SR: some ideas on autofire and cyberdeck creation
Nigel Stanger
Usenet access, but (i) he doesn't know how to post, and (ii) it's
not his account anyway. The post itself refers to the posting
made a couple of weeks ago about the new autofire rules for
Shadowrun that were introduced at GENCON recently.
If you want to reply by email, just send it to me and I will
forward it on to Tim.
Right, over to you Tim...
Nigel.
Nigel Stanger, University of Otago, Internet: sta...@otago.ac.nz
Dunedin, New Zealand.
***************************************************************************
In article <1991Sep-7....@nic.unh.edu> alternate rules for autofire &
related damage codes were suggested:
>Autofire is one blast that uses up to nine rounds Each round adds +1 to power,
>each FULL 3 rounds adds +1 to damage code.. If the damage code gets bumped
>past deadly, then staging goes up by one instead. Thus an Uzi-III on full
>auto (9 round burst) would do 14D4 damage
If these rules are used, a machine pistol on full auto would do 12D3 from a 9
bullet "blast" which would be able to at least penetrate even the heaviest
armor, even with just a single success. Is this realistic? In the Street
Samurai Catalog, there's a crack about machine pistols: "Wonderful. Now I can
flatten light ammo against body armor faster than ever before." This doesn't
sound like 12D3 to me!
To work out what damage a weapon "should" do, we need to first work out how the
power/base_damage/staging code affects armor penetration dodgability, &
survivability of bullets that penetrate armor. Armor penetration works on
base_damage/staging (e.g. D3 would mean 4*3=12 armor needed to stop it),
dodgability & survivability work on all 3 codes. This leads to the following
conclusions:
Burst (of 3): decreased dodge & survive as more bullets, no change to armor
penetration.
=> increase power, no change to base/staging.
=> +1 power (as before)
Explosive: decreased survive (due to fragmentation), no change to dodge or
armor penetration.
=> increase power, no change to base/staging.
=> +1 to +3 power (depending on GMs view as to "reality & game balance)
APDS: increase armor penetration, no change to dodge or survive (I'm assuming
that increased projectile energy and decreased calibre cancel out in terms
of stopping power).
=> increase staging, no change to power/base.
=> +1 staging (and probably the old -1 armor as well)
Fletchette: decreased armor penetration, decreased dodge, survive.
=> decrease staging, increase power.
=> -1 staging, +1 power
IMHO this makes the various ammo types act in terms of game mechanics more like
they do in reality.
Silly Question: Why do elves make the best deckers?
Answer: Because they're the only ones who live long enough to build a
decent deck (at least under "Virtual Realities" rules).
But seriously, the times involved mean that the average decker (Computer &
Computer B/R approx 6) would take about a year full time to build a half way
decent deck and about a decade to build a good one.
The main culprit seems to be the MPCP and Hardening design times, which have
base times: 8(new^2-old^2) days and 2.5(new^2-old^2) days respectively. This
means that to design an MPCP 8 (minimum to have personas all=6 and increased
reactions 2) from scratch would have base time: 512 days (and not very many
successes to reduce the time, at target number =8).
The best idea I've come up with to modify this is to assume that the times
given are doing it completely "lone wolf" whereas most deckers will borrow a
hot algorithm from here, a bit of pirated sourcecode from there (remember how a
recent Mac OS sourcecode was posted on nets before Apple had even released it).
Instead of 8(new^2-old^2) use k(new^2-old^2) where k varies from 1 (for a
decker who has a complete set of sourcecodes for the appropriate rating & just
needs to personalise it) to 8 (for a "lone wolf" effort). Similarly the
multiplier for hardening would vary from 1 to 2.5.
What do people think of this idea? Anybody know of any alternative rule
"patches" for this?
------------------------------
Tim Makinson,
University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
Richard G Tomasso
>I am posting this on behalf of a friend (Tim Makinson). He has
>Usenet access, but (i) he doesn't know how to post, and (ii) it's
>not his account anyway. The post itself refers to the posting
>made a couple of weeks ago about the new autofire rules for
>Shadowrun that were introduced at GENCON recently.
