If you fire in melee, you get a -20 penalty and there is a chance you hit your ally.

If you opt to hose the meleeing guys with autofire instead of a carefully aimed pot shot, you actually have LESS chance to hit the wrong guy cause you get a +20 bonus. However, this seems unrealistic. Unloading without restraint in a vicious melee would suggest you risk a bigger chance of hitting your friend with at least some of the bullets.

Also what if your ally is in melee with two or more adversaries? Or two allies with one opponent? Do the chances of hitting the wrong ones change?

I believe there's an optional rule where if you're shooting into a melee and get more than 1 hit you have to allocate at least 1 to each person engaged in that melee. p. 196 of the Core book, I believe.

The Laughing God said:

First of all, I suppose you mean firing INTO melee not IN (which is not allowed as per the latest unofficial clarification).

Secondly, FA would not make less chance to hit your ally. just greater chance for it not to be a miss. The exception would be if you get your modified BS to 100 or more.

And as Flail bot said: A sensible optional rule makes SA and FA very likely to hit allies in melee, in fact it is automatic if you get more than a single hit.

This is a special device you can install in weapon and program with profile of allies. If a shot would hit an ally normally, it won't with this device which counts as a sight.

Letrii said:

The item you speak of is in Ascension I believe.

Spoor Targeter

p 146 Ascension

from france

unofficial clarification are sadly just that unofficial. but for me the point is again if you want a cinematical (john woo ?) way aof gaming or more RAW.

if you allowed a cinematic gaiming that you can choose to shoot in mélée bu tin this case i strongly believe that you have half chance to hit your allies than your ennemies because mélée is too fluide.

Maybe I should go for a house rule that says that when you use semi or full auto on a target in melee, each other combatant should get at least an additional hit if you score them.

So if you shoot at a target locked in melee with one opponent, and you get two additional hits, at least one of them should be on the other guy. If you get no additional hits, you don't need to assign him one.