39 minutes ago, masterstrider said:

Or just engage the person wielding the autofire weapon. Nine times out of ten, it's on a Ranged (Heavy) weapon, which incurs a +2 to difficulty to fire whilst engaged. Have a group of cannon fodder in front to soak up the first spray and a group with melee weapons behind ready to assault.

Or make them fight a Droidekka with shields. It also has a firespray ability. Fight fire with fire!

Or remind them that it's not a domestic/concealable weapon that you carry around town. They will have to pick and choose when to bring it along.

Problem solved. No need to nerf it.

Unless they win initiative....or step back......

Engaging their allies is a much better option, it adds an additional Upgrade and Despairs can automatically be used to hit any other target in the engagement. Add a couple of ranks of adversary ever now and then... the other PC's will ban the Auto-Fire before you.

Off topic but where can I find official stats of the Droideka? And if I am not wrong shields add only setback dice, no big deal

3 hours ago, Rosco74 said:

Off topic but where can I find official stats of the Droideka? And if I am not wrong shields add only setback dice, no big deal

CotG and they are indeed no big deal, we did one-shot them with out sniper rifles and the shields are just setback dice. Now a first full of setbacks works fine against autofire weapons to reduce damage and their medium-high soak value is nice too, but they are nowhere near as scary as they should be imho. Not enough soak, not enough defense. You would expect from them defense 2-3 before they activate the shield even more with their shield active.

http://swrpg.viluppo.net/adversaries/adversary/2891/

EotE shields don't work like Star Wars shields.

The best way I've seen to deal with autofire at the lower levels is a twofold strategy.

1) Talk to the player about not min-maxing the gun, spreading his skills out, and going easy on true aim. If the answer to every combat situation is for him to go first, true aim, autofire, and go full turret mode for the duration, then nobody is having as much fun as they could be.

2) We have autofire cost increasing amounts of advantage. Think I got the idea from here, and I've nerfed myself with it in 2 games now. First trigger is 2 adv, then 3 for the third hit, 4 for fourth. Makes shooting more than twice rare, and 3 times an event. When the other players get lightsabers/XP/money, you can then consider un-nerfing it.

There's also sunder, 3D combat arenas, and all sorts of other ways to deal with autofire in a GM sense. Honestly, I prefer autofire to the guy that wants to make his HH-50 deal 12 strain per hit with something like an 80% chance to link it.

If the autofire bandit wants to deal 23 damage a hit with a completely modded out gun at a low enough XP level that the others are totally worthless, then it's just as much on the GM as the player.

8 hours ago, Ahrimon said:

EotE shields don't work like Star Wars shields.

Off topic, but adding automatic failure would be a better rule, or Upgrading the pool. The setback die has too many blank faces for it to be consistent, if you don't have enough then they tend to be ineffective but if you have too many they can dominate the results.

On 3/16/2017 at 10:02 PM, masterstrider said:

Or just engage the person wielding the autofire weapon. Nine times out of ten, it's on a Ranged (Heavy) weapon, which incurs a +2 to difficulty to fire whilst engaged. Have a group of cannon fodder in front to soak up the first spray and a group with melee weapons behind ready to assault.

Or make them fight a Droidekka with shields. It also has a firespray ability. Fight fire with fire!

Or remind them that it's not a domestic/concealable weapon that you carry around town. They will have to pick and choose when to bring it along.

Problem solved. No need to nerf it.

1. As has been pointed out, this is difficult to do if they win initiative. They can also always choose to prioritize the melee group (which they likely will ). Finally, any auto-firing character that has even a modest amount of XP under their belt will often be able to blast both the fodder and the melee group in one go, because multiple targets is how autofire rolls.
2. Also as pointed out, shields do very little. And using autofire or similar abilities against players tends to result in dead players, because (again) it's an obscenely powerful weapon quality.
3. First of all, there are weapons with Autofire that are either fairly concealable, or can be broken down and concealed. Second, balancing via deprivation never really works all that well, in my experience.

