[Jack_Spade]

Also, for suppressive fire you have to spend your whole combat turn. Mages tend to have other uses for their ini-phases.

Also you are forgetting that you can purchase FA shotguns and get the best of both worlds.

[Beta]

I say you take the skill and weapon that works best for your conception of the character, or for the nature of your game.  If your group is mostly doing military style assaults on hard targets, then range and firepower are important, if you are mostly threading high security or operating in very civilian manner than that concealability and legality are bigger deals.  If you view your character as a detective, an assault rifle might not be in character, etc

In other words, they can all be useful, but it depends on what you enjoy and what you are optimizing for.

Personally I'd say pistol .... and edge.  On the theory that you seldom expect to use the firearm at all, so something you can take almost anywhere is good.  And you use it seldom enough, and in particular situations, such that you can hope to edge the roll more often than not. 

Now explain how someone knows how to use military grade weapons (fully automatic equals military grade) but doesn't know how to use civilian weapons like handguns, tasers, sport rifles and shotguns.

Which is really not the question this thread was addressing.

[Haywire]

Now explain how someone knows how to use military grade weapons (fully automatic equals military grade) but doesn't know how to use civilian weapons like handguns, tasers, sport rifles and shotguns.

In today US, i can buy a FA assault rifle and learn to use it without taking once in hand a handgun.
In the Sixth World, where gun control is even more lassez faire, I do not see any problem with this kind of skills.

[Marcus Gideon]

Now explain how someone knows how to use military grade weapons (fully automatic equals military grade) but doesn't know how to use civilian weapons like handguns, tasers, sport rifles and shotguns.

Terrible skill generalization game mechanics.

It's the same reason why someone with "Pilot Ground Craft" can ride a motorcycle, or drive a car, or handle a big rig with equal levels of skill. And yet a non-paraplegic Rigger still needs "Pilot Walker" to operate an Ares Duelist.

[Rooks]

Now explain how someone knows how to use military grade weapons (fully automatic equals military grade) but doesn't know how to use civilian weapons like handguns, tasers, sport rifles and shotguns.

Terrible skill generalization game mechanics.

It's the same reason why someone with "Pilot Ground Craft" can ride a motorcycle, or drive a car, or handle a big rig with equal levels of skill. And yet a non-paraplegic Rigger still needs "Pilot Walker" to operate an Ares Duelist.

Handling but ya, pistols or automatics no one is going anywhere toting a sniper rifle or shotgun pistols for tasers and pistols automatics for machine pistols smgs or if you dont care about concealability assault rifles for those long ranges then switch it up with either stick and shock apds or flechette for the screw you I dont care if you duck suppression tactic

[Whiskeyjack]

To the OP: Automatics + MP (for normal carry) and SMG (for when you really need to shoot stuff)> I don't recommend AR because you won't be able to deal with the recoil like a sam will.

Now explain how someone knows how to use military grade weapons (fully automatic equals military grade) but doesn't know how to use civilian weapons like handguns, tasers, sport rifles and shotguns.

Terrible skill generalization game mechanics.

Yup.

[ScytheKnight]

it's one of those questions with no real 'Right' answer. The closest being "Whatever suits the character concept."

[Novocrane]

Now explain how someone knows how to use military grade weapons (fully automatic equals military grade) but doesn't know how to use civilian weapons like handguns, tasers, sport rifles and shotguns.

The people you're playing with are strict on skill substitution.

[Senko]

What about at chracter creation where a mage will maybe have 4-6 dice (3 agility + 1 skill rank + specialization)?

Probably more black trenchcoat than pink mohawk style steal, negotiation and limited fighting.

[Marcus Gideon]

According to the Training Time chart on Core pg 107, it takes (New Rating x 1 day) to learn ratings 1-4. So Rating 1 takes 1 day. Rating 2 takes 2 more days... So going from total noob to Rating 4 only takes 10 days of training.

If you only have Rating 1, you are someone who was shown a picture of a gun in a magazine and told "You point this end at the bad guys" and that's about it. At which point, it's probably not worth having a gun anyway. Just point the picture of the gun at them and yell "Bang!", it will be about as useful as you would be with Rating 1.

