Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => Gear => Topic started by: SeriousOne338 on <03-20-12/1159:43>
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Stupid Question I know, But what happened to Scopes? So I am working on a sniper right now and I am looking for a High-powered optical scope for his rifle, but for the life of me I can't find them in the new edition, I know they were there in 3rd. So what happened to them?
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Imaging Scopes, SR4A, Page 332.
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Scopes are so last decade anyhow.
Get em installed in your eyes! Either via cyber or in contact lenses.
:)
-k
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Smart Link on the gun with Smart Link + Image link in your cyber eyes / Contact lens/ Glasses / Goggles = what ever you gun is looking at is what your looking at + all kinds of fun ballistics data and predictions. Add in Image magnification and there is nothing a scope has to offer. In 2073 the only people that need or even want a scope is people with Sim Vertigo. Even mages can use the contact/glasses/goggle option with out spending essence. Also add in that its cheap as heck about 1k nuyen with the smart link on the gun included and scopes are simply not needed anymore.
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Scopes are good for things that otherwise wouldn't fit in the availability of your glasses/eyes. Ultrasound adds +8 to the availability, afterall.
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Forget that, slap a Device mount onto the rifle with Ultrawideband Radar 4 on it and hook it to the scope. Now you're able to see and snipe through walls (key here is that you see them so no blind fire). With a good sniper rifle and some APDS rounds, you can take out people through some very impressive barriers with no issue at all. Only problem is getting a definite confirmation on the target since radar isn't the most specific when it comes to the details. Even with lesser rifles like battle rifles, things can get impressive. A battle rifle with APDS can still penetrate up to brick walls with one net hit (a Barret in the same situation can go through concrete/metal beams with a net hit) or a standard hardwood exterior wall and 3 interior drywalls with the same one net hit.
It'll be like shooting fish in a barrel.
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Only problem is getting a definite confirmation on the target since radar isn't the most specific when it comes to the details.
A score of microdrones, a team with full Tacsoft suites, a hacker that has compromised the buildings internal security... and a Predator-drone with an APDS-equipped sniper weapon system (although, I'm kinda partial to the elephant gun).
It is about as close to "Rods from God" as you are likly to get as a shadowrunner.
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The Missions group I run for right now always has a Sniper set up with an APDS loaded Barret, and a very capable hacker. It is fairly common for the hacker to compromise security and use the cameras to note everyone in the building and tag them in the Sniper's AR, and then let the Sniper have a target shoot on the hostiles. At around 23 dice to shoot with ultrawideband radar 4, normally everything drops one shot even through the walls.
Makes wetwork extremely simple, but the look on their face when the second shot didn't drop the possessed mage was absolutely priceless.
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Makes wetwork extremely simple, but the look on their face when the second shot didn't drop the possessed mage was absolutely priceless.
In our defense, the attack chopper only took two.
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Forget that, slap a Device mount onto the rifle with Ultrawideband Radar 4 on it and hook it to the scope. Now you're able to see and snipe through walls (key here is that you see them so no blind fire). With a good sniper rifle and some APDS rounds, you can take out people through some very impressive barriers with no issue at all. Only problem is getting a definite confirmation on the target since radar isn't the most specific when it comes to the details. Even with lesser rifles like battle rifles, things can get impressive. A battle rifle with APDS can still penetrate up to brick walls with one net hit (a Barret in the same situation can go through concrete/metal beams with a net hit) or a standard hardwood exterior wall and 3 interior drywalls with the same one net hit.
It'll be like shooting fish in a barrel.
Reminds me of some 80s Seal Team action movie...
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Scopes are so last decade anyhow.
Get em installed in your eyes! Either via cyber or in contact lenses.
:)
-k
Some of us like having a less than hackable option. Just becasue it's new, dosen't mean it's better.
;)
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Some of us like having a less than hackable option. Just becasue it's new, dosen't mean it's better.
;)
That is the reason why I asked.
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Some of us like having a less than hackable option. Just becasue it's new, dosen't mean it's better.
An electronic scope or a smartlink might be just as hackable as electronic vision enhancments or cyberware; only a purely optical scope will be "hack-proof," as there is no computer interface to monkey around with. Limited or utter lack of wireless connectivity, and a monstrous Firewall at any possible point of entry into your PAN, can keep you fairly reasonably protected...
For what its worth, I personally wish scopes were a more reasonable option for aesthetic reasons: they just look cooler. But the designers of SR4 went with the simple "vision magnification makes all ranges Short," instead of messing about with degress of magnification. Maybe house rule it so that Scopes give a few bonus dice if you Take Aim?
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I for one don't allow optical vision magnification to be placed in contacts or glasses. If you want it, you're going to have to get goggles at minimum.
Bending light using lenses still requires some space. Miniaturization of tech doesn't change the rules of physics.
-k
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Bending light using lenses still requires some space. Miniaturization of tech doesn't change the rules of physics.
Except, y'know, when it does... ;) If material science in Shadowrun can ignore things like the square-cube law, why should it pay attention to mere optics?
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For what its worth, I personally wish scopes were a more reasonable option for aesthetic reasons: they just look cooler. But the designers of SR4 went with the simple "vision magnification makes all ranges Short," instead of messing about with degress of magnification. Maybe house rule it so that Scopes give a few bonus dice if you Take Aim?
