[inca1980]

I was wondering, I just realized that when comparing the damage of bursts against armor, you use the base damage of the gun.  So this would also apply when comparing to the armor rating of a barrier when trying to shoot through the barrier....but what about when you're trying to destroy the barrier?  It says DV is "2 per bullet"....so does this mean that if you shoot a full auto burst at the barrier, that's 10 bullets, so would that be DV20 that the barrier would have to resist?  That doesn't make much sense because that would mean a concrete wall would easily fall in like 2 bursts.  Can someone please show me RAW that would show me how to do this??!

[FastJack]

     Before rolling the barrier’s damage resistance test, adjust the modified Damage Value to reflect the type of attack, as noted on the Damaging Barrier Table.
     Resolve the damage resistance test by rolling the barrier’s Armor x 2. Against Indirect Combat spells and explosives attached directly, barriers roll only their Armor rating. The weapon’s AP is ignored. Each net hit reduces the modified DV by 1.

So, the concrete barrier with Armor 16 would use 32 dice to reduce the damage. Ex. 32d6.hits(5)=11, so it would only take 9 damage on the first round and 32d6.hits(5)=8 - 12 damage on the second round, creating a 1 square meter "hole" in the barrier, as long as it was 10 cm thick.

Structure Rating
The Structure rating is the number of “damage boxes” required to destroy a section 1 meter square and about 10 cm thick (approximately the typical wall thickness for a residential or office building).

So, if you're looking at a barrier that is a foot thick (30.48 cm), then it would take about 6 rounds to get through.

[inca1980]

But that makes no sense because say someone was standing on the other side of that 10 cm thick concrete barrier and I wanted to shoot through it and they are completely unaware of attack (say I won the surprise roll so they have no defense).  Say I have Intuition 4 + Automatics 4 + Blindfire -6 = 2 and say I roll 2 hits.  Let's say it's an automatic weapon that does 5P damage with AP -1.  This would mean that now I must compare a DV of 7P to a barrier armor rating of 16 - 1 = 15.  I will never be able to shoot through the barrier, it will always bounce off.  But now i'm shooting to "destroy the barrier" and all of a sudden I can blow a 1 meter by 1 meter hole in the thing???!!  The reverse would be more plausible for me, that I could shoot through it but it would be harder to blow a 1mx1m hole in it. That's what makes me think that with destroying a barrier, you don't give 2 DV for each bullet in the burst, but it's just a 2 DV period, even for a burst reflecting the fact that even 10 bullets don't carry the spread out momentum you need to blow big holes in barriers.  The fact that they say 2DV PER BULLET is what throws me off.

[FastJack]

You forget that when you're trying to shoot through the barrier, you're aiming at a particle spot to hit the target on the other side. When you're trying to destroy the barrier, you don't care what's on the other side and are simply trying to get through it.

Ahhh... hold on a sec:

Example:
Rambler has had enough of trying to shoot through the door, and decides to blast a hole in it. He switches his clip out for regular ammo, and makes an attack test, scoring 6 hits. One bullet only has a base DV of 2 against barriers, so he’s inflicting 8 DV (2 + 6). His AP of –1 is ignored. Rather than rolling Armor x 2 (12 dice), the gamemaster just trades the dice in for 3 hits. That means the door takes 5 boxes of damage (8 – 3). Since the door has a Structure rating of 7, that’s not enough to blow a big hole in it, so Rambler will have to take another shot.

Perhaps we're looking at this wrong. You still need to make the attack test. So, a Sammy takes out his Ares MP-LMG and lays into the door with a full-auto/full burst. That means his Dice pool is Agility 4 + Automatics 4 - Recoil 12 (9-3=6x2=12), which means the test can only succeed with Edge dice.

And, before we get into the whole "How could he miss the wall??" discussion, remember that the reason it failed was because the recoil was not compensated and so the bullets "walked" from the original target and he couldn't group them together in a single square-meter area. He didn't miss the wall, but rather did not group them closely enough to effect the wall as intended. I.E., each bullet does 2DV damage, but to a separate portion of the wall. This would result in the wall getting 10 Damage Resistance tests, so it would have 32 DR dice for each 2 DV hit. And the DM can buy the hits, so it's automatic 8 successes per 2DV bullet, canceling out any damage.

