Area Fire Revisited

[wyrmwood]

I still am taking issue with area fire... I love the idea, but I hate that success is entirely based on the weapon's design. Yet, the resultant hit/miss ratios of area fire do take into account some of the advantages and disadvantages inherent to each weapon's design - for example, as I mentioned before, while area fire may be attempted with a 11mm pistol, it has no chance of actually hitting the target. At close range, an FAM-90 has no chance of missing! A pistol should be much harder to keep on target, and a shoulder fired weapon should be easier, but I don't think it makes sense that one is completely inneffective and the other is infallible. And, my other complaint, this is irregardless of whether the player has skills beyond 0 in Sidearm or Combat Rifleman.

The pistols are listed from smallest to largest caliber. Each of the four pistols is single shot, yet has area fire capability. The ROF is 5, 4, 3, and 1 respectively. Each also lists "Area Fire Burst 3 rounds (AFV = 0.25)". Each has a DPV of .2, .3, .4 and .5 respectively. If you apply the area fire formula for chance of hitting, (AFV times #bursts (that is ROF), where AFV is double at close range, rounded down), then the chance of hitting with area fire at close range is 2 in 10, 2 in 10, 1 in 10 and 0 in 10, respectively. With these rules, using a three round burst with a pistol is very ineffective, if not impossible (Stracher P-11 mm).

Area fire for automatic weapons, on the other hand are another matter. For both the FAM-90 and the SK-19, the ROF is 5 (for area fire) and the AVF is 1.5. Thus, the chance of hitting at close range is 100% (roll less than 15 on a d10). The only question is with how many rounds (8-10 means 1 hit, 6-7 means 2 hits, 4-5 means 3 hits, 3 means 5 hits, 2 means 6 hits and 1 means 15 hits (provided you haven't hit with all 50 bullets yet)).

The Glock 18 is a pistol capable of selective fire; single shot, three round burst, and full auto. On full auto it's like a holding a high pressure water hose you have to constantly redirect, yet at ranges of 10 meters or less this is trivial. Out past that range, it's difficult to get more than 3 or 4 rounds to stay on target, due to the bucking of the gun. However, using 3 round burst mode and multiple pulls of the trigger once it's back on target (essentially what is described by 2300 Area Fire for a pistol), putting each group of three on target should have a reasonable chance of success, at least out to 25 meters.

If we look at the Army's ACR (Advanced Combat Rifle) program*, their research showed that with the M16A2 the probability of a battlefield hit is 20 percent at 100 meters, 10 percent at 300 meters, and 5 percent at 600 meters. Close range for the FAM-90 is 200 meters or less and for the SK-19, 150 meters or less with Area Fire, and both hit 100% of the time at these ranges. Of note here, the M16A2 only has single shot or three round burst, that is, it has no full automatic mode, to limit ammo wastage by troops, by preventing it rather than depending on training.

*Sidebar - I'd be willing to bet the early experimentation in the late 80's with flechette rounds for the ACR likely lead to some of Mark's ideas for 2300.

The DunArmCo Close Assault Gun uses a slightly different type of hit resolution for Aimed Fire, where, on hit, you roll how many slugs actually hit the target and each slug does the DP value of the weapon. This is not as effective as it might sound at first though, since they are not addititve (that is, it doesn't appear you add the DPV of each slug together to see if it penetrates the armor and does damage, you just get multiple hits at the DPV of the weapon). This makes sense as shotguns are not known for their penetration, rather for their saturation. However, at very close ranges, they are truly devastating.

I'm tempted to use this strategy for Area Fire, that is, you roll one Aimed Fire attack per burst, then, on success, roll how many bullets from that burst hit the target. I like that in Area Fire it's difficult to get very many hits though, so perhaps instead of just rolling d[number of bullets in burst], use the degree of success on the attack to determine how many from the burst hit. For example, with each burst attack, if you rolled what you needed to hit, you just hit once, if you rolled 1 higher, 2 hits, 2 higher, 3 hits, and so on. If you wanted to maintain the AFV characteristics, multiply the number of hits by this value (where any less than one is still one hit). This way, at close range with an SK-19, you would hit with 3, 6, 9, or 10 shots from the burst. With a pistol, you'd hit with 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, or 3.

 

[epicenter00]

Yeah, as many people have pointed out in the past, 2300's combat system isn't quite complete. It's a prototype of what would become GDW's House System, but isn't quite there yet. Autofire is just one of them - 2300 has a very deterministic combat system, which makes things simple but I think really sort of anti-heroic. Like if you think 2300's Autofire system is bad, look at how missile combat is handled. You can wipe out the entire player party if they're in a single vehicle with a single missile and player stats never enter into it once. You just compare the Evasion vs. Homing Value and roll a d10 to see if all the players die.

