[DeathStrobe]

Now that Narrow Bursts to increase damage are gone, LMGs aren't nearly as useful, IMHO, other than as cover fire and intimidation. Sure, an Ares Alpha might do more damage/bullet, but staring down the barrel of an Ingram Valiant can be pretty damn frightening. Of course, they were a LOT more intimidating when you knew they could fire a Narrow Long burst for +5DV...
I'm still not sure why the designers eliminated Narrow Bursts. And I don't buy the whole simplifying the game argument considering how relatively complicated they made shot guns. Increasing damage with bursts has been part of the game from the start, and I for one miss it. I liked Narrow Bursts; but then, I also kinda miss staging up 6M to 9S, and I even sometimes miss 7M2 damage...

Think of it this way then. If you fire a burst and get a lot of hits while your opponent doesn't. Think of that has the target getting hit by more than one bullet.

Honestly, does it make sense that hitting someone with 3 bullets only adds +2 dv?

[Medicineman]

Honestly, does it make sense that hitting someone with 3 bullets only adds +2 dv?

it makes more sense than hitting someone with a burst doing no more Damage than with a single Bullet

HougH!
Medicineman

[MadBear]

Now that Narrow Bursts to increase damage are gone, LMGs aren't nearly as useful, IMHO, other than as cover fire and intimidation. Sure, an Ares Alpha might do more damage/bullet, but staring down the barrel of an Ingram Valiant can be pretty damn frightening. Of course, they were a LOT more intimidating when you knew they could fire a Narrow Long burst for +5DV...
I'm still not sure why the designers eliminated Narrow Bursts. And I don't buy the whole simplifying the game argument considering how relatively complicated they made shot guns. Increasing damage with bursts has been part of the game from the start, and I for one miss it. I liked Narrow Bursts; but then, I also kinda miss staging up 6M to 9S, and I even sometimes miss 7M2 damage...

Think of it this way then. If you fire a burst and get a lot of hits while your opponent doesn't. Think of that has the target getting hit by more than one bullet.

Honestly, does it make sense that hitting someone with 3 bullets only adds +2 dv?

That is a big part of why I liked burst staging up damage from 6M to 9S. Made a LOT more sense. As for losing dice to defend, losing two dice ALMOST equates to one fewer hits, which ALMOST equates to one higher DV. Not nearly the same. And if recoil isn't compensated, there is no point to it. I lose two dice for a short burst, and my target loses two dice to defend. It's a wash. And LMG used to be able to easily add +5 or +9 to damage, with Long Burst or Full Auto, and that was just fraggin' awesome.

[Michael Chandra]

I don't get what Narrow Bursts have to do with LMGs, since ARs lost the same option.

As for why Narrow Bursts are gone, I can come up with two easy reasons:
- Dodge Pools have gone up, so they're no longer as viable a choice.
- Lethality has gone up, so you no longer need Narrow Bursts to take down heavy targets.

And keep in mind that they may actually make a return, as has already been stated.

[MadBear]

I brought up Narrow Bursts for two reasons: first to track the changes from 1st edition to where we are now comparing how LMGs and ARs work/show how increasing damage was comparatively better in earlier editions, and second to point out that LMGs were much more useful in earlier editions where it was relatively easy to do much, much more damage with an LMG firing FA(usually on a Gyromount or other recoil reducing mounting) than with an AR. With their ability to do increased damage, the role of LMGs, and even MMGs and HMGs, is reduced to that of cover fire and mounting on drones, mostly also for cover fire. And that's fine, I'm not complaining, as that more closely mirrors real world use, to cover large areas with a high number of rounds, not take out a single target.
Personally, I prefer to use Narrow Bursts with small arms like SMGs and Machine Pistols over FA capable weapons. A short, controlled burst of bullets at one target not to increase chances of hitting but to increase the relatively small damage of those weapons.

[frankhlane]

I brought up Narrow Bursts for two reasons: first to track the changes from 1st edition to where we are now comparing how LMGs and ARs work/show how increasing damage was comparatively better in earlier editions, and second to point out that LMGs were much more useful in earlier editions where it was relatively easy to do much, much more damage with an LMG firing FA(usually on a Gyromount or other recoil reducing mounting) than with an AR. With their ability to do increased damage, the role of LMGs, and even MMGs and HMGs, is reduced to that of cover fire and mounting on drones, mostly also for cover fire. And that's fine, I'm not complaining, as that more closely mirrors real world use, to cover large areas with a high number of rounds, not take out a single target.
Personally, I prefer to use Narrow Bursts with small arms like SMGs and Machine Pistols over FA capable weapons. A short, controlled burst of bullets at one target not to increase chances of hitting but to increase the relatively small damage of those weapons.

