16 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

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

Exactly. Dual pistols with an entire Gunslinger spec behind them (you left that out) will fail to do nearly as much damage as a single autofire rifle with a single talent behind it, assuming similar stats for both characters.

That's broken.

3 hours ago, Benjan Meruna said:

Exactly. Dual pistols with an entire Gunslinger spec behind them (you left that out) will fail to do nearly as much damage as a single autofire rifle with a single talent behind it, assuming similar stats for both characters.

That's broken.

I absolutely agree. Maybe we should house rule pistoles in some way instead. Maybe adding something like equipment which you can add to increase their effectiveness.

Just now, SEApocalypse said:

I absolutely agree. Maybe we should house rule pistoles in some way instead. Maybe adding something like equipment which you can add to increase their effectiveness.

The thing is, Gunslinger is actually pretty good. They can't delete entire encounters, of course, but they can do some pretty neat tricks and damage. The problem isn't that they don't do enough, it's that Autofire does too much.

Just now, Benjan Meruna said:

The thing is, Gunslinger is actually pretty good. They can't delete entire encounters, of course, but they can do some pretty neat tricks and damage. The problem isn't that they don't do enough, it's that Autofire does too much.

Like what?

1 minute ago, SEApocalypse said:

Like what?

Seriously?

Like I said, go ahead and make a Gunslinger character spec. I'll wait. Post it on swsheets.com. Tell how much XP you used. Then I'll match it for you. At this point, I seriously think that's the only thing that is going to get through to you.

There's no comparing a two weapon and autofire. A Gadgeteer with 15 xp is a Gatling turret if they want to be.

58 minutes ago, Benjan Meruna said:

Seriously?

Like I said, go ahead and make a Gunslinger character spec. I'll wait. Post it on swsheets.com. Tell how much XP you used. Then I'll match it for you. At this point, I seriously think that's the only thing that is going to get through to you.

Ok, 150xp, gunslinger. Encounter is a inquisitor, assassin, guard shoto with deflection 4, reflect 4, enhance for for jump if you excuse me non-raw force power ;-) Soak 8 from a bog standard superior robe. Brawn 5, Agi 4, Willpower, Cun, Presence 4, Int 2. And because of that int two we start that encounter at short with a cool init check.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6itNSR7CndFbENhY215T1VDVDQ/view?usp=sharing

edit:

But maybe it is unfair to not have any minions in that encounter as autofire weapons exell so much with taking them down, let's add a group of of 4 stormtroopers engaged with the inquisitor to that encounter. And give the gunslinger a Spore /B Stun Grenade for his main hand instead of the second pistole. Ranged light are so versatile, not that range heavy could not use a grenade launcher too. They are versatile outside of just autofire too.

Anyway, I was not asking to play who is the better killer, I was asking like what is doing autofire to much. Too much non-lethal damage? Forcing out to much stimpacks out of the enemy grunts?

2 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

Ok, 150xp, gunslinger. Encounter is a inquisitor, assassin, guard shoto with deflection 4, reflect 4, enhance for for jump if you excuse me non-raw force power ;-) Soak 8 from a bog standard superior robe. Brawn 5, Agi 4, Willpower, Cun, Presence 4, Int 2. And because of that int two we start that encounter at short with a cool init check.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6itNSR7CndFbENhY215T1VDVDQ/view?usp=sharing

Well, I guess we ARE doing modded weapons, then.

Meet Otto Fyre:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzUPTo88wdKGYVQzRXhnVXVaRUk/view?usp=sharing

Otto rolls 4 yellow, 1 green as a base. If he stops and takes a moment to True Aim (which he can do as an incidental if he's at short range) he upgrades the check twice in addition to the Boost he already gets. His gun does 13 damage base, has Pierce 1, and accurate 2.

