The game balance is basically out of whack for these two firing modes. In nearly all cases there is no reason why you'd opt for Semi-Auto given a choice between it and Full-Auto, and in most cases (yes, the Accurate Errata in 3.0 has helped this somewhat), no reason you'd want to use Single fire over Full-Auto. Furthermore, the profiles of these fire modes are completely divorced from reality; wildly spraying bullets doesn't actually help your chances to hit a target save at the very closest ranges; if anything it hurts them dramatically, and this is precisely why servicemen fire fully automatic weapons in short controlled bursts (and the M16A2 standard issue features a burst limiter), which generally offer the best trade-off between lethality, ammo consumption and accuracy as concluded by the US Military after exhaustive study. To this end I've come up with these changes, using 'Semi-Auto' as a stand in for burst fire:

• Semi-Auto and Full-Auto fire modes do not enjoy bonuses to hit.
• Semi-Auto now hits an additional time per degree of success up to the maximum number of shots fired.
• Full-Auto now doubles all bonuses and penalties to hit due to Range. Further, Basic and Pistol class weapons firing on Full-Auto suffer a -20 penalty to hit unless properly Braced (either against an object or while Prone) or the target is within Point Blank Range. If Kneeling or Prone, reduce this penalty to -10.
• And a rip from Rogue Trader: A character can move up to their Agility Bonus in Metres while firing a Pistol or Basic class weapon on Semi or Full-Auto (modify as appropriate depending on stance). Firing a weapon on Full-Auto in this way incurs a -10 penalty to hit.

The summary effect of these changes is to improve the realism of the various firemodes while simultaneously making them more balanced against each other, Semi-Auto offering firepower markedly superior to the Single shot albeit at a greater cost in time. In turn Semi-Auto features greater flexibility and mobility than the Full-Auto firemode, which compensates with superior lethality when braced and at close/point blank range, in addition to providing access to Overwatch and Suppressing Fire.

There are plenty of times I'd rather be using the single shot on my Stub-Autos then my burst fire. Such as if I'm just trying to take someone down and not kill, or if I only have one shot left. Should I also use more then one shot on someone who's behind cover? That's a waste of ammunition.

And also, most guns that are BEST on Full Auto only GET full auto. I personally don't know of a gun that does all three. And you know what, if I'm facing down a heretic with no armor, I'm not gonna waste 10 bullets on him, I'm only gonna use 3-5, cause I KNOW unless he's got some kinda crazy badness, he's gonna go down in that amount.

Also: What does better damage? a hand full of hits from a full auto burst, or a full round aimed hunting rifle shot with 3 extra damage dice?

Concerning your first point, it should be noted that I said Full-Auto is typically preferable and superior. Attempting to debilitate someone with lethal weaponry is the definition of situational, as is having a single shot remaining (additionally, the latter does not efface the desirability/superiority of Full-Auto, so much as it restricts you to single fire).

As for targets behind cover, yes, it actually is often a good idea to use Full-Auto fire over alternate modes. Why? Substantial bonus to hit, multiple chances to penetrate (which in turn also reduces the AP of the cover several times) and/or hit exposed areas for damage. Called shots to pick out exposed areas furthermore feature substantial to-hit penalties.

With respect to taking down unarmoured cultists, assuming said cultist can retaliate and harm you, or otherwise needs to be disposed of as quickly as possible, Full Auto is best. Why? Because an average human has around 11 Wounds, and a Toughness Bonus of 3. A typical firearm has an average damage of 8.5 (1d10+3), and wildly variable outputs that are evenly distributed, which makes it rather unreliable (exactly the same chance of rolling minimal damage, as rolling average damage or a 10). After adjusting for the cultist's Toughness Bonus, that damage is now 5.5, which means the Cultist can sustain 3 hits before he starts to face the possibility of incapacitation or death. Between this, the fact that Full-Auto grants a +20 bonus to hit, and that you're hard pressed until mid-late in your career to enjoy even a 50% chance of hitting without modifiers, and it becomes readily apparent that Full-Auto is preferable here.

