Automatic fire!

[IVhorseman]

post your opinions on how to calculate it. as you all know, i'm an afficionado for far too many bullets fired than necessary, and want to attempt a good way to assign how units firing from a fully automatic rifle end up doing it.

i know the finger rule for spray n' pray is... basically the only vestige of automatic fire i want remaining. for those of you who don't know, it works quite simply: your brikwarrior wants to fire his machinegun in an arc, covering a large area. so, you use your fingers to create an angle. you can use as many fingers as you want as long as you start with the forefinger, continue towards the pinky, and end with the thumb. the total number of fingers you are holding up is the amount added to the UR.

NOTE: this may be unfair to those with larger hands. of course, everyone knows that big hands means big firing arc for a fully automatic weapon. so tiny hands players can suck at brikwars, just like they suck at life.

the only thing i really want to add is how one would calculate how many shots hit an individual target if they are being shot at. as in, your brickwarrior wants to shoot a jaw jaw in the face fifty-two time, and fires with his uzi, how many shots land?

[DarkWolf]

Well, the way I've decided to do my automatic firing, is that each weapon has a singleshot mode, and a fully-automatic mode (some weapons are just one or the other) and it has a different UR for which rate of fire you want to use. The basic assault rifle my army uses, the VX-5, can fire one shot with a UR of 3, or two shots with a UR of 4. The more powerful version, the MA-3, can fire one shot with a UR of 4, or three shots with a UR of 5. My heavy machinegun, the ME-23, only fires fully auto, and fires a total of 16 shots per firing, with a UR of 6. The BK-8 Battlerifle (based on the Battlerifle from Halo 2) is also only fully-auto, and fires three shots at a UR of 5.

So yeah, those are just examples of how I play with automatic fire. As far as I'm concerned, having set URs and set numbers of bullets makes it easier since you don't have to spend time figuring out the UR and how many bullets you want to fire and stuff like that.

[IVhorseman]

i dunno, i disagree. i don't like having to memorize different URs for the same weapon, not to mention rates of fire, and multiple different weapon types. not to mention, specific set rules make it hard to translate to just any weapon. One way i used to have it is that UR increased by 1 for each shot fired for a maximum 1d4/6/8 bullets (depending on weapon class), but it got confusing, and an even WORSE idea was that they just continued firing until they rolled a critical failure (which literally resulted in one minifig firing twenty two bullets, dealing 22d6 damage to a fighter jet). if there was a simple way to do it that could easily be translated to other weapon types and only takes a short amount of time to determine (probably the biggest problem i've run into - automatic fire is supposed to be quick and impresice, whereas my current rules take 5 minutes per man, and every shot is calculated).

[Houndis]

I'mt not sure if this is worth saying, but me and my friends have made some of our own rules,  and we made the Minigun for our heavy corridor-defenders. Because my friend has the stats, these can be wrong (and propably are ).

Minigun, as you might know, is big automatic gun, which fires at enormous speed. Our minigun is heavy (-1" to Move) and difficult to use. Minigun covers a 45-60 degree cone at range of 8" and is capable to hit everything in that area (unless it's behind cover). User throws dice for every hit, and if it hits, damage depends on the range. Unit in front of the gun takes more hits and more damage than one at the back corner of the cone. Damage stats could be like this:
0-2": 1d10
2-4": 1d8
4-6": 1d6
6-8": 1d4

I'm sorry for my bad English, if you didn't understand something, just ask. Those stats can be totally wrong 'cause my memory isn't the best, but they are close enough.

[EvilTobbacconist]

Nah, your english is pretty good, in fact better thansome of the the other people in this forum, cool gun too. By the way, what does your signature mean?

[IVhorseman]

what can i say? i'm a grammar Piltogg. speaking of which, every single one of you has made some error in grammar and/or spelling, although i'm not entirely sure mike's was an accident.

also houndis, i use a minigun as well with similar stats. Mine's got between 10-15" range (don't remember which) and a 2 finger firing arc for 2d6 damage to everything in it's range (screw it, i am NOT calculating number of shots fired from something that fires 20 times a second). this is actually the weapon i feel most ashamed of for the stats (see "Battle of Redrock City, where half of a large army was liquified in one turn), but simultaneously is the most simplistic. and simple is good.

[Houndis]

By the way, what does your signature mean?

