Automatic fire!

[IVhorseman]

i was already pleased with billingsly's addition! if you can get it simpler, faster and more fun than that, you're in. and you're most likely god.

besides, all i was saying is that i was confused O_o

[Foggy]

Alright. I'm not going to read any of this thread and ask this challenge:

Write down the rules you have agreed on for Automatic Fire in a single, comprehensive post.
Said post cannot be a block of text, and must be easy to read.

Cookies are involved as a reward.

[IVhorseman]

that's probably the best test. i'm dedicating my next post to that and only that.

[IVhorseman]

AUTOMATIC FIRE RULES (as of 1/21/08)

after pages of arguing, we have determined effective rules for how minifigs with automatic weapons will determine the damage done by said weapon.

the basics

when firing a weapon in a fully automatic burst at a single target, two factors must be taken into consideration:

1) it will be much easier to hit a target when multiple bullets are fired

2) if multiple bullets are fired, recoil, insanity, and time will make it so fewer individual shots will hit.

that said, the rules for a minifig firing at a single target are as fol
lows: the UR of the weapon used is decreased by 1, and the minifig makes the skill roll as normal. if he misses, that means every shot flew off target. if it is equal to or greater than the adjusted UR, you have a hit! here's where the fun starts: the amount of skill that was rolled EXCEEDING the minimum UR is converted into bonus damage (this is reffered to as the success grade

EXAMPLE: minifig Bob sees his wife, minifig Susan, being intimate with minifig studly McHandsome. now, Bob hates McHandsome enough already, and this is the last straw. naturally, he does what any sane person would do, and grabs an assault rifle.

Bob takes aim at McHandsome, and prepares to fire. his gun has a normal UR of 3, so for auto-fire, it's 2. To fire, he rolls a 5: a hit. his gun normally does 1d6 damage, and since 5 - 2 is 3, it now does 1d6+3 damage.

cross-fire

so if some shots are missing the target, where do they go? well, the answer is simple: they land within 1" of the target. the way this is calculated, is you take the previously mentioned success grade, and roll a d6. If 1d6 - SG is a positive number, then everything within 1" got hit by a bullet. since it is one bullet, it would be just the damage of a normal attack, without bonus damage.

EXAMPLE: during bob's last escapade, you will remember he shot McHandsome. however, he was violating Susan at the time of the shooting; short story shorter, she was DEFINITELY within 1" of him. to see if she got hit, we roll 1d6 minus the success grade (3 in our last case). the die comes up as a 6, which leaves the positive number 3 left. Susan is hit by a stray shot, and takes 1d6 damage.

spread fire

now we get to the most fun and least ammunition conserving method of automatic fire: the spread burst, or "spray 'n' pray". this is when a minifig sees a field of potential targets, and decides he wants to hit as many of them as possible. the best way to do this is for him to swing his gun wildly at the targets in a certain angle, nailing as many targets in one turn as possible. obviously, this is much less accurate. instead of busting out a protracter, we construct finger cones.

the method is simple: take any two adjacent fingers (not your thumb!) and spread them out as far as possible. this forms an angle. your minifig will fire at everything within this angle. now, count your fingers. you have a 2 finger cone, so that means you're holding up 2 fingers. since it's harder to hit the targets you're barely aiming at, you take +2 to UR. for a 3 finger cone, +3, etc. you may include the thumb if and only if you've used up all the fingers on one hand.

EXAMPLE: bob, feeling remorse for shooting his wife, decides to go on a killing rampage at a nearby orphanage for blind children. he steps out onto the playground, and opens fire upon 4 children playing. to fit all 4 into a single angle, bob's player must make a 3 finger cone. bob takes fire at the children, at -3 to skill against all of them. from a starting UR of 3, he must get a 6 or higher to hit. bob rolls a 2, a 6 and a 3, so he only hits one of the children for 1d6 damage

[Rayhawk]

Spread fire is all well and good. Burst fire is problematic, game balance wise. If it's easier to hit AND you do more damage, why have regular single fire at all? You're even guaranteed to miss by less: any roll that you'd miss 1" with the burst, you'd necessarily miss by more than 1" with the single shot, thanks to the higher UR and the nearmiss rules.