So, going up against Mr 8 soak Inquisitor (fight those often, do you?), he aims twice (once as an incidental) and Braces once (taking 2 strain). The subsequent check looks a little like this:

http://game2.ca/eote/?montecarlo=100000#proficiency=5&ability=1&boost=4&challenge=2&setback=4

Now, his soak+reflect puts him riiiight at 13 total soak (after Pierce), so essentially every net success is damage done here. 50% of the time he's doing 5 or more damage, so we'll call it at 5. Also about 50% of the time, he'll get 5+ Advantage, so we'll assume 6 (with the auto advantage). I decided not to be a TOTAL powergamer and left Jury rig alone.

At this rate, he's doing 15 damage to Inquisitor Soakface, an enemy you made specifically to counter him and that no group will realistically face as a regular encounter. And you know what the best part is?

Otto is 50 xp shy of the gunslinger.

At this point, he could fully give in to the Munchkin Side and take a career like Gunner that will give him Jury rig (and later, access to 2 more ranks of True Aim). With Jury Rig, that damage goes to 30 and Inquisitor Soakface, an encounter designed specifically to beat Autofire, gets wasted in one round. Meanwhile, your Gunslinger can't hit anything outside Short, can't hit multiple targets, and relies on weapons that are heavily Restricted.

OR, Otto could just shrug and spend the XP on Slicer and 2 ranks in computers. Suddenly, he's a pretty decent slicer with 3 yellows to toss around, he has a decent Medicine check...who cares that he can't clear an entire stacked boss fight in one round? He's putting out 18x3= 54 damage on a regular basis, distributed as desired among enemies, AND he's a good slicer!

In other words, the Combat Decker is outperforming the Street Sam. THAT is what is too much. I hope this helps you figure it out.

Fight those often do you? - Last time they came as a pair, until the assassin droid disarmed them with his disrupter and thus took away their ability to reflect, they proved rather annoying. Though they had double bladed lightsabers instead of the guard shoto. But hey, they were two + support instead of one and we had a whole group … well we had a full group at the start of the encounter. So, it is an actual real game table example.

Your Otto has btw an issue. His loses his init check most of the time and gets down in turn 1 by Mr. Soaky Inquisitor. Meanwhile Mr. Gunslinger prevents his opponent from engaging in first turn if he wins his init check and with two extra success thanks to rapid reactions he does this nearly always. So better spend those left xp on pushing vigilance and cool.

Next the rifle you build has clumbersome 3, but otto has brawn 2. Usually you compensate this with a weapon sling, which comes with the advantage to actually draw your weapon, which cost you maneuver instead. So you lose upgrade your pool once and two boost dice. Your 50% chance for 5 success goes down to 25%, the chance for having 5+ or more advantages is in the ballpark of 35%. And now the fun part. You math is a little off. If you have a 50% chance for 5 success and a 50% chance for 5+ advantages than you have a 25% chance to have both at the same time . If we reduce the success to 2.5 than even jurry rigged will not help you as would require 7+ advantages so you can not safely say that if you overachieve one of the requirements it automatically compensates for under-achieving the other.

http://game2.ca/eote/?montecarlo=100000#proficiency=5&ability=1&boost=4&challenge=2&difficulty=1&setback=4

Lastly, being 50 xp shy of Mr. Gunslinger is nice and dandy, but if you are 45 xp shy of getting jurry rigged and about 50 to 100 xp shy of achieving a safe initiative win, it is not really enforcing your point. Otto is just as dead as Gunny when Soaky hits first.

Even more ironic it goes when you say something like this after applying enough XP to Otto to finish another career with Otto: " Meanwhile, your Gunslinger can't hit anything outside Short, can't hit multiple targets, and relies on weapons that are heavily Restricted." If you want compare future perspectives, the Gunslinger takes a few ranks of lethal blows and gets spitfire, a pair of HH-50s and can hit rather easy for 40 damage per turn himself or draw a pair of equalizers, legal and all and with a crit rating of 1, which compensates for losing vicious 3 easily. Add another spec like you did for Otto, for example Assassin and Gunny can deal with two Inquisitors in one turn. Unlike disruptor pistols you get range medium too that way ;-)

Furthermore, while Otto is shooting with his auto-fire rifle against larger groups and decimates them quite effectively, Gunny just throws a ranged light grenade into the back, which is still covered by his skill and even deadly accuracy. So the future perspectives do seem rather rosy too as gunslinger is synergizing with a good amount of specs rather well too. Is it possible that in your focus on one thing, especially when checking potential growth and options, you completely lose track that growth is option for the "opposing" side as well? And you ignore the alternative scenarios as well, which against works out for the gunslinger rather nice too.

