Real Full Auto Fire?

[MrMorden]

Hey folks...I'm a little confused about the automatic fire rules for T20. In the weapons table, burst sizes are written as these examples:

SMG 0/4

Gauss Rifle 1/4/10

So far so good. an SMG does ONLY 4 round bursts, and a Gauss Rifle can fire single shots, 4, or ten round bursts.

BUT...what about real full auto fire? In a six second combat round, just about any full auto weapon could easily empty its magazine. CT book 4 (Mercenary) used to have a rule for this, called "panic fire". You'd empty your weapon and get one attack at a big bonus to hit (if I remember correctly).

Does T20 just use different burst sizes as a concession to different weapons' RoF, and does away with real full auto fire? Or is there a rule out there I'm missing? I'm not trying to encourage my players to go nuts on full auto, I just want to know if I'm missing something.

 

[far-trader]

Coincidently the page I printed in testing for your PDF troubles references exactly what you're looking for here. TA#1 page 41 answers this with it's Panic Fire rule for T20. Not sure it's in the Handbook but basically any autofire, burst-capable, or semi-automatic weapon with 10 or more rounds in the weapon, may be emptied at a single target in a single action. This action uses up all the remaining ammo in the weapon and can be done even while the character is moving! The full details of the rule are beyond the scope of fair use so you'll have to get the TA (highly recommended anyway!) if it's not in the Handbook somewhere. It's very similar to the CT rule from Book 4.

 

[Hyphen]

Dear Folks -

Originally posted by far-trader:
The full details of the rule are beyond the scope of fair use...

"Fair use" is "about a page at a time". One paragraph snippet containing a rule should be fine; I've posted longer than that when discussing fixes to Book 8: Robots on my site.

(If a Panic Fire rule is longer than that, it's way too detailed!! )

 

[far-trader]

Yeah it's about half a page, 5 paragraphs, right at my borderline for fair use

I wouldn't call it too detailed, just a little involved

I'll have a look at the Handbook later and see what it says about it, maybe it has something close enough that I can call it valid fair use posting for clarity. I still think everyone should buy TA#1 for a lot more stuff and it's a steal of a deal

 

[MrMorden]

Ha, great thanks! Now if it would only print...

 

[Crashlogic]

well I should think panic fire would fall under the suppresive fire rule. You aren't really aiming just throwing a lot of fire in a particular area to get the enemy to go heads down. Intentional or panic, the result is basically the same.

 

[MrMorden]

Well, but panic fire is *at* a target, instead of just surpressing an area. It's basically like saying "oh crap, I need to stop this one threat right NOW" and just laying waste to it.

Of course it's not very accurate, but it's not quite as random as surpressive fire either.

 

[archhealer]

I ran into a little trouble with this... My players have a vehicle-mounted autocannon with a rof of 70. Now, I did get an expanded list for autofire bonuses from Tjonslo which works fine, but now I'm having trouble with area and suppresive fire, specifically, vs. a swarm of gian dragonfly-things chasing them in the vehicle. Using area fire... how many of them got hit? a 6m area... I suppose it would have been easier had we been using a battlemap, but still..

 

[MrMorden]

I don't have my handbook handy, but I think the rule is that every critter in that area has a *chance* of getting hit. I seem to remember something about rolling a normal attack at -4 for all targets in the area, but I'm not sure about that...

I'm also not sure if you can increase the chance of getting a hit on the critters by increasing the burst size.

 

[BetterThanLife]

One thing to poiint out. "Real Autofire" is excessively ineffective. (Which is why most modern weapons have burst limiters.) Firing 30 rounds from your Assault Rifle, SMG, even Machinegun, is unlikely to create more hits than a 3-4 round burst, in fact it is less likely to create hits than that same 3-4 round burst. (Though a true Machinegun the ideal burst size is closer to 6-9 rounds.) Recoil is going to cause your weapon to rise to the point that indoors you are almost going to be picking plaster out of your hair.

(It isn't, literally, quite that bad but an M-16 on full auto fired at a target at 100 meters clamped to a bench, the second round tends to be about 1.5 meters high. For game effect I have had characters empty their magazines into the ceiling. Lesson learned and the looks on their faces was priceless.

 

[Uncle Bob]

Well, there is also "burst-on-target" fire. Used on moving targets you adjust from the arc of tracers or the dust puffs of bullet hits. Works better with MGs on mounts, can be used at short range with low-recoiling weapons like SMGs.

Think in terms of a AA gunner swinging his bullet stream through the target like a firehose. Often bursts can last a second or more, 10-15 rd. This is one reason that many elite units don't use burst limiters. They mostly shoot fast, semi-auto double-taps, but when they decide they need full auto, they want the real thing. Notice that neither the XM8 nor the new SCAR SF carbine have burst limiters.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by Uncle Bob:
Well, there is also "burst-on-target" fire. Used on moving targets you adjust from the arc of tracers or the dust puffs of bullet hits. Works better with MGs on mounts, can be used at short range with low-recoiling weapons like SMGs.