5 hours ago, Benjan Meruna said:

1. As has been pointed out, this is difficult to do if they win initiative. They can also always choose to prioritize the melee group (which they likely will ). Finally, any auto-firing character that has even a modest amount of XP under their belt will often be able to blast both the fodder and the melee group in one go, because multiple targets is how autofire rolls.
2. Also as pointed out, shields do very little. And using autofire or similar abilities against players tends to result in dead players, because (again) it's an obscenely powerful weapon quality.
3. First of all, there are weapons with Autofire that are either fairly concealable, or can be broken down and concealed. Second, balancing via deprivation never really works all that well, in my experience.

1) Prioritizing the soak and brawn heavy melee group instead of the agility heavy range group is already a win to increase the challenge, and ill advised if the range group has auto-fire weapons themselves. Killing everyone in one turn would be a numbers problem,

2) Shields do very little on their own, if those droideka had their shields 2 extra soak, 2 base defense on top, and a rank of adversary they would be a total party kill against most beginner groups. Defense dice are unreliable and with a bad result distribution on small numbers, once you hit about 4 they become a rather solid form of defense.

3) range light autofire weapons are balanced via their low base damage, those are fine. The autofire adding attachment is a silly problem, the heavy blaster rifle is problematic, but the other cases deprivation works rather well. At least in my groups we never had issues with something like this. Especially in the shadowrun groups we never had the classic problem of the troll with a vindicator mini-gun mowing down everything at first turn. The reaction from Lone Star would simple have been to heavy if you bring heavy weapons in a unappropriated area. And just like in shadow run, as well in star wars are grenades a far more troublesome issue. ;-)

And the idea to change defense dice to auto failures is actually not a bad one, most likely the devs did not went with it because it would be 'OP' against smaller dice pools with 3 or less dice.

1 hour ago, SEApocalypse said:

1) Prioritizing the soak and brawn heavy melee group instead of the agility heavy range group is already a win to increase the challenge, and ill advised if the range group has auto-fire weapons themselves. Killing everyone in one turn would be a numbers problem,

2) Shields do very little on their own, if those droideka had their shields 2 extra soak, 2 base defense on top, and a rank of adversary they would be a total party kill against most beginner groups. Defense dice are unreliable and with a bad result distribution on small numbers, once you hit about 4 they become a rather solid form of defense.

3) range light autofire weapons are balanced via their low base damage, those are fine. The autofire adding attachment is a silly problem, the heavy blaster rifle is problematic, but the other cases deprivation works rather well. At least in my groups we never had issues with something like this. Especially in the shadowrun groups we never had the classic problem of the troll with a vindicator mini-gun mowing down everything at first turn. The reaction from Lone Star would simple have been to heavy if you bring heavy weapons in a unappropriated area. And just like in shadow run, as well in star wars are grenades a far more troublesome issue. ;-)

And the idea to change defense dice to auto failures is actually not a bad one, most likely the devs did not went with it because it would be 'OP' against smaller dice pools with 3 or less dice.

1. A couple of extra points of soak is going to reduce the damage dealt to the group by 2 per shot. Assuming 4 shots go off, that's 8 damage. When you're dealing dozens of damage total, 8 isn't much of a sacrifice. And throwing groups of Brawn 4-5 minions at the group poses other problems: what if you succeed in taking out the Auto-firing player? Now the group has to deal with these minions, and they aren't the one outputting oodles of damage every turn. It's the classic problem GMs have dealing with overpowered characters: anything that can remotely challenge the character WILL wipe the rest of the group given the chance. And as pointed out several times, using autofire AGAINST the players is what you do when you want to wipe the party.
2. I think people were just pointing out that as they are, Droidekas won't do much. You can buff them up, of course but....well, see above.
3. People keep saying this, but it's not really true. The ACP repeater gun does 7 damage base, and can be modded with Superior to give a Boost and raise the damage to 8. I can buy that you never had problems with it in your group, but something being easily abuseable doesn't change just because no one in your group chooses to abuse it. Ironically, I in turn never had Troll+Vindicator problem. Most of our group were elves and humans and a dwarf, so anyone who got silly with Full Auto generally only did so to send the enemy into cover. And when we DID get a Troll, they went for the big bow type of damage. Which caused its own set of problems, I think they actually got it up to Naval damage on paper before the GM put the kybosh on that...

Just as a side note, let me expand on what I mean by "balancing by deprivation."