Anyway, I would love to go into more detail, because I am still not given up to make you less dismissive of other "op" options, you seem sometimes so obsessive about one "broken" thing that you ignore all other options. Still gtg, breakfast is calling on this beautiful monday, have an excellent day.

edit: I run the dicecalc a little ( https://github.com/bknowles/EotE-Dice-Probability )

Here btw the chance for your 5 Success (or better) with 5 advantages (or better), just 2.66%, it funny how each advantage basically reduce the chance for a success and vis versa …

++++RESULTS for Dice Pool: PPPPPACCDBBBBSSSS++++
Total Chance of Success: 82.23%
Total Chance of Advantage: 83.17%
Total Chance of Threat: 9.18%
Total Chance of Failure Symbol: 9.19%
Total Chance of Reaching Target (SSSSSAAAAA): 2.66%
Total Triumph Chance: 35.28%
Total Despair Chance: 15.97%
+++++++++++++++

Now we could start to write down all possible lower combinations like 1 success & 20 advantages, 2 succes & 10 advantages, 3 success & 6 advantages, 4 success & 5 advantagesm and run it through Brad's and Neolitheon'S calc to see the absolute chance.

(S = Success; A = Advantage )

SSAAAAAAAAAA = 0.23%

SSSAAAAAA = 10.14%

SSSSAAAA = 9.92%

SSSSSSAA = 3.73%

SSSSSSSA = 3.04%

SSSSSSSSSS = 0.07%

Overall chance = 27.11%, those are numbers with jury rigged. If you replace the banta-eye with a weapon sling it gets a little better, but not in significant ways. I assume that you can aim three times and that the incidental aim does not count to the limit of 2 maneuvers per turn.

Well, I was assuming the character in question is going first. After all, those initiative slots are shared by the party . We COULD assume the Inquisitor goes first, but in that case you getting to assume we start at Short (the absolute limit of your range) is a bunch of drek. Int 2 doesn't mean gibbering retard.

6 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

Though they had double bladed lightsabers instead of the guard shoto

Wow. For real? You literally took an end boss fight from your group and modified it even further and you're pretending that's a legit scenario? C'mon, man.

Good catch on the weapon sling, for some reason I had out Brace as having that effect. So, swap out the ability to incidentally Aim for just manually Aiming twice, and we're right back at the same roll.

Also, those stats are off the die roller. You'll also notice I didn't bother accounting for Triumphs, which will essentially count as free extra hits. It's not perfectly precise, but it's about what you can expect on average. Roll it yourself a few times.

6 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

Lastly, being 50 xp shy of Mr. Gunslinger is nice and dandy, but if you are 45 xp shy of getting jurry rigged and about 50 to 100 xp shy of achieving a safe initiative win, it is not really enforcing your point. Otto is just as dead as Gunny when Soaky hits first.

As said before, initiative is done by the whole party, and given to the party beatstick. Assuming you need to win an Initiative roll in this scenario is as asinine as an enemy that willingly walks into the very Short range of your guns for you. Oh wait, you did that too.

Also, something that that should occurred to you:

There is a Disruptor Rifle .

Everything that Otto put into being good at Autofire, also makes him good with said Rifle. Likely to hit (more likely to hit than the Gunslinger, by 10%, but you left that out I noticed), easily able to get a crit with +80 (40 base for the gun, 10 from Lethal Blows, 30 from 3 additional crits) that will cripple the Inquisitor and end the fight. Literally everything that you hinged this entire fight on (being able to supercrit) is something that Otto can do as well, easily.

