[Delahunt]

I'm honestly not sure if I see the point of using suppression fire against runners or other combatants. From the rules in the 4th ed book someone under suppression fire makes a Reaction + Edge test against the number of successes earned on the suppression fire check. If they fail they get hit once by the base DV of the gun.

So, even with just a 900 nuyen combat jacket (Ballistic a LMG like the white knight is doing stun damage. It has a damage value of 6 with an AP of -1. So, assuming Body 3 the person is rolling 10 dice against 6 damage before edge. 1/3 rolls should be a hit so they should, on average, soak 3 of the 6 and take 3 stun damage.

Yes, it is damage. But I'm not sure I see the threat to it. Especially in the type of circumstances you'd want to use suppression for (cover an extract, keep the other people pinned down.) Is this how it actually works, or am I missing something?

Are there ways to use it better? House Rules to make it a bit more beefy? Or is it just something you use when the street sammie is already taken care of and you want the squishies to stay down?

[emsquared]

Well, if you have someone doing suppression fire and someone shooting to kill, the target gets penalties for already having been shot at.

[Delahunt]

Don't they only count as shot at if they've moved? Or does defending against the second shooter trigger the suppression check?

[emsquared]

RAW in the "Defense Modifiers Table" says: Defender has defended against previous attacks since last action -1 per additional defense

So it doesn't even have to be in the same IP, i.e. if the suppression fire goes after the "shoot-to-kill", in the previous IP (and after the target), the target will have a penalty the next time he's shot at.

[UmaroVI]

Suppressive fire is indeed usually worthless. The times it isn't worthless:

First, note that not everyone has edge. Suppressive fire is more useful against mooks, and less against bad dudes with high edge and reaction.

Suppressive fire with Stick-n-shock against relatively weak targets is good, because it forces the Don't Taze Me Bro check and imposes the -2 shock modifier, even if it doesn't do that much damage. Against a large enough group of targets, hitting most of them with SnS and disabling a few is better than shooting one or two directly.

Miniguns do DVx1.5 with Suppressive Fire. The vehicle mounted miniguns can do hilarious amounts of damage as a result. The LMG minigun with APF ammo does 12P/-1 suppressive fire which is quite impressive against groups.

[Falconer]

Hmm the other big things that are missed here is that you look at the damage to a single target using basic ammo.

If you switch from basic ammo to any of the enhanced... the damage against the armor jacket on the LMG switches from 3S average to 4P+.  Even gel with it's slight damage penalty... works because it also has knockdown effect (great for crowd control... one of these days I'll get my wish of spraying down a crowd of trogs/hippies/transhuminists/insert disliked group here... with a load of gel from a HMG.

I personally disagree with SnS (think it should be shotgun only)... but won't argue with it's effectiveness.


Also missed is that this is an area attack and hits multiple targets... if you suppress an area and catch say 5 targets over that period of time...  that 3 or 4 damage times all the targets is a lot more.   Also it's a persistent area so it deters people from entering the suppressed zone.   Or it immobilizes people by forcing them to go prone/take cover.... (great if you have a followup grenade!).

Also missed is that 3 damage is enough for a -1 penalty on all their actions, in addition to the -1 for being attacked once.   Making for a -2 dodge penalty against the next shot taken at them.

Also missed, is that the suppression lasts until the characters next action phase... if your decker only has a single IP...  suppressing the hallway, while the street sam deals with the guys coming the other way is a perfectly viable strategy and one of the few actions which is more valuable to non-combat chars than combat chars.

[Azrael]

knockdown rules are good to remember with suppressive fire

[RHat]

And then there's overlapping fields of suppression fire, which is I believe covered in Arsenal?

[Mirikon]

On its own, suppressing fire is indeed worthless. That's because it isn't meant to be a single person tactic, but a group tactic. You have a guy on the machine gun laying down suppressing fire, while your buddies shoot to kill, or toss grenades at the people who have their head down. The purpose is not to kill your foe, but to make them duck behind cover to allow allies to close in. And at that it does a fair job.

[Prodigy]

Wow, Mirikon, you mean like in real life? +1 to you for understanding real life tactics. SR4 does a good job replicating that.

Getting shot at is scary. Suppressive fire doesnt usually hit targets. But it scares the **** out of people.

[farothel]

We once used suppressive fire when a group of guards were in their barracks.  We set up a drone with a machine gun and had it fire on the door of the barracks while we took out the patrols.  Nobody is willing to come out of a door when machine gun rounds are ripping through it.  A couple of grenades through the small windows and we were done.

[Mirikon]

Exactly. It takes a special kind of crazy to go charging into an area where someone's laying down machine gun fire. Of course hyper-agile adepts and street sammies are usually that special kind of crazy, but there you go. For most people, they see wall of lead coming at them, they get behind the closest cover they can find, or hit the deck. In either case, that means your buddies can now either close in, or take up the next position if you're using suppressive fire to cover an escape, taking turns laying down cover fire as you 'walk' back from cover to cover.

There are other uses, as well, but this is not meant to be a lethal tactic, but a stalling one. And it is one that works better with the composure rules from WAR!

[WellsIDidIt]

Yep, when you slap a Composure (3) test on entering a suppressive fire zone (or popping out of cover inside it), it makes it a lot more effective. Of course, runners always have edge to use if they really really have to get through the zone.

[Mirikon]

Right. People like to slam WAR! for various reasons, but there are some gems in there, especially when dealing with small unit tactics and guerilla campaigns.

[Charasanya]

I usually find that supressive fire makes a rather fine deterrent to enter just about any area that can be narrowed down to a couple of square meters. Well armored opponents, or especially daring NPC's can probably just ignore the rain of bullets, but it still keeps the goons at bay.

The composure test is actually a pretty good idea, though an especially threatning leader might also be able to motivate his underlings to face the hail of bullets rather then him.