>>Autofire is one blast that uses up to nine rounds Each round adds +1 to power,
>>each FULL 3 rounds adds +1 to damage code.. If the damage code gets bumped
>>past deadly, then staging goes up by one instead. Thus an Uzi-III on full
>>auto (9 round burst) would do 14D4 damage
> {{various comments}}
I was the one who posted the article. I'm not sure what question you are asking
in your post.
The points you make are valid using the OLD RULES. Hume, etc. at FASA wanted
to make combat quicker and deadlier, which is what the old rules do. No more
street sams duking it out for half an hour. If you have a real problem with
them, don't use 'em. For the record, they will be printed in the Rigger book
and in the new edition of s-run whenever it comes out.
Oh BTW, I think I forgot to mention in the post that full-auto (9 shot burst)
has a +4 mod to the target number. I'm sure some people figured this out, but
I just want to make sure.
'later chummers.
Lester Ward
> [Stuff on auto-fire fixes deleted]
Sorry, but I'm confused. Could you (or Tim, rather) post some examples
as to what the deal is. It seemed to me that the quoted burst rules
were intended to simply cut down on number of die rolls (though I agree
that they make combat more dealy, e.g. light machine-pistols now
being able to cut through heavy armor). Did your fixes apply to
single shots or bursts, and if to bursts, why just add to power (for
the most part). Since armor dosen't care what the power is (auto-
successes), if seems to me like you're just using up three bullets
to do the damage that one used to do. Sorry if it sounds like I'm
blasting Tim. That is not may intent, I just didn't get the gist of
the post.
> [Deck building commentary]
>The best idea I've come up with to modify this is to assume that the times
>given are doing it completely "lone wolf" whereas most deckers will borrow a
>hot algorithm from here, a bit of pirated sourcecode from there (remember how a
>
>Instead of 8(new^2-old^2) use k(new^2-old^2) where k varies from 1 (for a
>decker who has a complete set of sourcecodes for the appropriate rating & just
>needs to personalise it) to 8 (for a "lone wolf" effort). Similarly the
>multiplier for hardening would vary from 1 to 2.5.
THIS I get, and I think it's great! Very realistic; however, it could
be argued (somewhat lamely) that the divide time by successes reflects
this already. I'm more inclined to think that the divide by successes
reflects how well the stuff is used.
The only problem I see is where/how the decker gets this stuff. It lends
itself to simple roleplay, but some for something this basic to the
Archetypical Decker, it might be good to have a sort of baseline price
or availability, so that (all other things equal as well) different
campaigns have deckers with decks of about equal ability.
Wordman
"The finest edge is made with the blunt whetstone."
- John Lyly
Nigel Stanger
forwarded to Tim.
Nigel.
Nigel Stanger, Univrsity of Otago, Internet: sta...@otago.ac.nz
Dunedin, New Zealand.
***************************************************************************
In <1991Sep26.1...@nic.unh.edu>
r...@kepler.unh.edu (Richard G Tomasso) says in reply to my reply:
>I was the one who posted the article. I'm not sure what question you are
>asking in your post.
The point I was trying to make was that under the rules you were
proposing, even very light weapons are able to penetrate any
armor on full autofire. This IMHO totally sends realism (I know
that it's a dirty word but you need at least some of it) up the
spout.
>The points you make are valid using the OLD RULES. Hume, etc. at FASA wanted
>to make combat quicker and deadlier, which is what the old rules do. No more
>street sams duking it out for half an hour.
Don't you believe it, try an Ingram Smartgun with Explosive ammo
and a vent-4 under the old rules: multiple bursts of 6M5. If
anything it's too deadly, I've nearly killed my party with an
equal number of opponents armed as above in less than one round.
.
[ I'm one of the players, and can vouch for this fact - even the
street samurai/phys. adept in the group quite regularly gets the
crap shot out of him. On the opposite side of the coin, we
quite often shoot the crap out of others too :) - N. ]
.
Admittedly, with Shadowrun you can never be quite sure that the
rules say what you think they say, but under most interpretations
this should apply.
>Oh BTW, I think I forgot to mention in the post that full-auto (9 shot burst)
>has a +4 mod to the target number. I'm sure some people figured this out, but
>I just want to make sure.
+4 for 9 shot burst? Why? surely it should be +1/3 shots => +3
Tim Makinson, c/o sta...@otago.ac.nz
"While I live, I'll pun"