6 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

because I am still not given up to make you less dismissive of other "op" options,

You "OP option" requires over 20,000 credits of specialized equipment and 150xp sunk into making them do anything at all, and still suffers from range problems, struggles to deal with groups, and (again) relies on access to HIGHLY illegal gear. Meanwhile, I've spent 100 XP, can hit out to Extreme with a maneuver, and can wipe multiple Minion groups out in a single turn WITHOUT blasting craters into the surrounding landscape--all with a 3,000 credit rifle . Of course I'm dismissive of your "OP option," it is objectively worse in every way, shape, and form than a build that requires less XP and credits to run!

Edit: I should probably state this for added clarity: I am in no way suggesting I'd be cool with Mr. Disruptor at my table. He'd be very...disruptive (rimshot) because both the pistol and rifle version are...kinda nuts. It's just that it is in no way OP because of Gunslinger, any more than Sharpshooter is OP because of Autofire. Both Autofire and Disruptor weapons were probably designed by the same guy at FFG. The main difference between them is that Disruptor weapons are Restricted, so they are much more difficult to get ahold of, expensive (and the base cost of disruptor weapons is a pretty penny to begin with!), and...well, there's only the two of them. Autofire, on the other hand, shows up on generic weapons AND gives more bang for your buck. It's a common situation vs. an uncommon one, and the uncommon one still doesn't measure up, which is why you don't see many "Disruptors are too powerful threads!"

<double post, please delete>

Remove all the mods, use just Base unrestricted Weapons THEN see if Autofire is OP or not...

Mods make the twinky factor WAY higher...if I ever run a Game of my own I will be banning a lot of mods and Crafting Classes in Favor of having a game that is more balanced and more focus on ROLE-play than ROLL-play. I hate that I'd have to do that but I know the people I routinely game with and I know me..8P

56 minutes ago, GandofGand said:

Remove all the mods, use just Base unrestricted Weapons THEN see if Autofire is OP or not...

Mods make the twinky factor WAY higher...if I ever run a Game of my own I will be banning a lot of mods and Crafting Classes in Favor of having a game that is more balanced and more focus on ROLE-play than ROLL-play. I hate that I'd have to do that but I know the people I routinely game with and I know me..8P

Mods can be a mixed bag. Sometimes they can be used to min-max the shite out of something, but other times they can provide a bit of flavor and progression instead of just ditching the gun entirely. As with everything, they should be subject to GM approval.

Agreed and while I don't want to ban ALL mods; things like, telescopic scopes, silencers and slings are okay but certain combinations or options....meh, in reality I'd have to not abuse things, or start dumping loads of Setback dice on them...as has been mentioned before.

1. That two inquisitor encounter was not by any stretch of the imagination a boss fight, it actually was an filler encounter after one of the force users did draw too much attention to the group, they tried to ambush us, we tried to ambush them and after my pilot rolled a despair on his stealth check both groups stumbled into each other. It was basically just there to spice up a shopping, preparation and investigation session with some consequences from reckless force use in a prior session. More like inquisitors of the week. And don't think that you need reflect for that much damage absorbtion, one of our players considered playing a soak 13 wookie marauder.
2. Now you want to use leech from the initiative roll from … for example that gunslinger in the group, to shoot first, but with less effect.
3. And you want to shoot with an disruptor rifle instead, to proof that autofire is imba,
4. while pointing at all the disadvantages from disruptor pistols and do not have think for a second about the possibility to grab another pistole, despite am having pointed out the flexibility of the gunslinger in his weapon choice
5. And ignoring the second encounter example, which is still solvable easily for the gunslinger thanks to his range light skill while the sharpshooter´, even when grabbing a disrupter rifle would have no chance to deal with the minions.
6. Still, according to you, the option which solves both common encounter occurrences, though nemesis characters and attached minion group without relying on external help. Sounds very gunslinger to me …
7. Lately, and that is the only thing that really annoy me when we two argue about some stuff is that you still claim to be absolutely in the right, right after you decided that your example character for imba autofire is using a disrupter rifle for that case. Shall we make it a carabine and add the splitfire talent as well, so that you can throw a grenade into the minion group on top to deal with example two as well?
8. Carrying a disruptor rifle and a heavy blaster rifle is already encumbrance 11, meanwhile grenades have to much encumbrance for you. Two disruptor pistols, two hh-50 and a spore B stun grenade is encumbrance 11 too. And unlike the heavy rifles you can conceal all the pistols, rather well actually considering that they fit into concealment holsters and are a lot harder to spot to begin with.

