[JoeNapalm]

Ejecting a magazine should be a Free Action, anyway.

You do it by simply moving a digit a fraction of an inch while reaching for your new magazine...it's not really a separate step. The magazine falls out of the well when the catch is released - and even if it doesn't, a flick of the wrist should propel it clear.

If it is still stuck, you clear it with your finger as you bring the new mag in...but you're getting into weapon malfunction territory, at that point.

...

But SR combat time is full of quantum anomalies, I suppose.

-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist

[Mithlas]

Unless you're assumed to be policing your brass and magazines. In proper military procedure, you keep your magazine instead of just letting it fall.

Personally, I think it's a vestige of older editions where ejecting a smartgun was necessary to get that as a free action, because if you're policing your magazine it would still take a simple action because most of that time is putting away the old magazine. It becoming a free action is a benefit of a smartgun - possibly one of those copypaste carry-overs.

[JoeNapalm]

Unless you're assumed to be policing your brass and magazines. In proper military procedure, you keep your magazine instead of just letting it fall.

Personally, I think it's a vestige of older editions where ejecting a smartgun was necessary to get that as a free action, because if you're policing your magazine it would still take a simple action because most of that time is putting away the old magazine. It becoming a free action is a benefit of a smartgun - possibly one of those copypaste carry-overs.

That may have been a procedure, but it isn't a proper one.

If you're manually removing an empty magazine in combat, you're doing it wrong.

They (at least the They that trained me) stopped teaching people to keep magazines because it's incredibly slow to do it that way. Magazines are cheap and trained personnel are expensive. Empty magazines are not in any way useful toward addressing the threat.

Shadowrunners are not regular military, anyway. If you want to take the time to take an empty magazine out of your weapon and stick it in a separate pocket away from your useful full magazines, then, when you're done with that, finally get around to inserting a full, useful magazine and get on with dealing with the people who are trying to kill you, then you can spend your actions on that.

I'm not doing that.

-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist

[Mithlas]

I think you're separating it into too many actions without keeping in mind that things can be done simultaneously. This is the sequence we were taught:
-Reach nearly empty. Before actually running out of ammo, release the hand not on the grip and trigger
-Draw the next full magazine
-Reach up with hand on grip and hit the button to eject the empty magazine
-Extend fingers and let the empty magazine fall into your fingers, then push up the replacement magazine
-Adjust grip on empty mag and slap up to ensure that new mag is firmly seated. This is the longest part of the procedure, and takes place over ~0.25-0.5 seconds
-Depending on the unit (usually if you're engaging in suppressive fire) you fire a burst as you drop the empty mag into the mag pocket that you just drew the replacement from
-Put hand back on forward grip to allow you to settle back into precision fire (even if engaging in suppressive fire)

That may sound like a lot, but it took us less than 2 seconds at the end of our first 6-hour training session, and we're still engaging the targets downrange during this process. If you're up against a squad of 4+ people doing this, particularly if they're well drilled, you may not even see a noticeable gap in the firing pace. People who have been drilling at this can complete the exchange even faster. I have no idea if this is everybody's procedure, and it's probably not what street-raised shadowrunners do, but it's one possible sequence of events. Just something to keep in mind.

[JoeNapalm]

That's pretty close to what I was taught as a magazine exchange, where you would exchange a partially spend magazine for a full one. It is sometimes confusingly called a "combat reload" but you would never do so while getting shot at (because you still have bullets to share downrange) and would never put a partially empty magazine in with full ones.

What you are describing can be done quickly, but never as quickly as just discarding the old one.

I know guys who were taught that way, I just wasn't.

-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist

[The_Gun_Nut]

Personally, I like me more than I like spent magazines.  Even if it only buys me 1 second, I like to think that 1 extra second of being able to protect myself (and my buddies) is worth it.

[JoeNapalm]

Exactly.

It might make sense when you in an infantry unit, as one person taking a long time to reload isn't a big impact on your volume of fire.

But in CQB, fractions of a second count. Two seconds to reload is an eternity.


-Jn-
City of Brass Expatriate

[Prodigy]

The guys I worked with overseas just let their mags fall. You pick them back up after your enemies are gone/dead. Watch an SF quick shooter competition. They let their mags fall.

But you are correct Mithlas that with proper training it can be done smoothly with little gap in firing pace.