Furthermore, Semi-Auto, while potentially supplying just enough bullets to land the kill/incapacitation, is substantially less reliable as A: the bonus to hit is reduced by 10, and B: you need 2 degrees of success as opposed to 1 to score an additional hit, making it rather unlikely that it can take said Cultist down before you are subject to retaliation/consequences.

As for the Hunting Rifle, Full-Auto from something that deals comparable damage is better unless you're facing a heavily armoured and/or high Toughness opponent, all other things (such as Ballistic's Skill) being equal. While the 'Accurate' Trait does help narrow the gulf, it alone is insufficient. This is because:

#1: The Hunting Rifle and other Accurate weapons deal only 1d10 more damage per 2 degrees of success. An Autogun as an example, deals a full 1d10+3 per degree of success.

#2: The Hunting Rifle has a cap of two (2) additional d10 at 4 degrees of success. All Full-Auto weapons repeat their base damage 4 times with that many degrees of success, and can typically hit 2 or more times beyond that. The final tally assuming 4 degrees of success? 19.5 Damage vs 42.5. Granted at 6 or more total damage reduction, the Aimed Shot will do more damage with less ammo, but barring that, Full-Auto is king. Further, the better weapons get in terms of base damage and penetration, the higher the aggregate damage reduction of an opponent needs to be before the Aimed Shot proves superior.

#3: Full-Auto can strike multiple targets simultaneously.

It should also be noted that the 'Accurate' Trait is relatively rare and not found on most weapons.

Kylen said:

It's an extra two dice of damage maximum, for a total of three with most weapons. Though, with a full round aim you're looking +20, +10 for accurate on top of that, so stands a decent chance of scoring those extra dice.

One of the aspects of semi- and full-auto fire people overlook is the ability to hit multiple opponents if available. There are stipulations for this within the rules for those two actions.

As for your house rules; Lasers, they are well thought out and succinct. I will not be using them for my own games. If I wanted realism, I wouldn't be playing a Science Fiction horror type game with sorcerers and psychics in it. I would go back to playing games like Living Steel were the designers had TOO much knowledge of real world physics and ballistics; and you had to determine the hit and deflection angles, penetration and damage on not just every round fired, but every pellet from a shotgun shell.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Keep in mind the primary goal of these houserules is actually to balance the fire modes against each other; realism is a secondary objective and a byproduct of this improvement to balance.

To be fair, Kylen's character makes brutally effective use of single shot and burst fire. Granted he is an Assassin that specializes in guns, but it is not exactly uncommon from what I have seen (Scum and Guardsmen also seem to have a real knack for this stuff). His favoured weapons are 1) A pair of Armsman-10 stubautos (single/semi) 2) Nomad rifle (single accurate) 3) a pair of chain knives 4) Mirker's Greaves (for kicking!)

Want to play sniper on a budget? Basic hunting rifle in the core book. Relatively cheap and easy to find. Load dumdum or manstopper for special targets if you care enough, or "basic lead, in the head"

Got a few connections? Longlas is your friend! Slap an overcharge or hotshot powerpack in this professional bad-boy and you are good to go.

Got absurd connections, big piles of cash and a little time? The Nomad weapons system or some other custom job is just the ticket. Heck, an "Angelis" boltgun with decent optics would be absolute murder with aimed single fire!

If you want to open up some more shooting options you could house-rule that pistol class weapons with the accurate trait also benefit from extra damage for well placed shots. Several pistols in the IH are accurate. Even if you DON'T house rule this they are still good guns. Pop a red-dot sight onto an accurate pistol, take a half-action aim and pull the trigger.... Suddenly those "called shot: left nostril" are not so impossible. Cover only counts if the shot goes through it.