Look, I never tried to say autofire weapons are not great and especially versatile weapons which are a great backup plan when you don't have specialized gear. I was trying to say that that there are a lot of tools for the right job and gunslinger especially great to use them. I was as well pointing out several times that two crit kills often compensate easily for two to four autofire hits against minion groups or groups of rivals. So what I am trying to say is that your looking rather one sided on the matter and seem to blank out any factors which contradict your view on the matter, at least during the discussion.

Let's take 44 damage per action for example, applied via 4 hits with 11 damage each, that's indeed not an unreasonable damage number with an autofire rifle. I hope you agree on that number. Lets use the classical stormtrooper minion group against that:

They have soak 5, ht 5, you need 11 damage to take one out and thus you take out 4 minions with that volley of autofire, maybe hurting a 5th if you got some pierce on top. Now a gunslinger with two equalizers, classical model for crit rating one, deals minimum 13 and 9 damage with his two shots and takes another two out via two critical hits. That is as well four stormtroopers taken out for 4 advantages and maybe a little bit less damage on a fifth.

Let's say the rifle was better, heavy blaster rifle, spin barrel, weapon sling, superior, a pretty standard modded riffle, even jury rigged on top, base damage 14 instead. With 4 hits we get now to 60 damage instead (one success), and take out 6 stormtroopers instead. That is clearly better, but has shown previously it comes still with disadvantages in other areas, like weapon concealment, harder to reach the advantages and less stopping power against heavy soak.

Or so I would like to say, but there is one issue with my math above : This requires the minions to be each one a separate group, but once they are grouped you need instead just 5 damage to kill one stormtrooper after the initial 10 for the first, you do not need either to exceed the WT, but instead just reach it while those minions are grouped, this means the damage needed to kill a stormtrooper decreases by over 50% after the first one, something which devalues critical hits against them massively. When correctly applied the minion rules those 60 damage do instead kill two minions per hit, except for the last minion in the group which needs one extra damage to exceed the minion groups combined WT if pierce = 0. And those 60 damage with pierce 2 take flat out 9 minions if there is a minion group big enough, it applies 48 damage to a single minion group. If there are those recommend three groups of 3, those 60 damage take out 6 minions.

Meanwhile the gunslingers 13 damage with pierce 3 and a crit takes out a whole minion group of 3 stormtroopers, and could takes out two of the second group, leaving the 2nd group with 13/15 wounds. And against a larger 10 minion group with a WT 50 it becomes just 11+5+7+5 damage, so 28 / 50 or exactly the same amount of damage.

That is indeed an issue balance if large minion groups are a common enemy. It gets diminished if you pick your minion group sizes wisely, Definitely something to consider. Depending on the group arrangement and how the damage plays out in detail you can have an damage advantage of just 9.375% for the autofire weapon or 44% in damage done.

And now, before you say it, autofire weapons do scale rather nicely with extra success as you multiply the damage from each success, meanwhile their scaling works in the opposite direction against soak and defense, that is one of the reason why they work so amazingly against low quality minions, no defensive abilities to speak of nor special soak values either, they are bullet sponges and that is exactly where autofire shines. But the side people seem often to forget is that rolling lots of success with lots of advantage is a rare thing, because most side of the dice have one or the other.