[Aryeonos]

Consider that leaving behind even brass is a way to be traced, unless you scrubbed each shell with gasoline or bleach, or whatever your preferred agent is (gas probably not so much). When they were testing the AK-47 out initially they were instructed to pick up every bit of brass so the project wouldn't be leaked. Now mags are allot more specific, and if somehow you don't have footage or something similar you've got something hard to go off of from a number of different angles.

As far as it taking that much extra time to keep it all together, it shouldn't but, as you stated earlier JN the action phase is at the very least full of quantum anomalies. I think they should shrink how much time an Action is from 3 seconds to one to better reflect un-augmented human capability.

[Lightning1987]

For my next game I am about to run, I will running a cap on initiative passes (at 2). As I have a preference to use less huge brawls/combats, and like roleplay. And my players generally like to have heavy themed characters, we only end up with one combat heavy, so it gets bogged down (in my opinion) in combats when everyone generally has one pass, and he has three every combat.

[JoeNapalm]

Consider that leaving behind even brass is a way to be traced, unless you scrubbed each shell with gasoline or bleach, or whatever your preferred agent is (gas probably not so much). When they were testing the AK-47 out initially they were instructed to pick up every bit of brass so the project wouldn't be leaked. Now mags are allot more specific, and if somehow you don't have footage or something similar you've got something hard to go off of from a number of different angles.

As far as it taking that much extra time to keep it all together, it shouldn't but, as you stated earlier JN the action phase is at the very least full of quantum anomalies. I think they should shrink how much time an Action is from 3 seconds to one to better reflect un-augmented human capability.

Caseless ammunition is much more common in 2070 than cased - Revolvers still use brass, but they don't spit it out.

I would strongly recommend against scrubbing your rounds with gasoline or bleach. Or any liquid, but certainly not gasoline or bleach. You don't want solvents, especially flammable solvents near your ammo.

Best case scenario, they gunk up the powder or the firing mechanism.

Worst case scenario?

Think this through. You want to scrub you bullets with gasoline, stack them up in a magazine, then load them into a firearm. They're called "firearms" because of all the fire.

When the gun fires, exploding flaming hot gasses push the bullet down the barrel. They also cycle the chamber open on top of your magazine, so there's one potentially bad situation, as your entire magazine catches on fire.

These explosions also make the chamber very hot, so if you feed the next round in, and you have a second scenario for unwanted flaming explosives going on in your weapon.

Use caseless. Wear gloves. Don't have a SIN or Records On File. (Everybody's worried about prints...most Shadowrunners aren't in the system to begin with.)


-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist

[Simon Le Bonbon]

Has anyone made any houserules about knowledge skill groups? I have been thinking about introducing such groups, like:

Biology group (botany, genetics, virology, zoology)

One rank for a knowledge skill group might cost half of the cost of a rank in an active skill group... is this a totally dead idea, what do you think?

[mtfeeney = Baron]

There is already a biology skill that would cover everything you mentioned.  As for the general premise, it's not bad.  It'd have to be something wider, though.  Like "Security", which would cover security related knowledge skill.  The problem is that the knowledge skill list was left short and incomplete to encourage making up your own... so any knowledge skill group would have to be made up along with the component skills that it contains.

[Medicineman]

knowledge Skills can be as broad or as narrow as You want it to be
F.E. Area Knowledge   the World (Where is Russia, where is Japan)
Area Knowledge US of A (Which Cities are at the East Coast)
Area Knowledge 42nd Street of New York (Where do I get cheap Food )

Even Biology is a Knowledgeskill by itself so its no use to make a Skill into a group

with a broad Dance
Medicineman

[Mason]

Yes, I made a rule for that. Let me pull up my files...

Quote from genericfantasyname's (my online identity elsewhere) private files:

"House rule: New grouping of cost, Knowledge Skill groups, have a karma cost of new rating times 3 or 2 creation Knowledge Points per rank. Any group of knowledge skills can be considered a group with GM permission. For example, Yakuza Operations would encompass their safehouses, drugrunning, prostitution rings, and wars, for example. All groups contain 4 specific skills, and additional skills under the heading may be added at a cost of 2 Karma or 1 BP per skill. The gamemaster will limit the amount of knowledge covered by any one skill group as he sees fit."