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Message no. 1
From: Neil Clark neil.clark@**********.com
Subject: miscellaneous shadowrun technicalities
Date: Mon, 3 May 1999 19:37:29 -0400
1:
SR3 says that (sport, not assault) rifles are smooth bolt action. but my
friend and I find this vague. there are bolts driven automatically by the
gas of the bullet, and there are bolts you have to cock with your own hand.
I tend to think that sport rifles, the Remingtons, are bolt action and need
to be loaded by hand (which would require a simple action). yet they are
both listed as SA (semi-automatic)? if they were SA, wouldn't that severely
blur the line between a sport rifle and an assault rifle?

2:
are magnifications cumulative, between the eye and the scope? if someone
had a rating I rifle scope, and was looking through it with
cybereyes+opticalmagII, would the said shadowrunner have an effective rating
of III in magnification? if the cybereyes were instead fitted with
electronic magnification, instead of optical, would this change things?

thanks,

--Neil
Message no. 2
From: Michael Berman jberman@*****.com
Subject: miscellaneous shadowrun technicalities
Date: Mon, 3 May 1999 20:13:07 -0400
\1:
\ SR3 says that (sport, not assault) rifles are smooth bolt action. but my
\friend and I find this vague. there are bolts driven automatically by the
\gas of the bullet, and there are bolts you have to cock with your own hand.
\I tend to think that sport rifles, the Remingtons, are bolt action and need
\to be loaded by hand (which would require a simple action). yet they are
\both listed as SA (semi-automatic)? if they were SA, wouldn't that
severely
\blur the line between a sport rifle and an assault rifle?

Why does it matter... if it does matter though i would imagine that they are
hand loaded as you say though




\2:
\ are magnifications cumulative, between the eye and the scope? if someone
\had a rating I rifle scope, and was looking through it with
\cybereyes+opticalmagII, would the said shadowrunner have an effective
rating
\of III in magnification? if the cybereyes were instead fitted with
\electronic magnification, instead of optical, would this change things?

No, just no.


\ thanks,
\
\--Neil
Message no. 3
From: grahamdrew grahamdrew@*********.com
Subject: miscellaneous shadowrun technicalities
Date: Mon, 03 May 1999 04:53:01 -0400
Neil Clark wrote:
>
> 1:
> SR3 says that (sport, not assault) rifles are smooth bolt action. but my
> friend and I find this vague. there are bolts driven automatically by the
> gas of the bullet, and there are bolts you have to cock with your own hand.
> I tend to think that sport rifles, the Remingtons, are bolt action and need
> to be loaded by hand (which would require a simple action). yet they are
> both listed as SA (semi-automatic)? if they were SA, wouldn't that severely
> blur the line between a sport rifle and an assault rifle?

I would say that's a little off base. Semi-Automatic may just be an
expression of the firing rate, as opposed to a semi-automatic mode as
one might think. The sport rifles still carry clips, so although the
bolt may need to be cocked by hand, it still takes considerable less
time then a fifle in which you would insert a new round by hand. Sure,
this puts them in the same firing catigory as assault rifles in some
cases, but that's what full automatic modes are for.
>
> 2:
> are magnifications cumulative, between the eye and the scope? if someone
> had a rating I rifle scope, and was looking through it with
> cybereyes+opticalmagII, would the said shadowrunner have an effective rating
> of III in magnification? if the cybereyes were instead fitted with
> electronic magnification, instead of optical, would this change things?

Umm, no. Ever try to line up two pairs of binoculars in series? One,
it's a pain in the ass. Two, it's ineffective. Any small movement
you've made throws off your view of the other set of lenses, and messes
up your focal points. In addition, the glare from the secondary set of
lenses isn't so great for the aim either. Any bonuses incurred from the
aditional range adjustment would be more then nullified by these
factors.
>
> thanks,
>
> --Neil

--
If a device is designed to do one thing really well, it can be
redesigned to do many things badly.
-Paranoia
Message no. 4
From: Schizi@***.com Schizi@***.com
Subject: miscellaneous shadowrun technicalities
Date: Mon, 3 May 1999 22:30:19 EDT
In a message dated 5/3/99 7:40:59 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
neil.clark@**********.com writes:

> SR3 says that (sport, not assault) rifles are smooth bolt action. but my
> friend and I find this vague. there are bolts driven automatically by the
> gas of the bullet, and there are bolts you have to cock with your own hand.
> I tend to think that sport rifles, the Remingtons, are bolt action and need
> to be loaded by hand (which would require a simple action). yet they are
> both listed as SA (semi-automatic)? if they were SA, wouldn't that
severely
> blur the line between a sport rifle and an assault rifle?
>

I just changed sport rifles to SS, instead of SA.
I also have SA rifles though, to carry on the Browning BAR's etc.
Message no. 5
From: Gurth gurth@******.nl
Subject: miscellaneous shadowrun technicalities
Date: Tue, 4 May 1999 11:19:01 +0200
According to Neil Clark, at 19:37 on 3 May 99, the word on
the street was...

> SR3 says that (sport, not assault) rifles are smooth bolt action. but my
> friend and I find this vague. there are bolts driven automatically by the
> gas of the bullet, and there are bolts you have to cock with your own hand.

Those latter are called bolt-action in the real world -- you turn a bolt
handle up, pull it back, push it forward again, and turn it down to lock
the action ready for the next shot. The former are called either blow-back
(if the recoil of the shot directly pushes back the bolt) or gas-operated
(if gas is tapped off from the barrel to work the action via a cylinder).
There are other systems, but I don't think it's necessary to go into more
detail here.