Think in terms of a AA gunner swinging his bullet stream through the target like a firehose. Often bursts can last a second or more, 10-15 rd. This is one reason that many elite units don't use burst limiters. They mostly shoot fast, semi-auto double-taps, but when they decide they need full auto, they want the real thing. Notice that neither the XM8 nor the new SCAR SF carbine have burst limiters.

The way that generally works is that you aim low and let the recoil carry the weapon up into the target. (I was an expert M60 gunner while I was in the US Army.) A quick burst on target in the first place is at least as effective. I was under the impression that the reason that some of the newer weapons have a full auto setting, unlike the M16A2 was so they could be used in the suppressive fire role. Which is generally more psycological than real when it comes to are you going to be hit. A 3 round burst isn't as likely to put your head down than a nice long 10+ round burst.

I never really said long bursts didn't have their uses. Though I didn't really say they did either to be fair. I said that you are less likely to hit a target with a long burst than you are with either a short burst or single shot. You don't have to be as precise when you are firing at an area target, for either suppressive fire or simply firing into a crowd, not caring who you hit as long as you score a hit or two.

With Triple A you aren't really usually walking rounds into a moving vehicle, more like throwing up as close to a wall as you can and hope that your target flys into it. (Extreme example of this principal is the British Royal Navy Seawiz and the USN Phalanx.)

 

[SanDragon]

And the Vulcan autocannon mounted on a modified APC was our Army attack chopper pilots' favorite target when we were practicing in the field.

 

[Uncle Bob]

M60 did not (and the M240 does not), AFAIK, have anti-air SOP The firehose burst-on-target method is for the ma deuce vs fast movers. It's in the manual, even.

I think the elimination of the burst limiter has more to do with a consistant trigger pull than anything else. But, before the burst limiters, back in the days of SMGs, two modes of firing were taught: short bursts of 2-3 rds to engage single targets and long bursts of about a second to engage running/dodging targets, especially at night.

Area/suppresive fire usually called for a series of short bursts, ea 2-3 rd from an autorifle, 5-7 from a belt fed MG.

That is a little complicated for a game, though.

Oh, and that is why the PIVADS is no longer used. It had a 2000 m range and a TOW (or SAGGER) missile could shoot 3750 m.

 

[Merxiless]

Just as a side note, the Twilight 2K rules 2nd ed (and likely TNE) are okay to do this kind of fire.

Greatly simplified paraphrasing:

More or less have a bunch of d6, the number limited by ROF, distance, and the recoil of the firing weapon.

Toss all those dice and 1 in 6 will hit targets in the full auto area.

As I recall, save half of the rest of the dice that didn't hit, and those hit targets moving through the kill zone.

..or something like that.

As explained by the design notes, burst fire is aimed, and auto fire is just spraying so that the rules in T2K2 tried to give a rough feel for that.

Worked pretty well.

(I'm not familiar with T20, so the following might be way off)

If your ROF is 70 per combat round:

I'd game it out as follows:

Short Range: 10D6
Medium 7D6
Long 4D6
Extreme 2D6

Take the above dice, assign equally to the creatures in the area you are tracking, with a width of 5 M to left and right of the center of your base of fire, for the Specific Range Band, so that the area covered is 10m wide, at that range.

Roll the above dice, each "1" rolled on a die inflicts 5 actual Autocannon rounds hitting a target in your area of fire, at that range band. (so that you don't have to roll a pillowcase full of d6.)
---------------------------------------------
Twilight 2K 2.2 figured this is also based on skill, so it made it an impossible task to hit, and instead of hitting on 1 in 6, it became 1 or 2 in a d20.

Thus, going by single AC rounds hitting per die:

Short Range: 70D20
Medium 49D20
Long 28D20
Extreme 14D20

Each "20" rolled getting a hit, with one round, on one creature.

Yeah it's slop, but it's a game.

Even more so, I am a fan of: what does the story need?

This is spurring me to crack open my T20 for the first time, and see how they wrote the autofire rules.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by Uncle Bob:
M60 did not (and the M240 does not), AFAIK, have anti-air SOP The firehose burst-on-target method is for the ma deuce vs fast movers. It's in the manual, even.

Well the M-2 Manual was written when fast movers had a maximum speed of less than 400mph.

The M60 did have an anti-air SOP. (As does the M16.) The same principal would apply to the M240 and the M249. It may not be in the M60 manual, as far as I remember it is in the 11B Soldier's Manual. Though I do remember seeing it before I ever got my hands on an 11B soldier manual so it could be the M60 manual or perhaps the SMART book. (Perhaps the level 20 edition?)

I will admit it has been a while.