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Message no. 1
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Shiro BsquLadat)
Subject: Full auto lasers
Date: Mon Jul 9 17:35:01 2001
I was thinking what would the stats be for a laser
that could fire a continual beam. My thoughts are the
following:

Cons Ammo Mode Damage Weight Avail Cost St.ind
- 30 SA/FA 12M 25 30/1mo 200K 4

Legality
2-K

Battery:
Cons Ammo Mode Damage Weight Avail Cost St.ind
4 30 - - 5 16/3wks 1000 3


Legality
2-K


Rules:Follows all the rules for lasers.
Treat it as an MP Laser III.
In FA it fires a beam that covers an arc of as
many meters as many shots the character spends.Against
barriers half the rating of the barrier.

What are your thoughts?


====-It didn't look so big in paper!!!!
-Ideas grow,Shiro.Sometimes bigger than life!

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Message no. 2
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Damion Milliken)
Subject: Full auto lasers
Date: Tue Jul 10 05:00:00 2001
Shiro BsquLadat writes:

> I was thinking what would the stats be for a laser
> that could fire a continual beam. My thoughts are the
> following:
>
> <Snip laser>
>
> Rules:Follows all the rules for lasers.
> Treat it as an MP Laser III.
> In FA it fires a beam that covers an arc of as
> many meters as many shots the character spends.Against
> barriers half the rating of the barrier.
>
> What are your thoughts?

The beam would probably not be continuous, as the energy required would be
very high, and it wouldn't last for more than a second or two before
exhausting its power supply. OTOH, it would function just as well if it were
rapidly pulsed.

You might want to have it take more power to do the FA mode, say double, but
otherwise it seems OK.

--
Damion Milliken University of Wollongong
Unofficial Shadowrun Guru E-mail: dam01@***.edu.au
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Message no. 3
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Zixx)
Subject: Full auto lasers
Date: Tue Jul 10 06:25:03 2001
Shiro BsquLadat wrote:

> Rules:Follows all the rules for lasers.
> Treat it as an MP Laser III.
> In FA it fires a beam that covers an arc of as
> many meters as many shots the character spends.Against
> barriers half the rating of the barrier.
>
> What are your thoughts?

The big funky advantage of continous beam lasers is that you can
'seek' for the target with your beam. So you might want to chage the
FA rules to something like this:

When fireing the laser in continous mode, you first declare how many
'shots' you're going to fire, and then roll with the TN decreased by
the number of 'shots'. Substract your roll from the TN to find out
how many 'shots' hit the target, modify damage accordingly.
So if you fired 5 'shots' against a target with TN 10, you would need
to roll a 6 to hit one 'shot', 7 for 2 'shots', etc.

Zixx
Message no. 4
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Gurth)
Subject: Full auto lasers
Date: Tue Jul 10 06:30:04 2001
According to Shiro BsquLadat, on Mon, 09 Jul 2001 the word on the street was...

> Rules:Follows all the rules for lasers.
> Treat it as an MP Laser III.
> In FA it fires a beam that covers an arc of as
> many meters as many shots the character spends.Against
> barriers half the rating of the barrier.

Why not treat it as any other FA-capable weapon, except that it happens to
be a laser? (And you'd have no recoil as well...)

--
Gurth@******.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
A bad day fishing is still better than a good day dying.
-> NAGEE Editor * ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Page: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

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Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998
Message no. 5
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Shiro BsquLadat)
Subject: Full auto lasers
Date: Tue Jul 10 17:25:01 2001
--- Zixx <zixx@****.org> wrote:
> When fireing the laser in continous mode, you first
> declare how many
> 'shots' you're going to fire, and then roll with the
> TN decreased by
> the number of 'shots'. Substract your roll from the
> TN to find out
> how many 'shots' hit the target, modify damage
> accordingly.
> So if you fired 5 'shots' against a target with TN
> 10, you would need
> to roll a 6 to hit one 'shot', 7 for 2 'shots', etc.