In general, every PC has a set of toys that they can use. There may be general restrictions on when and where they can use them, but the expectation is that they'll be allowed to use these toys more often than not. In Shadowrun, this would be a rigger and his drones, a Street Sam and his favorite gun, a mage and his spell foci. In Star Wars, it's the Ace and his starfighter, the Gunslinger and his paired pistols, the Heavy and his...well, favorite gun.

These toys need to be balanced against each other in any situations where they will compete with each other. So, if that Decker munchkin'd out his cyberdeck, a GM might allow it because no one else is a decker so making the challenges equally hard doesn't affect the other PCs. However, if that Rigger has made every single drone a combat drone is is basically out-performing the Street Sam 100% of the time, the GM might have a talk and explain that there are also drones for scouting and support. Telling the Street Sam "don't worry, I can easily come up with tons of situations where he can't use those" doesn't make ANYONE happy:

• When the Rigger is droning everyone and laughing and putting the Sam out of a job, the Sam is upset.
• When the Rigger can't use his drones and is thus essentially useless and sulking in his van, he's upset.

Which leads to the epiphany I had back in Shadowrun: Letting someone be overpowered 50% of the time and near useless 50% of the time != balance. You MUST, as a GM, make sure that any toys (and these can be anything ranging from weapons to Talents to even contacts) are balanced against each other. When everyone is using their toys, everyone should be equally happy with their contribution to the groups efforts. The ratio I personally shoot for at that point is that players get to use their toys 80% of the time, and the remaining 20% are those situations where they have to be clever and come up with ways to deal with not having their usual methods available to them. (The unfortunate exception to this are careers like Deckers or Pilots, whose specialization generally requires either an Assistant GM to run a parallel encounter or a lot of patience from the rest of the group.)

In this way, no one feels like they wasted money or XP on a toy that the GM won't let them use because it's too powerful, and the situations where their toys DO get taken away feel less like the GM meta-balancing via circumstances and more "Oh hey, this'll be a fun challenge."

41 minutes ago, Benjan Meruna said:

1. A couple of extra points of soak is going to reduce the damage dealt to the group by 2 per shot. Assuming 4 shots go off, that's 8 damage. When you're dealing dozens of damage total, 8 isn't much of a sacrifice. And throwing groups of Brawn 4-5 minions at the group poses other problems: what if you succeed in taking out the Auto-firing player? Now the group has to deal with these minions, and they aren't the one outputting oodles of damage every turn. It's the classic problem GMs have dealing with overpowered characters: anything that can remotely challenge the character WILL wipe the rest of the group given the chance. And as pointed out several times, using autofire AGAINST the players is what you do when you want to wipe the party.
2. I think people were just pointing out that as they are, Droidekas won't do much. You can buff them up, of course but....well, see above.
3. People keep saying this, but it's not really true. The ACP repeater gun does 7 damage base, and can be modded with Superior to give a Boost and raise the damage to 8. I can buy that you never had problems with it in your group, but something being easily abuseable doesn't change just because no one in your group chooses to abuse it. Ironically, I in turn never had Troll+Vindicator problem. Most of our group were elves and humans and a dwarf, so anyone who got silly with Full Auto generally only did so to send the enemy into cover. And when we DID get a Troll, they went for the big bow type of damage. Which caused its own set of problems, I think they actually got it up to Naval damage on paper before the GM put the kybosh on that...

Just as a side note, let me expand on what I mean by "balancing by deprivation."

In general, every PC has a set of toys that they can use. There may be general restrictions on when and where they can use them, but the expectation is that they'll be allowed to use these toys more often than not. In Shadowrun, this would be a rigger and his drones, a Street Sam and his favorite gun, a mage and his spell foci. In Star Wars, it's the Ace and his starfighter, the Gunslinger and his paired pistols, the Heavy and his...well, favorite gun.

These toys need to be balanced against each other in any situations where they will compete with each other. So, if that Decker munchkin'd out his cyberdeck, a GM might allow it because no one else is a decker so making the challenges equally hard doesn't affect the other PCs. However, if that Rigger has made every single drone a combat drone is is basically out-performing the Street Sam 100% of the time, the GM might have a talk and explain that there are also drones for scouting and support. Telling the Street Sam "don't worry, I can easily come up with tons of situations where he can't use those" doesn't make ANYONE happy:

• When the Rigger is droning everyone and laughing and putting the Sam out of a job, the Sam is upset.
• When the Rigger can't use his drones and is thus essentially useless and sulking in his van, he's upset.