Lastly, I just noticed that your dice pool forgot as well to increase the difficulty for using autofire. So you literally forgot to increase the difficulty by two. I am sure that was an accident, but it further reduces to "50% chance to …" even less than 2.5%.

1 hour ago, SEApocalypse said:

That two inquisitor encounter was not by any stretch of the imagination a boss fight, it actually was an filler encounter

At this point, I think it's safe to say that you're not playing the same game the rest of us are playing.

Just now, Benjan Meruna said:

At this point, I think it's safe to say that you're not playing the same game the rest of us are playing.

That is something which I was saying all along. Especially when people mention their low credits campaigns. ;-)

Though the points and math stands. And it makes me wonder what are your normal combat encounters for 500xp gained groups?

On the one hand, I do think that auto-fire is not properly balanced for the rest of this game.

On the other hand, I don’t think that it is the most OP thing in the game.

Moreover, I believe that there are ways that the GM can moderate how bad auto-fire can be, especially when the players understand that anything the PCs can do could also be done by NPCs.

So, if they don’t want to have the entire party wiped out by a Terminator firing a mini-gun from a building at them, then maybe they might want to hold back a bit on going down that road themselves.

7 hours ago, bradknowles said:

On the one hand, I do think that auto-fire is not properly balanced for the rest of this game.

On the other hand, I don’t think that it is the most OP thing in the game.

I would say that it's probably the most common and accessible OP thing in the game, both in terms of credits, equipment, and XP needed to get some use out of it. I AM curious to hear what the most OP thing is, I want to see if I've encountered it before.

5 hours ago, Benjan Meruna said:

I would say that it's probably the most common and accessible OP thing in the game, both in terms of credits, equipment, and XP needed to get some use out of it. I AM curious to hear what the most OP thing is, I want to see if I've encountered it before.

My personal top 10, most certainly incomplete and heavily focus on offense, when stuff like a bodyguard team-up of Soretsu defenders becomes nearly untouchable too, but the whole discussion was so focus on offensive that I would like to keep it that way:

1. Mechanic 5/7 pool and perfect tools for placing charges, combined with proton grenades and a few ranks selective detonations might be on top of that last. It basically wiping out the whole area while arranging the shockwaves in away which avoid certain spots were you and your allies standing. If you are willing to spend a little extra time, going in with a jetpack or vehicle, playing charges and leaving the area or just sneaking in an prepare the charges in advanced works like a charm and transfers your ship's mechanic into a destructive force and weapon of mass destruction.
   
   The worst part is that it is extremely hard to deal with the rules make placing charges so quick, which leaves little room to react to it. Furthermore with the price for charges as low as 50 credits per charge for detonite and 60 credits per charge for proton grenade charges, it is not a cost factor either.
   
2. Second place would be starships. Why face an villain in his head quarter when you can bombard his HQ with turbolaser fire and proton bombs instead. Why infiltrate a building through the ventilation shafts when you can just create a new entrance in the 271st floor and take out the first two rooms of henchmen in one go with parts of the outer facade.
   
   This can be dealt rather easily, it is basically merely a change of encounter type from personal to planetary scale as actions like this will not go unnoticed. Furthermore a ship in a city which runs without transponder code will attract attention, while constantly changing and altering is a lot of trouble for the PCs, so players will be sparsely burning IDs to prevent creating new "Ghost stories" (KtP, p.63) about their own prefered ship type.
   
3. Ground based vehicles. As if bringing a tank would be better than bringing a starship!? Well, actually it is, because at least escape routes are much more limited now and you can not just leave the planet to avoid the heat.
   
4. Crafting, it starts with building 600 credits elimination directive monotask droids and ends up with special deliveries via remotes which can bring explosives directly into the heart of your enemies to clear the way.
   
   Hug me, because I am da bomb!
   