I didn't understand the last part.Could you give me a
more detailed example?

====-It didn't look so big in paper!!!!
-Ideas grow,Shiro.Sometimes bigger than life!

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Message no. 6
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Shiro BsquLadat)
Subject: Full auto lasers
Date: Tue Jul 10 17:30:01 2001
--- Gurth <Gurth@******.nl> wrote:
> Why not treat it as any other FA-capable weapon,
> except that it happens to
> be a laser? (And you'd have no recoil as well...)

Because I don't want it to have the 10-rounds
limitations and the power/damage level increase.It
would make it far too deadly in my opinion.I'd like to
stick to the rules as much as possible.

====-It didn't look so big in paper!!!!
-Ideas grow,Shiro.Sometimes bigger than life!

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Message no. 7
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Zixx)
Subject: Full auto lasers
Date: Tue Jul 10 18:10:01 2001
Shiro BsquLadat wrote:
> --- Zixx <zixx@****.org> wrote:
> > When fireing the laser in continous mode, you first
> > declare how many
> > 'shots' you're going to fire, and then roll with the
> > TN decreased by
> > the number of 'shots'. Substract your roll from the
> > TN to find out
> > how many 'shots' hit the target, modify damage
> > accordingly.
> > So if you fired 5 'shots' against a target with TN
> > 10, you would need
> > to roll a 6 to hit one 'shot', 7 for 2 'shots', etc.
>
> I didn't understand the last part.Could you give me a
> more detailed example?

Sure. Say you're shooting medium distance (TN 6) at someone behind
cover (TN +4) for a total TN of 10. You power up your laser and try
to hit him with the beam. This is easier then just firing single
shots, so we see how long you shoot. This is done by seeing how many
FA shots you declare (Let's say you fire 5 shots, i.e. keep the laser
fireing for half of the maximum time). Your TN to hit the guy drops
to 6 then and you roll. Lets assume you rolled an 8, which normally
would not have been enough. It is though, as you fired a continous
beam and happend to "find" your target with it. To figure out how
many "shots" hit, you substract the shots you fired from your initial
TN (That's 10-5=5 for us). then, you substract that from your roll
(8-5=3). As you have hit with three "rounds", powerlevel goes up
three points and damagelevel goes up one point. Understood?

Zixx
Message no. 8
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Michael Choiniere)
Subject: Full auto lasers
Date: Tue Jul 10 20:30:00 2001
> Sure. Say you're shooting medium distance (TN 6) at someone behind
> cover (TN +4) for a total TN of 10. You power up your laser and try
> to hit him with the beam. This is easier then just firing single
> shots, so we see how long you shoot. This is done by seeing how many
> FA shots you declare (Let's say you fire 5 shots, i.e. keep the laser
> fireing for half of the maximum time). Your TN to hit the guy drops
> to 6 then and you roll. Lets assume you rolled an 8, which normally
> would not have been enough. It is though, as you fired a continous
> beam and happend to "find" your target with it. To figure out how
> many "shots" hit, you substract the shots you fired from your initial
> TN (That's 10-5=5 for us). then, you substract that from your roll
> (8-5=3). As you have hit with three "rounds", powerlevel goes up
> three points and damagelevel goes up one point. Understood?
>
> Zixx
>

seriously... don't do it... there are several reasons for it, some of
them "reality" reasons and alot are game mechanics/game balance issues...

First off, if you could continuosly sweep a beam instead of firing actual
shots, then it'd be insanely easy to hit a target.. its just too
deadly... think about it it... for every bit of power you use to fire the
gun you'd have to reduce the target number by one... for all intents and
purposes you'd be trying to hit someone with an over-grown laser pointer.
On top of that for every success you'd have to increase the power of the
weapon because it indicates keeping a constant bead on the target giving the
laser more time to heat up and burn through it.... thats just thinking
game mechanics and lethality...