It's nice and efficient, but it feels exactly the same as a regular single shot except in munchkined version. It'll look like this:

Gun (3CP, Rng:6")
firing mode 1: UR:3 Dmg:1d6
firing mode 2: UR:2 Dmg:1d6+Skill-2, max miss of 1"

People will think I'm an idiot for having mode 1 in there at all.

Now if there's some drawback to mode 2, like "mode 2 uses up your clip and you have to spend a turn reloading," then it's a little more balanced, but it still just feels like a more powerful single shot.

[Gorchek]

Sorry for the (lack of) formating in my last post. I'll have to remember that copy/paste from notepad is a bad idea.

It's true that my rule could get unbalanced with really BIG weapon (I've yet to use a weapon bigger then size 2, since it gets hard to hit with them...) The fact that I didn't also post the "weapon problems" rule meant I left out the main balancing factor.
In short, if any of the attack rolls come up as a critical failure, you have to reroll as many dice as you rolled in the first place. If any of them roll a 1, your gun is out of ammo for the rest of the game, or your vehicule stalls because you drained all the power with your burst.

For Horseman's rules, I like them, but I'd also like a way to increase the chance of critical failure, so I could mix it with my WP rule. Try as I might, I just can't think of one right now.

[Foggy]

I second the word of Rayhawk.

I believe that the number of shots should be declared first, then with each shot the UR is raised by 1.
Example: Declare 3 shots.
1st shot UR 3
2nd shot UR 4
3rd shot UR 5

If(when) you miss, you then use the "Stray bullets" rules.

[IVhorseman]

I second the word of Rayhawk.

I believe that the number of shots should be declared first, then with each shot the UR is raised by 1.
Example: Declare 3 shots.
1st shot UR 3
2nd shot UR 4
3rd shot UR 5

If(when) you miss, you then use the "Stray bullets" rules.

i used this system for a very long time. it became tedious and boring and took forever to do.

as for the fact that auto-fire is more powerful, well... yeah! it is! i've been tossing around the idea that auto-fire only has half the range or something like that, but for now, i say the only reason to use a carbine would be because it's less CP (i didn't calculate it here, but someone threw in a reasonable CP cost. i think it was -2 or something?). as for those of us who don't use CP, game balancing isn't really THAT important to us. what's wrong with agreeing that automatic fire is tactically superior to a single shot in every single way? realistic? no. but since when has THAT ever stopped us?

[Rayhawk]

In short, if any of the attack rolls come up as a critical failure, you have to reroll as many dice as you rolled in the first place. If any of them roll a 1, your gun is out of ammo for the rest of the game, or your vehicule stalls because you drained all the power with your burst.

For Horseman's rules, I like them, but I'd also like a way to increase the chance of critical failure, so I could mix it with my WP rule. Try as I might, I just can't think of one right now.

Ah, now you're speaking my language. I like tying the chance of critical failure to weapon failure. That'll mean the option of using the more powerful attack has an appropriate counterbalancing risk. (And speaking of criticals: one important way to help keep automatic fire from getting too complicated is just to say no Bonus Dice in automatic fire, ever.)


So: let's take this and revisit an earlier idea. A gun has one set of stats regardless of whether you're firing single shot, burst, or spray n' pray. However, instead of inflicting Skill penalties as the attack increases, you now subtract die sizes. Hopefully you have lots of dice handy.

BrikWars Die Sizes, for those not familiar:

• 1d12 (Legendary)
  1d10 (Heroic)
  1d8 (Expert)
  1d6 (Trained)
  1d4 (Untrained)

And then one extra die size below the regular 1d4, for use in emergency:

• Emergency 1d4 (automatic Gun Failure, explained later)

So let's start with a Hero, because he has a nice high Skill, which makes him good for illustrating my point. He fires one shot at a Skill of 1d10. Adding a second finger to the angle, he makes all his shots at 1d8. A three-finger angle makes for 1d6, and at four fingers his effective Skill for each shot is 1d4. At all five fingers, he's still at 1d4, but it's the Emergency 1d4 so there'll be consequences later.