5. Force move. Throw them into the air and just watch them fall. As the recent developer answer clarified that "slow moving" means at speeds of at least 36 kilometers per hour (assuming that extreme range starts somewhere around 600m), we end up with the ability to just move targets up into the air and drop them in open air encounters or smash them against each other other. This makes as well the first appearance of autofire quality as it is an major contributor to the power level.
   
6. Grenades, Mini-Torpedos, Micro-Missiles and similar explosives. If the thermal detonator would not cost 2,000 credits they would be higher up on the list, if they would not be perfectly valid to use as secondary weapon for two-weapon combat they would lower in the list. But as it stands anyone with quick-draw and ranged light can just draw them out as an incidentally and throw them without any warning and creating massive damage against groups of enemies standing too close to each other. With Range Heavy you can have them in an under-barrel launcher or on a wrist or shoulder mounted weapon slot. They comes extremely handy when fighting in buildings or starships because the natural counter of just spreading out becomes basically unavailable in such environments. Furthermore and this is what keeps them above the more universal autofire weapons is the ability to cause a great deal of special effects. From Concussive to stun, from applying poisonous gas to an area to armor breaching qualities, there is always the right grenade for the job.
   
   This should be dealt most easily with just spreading out at medium or even long-ranges. Still, blast stays a blast to use in many circumstances, your players need just to bring the right grenade in the right moment.
   
7. Disruptor weapons, from the T7 over the Rifle down to those sweet, easy to conceal encumbrance 2 Pistols, they all come with the ability to main an opponent after just barely touching them. Dealing one point of damage and applying a single crit is enough. The target becomes automatically at least maimed or worse. This goes a long way with crit builds and jury rigging the crit rating of the weapon down to one, creating true assassins who will usually reach that magical 151+ critical hit result with just one hit against basically anything.
   
   This can be dealt rather easily with abandoning the absurd videogame trope of boss encounters. If there is not this single adversary to overcome in battle than the ability to kill a single target becomes a lot less meaningful even when it still comes extremely handy when dealing with tough opponents.
   
8. Autofire Rifles with Jury Rigging. Raw, pure numbers, overwhelming wounds per action and universal usefulness. There are many weapons, but non is as universal useful in combat encounters as this one.
   
   Now they can be dealt by either balancing the encounter around more specialized solutions or by simply making disarming or destroying the weapon a priority. "Nice rifle you got, would be a shame if something happens to it" (Sunder). They have somewhat of a weakness high soak targets, be it by means of armor or by means of the reflect talent. They are still, outside of maybe move the most universal weapon on the list.
   
9. Lightsaber and other melee, especially when combined with stuff like saber swarm and hawk bat swoop. There are multiple paths to follow, from going with ataru for extreme pure damage to going with crit builds which do the same as the disrupters, and all that comes with extreme defensive options thanks to reflect. Force Powers or Equipment can compensate partly for the big downside of needing to engage your targets first, and if you reach your soak 15 by means of reflect or ranks in endurance, armor, etc does matter little. You just need this high values to survive initial hits while you move to your targets. If you take them down when you reach them by wounds or critical hits is a flavor of the build, vibro-weapons, especially crafted ones doe extremely well with the crit-builds while the breach of lightsabers give you an option to apply large amounts of wounds even past heavy soak values. One of the strengths of this is that it can combine survivability with offensive power of various degrees.
   
   The easiest counter to those types is just give those players something to play like themselves. High Soak, Melee characters, which can prevent other melee characters from just passing them via engaging them. Disengage is a maneuver and thus just engaging another character heavily hinders them from moving around the battlefield. Now crit builds stop that type easy enough too and autofire can wear them down, but usually players don't build a guy with a giant axt because they want to get into gunfights, so giving the player what he wants, a worthy melee opponent sounds like a good plan.
   
10. High Damage weapons. Stuff like the Heavy Verpine Shatter rifle and other (mostly) personal scale gunnery weapons. They do extremely well if you can maintain the distance to your targets and just outrange them, they are versatile in context of coming usually with breach or high peirce values. In case of the Shatter rifle knockdown and low crit ratings mean as well that your target basically never has a chance to reach you and the crits can help at least a little against minions and add stopping power against nemesis type characters.
    