Which leads to the epiphany I had back in Shadowrun: Letting someone be overpowered 50% of the time and near useless 50% of the time != balance. You MUST, as a GM, make sure that any toys (and these can be anything ranging from weapons to Talents to even contacts) are balanced against each other. When everyone is using their toys, everyone should be equally happy with their contribution to the groups efforts. The ratio I personally shoot for at that point is that players get to use their toys 80% of the time, and the remaining 20% are those situations where they have to be clever and come up with ways to deal with not having their usual methods available to them. (The unfortunate exception to this are careers like Deckers or Pilots, whose specialization generally requires either an Assistant GM to run a parallel encounter or a lot of patience from the rest of the group.)

In this way, no one feels like they wasted money or XP on a toy that the GM won't let them use because it's too powerful, and the situations where their toys DO get taken away feel less like the GM meta-balancing via circumstances and more "Oh hey, this'll be a fun challenge."

1) Your mathematical approach is wrong. You see those 8 damage reducing as something minor in context of a base damage in the range of 48. I see the those 8 point reduction as something major in context that it would reduce 20 damage to 12 damage and nearly half incoming damage, Damage reducing from soak is not linear, each point of soak becomes more effective than the point before up to the point of literally invulnerability. Besides, increasing soak by 2 is a rather tame thing to do. Increasing soak by 5 sounds more like it, heavier armor, enduring talents, etc are all good reasons to increase the soak along that ball park. Now your dozen damage per shot are reduced for 2 damage per shot and your autofire guy takes down a single dude with his 4 hits, maybe two if he rolls enough succes.

Claiming that this is op compared to the rest of the group is silly as well, as the gunslinger with two disruptor pistols has a good chance to take out one or two guys with critical hits too even if you upgrade the enemies to rivals, the mechanic can use micro-missiles or other explosives to wipe out the whole range group in one go and the marauder is going to intercept the melee group before they reach the autofire guy, disengage is a maneuver and forcing that maneuer out of the enemy means they will never catch a retreating range guy, so that way the ranged backline can be protected by the melee guys in the group. The sharpshooter/gunner might take out two despite their high soak value, thanks to high pierce and a dice pool with more than half a dozen yellows.

2) I was just pointing out that the issue was not the shield mechanic itself, upgrading difficulty once and adding two setbacks is fine defensive extra effect, but it is just an extra not suited as a main line of defense against anything but starting characters. Buff them up a little and those defensive values matter a lot. You were the one who stated that shields are useless, I made a counter claim. I was the one who claimed in the first place that droideka themselves are rather weak examples and that their shields do little, you were the one who generalized the statement.

3) Our players in general go with the best equipment avaible and with the best solution to the problem. Your understanding of balance is just that, game balance. Appropriated to an mmo at best. You want basically a car run as fast as porsche and transport as much as a truck and as agile as an atom. That is an design goal of games like d&d, but definitely not for games like shadowrun which embrace specialists and spotlights for every character to shine.

Furthermore, let me tell you: Meta-Gaming my ass. A living world reacting in sensible way to the actions of the characters does take away the toys of people sometimes away. If people feel like they wasted their xp when they specialized into something that this is an issue with attitude, not balance, it is an issue on fundamental expectations of the game. It is a good case to change the game to something that is more desired by the group, but it most certainly is not a case of the game doing anything wrong or right, but a matter of taste and expectations. I don't like that brown chocolate taste because it tastes like DnD, but if you are a fan of it, you can always mod your game.

Besides, even without striving for that everything is equal useless balance, there is indeed still the issue of a few weapons like the heavy blaster rifle being unrestricted and outlandish good compared to the rest of the weapons and that is indeed a balance problem, because it makes most other weapons in the game obsolete which is a problem for internal consistency of the world. That is the kind of balance issue which is problematic regardless of playstyle, because it leads to making everything else obsolete in the game. That is the real elephant in the room, not that some toys are better than others.

