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Some Thoughts on Blaster Weapons
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 19, 2016 10:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Whill wrote:
Does auto-fire include stun? Or is that normal damage only? I guess I should also ask, do all of the weapons even have a stun setting (aside from the two stun-only weapons obviously)?

I hadn't really thought about it, actually. I vaguely recall a topic here on the Pit where someone pointed out that it actually was more effective from a rules standpoint to use Stun damage as opposed to normal damage with a Blaster.

Since there isn't a lot to go on for the limitations of Stun, I'd suggest the following:
    1). Stun only works at Short Range or less.
    2). Stun can't be combined with Auto-Fire
The Stun-only weapons would have a range advantage because they are specifically tuned to work in Stun mode, not switching back and forth between the two.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 19, 2016 10:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Naaman wrote:
Some pistols do have scopes/optics on them, but they are generally very specialized weapons. Certain heavy caliber (magnum) revolvers will have optics on them for hunting, while some competitive shooters who compete in the "open" class will install optics such as reflex sights or even holographic/reticle sights to improve the sight picture.

Such implements are great in their domain, but in battle, they create more problems than they solve (on pistols)... not the least of which is adding bulk/weight.

Agreed. For Han Solo, a very capable gunslinger and QuickDraw artist, to have something that big and bulky on his personal weapon of choice, it needs to confer enough of an advantage to offset the added weight and bulk.

Quote:
However, in CRM's case, he can just hand wave the recoil and balance issues and call it light enough that it doesn't mimic real world counterparts (in reality, even shooting a pistol one-handed has its problems--the person's stability/shakiness is always magnified when using only one hand... a "long gun"--even an SBR--would not really work in one hand, except as a last resort).

It's actually even simpler to justify than that. If you watch the films, the characters regularly fire blaster carbines off the shoulder with the stock retracted, and appear to have little issue doing so. My assumption, based on that evidence, is that recoil on blasters is negligible, at best.
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Naaman
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 19, 2016 10:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, there's that, too.

I just tend to hand wave in the other direction (I.e. given that the original movie... and probably the whole original trilogy for that matter... lacked a military technical advisor). All for the sake of addressing the "silly" looking fire fights that we see on screen.

For me, its one of those things that I just can't forgive... LOL!
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 19, 2016 11:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Naaman wrote:
I tend to disagree here. I think that adding model-specific differences would add a level of complexity that he is trying to avoid.

Exactly. In addition, the fact is that, in the films, carbines exist, and are distinct from rifles. This has carried over into the EU, even though improperly applied.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 19, 2016 11:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Regarding the Auto-Fire rule, I'm considering an alteration. Only allowing it to be used once per round didn't sit well with me, because a character can manage multiple trigger pulls per round, and each pull of the trigger will fire off multiple rounds, rather than multiple rounds with one pull and single rounds with any others. However, this multi-use needs to be balanced with the fact that the mechanics of the blasters themselves are going to limit the maximum fire rate per round.

Bearing that in mind, I'd say that a shooter using a Blaster with Auto-Fire dice may use the full Dice amount 3 times per round, no more.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 19, 2016 11:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Naaman wrote:
Yeah, there's that, too.

I just tend to hand wave in the other direction (I.e. given that the original movie... and probably the whole original trilogy for that matter... lacked a military technical advisor). All for the sake of addressing the "silly" looking fire fights that we see on screen.

For me, its one of those things that I just can't forgive... LOL!

There is actually sci-fi precedence for energy weapons having minimal recoil. David Drake's power guns from his Hammer's Slammers series are monstrously powerful energy weapons, yet are specifically said to have no recoil and shoot line-straight.
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Whill
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 12:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Naaman wrote:
Some pistols do have scopes/optics on them, but they are generally very specialized weapons. Certain heavy caliber (magnum) revolvers will have optics on them for hunting, while some competitive shooters who compete in the "open" class will install optics such as reflex sights or even holographic/reticle sights to improve the sight picture.

Such implements are great in their domain, but in battle, they create more problems than they solve (on pistols)... not the least of which is adding bulk/weight.

CRMcNeill wrote:
Agreed. For Han Solo, a very capable gunslinger and QuickDraw artist, to have something that big and bulky on his personal weapon of choice, it needs to confer enough of an advantage to offset the added weight and bulk.