[inca1980]

No, that was my whole point, that when you're actually trying to destroy the barrier, it's real easy if you do it with DV 20P (2/bullet)  coming in at the barrier, but it's impossible to penetrate the barrier if you're trying to hit someone on the other side.   So what I was thinking was that if you shoot a 10 round burst, that's 2DV per bullet, so that's 20 DV total and the wall resists with 32 dice....and this way doesn't make sense to me, but it says "2DV per bullet" and it's 10 bullets.  

So you're saying it would be 10 different resistance tests....but I don't see where in RAW it would be handled that way.  It sucks that the example doesn't deal with a burst!

The only way that this makes sense to me is that it doesn't matter if you do a burst or fire a single shot, it's still just 2 DV + hits on an attack test.  Because 2DV is the "base damage" and then you add net hits (which is just hits against barriers) and compare it to 2xArmor.....but when comparing bursts against armor you have to use base damage + net hits and ignore the burst DV modifier.   Actually doing a burst would be even worse than single shot because you'd have recoil so you'd get less hits.  10 different attack tests is just way too much dice rolling and I don't think SR4A would call for that.
It's the whole "2DV PER BULLET" which makes the whole thing seem ambiguous.....my feeling is it should be "2DV per burst" unless you're going to do the 10 barrier resistance tests which is just way too cumbersome.  I guess you could buy hits.

[FastJack]

Sorry, you wouldn't actually make the 10 resistance tests. I'm implying that's the case since you automatically fail on the attack roll without heavy recoil compensation. In other words, full-auto is tough.

[voydangel]

When firing a burst you get a (# of bullets in burst - 1) bonus to your DV. So its Base DV 2 when shooting the barrier, then add +2 or +5 or +9 for the burst to that base. So, in your example of the long full auto burst, you would be doing 2DV + 9DV + [net hits]DV vs the armor x2. The end. You don't need to compare the DV of the attack to the armor in this case as it's a barrier, not an armored person and therefore can't take "stun" damage.

[FastJack]

When firing a burst you get a (# of bullets in burst - 1) bonus to your DV. So its Base DV 2 when shooting the barrier, then add +2 or +5 or +9 for the burst to that base. So, in your example of the long full auto burst, you would be doing 2DV + 9DV + [net hits]DV vs the armor x2. The end. You don't need to compare the DV of the attack to the armor in this case as it's a barrier, not an armored person.

The rules in the book actually say 2DV per bullet, that's where the confusion is coming in since damaging a barrier works differently than a normal ranged attack.

[voydangel]

True, thats what the RAW states, but I'm flubbing a bit in favor of my opinion of what the RAI is.
Sorry, guess I should've explicitly mentioned that.

[FastJack]

No problem, that's kinda the point of this entire thread.

[voydangel]

Ok ok I'm sorry! I rolled a glitch on my logic + 21st century RPGs knowledge test. 

[The_Gun_Nut]

Big, strong barriers tend to have large amounts of armor.  And, unless they changed it and I just didn't notice, the armor counts as hardened.  Meaning the base DV (before modification for bursts) has to equal or exceed the armor rating or else it does no damage.

This is why demolitions is so important.  It is powerful, and squashes the armor rating of the barrier.

[FastJack]

Big, strong barriers tend to have large amounts of armor.  And, unless they changed it and I just didn't notice, the armor counts as hardened.  Meaning the base DV (before modification for bursts) has to equal or exceed the armor rating or else it does no damage.

This is why demolitions is so important.  It is powerful, and squashes the armor rating of the barrier.

I think it has changed. The Damaging barriers table automatically changes the DV of your gun to 2 DV per bullet, erasing the weapon's normal DV.

If you're trying to shoot through the barrier at a target, the weapon's Base DV does have to still be greater than the armor rating of the barrier.

[The_Gun_Nut]

Ah, gotcha.  But for doing damage, it's 2 DV per bullet.  So a burst of 10 would be 20 DV.

[FastJack]

Ah, gotcha.  But for doing damage, it's 2 DV per bullet.  So a burst of 10 would be 20 DV.

Right. Which is where all the hullaballoo comes in from the OP. Because then you add in the hits from your Attack Test and the Barrier just does a Soak Test. And even a Concrete Barrier looks like it would have a square meter hole blown out in 2 Rounds.