And by the way, explosives are clearly better than autofire weapons, especially when we talk about planetary scale ones

1 hour ago, SEApocalypse said:

1) Your mathematical approach is wrong. You see those 8 damage reducing as something minor in context of a base damage in the range of 48. I see the those 8 point reduction as something major in context that it would reduce 20 damage to 12 damage and nearly half incoming damage, Damage reducing from soak is not linear, each point of soak becomes more effective than the point before up to the point of literally invulnerability. Besides, increasing soak by 2 is a rather tame thing to do. Increasing soak by 5 sounds more like it, heavier armor, enduring talents, etc are all good reasons to increase the soak along that ball park. Now your dozen damage per shot are reduced for 2 damage per shot and your autofire guy takes down a single dude with his 4 hits, maybe two if he rolls enough succes.

Claiming that this is op compared to the rest of the group is silly as well, as the gunslinger with two disruptor pistols has a good chance to take out one or two guys with critical hits too even if you upgrade the enemies to rivals, the mechanic can use micro-missiles or other explosives to wipe out the whole range group in one go and the marauder is going to intercept the melee group before they reach the autofire guy, disengage is a maneuver and forcing that maneuer out of the enemy means they will never catch a retreating range guy, so that way the ranged backline can be protected by the melee guys in the group. The sharpshooter/gunner might take out two despite their high soak value, thanks to high pierce and a dice pool with more than half a dozen yellows.

2) I was just pointing out that the issue was not the shield mechanic itself, upgrading difficulty once and adding two setbacks is fine defensive extra effect, but it is just an extra not suited as a main line of defense against anything but starting characters. Buff them up a little and those defensive values matter a lot. You were the one who stated that shields are useless, I made a counter claim. I was the one who claimed in the first place that droideka themselves are rather weak examples and that their shields do little, you were the one who generalized the statement.

3) Our players in general go with the best equipment avaible and with the best solution to the problem. Your understanding of balance is just that, game balance. Appropriated to an mmo at best. You want basically a car run as fast as porsche and transport as much as a truck and as agile as an atom. That is an design goal of games like d&d, but definitely not for games like shadowrun which embrace specialists and spotlights for every character to shine.

Furthermore, let me tell you: Meta-Gaming my ass. A living world reacting in sensible way to the actions of the characters does take away the toys of people sometimes away. If people feel like they wasted their xp when they specialized into something that this is an issue with attitude, not balance, it is an issue on fundamental expectations of the game. It is a good case to change the game to something that is more desired by the group, but it most certainly is not a case of the game doing anything wrong or right, but a matter of taste and expectations. I don't like that brown chocolate taste because it tastes like DnD, but if you are a fan of it, you can always mod your game.

Besides, even without striving for that everything is equal useless balance, there is indeed still the issue of a few weapons like the heavy blaster rifle being unrestricted and outlandish good compared to the rest of the weapons and that is indeed a balance problem, because it makes most other weapons in the game obsolete which is a problem for internal consistency of the world. That is the kind of balance issue which is problematic regardless of playstyle, because it leads to making everything else obsolete in the game. That is the real elephant in the room, not that some toys are better than others.

And by the way, explosives are clearly better than autofire weapons, especially when we talk about planetary scale ones

1. The only reason damage reduction from soak isn't linear is because the damage being DEALT isn't linear. It's exactly this reason that Autofire is so out of whack with the other classes. The only thing that comes even close is Ataru, which requires a huge XP investment and costs strain. The gunslinger has to get two advantage to hit, and then has to spend 3 advantage to crit. The odds of him getting the eight advantage he needs for this is nuts. And with that same amount of advantage, the Autofire guy can hit four times! If they both have Jury Rig the gunslinger only needs 6 advantage now...but now the Autofire guy is hitting six times. It's nuts, these are COMPLETELY out of whack with each other.
2. Yes, shields are basically useless. Saying that shields work once you stack them 4 times (which is a huge amount compared to the RAW values you're dealing with) is essentially saying the same thing. "Buff them up a little and" and you're houseruling, whichis what this entire discussion is about. Why houserule only shields, and not autofire?
3. Balance does not mean that everything is the same. Balance just means that there is no one objectively better career or path. If you have a **** hot Decker who can outgun the Street Sam, no one would play the Street Sam. And then you lose that whole flavor. Balace is important, and the fact that you think it isn't explains a lot about why you don't care about making sure autofire is balanced.