The other big drawbacks for full auto are rather obvious: Rapid ammo consumption and the dreaded "jam"! The Autopistol and Autogun (the most common full auto weapons used in DH) both run dry in three turns of fire assuming you don't jam the thing first. A Lasgun firing on burst can fire for 20 continuous turns on a single powercell and is VERY unlikely to fail.

Characters with the Hip Shooting talent are also more likely to make use of single fire to better exploit tactical opportunities!

The primary drawbacks for Full-Auto are easily mitigatable via Fire Selectors which effectively triple munitions, and simply purchasing a Good Quality variant of a weapon for the Reliable trait (which is often affordable), or selecting a weapon that has it to begin with (such as the Apocalypse Autogun or Hecuter) . In the unlikely event your Reliable weapon jams on a Full-Auto burst and you _really_ can't afford this, you can spend a Fate Point to reroll the Ballistic Skill Test. Moreover, its occasional inferiority versus high-armour/toughness or entrenched opponents as contrasted to Accurate quality single shots can be partially addressed via special rounds such as the Manstopper, or these may not functionally exist in the first place for higher powered Full-Auto weaponry (Autocannon, Hellguns, etc...), and/or with the benefit of damage enhancing talents like Mighty Shot. Granted, weapon/quality/ammo mods are elements distinct and seperate from Full-Auto, but they are important aspects which strongly contribute to its general supremacy.

In balance, when considering the mechanics and ruleset as a whole, I don't think it can be plausibly argued that Single or Semi-Auto fire modes, even with the new Accurate errata, are _overall_, competitive with Full-Auto.

Even if single shot can be justified by situations or accurancy, semi auto can't. It's inferior in every way but ammo consumption and even then most full auto weapons can offset this easily with rapid reload (if they bother), fire selectors and duplex clips.

So I appreciate the effort but I don't think it's clear what bonuses you're rules are taking into account from the RAW.

Face Eater said:

The fire-modes for my house rules are completely identical in every way to their RAW counterparts save for what is mentioned in the original post. To be more explicit:

• My Rules: Neither Full-Auto or Semi-Auto attacks enjoy a bonus to their Ballistic Skill Tests. RAW: Full-Auto attacks enjoy +20 on their Ballistic Skill Tests, Semi-Auto attacks enjoy +10 on their Ballistic Skill Tests.
• My Rules: Semi-Auto now hits an additional time per degree of success. RAW: Semi-Auto hits an additional time per 2 degrees of success.
• My Rules: Basic/Pistol class weapons using the Full-Auto fire mode suffer -20 to hit when unbraced, or -10 to hit when unbraced but Prone/Kneeling when firing at targets beyond Point Blank Range. RAW: Basic/Pistol class weapons using the Full-Auto fire mode do not suffer any penalty when unbraced regardless of distance from the target.
• My Rules: Characters can move up to their Agility Bonus in metres when making Full-Auto and Semi-Auto attacks. Full-Auto attacks suffer a -10 penalty to their Ballistic Skill Tests when a character making one moves in this way. RAW: Characters cannot move while making Full-Auto and Semi-Auto attacks.
• My Rules: Full-Auto attacks double all positive and negative modifiers due to Range. RAW: Full-Auto attacks do not modify Range modifiers.

This means that Semi-Auto now tends to be more useful on the fly, when a character wants to retain mobility, or is firing at a far off target; you can fire on the move and without Bracing (which takes a Half Action, and requires being Prone or having an object/cover to brace against) without penalties, and you do not double Range penalties. Moreover, all of these benefits can be had without giving up too many hits due to an additional shot now hitting for each degree of success rather than two as normal when using Semi-Auto.

However, when you have time to brace, you don't need to move around constantly, and your target is or will be at Close or Point Blank Range, Full-Auto clearly becomes a better choice, besides its Overwatch and Suppressive Fire options. It is also worth noting that at Close Range, the Full-Auto penalty is negated by the doubled Close Range bonus, while at Point Blank, a Full-Auto attack enjoys an effective +60 bonus to on its Ballistic Skill Test, even without Bracing.