But I'm pretty sure that statistically, the bursts in SR5 do more damage on average than narrow bursts ever did.  If you rolled 100 narrow bursts and 100 SR5 bursts, SR5 bursts would do considerably more damage on average (setting aside the rules differences) because there will be fewer outright misses.

So really, you're getting exactly what you want, increased damage on an SMG, which you pay for with bullets and recoil.

[ZeConster]

Statistically, everything does more damage in SR5 than it did in 4th. So I'm not sure why so many people always compare SR5's [Wide] bursts with SR4's Narrow bursts, instead of comparing SR5's [Wide] bursts to what a Narrow burst in SR5 would do.

[MadBear]

True, and the +1 per extra round is a lot less effective relative to 4th. +2 per round would be better, and maybe even a +3 per round for Heavy Pistols. I mean, a gun with a DV of 9 only does 11P if three bullets hit instead of 1? I don't really know how well that would work in game play, just throwing ideas around.
As for 5th ed (wide) bursts already doing more damage than 4th ed Narrow bursts, I still don't see that. Losing two dice in your doge pool does not quite statistically equate to one lost hit(assuming average rolls it takes three dice in your dice pool to equate to one hit). Even if it did equate to one full hit lost on the target's dodge roll, that's still not the same as a +2 DV. I'll take the DV any time. And even for those instances where the target would roll two more hits on his doge roll, two more rarely if ever would turn that hit into an outright miss. Maybe for fairly average characters with 3s and 4s in most stats, sure. But that would be for when your Decker pulls out his MP as a last resort, not when your Orc sammie is blasting away with his AR; you are looking at a dice pool diferrence of 6 to 8 vs 16 to 18).
Now, I've never been in combat, never been to war. I mostly have movies to go off of-I know, not very realistic, but then, we ARE talking about ORCS with WIRED REFLEXES here, realism can only be extended so far. And I see pistols double- and triple-tapping to put two or three shots in the chest(no more double tapping in 5th, I'm afraid). According to the rules, if you fire a SA Burst, you are only increasing your odds of hitting, which means three bullets but only one will hit, the other two are spread out so that if your target doges to the left or right he will hit one or the other of those. Why does it always have to be ONE bullet? WHY can't you group three in the chest? When firing an SMG short burst, why is it no longer possible to group those three shots close together?
I'm positive there are folk on here who can attest to the fact that is possible, whose much more well versed in fire arms than I.

[Csjarrat]

Why does it always have to be ONE bullet? WHY can't you group three in the chest? When firing an SMG short burst, why is it no longer possible to group those three shots close together?
I'm positive there are folk on here who can attest to the fact that is possible, whose much more well versed in fire arms than I.

perhaps that's why they put in the called shot (vitals) option? SA burst is just slinging more lead at your target, called shot is grouping more rounds in to the squishy bits

[ZeConster]

Called Shot (vitals) was more powerful in 4th (take -X on the attack roll, get +X to DV, X = 1/2/3/4) than it is in 5th (take -4 on the attack roll, get +2 to DV).

[MadBear]