Honestly, there's not much further to go after point number 3. The entire discussion is about "Is autofire OP/unbalanced?" The question you're trying to address is "Is imbalance in RPGs bad?" Which is a whole different thread.

And by the way, explosives have limited ammo, can easily hurt you or your friends, and take up a lot of encumbrance, and have limited ammo.

Quote

Furthermore, let me tell you: Meta-Gaming my ass. A living world reacting in sensible way to the actions of the characters does take away the toys of people sometimes away.

Of course, that's the 20%. The key word is SOMEtimes, not all the time, and not as a tool for the GM to try to balance things.

Is there a mod that can give a weapon auto-fire?

33 minutes ago, HistoryGuy said:

Is there a mod that can give a weapon auto-fire?

Rapid Recharge Xciter, yup.

1) Wait a second. You assume 8 advantages for that gunslinger example, but assume as well 4 hits aka 8 advantages for autofire and call the odds for that gunslinger nuts? ;-) Besides, disruptor pistols need two advantages for a crit, so you are down to 6 naturals to roll, banta-eye can generate 2 of those, down to 4 natural advantages, superior on the main weapon and you are down 3 natural advantages, jurry rigg them and you are down to 1 ;-)

2) I am not talking about house rules, we have on the defense rules conflicting stuff anyway. I merely stating that high values have more consistent effect. If for example a def 2 shield stacks with defensive talents which increase defense is ruled differently. And btw, I am not saying useless either, but of little effect, a little below 1 soak usually, against crit weapons 1 point defense might be worth a little more than 1 soak against heavy pierce or breach weapon defense becomes a lot better than soak. The overall package of the droideka is just lacking against experience players, more so than cannon suggests. Lastly, adjusting adversaries to suit your group is 101 in running a table, that not even close to house ruling anyway.

3) But the hot decker is not outgunning the street sam. I explicitly said that consistency of the world is the thing that matters. Besides the decker who out guns a street samurai , would be a street sam himself, using a classless system as example like that is bad. I still get what you mean, but I don't see a case in which a SWRPG becomes obsolete because another spec is just plain better, especially as the specs offer nice cross-synergies and jury-rigging autofire guns for the heavy in the team works just fine, so even non-combat characters can contribute in significant ways to the combat efforts of the group by providing equipment and support.

As mentioned, I am totally with you in cases that something becomes obsolete, most sniper rifles in the game for example are a clear case of obsolete and broken balance as they will perform poorly when compared to a heavy blaster rifle. They are indeed useless. At the other hand there a plenty of options which actually can keep up that prime example for autofire weapons. Those illegal disruptor pistols have been mentioned and your estimation of the required advantages has been corrected as well.

High damage, high pierce/breach weapons are another example, explosives are another one. Sure, detonite is 50 credits per charge and has some weight, but at the other hand you can clear a whole encounter with it and level a small city with just 600 credits worth of proton 'nades. Vehicle weapons are as well quite useful when you need heavy firepower, and small stuff like grenades can be crafted for 35 credits, with yields not uncommon in double digits ;-)

Still, overall I think we are actually mostly in agreement even about balance, just with different emphasis on the details. Which surprises me a little. Making something obsolete is indeed bad.

We seem to have just a rather different play experiences, so let me give you something practical to think about: How would you react if your players bring instead of autofire weapons a hover tank. Still saying that "taking away" the toys of the players in 80% of the cases is a bad idea and that responding in kind to the actions of the players is a wise choice? (And just to sure to prevent any misunderstandings "taking away" in this context means, making to use of those toys undesirable because it would provoke reactions from the world which are undesirable for the player characters)

4 minutes ago, Benjan Meruna said:

Rapid Recharge Xciter, yup.

And that mod was imho a terrible idea, it might be one of the reasons why blaster sniper rifles are so terrible.

2 hours ago, Benjan Meruna said:

Rapid Recharge Xciter, yup.

What book is that in?