I had house rules for SR3 that enabled rifles to exceed their presumptive maximum range. If a Barrett .50 M82A1 can deliver lethal hits at 2300m, and others at 2500m and beyond, then SR's 1500m extreme range is clearly in need of ... not revising, but extending the table if you have the proper gear to do so.
It took a complex action for each additional range bracket, and you could only extend it to the rating of your scope (i.e. up to a max of Extreme-3); target numbers were still equivalent to Range Bracket - Rating, which meant if you were shooting at something at EX-2 and you had a level 3 scope, you had the TN equivalent of Long Range.
I also expanded the 'grades' of rifles; sporting rifles don't shoot as far as the ones snipers on SWAT teams do; those don't shoot out as accurately as the sniper rifles the military uses. And of course, everyone knows that the CIA has guns that can kill you from, like, five kilometers away, right? Therefore Sport, SWAT, Sniper, and Sanction grades were 'born'. (And no, you did NOT want to become the target of a CIA hitter using a Barrett M135A5 ...)
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I have a couple scope and reflex sights in a small supplement I wrote up a while back. It's not official, but you can find it on the forums here: A Personal Touch (http://forums.shadowrun4.com/index.php?topic=5591.0)
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I for one don't allow optical vision magnification to be placed in contacts or glasses. If you want it, you're going to have to get goggles at minimum.
Only purity conscious mages use optical magnification.
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I for one don't allow optical vision magnification to be placed in contacts or glasses. If you want it, you're going to have to get goggles at minimum.
Bending light using lenses still requires some space. Miniaturization of tech doesn't change the rules of physics.
Mirrors can do a whole lot to help pack things in tight spaces.
Hell, they can paint images on walls now using lasers and a microchip-size array of movable mirrors.
And those scientists keeps coming up with all kinds of materials with crazy refraction indexes.
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I had house rules for SR3 that enabled rifles to exceed their presumptive maximum range. If a Barrett .50 M82A1 can deliver lethal hits at 2300m, and others at 2500m and beyond, then SR's 1500m extreme range is clearly in need of ... not revising, but extending the table if you have the proper gear to do so.
That's because a .50 caliber weapon is an anti-materiel weapon, not a sniper rifle. It should use the Assault Cannon ranges which go out to 2400m.
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And yet the in-game Barrett 121 -- see, Ronnie Barrett only works with one caliber -- still uses Sniper ranges.
What's more, the lighter bullets are the ones getting the furthest kills these days, so ... riddle me that.
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And yet the in-game Barrett 121 -- see, Ronnie Barrett only works with one caliber -- still uses Sniper ranges.
What's more, the lighter bullets are the ones getting the furthest kills these days, so ... riddle me that.
Actually, his company currently offers firearms in .50 BMG, 6.8 Remington SPC, and .416 Barrett. Yes, the company has invented its own caliber and named it after themselves... Browning did it with the .50 BMG, why shouldn't Tennessee's current favorite son?
The .416 Barrett factory specs state a 0.8 MOA at 1500 yards; The .50 BMG is specs have a 1.2 MOA at 1500 yards; the much smaller 6.8 SPC has factory specs that don't go past 1000 yards (its meant for what Shadowrun would class as sporting rifles or assault rifles [it is essentially an improved 5.56 NATO]). The .416 Barrett has a greater velocity than the .50 BMG - that means less drop over the same ranges. The larger .50 BMG delivers more energy to the target, although at the full 1500 yards the difference isn't as dramatic as it is at shorter distances.
With a damn good man behind the trigger, either of these rounds should be able to reach upwards of 2000+ yards... but you're talking about Longarms 7, a weapon specialization, AGI 6, several Take Aim actions, and some Edge Dice. ;)
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Ah, didn't know that about the various calibers.
Still, by game rules, your max range just isn't there. Ergo, rules so that weapons do go out to actual ranges, and how to hit them way out there...
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Ah, didn't know that about the various calibers.
Still, by game rules, your max range just isn't there. Ergo, rules so that weapons do go out to actual ranges, and how to hit them way out there...
My Sniper will not kill all the bad guys before the rest of the party is in range.
Well, the key thing is that Shadowrun is a game, and many aspects of its mechanical design are built to reinforce its aesthetic design. Shadowrun combat is, at its heart, meant to recreate a sort of hybrid cyberpunk/heroic bloodshed/action movie aesthetic -- its just cooler to have firefights involving heavy pistols, submachine guns, katanas, kung fu, and parakour than it is to have the heroes taking cover and trading rifle rounds at 500 yards.
This is just one of those little "breaks from reality" that need to be shrugged off for game play. It is cool and badass for the team to have one player that invests quite a few of their resources into being an elite long-ranged sniper; it really gets dreadfully boring if everyone can do it.
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Well, yes, to all of the above. However.
Making a kill-shot at 3000m is just as much a part of that hybrid cyberpunk/heroic bloodshed/action movie aesthetic; the 'one shot, one kill' thing, plus the 'impossible shot' thing. I am not saying that everyone should be able to do it; clearly everyone should not be able to punk an impossible-to-get-to target at two and a half klicks, having taken a -12 penalty (or something equally ghastly) to their dice pool. However, I am saying that it should be doable -- just as using your katana in close combat to cut apart six guys at once is doable, in that hybrid aesthetic way.
As the rules stand, however, 'doable' it is not.