As I said in this thread:

It's one of the most famous Finnish warcrys, along with "Tulta munille!". It could be translated "Go for it, son of the North!" or moreover "Attack, son of the North!". Literally it means "Beat over, son of the North!". As you might understand, it has no perfect translation, so you'll have to live with those Wink
"Tulta munille!" means literally "Fire at the eggs/balls!", but most often it's translated just "Fire!" or "Fire in the hole!"

BTW IVhorseman, your minigun would easily beat mine; it's range is somewhat double compared to mine
Seems working, I could try that out sometime. But it will be very expensive weapon, that's for sure.

[DarkWolf]

Well, I don't know whether or not my heavy machine gun counts as a minigun or not. It's quadbarreled, four shots per barrel for a total of 16. UR: 6 and that's per shot, so you need 16 1d6 for the skill rolls. That's a big handful of dice, sure to scare you opponate. And I've permantly set the damage at 1 damage per shot, so you have to actually hit something and not just riddle the area with bullets. But, if you're firing one on target, with 16 shots the laws of probablity and and even unfavorable Dice Gods says you'll hit the target enough to kill it several times over.

[Muskotti]

I'mt not sure if this is worth saying, but me and my friends have made some of our own rules,  and we made the Minigun for our heavy corridor-defenders. Because my friend has the stats, these can be wrong (and propably are ).

Minigun, as you might know, is big automatic gun, which fires at enormous speed. Our minigun is heavy (-1" to Move) and difficult to use. Minigun covers a 45-60 degree cone at range of 8" and is capable to hit everything in that area (unless it's behind cover). User throws dice for every hit, and if it hits, damage depends on the range. Unit in front of the gun takes more hits and more damage than one at the back corner of the cone. Damage stats could be like this:
0-2": 1d10
2-4": 1d8
4-6": 1d6
6-8": 1d4

I'm sorry for my bad English, if you didn't understand something, just ask. Those stats can be totally wrong 'cause my memory isn't the best, but they are close enough.

Well, I didn't find those custom rules we made, but I'll keep looking. We have made also flamethrower, sniper-rifle, and some other nice mods.

Flamer is similiar to Minigun, but with shorter range, less wide angle, more power, and so on.

[kidko]

Well, for a while, I had a base that I lugged around to provide support to my ever-vulnerable ATV riders (with just pistols!). It was a small building, but I mounted a bunch of the LEGO rifles using those U-shaped holding pieces, and called them automatics. They basically got 3 shots per turn at 6" range, doing just 1d6 damage, with each shot checked individually. I only used it once or twice, but it seemed pretty balanced (not like it matters, but nobody was obliged to beat me over the head with anything).

[Olothontor]

Iv'e never seen you use that, Kidko. Did I just arrive too late to that one battle we had in your attic?

[IVhorseman]

you know, i've done things like that, but i gave weapons fire rates. i have 3 classes of rifles that everything fit into, and they had firing rates of 1d4, 1d6, and 1d8 bullets per turn respectively.

in theory neat, but in practice, questionable. for every shot, a minifig first had to roll a d6 to see how many shots were fired. then, the number of shots was added to the UR of each shot (this worked well for incorporating recoil), and each shot was rolled individually. it was kindof cool, but took a lot of rolls before shots hit.

EXAMPLE:

a minifig trooper sees another minifig standing in front of him. the trooper pulls out an assault rifle (1d6 fire rate) and lets loose. you roll a 4 for bullets fired. this gun originally has a UR of 4, so the first bullet has a UR of 5, the second a UR of 6, and so on until a UR of 8. this ends up being 5 die rolls total. this is what i use the most, and so far i like it the best. but 5 die rolls is still a lot of dice to roll.

[kidko]

That does seem a little... excessive. Oloth can tell you, but some of the players we play with are a) more than a little crazy (killed a minifig with a thrown hand and b) impatient. Some of them wanted to take their turns at the same time, just for it to go faster.

I like the idea, though. But it might make more sense for assault rifles to maybe have 1d3 (1d6 / 2, round up) shots instead of 1d6. The recoil is a nice touch too; didn't even think of that.

[Olothontor]

He's right, you know. And more than a little crazy may be an understatement (My Little penises flies out of the sky, picks up this here mountain, and drops it on your hero, causing [insert some insane amount of dice here] damage, killing him!)

[Silent Mobius]

Well I do it by percentages.  Usually I make the minifig empty an entire clip into someone with numbers divisable by ten. And make him aim at however many targets are in the blast range (the fingers method) Then either roll 1d10 (with 00 being 100) or 5d20's and calculate the percentage of shots hit off of that. Then I let them divide the damage between at least 2 minifigs (if there are multiples in the area of fire.)