Controlled Bursts work the same way - if the Hero's single shot would be at Skill 1d10, then he would roll two shots at Skill 1d8, or three shots at 1d6, or four shots at 1d4, or five shots at Emergency 1d4.

What's the advantage of using dies sizes instead of Skill Penalties? Simple: When you're making lots of attacks, the less math, the better. And secondly, each time you drop a die size, the chances for Critical Failure go up, which leads to my next bit.

When you're watching an action movie or cartoon, as soon as a gun runs out of ammo, the hero tosses it aside like a one-night stand. Anyone in the audience who understands how much guns cost, bullets or not, are slapping themselves on the foreheads at that point. But the lesson to be learned is, if you're firing automatic bursts in action movie reality, there's no way to predict if a gun will keep firing for ten thousand rounds or if it'll be used up after the first burst.

Guns can get Used Up for all kinds of reasons: out of ammo, gun jam, overheating, boredom, whatever. But once it's done, it's done; toss it aside, because reloading is for pansies. (The gun can be repaired/reloaded later by a qualified Mechanik, I assume.)

How do you know if a gun is Used Up? Easy: if the attacker rolls "1" on the last shot of any burst of automatic fire, that's it. The gun is done. You can quickly see that the lower the die size, the more likely this result becomes. And at the Emergency 1d4 size, the gun is Used Up automatically, no matter what the final roll looks like.


So there it is. I'll come back later and figure out Squads and so forth.

[Foggy]

Hmm, its unique. I like the idea.
It may need some condensing for simplicity, but otherwise I'm liking it.

[jack3.5]

That is why you are the creator, but what about a normal minifig firing past three shots would it just be the same that the gun is used up or is there othe things that could happen cause a minifig usualy only starts out with a d6

[IVhorseman]

you know i like it, but i think i still prefer the billingsly edit. namely because it dosen't require obscure die that some people don't have just lying around. that, and because it's just one single die roll, and you're done.

what about the billingsly edit, followed by the fact that if a critical fail is rolled, the gun's out for a turn?

[Gorchek]

Rayhawk, that's perfect! Now I just have to figure out what unit will get the full-auto gun in my next fight.

And horseman, it's true that the dice may get hard to find for some people. The alternative might be to give a -1 penality to the roll, and increase the critical failure by half the penality.

So, a Hero firing two shots would do so at 1d10-1 (critical 1), three shots at 1d10-2 (critical 2), four at 1d10-3 (critical 2 again), and five at 1d10-4 (at an automatic critical). It's close to the same odds, and doesn't require new dices.

[Sir Billingsly]

Hi,

wasn't online for some time, so I missed some of the discussion.

@Rayhawk: I don't think that the rule is unbalanced. You get one point of UR less and a chance to inflict slightly more damage. This costs you double CP if you use them and if you don't use CP's you can simply give the weapon several drawbacks, like jamming for one turn on a 1 or the weight of the ammo tornister slowing you down by one inch and so on...

My Point is that I would like to keep it simple, funny and quick.

Greetings Billingsly

[IVhorseman]

So, a Hero firing two shots would do so at 1d10-1 (critical 1), three shots at 1d10-2 (critical 2), four at 1d10-3 (critical 2 again), and five at 1d10-4 (at an automatic critical). It's close to the same odds, and doesn't require new dices.

but it DOES require remembering which die is which when you rolled. which in brik theorizing seems not too hard, but in practice gets very, very, VERY tedious, even if you DO remember.

and you know, i agree with billingsly. the only thing is that i WOULD like to make some kind of reasoning as to why a single shot may be more effective, but then again i kindof want to say screw it. this is brikwars! we don't need to worry about "saving ammo"!