But I still stand by what I've been saying thus far. Suppressing Fire is the way to go if you want to contribute without much skill investment. Shotgun blasts sound scary and impressive, but you're still expected to hit the targets you're aiming at. Which you are NOT going to do with 4 dice. Suppressing Fire automatically hits unless the targets dive for cover. Or unless they are willing to chance avoiding fire by beating your Threshold. Only they have no idea what the Threshold is until they stand up and try it.

So you could either level a shotgun in their direction, only to have them laugh and say "How did you miss me? I'm like 3 feet away!?"

Or you could spray bullets in their direction and force everyone to drop.

[Rooks]

Or flechette suppress while someone else throws a grenade

[Senko]

According to the Training Time chart on Core pg 107, it takes (New Rating x 1 day) to learn ratings 1-4. So Rating 1 takes 1 day. Rating 2 takes 2 more days... So going from total noob to Rating 4 only takes 10 days of training.

If you only have Rating 1, you are someone who was shown a picture of a gun in a magazine and told "You point this end at the bad guys" and that's about it. At which point, it's probably not worth having a gun anyway. Just point the picture of the gun at them and yell "Bang!", it will be about as useful as you would be with Rating 1.

But I still stand by what I've been saying thus far. Suppressing Fire is the way to go if you want to contribute without much skill investment. Shotgun blasts sound scary and impressive, but you're still expected to hit the targets you're aiming at. Which you are NOT going to do with 4 dice. Suppressing Fire automatically hits unless the targets dive for cover. Or unless they are willing to chance avoiding fire by beating your Threshold. Only they have no idea what the Threshold is until they stand up and try it.

So you could either level a shotgun in their direction, only to have them laugh and say "How did you miss me? I'm like 3 feet away!?"

Or you could spray bullets in their direction and force everyone to drop.

Its why my initial 3 possibilities in guns had 2 of them relying on the automatics skill. The 1 isn't likely to hit is th reason for the specialization as it gives me the equivilent of 3 ranks in the firearm I choose e.g. automatics specialized submachine gun = 3 ranks when using  submachine guns then as I get some karma I can easily buy it up another rank or two giving me 3 agiility + 4-5 ranks worth of dice with submachine guns for a total pool of 8. Still not great but it should be enough for a secondary or tertiary skill I thought.

[Marcus Gideon]

Mathematically, the chances of any single die coming up a success are 1:3. Which means the easiest way to run the math is to divide the dice pool by 3 and that's the average hits you'll score. If you only have 6 dice to roll, you're looking at 2 hits on average.

You can either use those 2 hits as the Threshold for everyone downrange to avoid your hail of gunfire. Or you can use those 2 hits on a shotgun blast and hope you actually hit the targets despite their defense pools.

[Dal Thrax]

Don't the rules say that anyone with a comlink can control one drone?  Maybe the answer is a goid comlink + microdrone and let the drone's pilot program do the shooting?

[Marcus Gideon]

Don't the rules say that anyone with a comlink can control one drone?  Maybe the answer is a good comlink + microdrone and let the drone's pilot program do the shooting?

1) There's a difference between being a Rigger, and being a drone owner. Anyone can go downtown and buy a drone, and order it to shoot stuff. You don't even need a Commlink at all, except they're the cheapest way to get a high rated Firewall.

2) Any device can protect (Device Rating x 3) other devices. So even a Rating 1 Commlink could be Master to 3 different Slaved devices, such as drones. Not that it would be worth the effort, since drones would have a better Firewall than a Rating 1 Commlink could provide.

3) Back to the "not needing a Commlink" aspect, if you're relying on the Pilot program and the Autosofts to do the work for you, then all you need is to tell the drone what to do. "Shoot those guys over there" and off it goes rolling its own dice.

But yes... as often as you may see a teammate carrying a machine pistol or SMG just so they can lay down covering fire, you'll see some teams that go get a cheap Roto-drone with a mounted machine gun, for the exact same reason. The basic Pilot program, with a cheap Autosoft, is more than enough dice to make it worthwhile.