've heard it described as most infantry combat taking place inside 100-200m's. Obviously as i already said MMG's and above are pretty bad on full auto. (My dad was an MMG gunner in the RAF regiment so I've heard the odd story about how to get accuracy out of one from him).

@Beachhead1973: Well that does help in a way, i guess. But have you got things like morale and how that's going to work in other situation's sorted, what about how many shots per round/action you expect, what about the scale. Trying to create an RPG where your fighting at anything from across the room to out to a couple of KM is very different from trying to create one that takes place strictly at across the room ranges.

Also what about your stat's system, what stats do you have and what does each effect?

Different weapons perform differently; it's easy enough to model with a flat automatic fire penalty and a vaiable weapon accuracy modifier. The M16 series for instance is very accurate, as a rifle, while it climbs a lot on automatic, others are more controlable. You can about write your name with a thompson SMG for instance.

I have a number of issues beyond the base mechanic I am looking at; one is range and the issue of to have a map or some kind or not and I am planning to branch those as required. Automatic fire is a big one. But most of those other small issues can be dealt with on the main homebrew thread.

[lsfreak]

I'm happy to be corrected on LMG's i've heard little about their specific accuracy but assumed they where as accurate as rifles since they're heavier variations on the same principle designed for more sustained firing.

My armchair understanding is that the constant heating and cooling of the barrel on full-auto is going to affect accuracy quite a bit. Given a barrel of identical size and make, the one that's shot more often will be less accurate, and weapons designed around full-auto bursts are going to be shot orders of magnitude more often than a rifle. Because they naturally become less accurate, and that weapons designed around bursting full-auto are designed for area targets and not point already, the barrels themselves aren't made as accurate in the first place; similar to how a marksman's rifle requires stricter standards than an assault rifle, a rifle barrel has higher standards than a SAW. The extra weight compared to a rifle will help absorb the recoil, but if it's not supported the weight itself will *significantly* impact how steady you can hold the gun in the first place.

Again, though, armchair understanding, and it's been a few years since I really studied this stuff so I may be misremembering.

[Carl]

Cheers for the link, helps with stats but you still don't fully answer everything i need to know, got a basic idea floating now but needs a few more details from you to adapt to your specific system.

1. If you get chance the tables showing stats would be nice as a summary to easily review.

2. How are stats generated and thus what's the expected range of values.

3. How do they modify rolls. Do you just add the stat value, or is it some derived systems like D7D 3.5?

4. You mention about maps, what's that mean though in terms of range. Let me put it into perspective. I've got some notes relating to the lore of a post modern magic and tech world lying about. If i where to create a game system for that it would have to simulate everything from 9mm semi-automatics across the room to SMG's across the street, to Assault Rifles along then length of a street, to MMG and HMG fire over ranges of several city blocks, and potentially in extreme cases, light cannon, missile, and rocket exchanges at ranges of a couple of miles or so. And that's whilst simulating everything from Power armour packing SOAS members, to hulking half-"daemons", and Techno-magi and their creations, up through squads of ordinary men, Inquisitor-Magi, and Vatican Assassins.

The fact that my world would need a system able to handle everything from across the room to across the city fights with a wide variety of opponents requires a system with very different implementations of range modifiers than one for fighting across streets all the time.

Also what are we looking at in terms of RoF and how much time does 1 action point represent?

Likewise the fact that it, (my little world i already mentioned), runs the range from semi-auto, to low full auto (300rpm or so), to extreme full auto, (3000rpm+) requires a system with a fair ability to handle a wide variety of fire modes and RoF. Whereas a system representing modern infantry automatics mostly is a lot less variable in RoF 600-700 is common with only outside exceptions pushing outside that, so it doesn't need the same degree of flexibility.

That everything i can think of for now though i'm sure more will come to mind when i'm less half asleep.