Anyway, back to autofire:

2300 has always actually had an issue that it's simply too easy to hit most of the time at most combat ranges. The usual target # in 2300 is 6 (routine). Most players have at the very least skill-2 in a weapon. This means that a person shooting a weapon hits with 60% of his shots, which is pretty easy. As a result, 100% hit chances with a FAM-90 on autofire isn't that ridiculous. If you really break down the RoF of a pistol on autofire as opposed to just firing single shots, you're almost always going to find you're better off firing a pistol single shot.

The second problem I suspect you're running into is that 2300 autofire can't really make up its mind what it wants to be and sort of turns out a bit odd. Cyberpunk 2020 split autofire up into two types: Area Fire and Automatic Fire. Area Fire represented just firing a bunch of bullets into an area to force the enemy to keep their heads down. Automatic Fire represented you seeing someone and firing a bunch of bullets at him to make sure he dies.

In 2300's combat system, this is handled by a single action, Automatic Fire so it's clumsy. The consumption of rounds and so on strongly suggest these aren't "short, controlled bursts" but instead just going cyclic and waving your gun in the direction of your enemy. The FAM-90 is vicious against lightly armored or unarmored enemies on autofire, but from the lower velocity setting, it's obvious that the FAM-90's autofire is actually designed for area-denial because of its inferior ability to penetrate armor when fired in this way (the SK-19 is so terrifying in AF because its DPV doesn't drop which is why I suspect it was omitted from 2300AD).

In this scenario, it's reasonable for pistols to be totally worthless at area fire - they just don't have the rate of fire with manual trigger pulls to fill a 10m area with bullets. 2300 pistols are all self-loading semi-auto pistols - you don't see weapons like the Glock 18 or the Beretta 93R in 2300, likewise, there's no "Gauss Pistols" in 2300. Laser Pistols do exist, and the P-3 actually has a decent AFV. However, the P-11 is worthless and honestly, if GDW weren't seized by "Pseudoscientific Nerdiness" they should have just said "AFV=0 (Cannot Fire Bursts)" and have been done with it.

I do use the 2300 combat system and I do agree with you that it's a bit ill. One of the things I did with 2300 to make it more to my tastes was reduce the combat turn from 30 seconds to 10 seconds (likewise, I also reduced movement distances and similar things proportionately - I didn't change RoF though). I also futzed with the skill targets and declared a universal +2 difficulty for any task attempted under fire (or in a very stressful situation in general). I also redid the combat ranges of most weapons (which is more work than most people want to do). As the way that 2300 does it's combat pretty much requires the use of a grid, I declared every hex on the grid was 2m. As for autofire itself:

* The full AFV value (as described in 2300) is only available in a 2m hex, not 10m. You can fire at areas larger (or be forced to fire), your AF value is divided by the number of hexes it covers.

* Default size for AFV attacks is 4m. You may check against your relevant stat at routine-under-fire difficulty (target number 8) to reduce that area to 2m. You may expand your Area Fire area without a check.

* You can never hit with more bullets than the lower of your relevant stat or the AFV vs. d10 roll (so someone with a Combat Rifleman-2 can only ever hit with two bullets in an AF attack per target). A skilled gunner knows how to control his or her weapon better.

* AF into a hex makes it "dangerous" until the shooter's next action (this breaks down a bit if someone only has one action but it's not too bad, really) or until the shooter is forced to break the AF for some reason, like being incapacitated.

* A dangerous hex is where anyone who moves through the hex takes an autofire attack.

* Doing a AF attack means the shooter cannot do ducking actions as they're too busy shooting at everything that moves in the area, everything they think they see moving, and everywhere they think something might be moving even if they can't see it.

* A duck in my version makes the person lose their next action - they're "deficit spending" their action now - but awards partial cover against that AF attack and further ones, unless it's declared impossible to get partial cover - like they're ducking in an open courtyard and someone is shooting them from a 3rd level of a building. However, it's possible to get partial cover simply by hitting the deck even in an open street. If they're already behind partial cover, ducking awards total cover (out of LOS). You can force NPCs to duck even if your AF attack has no chance of hitting (after all, they don't know you have no chance of hitting, and neither does your character, honestly) but such "scare shooting" only works in a 4m area at most (this prevents powergamers from declaring 100m AF "scare" fire areas).

 

[Colin]

In 2300AD, the pistols are not actually firing true bursts. In their case, it's more like "panic fire" pulling the trigger as fast as you can to put the most number of bullets down-range, without regard for accuracy.
However, I do agree that skill should enter into it somehow.

 

[wyrmwood]

the sk-19 was included in an errata and according to the Director's guide, ducking does use up one action, if I'm reading it correctly

I like your changes, especially the idea of "dangerous"