Special modifications

btw, another fun gunslinger combo is a pair of H-7 Equalizer with banta-eye and enhanced x-citers, generates iirc 3 or 4 advantages (did superior in the offhand add an advantage or was this just banta-eye?), and requires 4 advantages for two critical hits. Perfectly legal, pretty deadly and super-easy to handle, electronic sightings might be an option over banta-eye. Not as deadly as the disruptors, but not as problematic either and as I said, super easy to handle.

3 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

1) Wait a second. You assume 8 advantages for that gunslinger example, but assume as well 4 hits aka 8 advantages for autofire and call the odds for that gunslinger nuts? ;-) Besides, disruptor pistols need two advantages for a crit, so you are down to 6 naturals to roll, banta-eye can generate 2 of those, down to 4 natural advantages, superior on the main weapon and you are down 3 natural advantages, jurry rigg them and you are down to 1 ;-)

2) I am not talking about house rules, we have on the defense rules conflicting stuff anyway. I merely stating that high values have more consistent effect. If for example a def 2 shield stacks with defensive talents which increase defense is ruled differently. And btw, I am not saying useless either, but of little effect, a little below 1 soak usually, against crit weapons 1 point defense might be worth a little more than 1 soak against heavy pierce or breach weapon defense becomes a lot better than soak. The overall package of the droideka is just lacking against experience players, more so than cannon suggests. Lastly, adjusting adversaries to suit your group is 101 in running a table, that not even close to house ruling anyway.

3) But the hot decker is not outgunning the street sam. I explicitly said that consistency of the world is the thing that matters. Besides the decker who out guns a street samurai , would be a street sam himself, using a classless system as example like that is bad. I still get what you mean, but I don't see a case in which a SWRPG becomes obsolete because another spec is just plain better, especially as the specs offer nice cross-synergies and jury-rigging autofire guns for the heavy in the team works just fine, so even non-combat characters can contribute in significant ways to the combat efforts of the group by providing equipment and support.

As mentioned, I am totally with you in cases that something becomes obsolete, most sniper rifles in the game for example are a clear case of obsolete and broken balance as they will perform poorly when compared to a heavy blaster rifle. They are indeed useless. At the other hand there a plenty of options which actually can keep up that prime example for autofire weapons. Those illegal disruptor pistols have been mentioned and your estimation of the required advantages has been corrected as well.

High damage, high pierce/breach weapons are another example, explosives are another one. Sure, detonite is 50 credits per charge and has some weight, but at the other hand you can clear a whole encounter with it and level a small city with just 600 credits worth of proton 'nades. Vehicle weapons are as well quite useful when you need heavy firepower, and small stuff like grenades can be crafted for 35 credits, with yields not uncommon in double digits ;-)

Still, overall I think we are actually mostly in agreement even about balance, just with different emphasis on the details. Which surprises me a little. Making something obsolete is indeed bad.

We seem to have just a rather different play experiences, so let me give you something practical to think about: How would you react if your players bring instead of autofire weapons a hover tank. Still saying that "taking away" the toys of the players in 80% of the cases is a bad idea and that responding in kind to the actions of the players is a wise choice? (And just to sure to prevent any misunderstandings "taking away" in this context means, making to use of those toys undesirable because it would provoke reactions from the world which are undesirable for the player characters)

And that mod was imho a terrible idea, it might be one of the reasons why blaster sniper rifles are so terrible.

1. I was being generous and assuming someone who didn't have Jury rig on autofire. Obviously, this won't be the case for just about anyone who wants to get the most out of Autofire. It was also to point out that even the most obscenely lucky gunslinger will still lag behind a...well, someone who has a weapon with Autofire and decent ranks in Ranged Heavy. All the rest is assuming very specific equipment with very specific mods. As I've pointed out in the past, the fact that that's needed even to compete is a sign of how broken Autofire is.
2. Adjusting rules and stats is 100% house ruling. You do it for the same reason: game balance. "This NPC is too weak, I need to buff them up to give the players a challenge." "This weapon ability is too strong, I need to nerf it to give players a challenge."
3. It is wholly possible for someone with nothing more than a few ranks in Ranged Heavy and Jury rig to outperform a dedicated gunslinger. If you like, go ahead and roll one, and I'll see how much XP I need to devote to match it. No mods, just talents. This is the inconsistency; that there exists a weapon quality that is head and shoulders better than any other weapon quality. It requires no XP specifically dedicated to it to shine: you just need to improve the amount and quality of the dice you throw on a Ranged Heavy check, which will still benefit you without Autofire.