With the Disabeling, not killing thingy:
We "developed" Rubberrounds: They do no Crtitical Damage (unless you pump the Guy full with it in the head!) but knock him unconcius when he shoud get 5th Critical wound...

A few notes on realism.

In Real World the problem with automatic fire with stuff like submachineguns or assault rifles (like M16A2) because the recoil is moving your barrel out of the line faster than you can adjust it. However, this is not always the case. Machineguns are famous (notorious?) for being exact opposite... They are heavier and thus have smaller recoil resulting in recoil being usually just big enough to spread the bullets, but not big enough to waste all or most bullets. With most machineguns you do actually hit the target easier than with single-shots. The same principle applies in part to assault rifles when the range is big enough. Since the recoil will usually lift the barrel (and thus the burst will end up with last shots going significantly higher than the first shots) you can actually increase your chance of hitting a target over a single shot since you can just deliberately aim low and let the recoil lift one or more bullets of the burst to right height.

Also there is a few other little things... Laser weapons don't have recoil and the beams are not affected by mistakes in range estimation. You hit exactly where the gun points, every time, all the time. In order to be "realistic" lasers should get a huge accuracy bonus on all fire modes and no penalty or bonus for automatic fire.

Also, with some modern-day weapons, they are designed to stabilise with extended bursts, therefore meaning that the longer the burst you fire, the more accurate the gun is. Why would this not be the same with automatic SP weapons in 40k?

Polaria said:

If it's accurate fireing a single shot then surely firing more of them (and each tracing a line to the hit point each time) with no recoil would be more accurate.

To be honest, las weapons would suddenly be balanced against higher rate of fire / better ammo weapons if they had a base bonus to hit.

Polaria said:

Awesome points.

Especially the bit about Las weapons. They should be inherently more accurate, not only because of the lack of recoil, but also because beams of coherent light are not affected by wind or, at least at the range of normal combat, gravity. The impact point doesn't change over distance, so you don't have to "zero-your-sights/scopes" to a certain range, and since the las-bolt travels at the speed of light, you don't have to adjust for movement at the range of personal combats.

And to give credit to another poster, that translates to much higher accuracy in my book (again, at the ranges of personal combat).

In Real World the problem with automatic fire with stuff like submachineguns or assault rifles (like M16A2) because the recoil is moving your barrel out of the line faster than you can adjust it. However, this is not always the case. Machineguns are famous (notorious?) for being exact opposite... They are heavier and thus have smaller recoil resulting in recoil being usually just big enough to spread the bullets, but not big enough to waste all or most bullets. With most machineguns you do actually hit the target easier than with single-shots. The same principle applies in part to assault rifles when the range is big enough. Since the recoil will usually lift the barrel (and thus the burst will end up with last shots going significantly higher than the first shots) you can actually increase your chance of hitting a target over a single shot since you can just deliberately aim low and let the recoil lift one or more bullets of the burst to right height.

Overall though, when it comes to assault rifles, burst fire generally provides the best tradeoff between accuracy and power. I agree with your point concerning machine guns; I would exempt Heavy weapons from the rule if not for the sake of balance (which again I find most important).

"Also there is a few other little things... Laser weapons don't have recoil and the beams are not affected by mistakes in range estimation. You hit exactly where the gun points, every time, all the time. In order to be "realistic" lasers should get a huge accuracy bonus on all fire modes and no penalty or bonus for automatic fire."

I agree with this, but it's beyond the purview of this specific houserule. That said, I have ruled in my game that Lasers do benefit from increased precision and accuracy (perhaps not to the extent they should enjoy, but again balance is the biggest consideration, I wanted to even them out versus SP mainly). I may post the house rules in this thread at a later point.

"Also, with some modern-day weapons, they are designed to stabilise with extended bursts, therefore meaning that the longer the burst you fire, the more accurate the gun is. Why would this not be the same with automatic SP weapons in 40k?"