> I tend to think that sport rifles, the Remingtons, are bolt action and
> need to be loaded by hand (which would require a simple action). yet
> they are both listed as SA (semi-automatic)? if they were SA, wouldn't
> that severely blur the line between a sport rifle and an assault rifle?

It's probably something that crept in when firing modes were added to SR,
when they assigned modes without really paying attention to the
descriptions of those same weapons.

FWIW, in my game I've introduced an extra firing mode, Bolt Action (BA),
which costs a Complex Action to fire and work the bolt for the next shot,
or a Simple Action if you just want to work the bolt.

> are magnifications cumulative, between the eye and the scope?

I would say they are not. Technically they _could_ be, but you'd have to
space the two systems apart very precisely so that the focused light from
the first scope falls exactly right into the second. Then, even a small
movement of eoither of the scopes will upset the whole thing.

> if someone had a rating I rifle scope, and was looking through it with
> cybereyes+opticalmagII, would the said shadowrunner have an effective
> rating of III in magnification?

No.

> if the cybereyes were instead fitted with electronic magnification,
> instead of optical, would this change things?

Again, no.

--
Gurth@******.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Another year and then you'll be happy.
-> NERPS Project Leader * ShadowRN GridSec * Unofficial Shadowrun Guru <-
->The Plastic Warriors Page: http://shadowrun.html.com/plasticwarriors/<-
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Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998
Message no. 6
From: Rand Ratinac docwagon101@*****.com
Subject: miscellaneous shadowrun technicalities
Date: Tue, 4 May 1999 19:55:49 -0700 (PDT)
> 2:
> are magnifications cumulative, between the eye and
> the scope?
> --Neil
<BigSnip(TM)>

Actually, I've never seen this specifically mentioned anywhere, but in
the interests of game balance (i.e. with my GM hat on) I'd say no.

Why, you ask?

Because as a player, I'd LOVE for them to be cumulative and I've
learnt, as a GM, not to trust my player's instincts. :) That physad
sniper I've been talking about on another thread has vision
magnification 2 (I couldn't afford VM3 to start with) and right now he
owns a Remington 990S with a level 1 mag scope. I'd be very happy to
have them cumulative, but, my GM instincts say "he likes it - don't let
him have it". :)

Btw, I think there could be some argument made along the lines of two
scopes screwing up your vision, not enhancing it. Has anyone put a pair
of rifle scopes with magnification together and tried to look through
them? If so, what happened?

*Player Doc' likes pineapple juice. GM Doc' rules that the worlds
stores of pineapple juice have been incinerated in a freak petrol bomb
accident and the pineapple crops have been washed away by the crash of
the Exxon Valdez II, thus ending production of pineapple juice for the
next decade.

Player Doc' commits suicide.*
==Doc'
(aka Mr. Freaky Big, Super-Dynamic Troll of Tomorrow)

.sig Sauer
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Message no. 7
From: Steve Collins einan@*********.net
Subject: miscellaneous shadowrun technicalities
Date: Wed, 5 May 99 00:16:35 -0400
On 5/4/99 10:55 pm, Rand Ratinac said:

>> 2:
>> are magnifications cumulative, between the eye and
>> the scope?
>> --Neil
><BigSnip(TM)>
>
>Actually, I've never seen this specifically mentioned anywhere, but in
>the interests of game balance (i.e. with my GM hat on) I'd say no.
>
>Why, you ask?
>

}}snip good game balance reason{{
The technical reason : You change the apparent size of an object at a
distance by changing the focal length of the lens (yes this includes the
eye). Anything placed inside the focal length will be blurry at best and
if small enough invisible. So looking through a Magnifying scope at
another magnifying scope will porduce a large blurry spot in the middle
of the first scope unless there is a short enough space between the two
for the two of them to be considered 1 lens. For an example of this focus
your eye at a distant object (say 25 feet away) and hold a pencil up
right in front of your eye. If you can see the pencil at all then it will
appear as a large blurry object. You have to use either one or the other.
You can't use both. I suppose it would be possible to make a
scope/cybereye pair that could be mated but it would probably cost more
than just upgrading to Vision Mag 3 and being done with it, and would
certainly be more expensive than buying a vision mag 3 scope.

Steve
Message no. 8
From: Rand Ratinac docwagon101@*****.com
Subject: miscellaneous shadowrun technicalities
Date: Tue, 4 May 1999 23:30:27 -0700 (PDT)
> }}snip good game balance reason{{
> The technical reason : You change the apparent size of an object at a
distance by changing the focal length of the lens (yes this includes
the eye). Anything placed inside the focal length will be blurry at
best and if small enough invisible. So looking through a Magnifying
scope at another magnifying scope will porduce a large blurry spot in
the middle of the first scope unless there is a short enough space
between the two for the two of them to be considered 1 lens. For an
example of this focus your eye at a distant object (say 25 feet away)
and hold a pencil up right in front of your eye. If you can see the
pencil at all then it will appear as a large blurry object. You have to
use either one or the other. You can't use both. I suppose it would be
possible to make a scope/cybereye pair that could be mated but it would
probably cost more than just upgrading to Vision Mag 3 and being done
with it, and would certainly be more expensive than buying a vision mag
3 scope.
> Steve

Well, cut off me legs and call me "Not-So-Tally"!!

My supposition was actually correct.

What are the odds.

*Doc' goggles...and spectacles and safety-glasses and contact
lenses...in astonishment...*
==Doc'
(aka Mr. Freaky Big, Super-Dynamic Troll of Tomorrow)

.sig Sauer
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