In terms of reality they don't have the technology... the way it appears
to work is the only way they can get a damaging pulse from a laser is
through capaciters which would require time to power back up. IMHO that'd
make lasers a semi-auto fire weapon maximum rate of fire... in order to
get the pulses fast enough or a constant beam it'd require way to much
power, and in light of that the laser wouldn't do near enough damage or
have its effective range....

Now if you REALLY, REALLY still want full-auto/continuos fire rules, this is
what I would use... if a weapon is rigged for FA/CF (constant fire), I'd
never have it sold with the capability it'd have to be a modification of the
runners, then when it is fired in such a mode its effective range is only
75% of what it was. I would, in all seriousness cut the power of the weapon
in half as it doesn't have the juice that it normally would with capaciters
in use. Due to the insane power requirements to have a beam do enough
damage I'd have every effective shot actually use up atleast 2, maybe 3,
shots of ammo.. now... when fired, every shot fired adds a -1 to the
TN... not ammo used, but shots fired (i.e. if its a 5 "shot" FA/CF then
it'd cost him 10 rds of "ammo" and add a -5 to the target number)... now,
for every success add 1 to the power of the weapon, staging up the damage
level normally (i.e. take those 5 "shots" fired, if the damage of the weapon
was originally 12S, then in FA/CF mode it'd be 6S, and if there were 4
successes it'd then be 10S, and depending on the test of the target it'd get
staged up normally)....

For all intents and purposes it'd be easier to hit the target, but it'd do
less damage and cost more ammo, but easier to hold the beam on him to
increase the damage...

it may sound complicated but if you read it a few times it makes sense and
doesn't make it to unbalancing.... my personal opinion is that you could
only pull such a feat with a weapon mounted on a building with access to
some serious juice... possibly maybe a vehicle... but then again..
what do I know..? :-)
Message no. 9
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Zixx)
Subject: Full auto lasers
Date: Wed Jul 11 04:15:01 2001
Michael Choiniere wrote:

[Snipped my example]

> seriously... don't do it... there are several reasons for it,
> some of them "reality" reasons and alot are game mechanics/game
> balance issues...

Hey, I just wrote up some rules :)

> First off, if you could continuosly sweep a beam instead of firing
> actual shots, then it'd be insanely easy to hit a target.. its
> just too deadly... think about it it... for every bit of power
> you use to fire the gun you'd have to reduce the target number by
> one... for all intents and purposes you'd be trying to hit
> someone with an over-grown laser pointer. On top of that for every
> success you'd have to increase the power of the weapon because it
> indicates keeping a constant bead on the target giving the laser
> more time to heat up and burn through it.... thats just thinking
> game mechanics and lethality...

True. A continous beam laser is one hell of a weapon.
But if you make the base damage 4L or something, it gets better from
a gamebalance POV (especially, as with SR-tech even the 4L
beam-weapon would be the size of a PAC)

> In terms of reality they don't have the technology... the way it
> appears to work is the only way they can get a damaging pulse from
> a laser is through capaciters which would require time to power
> back up. IMHO that'd make lasers a semi-auto fire weapon maximum
> rate of fire... in order to get the pulses fast enough or a
> constant beam it'd require way to much power, and in light of that
> the laser wouldn't do near enough damage or have its effective
> range....

Pulse lasers are usually chrystal lasers (ruby, most of the time),
while continous beam lasers use gas-bodies. It's not as if you'd take
a pulse-laser and try to fire it that fast.

[Snipped rules]

As rigging the weapon is not really an option (due to the different
designs), I would just go with a 4L weapon that has a ROF of maybe 6.
That way, you could get up to 10S damage, which is not that bad,
considering the the damage other weapons of the same size can do...

> it may sound complicated but if you read it a few times it makes
> sense and doesn't make it to unbalancing.... my personal opinion
> is that you could only pull such a feat with a weapon mounted on a
> building with access to some serious juice... possibly maybe a
> vehicle... but then again.. what do I know..? :-)

Having a powerful energy-source really would help. Imagine breaking
into MCT's newest reasaerch-lab and encontering a 10M beam-laser :)

Zixx

Further Reading

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