I don't know of any rifle class weaponry that actually gets more accurate/likely to hit the longer your burst is. Either way, balance is the primary objective (realism is a nice aside).

Lasers said:

I think (and he can correct me if I'm wrong) but he's talking about weapons with either good muzzle brakes like the AK-74 or even with internal recoil absorbtion, although of these I don't know any that are past the developement stage yet (although there is a automatic shotgun which must be close as the've got hold of it for filming of Expendables and Predators) but I could be wrong.

I'm willing to belive the future rifles (which auto guns seem to be) are actually really good and take it into account (but not all sp weapons) but the innate benefits of las guns aren't taken into account.

I'm willing to bet though that recoil is still a factor, and not entirely nullified, thus significantly impacting full-auto accuracy.

Lasers said:

It's mostly current/future LMGs. They are partially designed to stabilise themselves for long bursts to make automatic fire a lot more accurate with them than small bursts.

Ah. Those are more along the lines of a Heavy weapon, which I do acknowledge as being exceptions, because they are explicitly designed around Full-Auto fire.

Depends on the size, however. Many of them are only slightly larger than normal rifle size, which would make them powerful basic weapons in 40k, given none of them (e.g. the M240) are near the size that the heavy stubbers or heavy bolters are in the 40k setting.

While that may be true, LMGs are operated in much the same way as heavy weapons in DH, typically being braced on a bipod while prone or set upon an object. I suspect that this is still recommended doctrine, even for those LMGs designed with stabilizers and recoil absorption.

In a way what advances in gunology have meant is that you can have a weapon that's as steady auto-firing as the original machine guns but in a much smaller package. They have found other ways to steady the weapon than just having and heavier barrel and sturdier tripod. Of course they still have smaller barrels and thus shorter range.

Obviously the best muzzel brake or heaviest tripod is never going to fully steady the barrel but at the end of the day, firing a lot more bullets more makes up for a bit of loss of single shot accuracy in most cases.

This would make sense if rules for Full/Semi-Auto differentiated depending on quality and make. Unfortunately the theory that stabilizers and other similar technologies are responsible for the Full/Semi-Auto bonuses really begins to break down when Volg Ripper-Clips (as one of many examples) that are cheaply made, largely improvised and clearly feature no advanced gunsmithery enjoy the same benefits from Full-Auto as a high quality Autogun.

I have a much simpler solution:

Las weapons that have "fluff" supporting full-auto modes gain full-auto modes (usually about double the burst rate). This leaves stubs and autos with a higher potential ROF in most cases and so possibly a few more hits on an extremely accurate/lucky shot, but the lasgun holds it's own due to longer combat endurance and lower odds of malfunction. In short: Gangers looking for fast, brutal shootouts pack solid guns. Professional thugs pack solid guns with fancy specialist ammo. Professional soldiers pack Lasguns.

In some cases I have also increased the Lasgun's penetration by one (they have a Pen 6 on the Tabletop. Good enough to ignore flimsy protection, but IG flak still has a chance to stop it)

Example:

Kantrael Pattern Lasgun (the ubiquitous Cadian IG rifle) Basic 100m 1/3/6 1D10+3 E Pen 1 Clip:60 Reliable

This plus the Mark III Lasgun are easily the most common rifles in the Imperium. They are in use for a reason.

Also of note: Lasguns in 40K have recoil. Pretty much all of the novels support this and the wargame makes no mention of recoil on ANY weapons. The common presence of massive armatures, bracing, support systems, massive hydraulic shocks and so on on the various models would tend to indicate that anything macho enough for 40K has recoil. Trooper Larkins (one of the snipers in the Gaunt's Ghosts series) even has a permanent bruise on his shoulder due to his routine use of hotshot packs in his Longlas. Adding "Accurate" to all lasguns renders sniper weapons obsolete except for a bit more range, so that is absolutely NOT a solution IMO.

I think you posted this in the wrong thread.