That still only accounts for one bullet hitting the squishy bits. What if all three bullets from your burst hit the squishy bits?
My complaint here is that there is no mechanic to account for more than one piece of high velocity hot lead hitting the target. An LMG on full auto, with fully compensated recoil, SHOULD, in my opinion, be able to deal out HUGE amounts of damage to a single target, as six or ten bullets hit flesh. A Trog with an Ingram on a gyro mount should be something to fear. As the rules stand right now, my current Orc Sammie is rolling a lot more than 9 dice to dodge. Yeah, that's a huge penalty, but one or two hits on dodge will help reduce the amount of damage dealt, and he definitely has enough Bod and Armor to reduce the rest down to a manageable level.
Assuming the Ingram wielding Trog in question has a 5 Agl and 5 Automatics, with a wireless on smartlink, that's only 12 dice for an average of 4 hits. If we make him on the same level with my sammie, we give him 6( AGL and 8 Automatics, so with the smartlink he's rolling 18 dice for an average of 6 hits, and with the Ingram's Acc of 5(7 with smartlink) he gets to keep all 6. That's a pretty nasty hit, but let's see what my sammie can do.
Rea 5( + Int 4 means 12 dice to dodge, lose 9 for Full Auto, leaving him with only 3, for an average of one hit to dodge. Damn. That means 5 of the Trog's hits add to the Ingram's 9P damage for a total of 14P damage. Sammie's Armor Jacket of 12 and + 2 for Bone Lacing mean total AR of 14, and considering the Ingram's -2 AP that's fully physical(Now, if he my Sammie has had that shiny new cyberarm installed with +3 Armor it suddenly becomes STUN). Bod of 7, 14 Armor, +2 Bone Lacing, +1 Toughness, and 24 dice on the soak roll for an average of 8 hits. He only takes 6 boxes of damage, 5 once you add in Platelet Factories. That certainly hurts, but that's 6 boxes of damage from a full burst in short range from an LMG. He pulls out his heavily modified Ruger and shoots the Trog in the face for about that much. Well, maybe not THAT much, considering the Troll's high Bod. Had I been clever enough to suppose a human wielding that LMG, then yeah, Sammie does more than 6 boxes of damage on his turn. And oh, lookit that, just read that Gyro mount only reduces 6 pts of recoil. 1 pt free, high Str, and gasvent certainly compensates for the rest, but a second round of full auto will suffer more penalties than my sammie has from wounds, so second initiative pass favors my sammie. If that Trog is a human and is NOT on the same level as my sammie, with AGL 4 and Automatics 4 and I'm looking at even less damage.
Now, if we look at the same scenario where that Trog fires Full Auto Narrow, and while my Sammie now has all 12 dice to dodge, he's facing an 18P DV(Ingram DV 9 + 9 for Narrow burst).  Average of 6 hits from the Trog, total of 4 for my sammmie(average roll on 12 dice) means two net hits for a total DV of 20P. I'm down and out with a final result of 12 boxes of damage even after my average roll of 8 on the soak. And even with that shiny new cyberarm it's gona be all physical, now way to avoid it.
As the rules stand now, my sammie knows he can take a point blank shot from an LMG and survive. In our most recent game, a human merc my sammie had pissed off previously  jumped out of the back of a van with an LMG on a Gyro mount. This was the last session of 4th we were gona play, where Narrow Bursts still happened. I had to spend Edge to go first, quick draw my Ruger, and double tap with two rounds of APDS, Edge was added to both rolls. I laid him out dead before he could even pull the trigger. I was willing to spend three points of Edge to do it too, because I knew full well if I didn't that Ingram could easily kill me on full auto.

[Reaver]

99.997% of ALL rounds fired from a machine platform (Squad, vehicle, Aerial ) miss their target.

In fact, the only time in history when machine platforms had a better ratio of 8% hits was world war 1, when soldiers used to WALK into machine gun fire! And even then, the hit ratio capped out at around 15%.

Go back 100 years to the boar war, and things get even more interesting.

there was a famous squad of American soldiers... supported by 8 gattling guns (the orginal, recoiless automatic gun!) Each fired off over 15,000 rounds of ammo at a fortified hill.... and only 3 people where hit from the fire... that lasted minutes!


Machine guns have never really been about whole sale slaughter.... but, as said before, its about area denial, cover, and suppression of the enemy. All of which the machine gun does exceedingly well.



As to bursts only represening a single bullet hit, thats actually fairly true. Since Vietnam, many militaries are moving away from automatic weapons and moving to 2 or 3 round burst weapons, as they are more accurate,  and save money on ammo and supplies.... not to mention that usually LESS then 1 round would hit for every 20 fired during Vietnam. (The last time fully auto weapons were mass deployed)

[MadBear]

Good to know. Means the current system is intended to more accurately reflect reality.
But then what about three round bursts from automatic and semi-automatic weapons? Are those spray and pray, or more clustered, accurate groupings where more than one bullet hits the target?

[martinchaen]

Why don't you go to a range and fire some rounds at a moving target and find out?

Hitting anything with automatic fire, even at close range, is highly challenging if the target is moving.

[MadBear]

That would not be a fair representation, as I have the equivalent skill rating of 0 in Automatics. I would rather ask someone with a 3 or even better a 6.