So we're all in agreement about scopes on blaster pistols. They took real gun parts and frankensteined them to make blasters, so it seems they were going for 'not too alien' to ground them in reality in some way but at the same time not looking exactly like any real firearm to uphold a minimal level of disbelief suspension. I'm sure the scopes were there just because it says "gun part" to the general audience who wouldn't think too deeply about it. (The flashes of cool-sounding red light coming out of the guns do distract from it.) We are talking about the cinematic universe created by the guy who just tossed sciency terms into the script like binary language, human-cyborg relations, clone wars, and parsecs. That leaves us nerds to give it all more meaning! Smile

Naaman wrote:
However, in CRM's case, he can just hand wave the recoil and balance issues and call it light enough that it doesn't mimic real world counterparts

CRMcNeill wrote:
It's actually even simpler to justify than that. If you watch the films, the characters regularly fire blaster carbines off the shoulder with the stock retracted, and appear to have little issue doing so. My assumption, based on that evidence, is that recoil on blasters is negligible, at best.

And of the course the reason blasters don't appear to have recoil most of the time is because the actors filming the scenes didn't experience recoil and the director didn't require them to act like it. But there's not too much handwaving needed there. These aren't real world guns firing real world bullets in a real world. These are blasters shooting high-energy packets of particles in a cinematic reality.
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 12:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Naaman wrote:
I think that adding model-specific differences would add a level of complexity that he is trying to avoid.

R&E's weapons section is formatted such that the general categories are represented with specific model examples. Now I've got that for all the weapons, even CR's new categories. I consider these categories to be the baseline stats but specific models can still vary. Most of the time, make and model aren't even going to even come into my game and the general types (and their stats) will suffice.

CRMcNeill wrote:
Whill wrote:
Does auto-fire include stun? Or is that normal damage only? I guess I should also ask, do all of the weapons even have a stun setting (aside from the two stun-only weapons obviously)?

I hadn't really thought about it, actually. I vaguely recall a topic here on the Pit where someone pointed out that it actually was more effective from a rules standpoint to use Stun damage as opposed to normal damage with a Blaster.

Since there isn't a lot to go on for the limitations of Stun, I'd suggest the following:
    1). Stun only works at Short Range or less.
    2). Stun can't be combined with Auto-Fire
The Stun-only weapons would have a range advantage because they are specifically tuned to work in Stun mode, not switching back and forth between the two.

With stun damage, a single Wound result or more on the character damage chart equals Unconscious. With normal damage, you would need to make your target Incapacitated to accomplish the same thing. Under RAW, stun is a tactical advantage over normal damage that is not at all represented by the films.

I think WotC's solution was also giving Stun a shorter range. I went a different direction by just moving the Unconscious result from Wounded down to Incapacitated. But I do like auto-fire not working for Stun so I'll use that too. Thanks.
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 11:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I found a workable explanation for the scopes. On page 88 of Gundark's Fantastic Technology, there is a device called an Electronic Blaster Sighting System. It provides a +1D bonus to Blaster by projecting a holographic crosshair a meter in front of the gun. Granted, we can't see a holo-crosshair in the films, but other sci-fi universes (including the works of David Drake and David Weber) allow holgrams to be tuned and focused so that they may only be seen properly from a particular angle, being either invisible or appearing as a distortion when viewed from any other. The tech is sufficiently miniaturized that this can be used as a desk monitor for an office computer system, or built into a command headset that uses the hologram as a Heads-Up Display.

Ultimately, it's not too much of a stretch to port it over to the SWU, even if just to explain the bulky scopes attached to weapons that shouldn't really need them.
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 11:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Whill wrote:
I think WotC's solution was also giving Stun a shorter range. I went a different direction by just moving the Unconscious result from Wounded down to Incapacitated. But I do like auto-fire not working for Stun so I'll use that too. Thanks.

An intermediate solution I was also considering was reducing Stun damage for non-Stun-only weapons by 1D per range bracket, so that a Blaster Rifle in Stun mode would inflict 5D damage at Point Blank, 4D at Short and so on. You can still use it at Long Range, but the beam diffuses enough over long distances that it becomes harder and harder to hit for effect.
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 1:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dredwulf60 wrote:
MrNexx wrote:
I'm trying to think of other situations in the OT where stun would've been a desirable setting.


