[Delahunt]

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.

I know the real world tactic as well. I was looking into it as the plan was to use suppressive fire as a means of covering a VIP extract that my players are guarding.

That said, there is a lot of stuff here that I didn't think about that should work well (including the fact that the gel rounds the gun will have should be knocking some people on their asses if they get hit.)

I'm still a little underwhelmed by the rules for it, but it also isn't as weak as I was originally thinking. Though I think it will be something more useful for PCs than useful against PCs. Which I am also fine with.

[Xetheral]

I like suppression fire when you have surprise... everyone gets hit and has to soak. Sure, on average against armored opponents you might not do much damage, but when you're potentially hitting a dozen or more targets at once, someone is likely to roll poorly and get hurt. You could do the same thing with a grenade, but suppression fire is likely cheaper and without scatter you can be perfectly precise.

Also, since there's no worry about net hits taking the damage higher, suppression fire is great when you'd rather not kill someone. If gel rounds aren't available, a Slivergun on suppression fire into a surprised crowd of unarmored targets more-or-less instantly clears a path without risking fatalities. (Admittedly, I wouldn't let that fly as a GM, particularly since critical glitches on some of the soak tests are likely.)