    They do mostly poorly against groups of rivals as they take out one at a time.

I might have given lightsabers and melee maybe not enough credit, those crit builds are damage wise even superior to disrupters, especially has force jump makes moving the battlefield so easy and gaining a defense of 3 or 4 becomes, and shotgun style blast weapons did not make the list, maybe they should have as the anything with blast can hit quite the large amount of targets in the right circumstances. But the correct order is not important imho, as all those options reign superior in their niches anyway.

Still the most powerful tool in the hands of Players is their creativity. Nothing changes the balance of a game and encounters more. This applies to any RPG. You have planned a cave full of goblins as encounter for your players, but your players instead get some gasoline and a match and turn the encounter into a "smoke them out", including deadly traps along the way, which were supposed to be a hindrance for your players.

Still, this is the great part of RPGs, changing the environment and playing on your own conditions instead of following some pre-written script, but it certainly is the most powerful tool in the arsenal of players.

I'll be sticking to my Paired Dragoons on my Gambler/Gunfighter/Pilot...suits the concept and gives me a modicum of combat effectiveness...without going super-cheesy...8)

But I also like characters that are capable in a multiple area and not just one...get to be involved in more scenes and never get bored!

I agree that AutoFire is an exceedingly powerful tool that can result in the escalation of encounters. If your an Age of Rebellion group or a commando unit who gets into frequent contact with the overwhelming power of the empire? Sure, then having a weapon that can overwhelm groups of stormtroopers at a time is mighty handy to have around, especially if the party is required to spilt up on a regular basis to accomplish goals. In a smuggling campaign however and from an encounter design perspective it is difficult to design encounters that prove interesting challange to the party without potentially making everyone keeping their heads down. In a Force and Destiny campaign an autofire user can be an extremely unwelcome introduction to anything involving a nemesis type inquisitor as the autofire user only needs to point his garden hose in the general direction of the target and fire until dead. Somewhat anti-climatic.

Thus I can conclude that ranged heavy auto-fire is an unbalanced part of this game unless exceedingly well managed and should not be available for all campaigns.

One example I observed of late was that a couple of players had really powerful blaster rifles that could deal 12 damage and had a pierce of around 16, and another dealt 16 and had a pierce of 6. The former also had access to an overfire weapon, so my DM designed an encounter with this in mind that featured 4 death troopers (each a rival) 4 stormtrooper groups and an officer. This was after several other encounters so the stims had been largely used and a couple of the party were suffering crits. In addition not everyone was there, as one other autofire gunner had gone off on a tangent (tried to take on a tank, lost a leg and stole a shuttle and legged it.) and another was outside in a starviper trying to hold off imperial forces from attacking our grounded star fighters. This encounter might have worked if the party were together, but the three players that were there took one look into the room, at their intiviative scores that they largely tanked in and was like "nope, theres no way we can fight our way through all that." Thankfully we had a baradium charge that was chucked into the room and turned it all to star dust, because having 9 different targets, 8 of which acting on two slots would have probably annihilated the entire squad after the first PC had rolled.

The lesson is autofire is an escalation game, it's fine if used in moderation as a epic set piece or as a limited resource but without good houseruling and encounter design it rapidly becomes a game of rocket tag; the first side to dump their load wins because offensive attacks are designed to be inherently more effective then defence dice.

Intresting diskcussions, have the autofire OP been solved by any known house rule or has other options made it more less optimal?

35 minutes ago, Silke said:

Intresting diskcussions, have the autofire OP been solved by any known house rule or has other options made it more less optimal?

Only one hit of an Auto-fire attack can be allocated per target (exception: Minion groups which can have one hit allocated per Minion). Result: Auto-fire no longer surgically cuts down a specific Riv, Nemesis, or PC with a single attack. Instead, it spreads the hurt around.