I'd say pretty much every time the baddies are shooting at the heroes. Don't they usually want them alive for information?


I am not sure either the Hoth or Endor battles though they were going to capture but eliminate the enemy..

CRMcNeill wrote:
Whill wrote:
Does auto-fire include stun? Or is that normal damage only? I guess I should also ask, do all of the weapons even have a stun setting (aside from the two stun-only weapons obviously)?

I hadn't really thought about it, actually. I vaguely recall a topic here on the Pit where someone pointed out that it actually was more effective from a rules standpoint to use Stun damage as opposed to normal damage with a Blaster.

Since there isn't a lot to go on for the limitations of Stun, I'd suggest the following:
    1). Stun only works at Short Range or less.
    2). Stun can't be combined with Auto-Fire
The Stun-only weapons would have a range advantage because they are specifically tuned to work in Stun mode, not switching back and forth between the two.


IIRC we have actually had several of those (long) discussions. And i do agree, that stun should be limited, so its not the 'go too' method of blaster fights as it seems to be these days.
I would also like to see a rule for heavier weapons (higher dam than blaster rifles) prohibited from even DOING stun shots..
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 1:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

garhkal wrote:
I would also like to see a rule for heavier weapons (higher dam than blaster rifles) prohibited from even DOING stun shots..

From a tech standpoint, Stun setting is essentially a de-tuned, reduced power blaster bolt. One could simply say that, as blasters become more and more powerful, it becomes more and more difficult to de-tune them to Stun energy levels, until it reaches a point where it is no longer viable.
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 8:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

CRMcNeill wrote:
garhkal wrote:
I would also like to see a rule for heavier weapons (higher dam than blaster rifles) prohibited from even DOING stun shots..

From a tech standpoint, Stun setting is essentially a de-tuned, reduced power blaster bolt. One could simply say that, as blasters become more and more powerful, it becomes more and more difficult to de-tune them to Stun energy levels, until it reaches a point where it is no longer viable.

I've researched this recently. I've read a little WEG weapon fluff text that suggests stun is just normal damage reduced in power, but the bulk of the evidence (EU fluff, WEG fluff and WEG game mechanics) indicates otherwise.

From a WEG point of view, if stun is just low-power blaster energy than the stun effects should be at the high end of the normal damage/wound chart. The optimal result for RAW's stun damage is "unconscious for 2D minutes" which in unconscious but otherwise unharmed, which his the point of using stun. But there is no such result on the normal damage wound chart in between wounded and stunned. If you were dead set on the philosophy of stun being low-powered normal damage, then it would make sense for you to add "unconscious for 2D minutes" to your normal damage wound system. On the other end it, would also make sense for you to add the worse normal damage effects at the lower end of the stun chart for poorly resisted stun blasts if you felt that way.

In the EU, stun is described as a type of attack dedicated to overloading the target's nervous system of organic lifeforms, producing a shock effect that causes their system to have to reset with an end result similar to anesthesia. And in the single case of film evidence of stun, it uses a completely different special effect. It has a different sound effect than normal blaster shots, and appears as vertical blue rings shooting from the gun instead of horizontal red hyphens. When it hits the target, they momentarily completely glow blue. Stun being a distinct type of blaster energy makes the most sense to me, so that's what it is in my SWU.

A GM can still say certain blasters don't have a stun setting, but I personally would reserve that for rare models or as a side effect of jury-rigs. Stun is very useful to have, even if it doesn't come into play very often.
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 21, 2016 12:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

CRMcNeill wrote:
garhkal wrote:
I would also like to see a rule for heavier weapons (higher dam than blaster rifles) prohibited from even DOING stun shots..

From a tech standpoint, Stun setting is essentially a de-tuned, reduced power blaster bolt. One could simply say that, as blasters become more and more powerful, it becomes more and more difficult to de-tune them to Stun energy levels, until it reaches a point where it is no longer viable.


Hence the thread i had a while back about whether repeating blasters (E-webs especially) should even HAVE a stun setting.
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 21, 2016 11:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

garhkal wrote:
Hence the thread i had a while back about whether repeating blasters (E-webs especially) should even HAVE a stun setting.

I wouldn't give those weapons a stun setting, but those have appeared so rarely in my game I doubt the question would ever come up.
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