There also remains the fact that most autofire weapons are high damage, the ACP is more the exception than the rule. I honestly think that the main problem with Autofire is that it's added benefit for no cost, and because it's multiplicative instead of additive the difference of a few advantage is immense. That's why I Shadowrun-ified it, with a player having to declare the amount of shots they're attempting and upgrading the difficulty that many times. The reward is still there, but not nearly so accessible and the greatest reward comes with the greatest risk. It also addresses the problem at the source (the quality itself) rather than trying to throw high-threat enemies at a group where only the problem player can remotely deal with them.

RE:explosives, without some XP investment you can't easily blow up an encounter without blowing up yourself. Leveling cities also has far more drastic RP consequences than shooting somebody on full auto, ditto hover tanks. That's actually another imbalance: in-universe, autofire is just another weapon quality. Having a weapon with it is awkward, difficult to hide, and can cause problems. Having a tank is treasonous, impossible to hide, and will likely provoke a much higher response than just a gun. The tank, like the starfighter, falls into that category of toys that cannot reasonably be used often. The same is not true for a mere blaster.

As for play experiences, I can appreciate that it didn't crop up as an issue in yours. But this exact type of thread pops up with enough regularity that you should be able to accept that your experience isn't the same across the board. Autofire is very, very easy to abuse even unintentionally (The OP mentioned how even his player was surprised) without house rules to bring it back down to saner levels.

Thinking about it, I must agree, pistoles without attachments can't compare to jury rigged autofire rifle.

How do you get three "auto-generated" Advantage? Superior and the sight each grant a single advantage. I've never played a Gunslinger, so i'm not familiar with their Talents.

2 minutes ago, Pyremius said:

How do you get three "auto-generated" Advantage? Superior and the sight each grant a single advantage. I've never played a Gunslinger, so i'm not familiar with their Talents.

Banta-eye generates a second advantage from the off-hand weapon the moment you can spend the advantages to activate hit from the offhand weapon, which then immediately allows a gunslinger to crit with the offhand if the crit rating is 1. "Sorry about the mess" reduces the crit rating of weapons when used against targets who did not act in this encounter so far, basically making the gunslinger favoring heavily to draw first, shoot first.

Though with an equalizer you could just take banta + enhanced xciter for crit rating 1 on both weapons.

There is some post in the faq sticky that explains this a little odd mechanic in two weapon combat. Helps pistoles a lot from a usefullness factor as banta eye is pistoles only.

I've gone round and round on this one but have never found something I liked. I had considered increasing Cumbersome ratings when going auto-fire, thus handling the penalty and giving big Brawns an advantage with one rule. But, it doesn't work well with the new auto-fire pistols and carbines that start with 0 cumbersome. Those actually should be harder to control then the big guns, but would have a big advantage for auto-fire if they started with no Cumbersome.

Thoughts on how to use the Cumbersome rules in RAW for autofire? Something like +1 Cumbersome per extra Burst fired - number of Bursts you take sets a maximum on number of total hits. Or, just a flat +2 Cumbersome when using auto-fire, with a limit on number of max hits set by Brawn? But, this would require adding some sort of tweak to RAW for the smaller non-cumbersome auto-fire weapons (pistols, carbines) or they would be better at laying down auto-fire then larger weapons. An auto carbine would only have a 2 cumbersome (starts at 0) thus that would allow auto-fire without any added difficulty at all which would just increase the lethality, not decrease it. There's also an attachment that reduces cumbersome by 2 for 500 credits, if I recall correctly, which would cause big problems.

Not sure how to use Cumbersome with auto-fire without it easily being gamed. But it just feels right to somehow implement it.

I'm a fan of the increasing advantage cost for every shot.

Has anyone done the math for making the bonus damage for each success have to be spread between every shot? So if you had 4 successes plus four advantage and activated rapid fire twice then you would spread those four successes over the three total hits.