Out of Ammo and Shotguns

And the esteemed Jerry spoke....

From: "Jerry" <jerrym@cvzoom.net>
Subject: Re: Out of Ammo in FMA

Actually this whole out of ammo has a beauty in its own.
Inexperienced
troops will more likely roll 1's than experienced ones AND firing at
longer
ranges will more likely result in an out of ammo roll.

** This last eludes me. Wherein does range act in the equation? I
thought we were speaking of a quality die and a firepower die. Double
ones is out of ammo (though I liked the idea of a one die roll
subsequent to that based on weapon reliablity or troop quality).

** I do agree even elites can run out of ammo though.

** Here's another cut:
If you get double ones, you are 'out of ammo'. This may be remedied by
a 1 action reload, or by a zero action "emergency load" which can be
botched. In this case, roll a reaction test to reload. If the unit
succeeds, they reload and it doesn't consume an action. If they fail,
they kill off an action, and still have to reload (consuming their
second action if they want to do it then). This would allow high
quality troops to reload "on the fly" while lower quality troops
frequently hesitated, fumbled with the mag, etc. Thoughts?

** As for jamming, I have spent plenty of time both on the range and
playing with dirty military long arms that aren't cleaned by clowns
who put them away dirty... and I've found real "stop you dead" jams
such as a broken firing pin, a burst casing, a real ejector problem,
or some such serious stoppage to be somewhat rare. Occaisionally, the
weapons will misfire or misfeed, but most of the time, recocking is
all that is required to clear the weapon. That is so fast it wouldn't
be represented even within the context of FMA. It is an ingrained
immediate action drill.

** Having said that, if you combined my above idea with Adrian's and
said

"During Fire Combat, anytime a fire action results in a roll of 1 on
both the quality and the firepower dice of the firer, something has
happened. An "Out of Action" chit is placed by the weapon bearer
representing either a temporary stoppage, a jam, or merely an
unexpected out of ammo result.

There are two ways to remove the Out-of-Action chit. One is an
Immediate Action response. This involves trying to rapidly clear the
jam or reload the weapon. This could result in more serious problems,
or it could get the user back locked and cocked asap. To try this,
before his next action, the figure rolls a reaction test +1 (+1 extra
level of difficulty if suppressed). If the figure suceeds,  the jam or
stoppage is cleared, the weapon reloaded, or whatever, and the player
may take his next action unhindered. If the figure fails, his next
action is forefeit and he must spend an action subsequently to reload
or clear the jam. If the figure spends an action to Ready Weapon
(instead of an immediate action response or as a result of a blown
IA), the figure rolls a reaction test +0 (+1 extra level if suppresed)
to clear the weapon because he is taking his time. Failure here means
further actions must be spent trying to unjam the weapon until it
succeeds or a catastrophe results.

Catastrophe results from rolling a 1 on either of the above reaction
tests (the Immediate Action or the Ready Weapon action), it turns out
that the stoppage or jam is serious and the weapon is out of action
until a weapon tech gets a chance to fix it. It will no longer fire."

This should cover the whole 9 yards with a simple rule and in such a
way as to penalize poor troops far worse than experts, but even the
pros can have an off day.

As for overall ammo: Assume your rounds are 4mm slivers with no casing
weight to waste. You can probably carry
4-8x as many of these as the modern soldier.  That means if you modern
joe would carry 120-180 rounds, you'd carry up to 1250 or so rounds.
You shouldn't run out (even with a 5 round burst) anytime in the time
scale of the average FMA game.

If you do encounter a limited ammo scenario, or one where each player
has but one mag (a fun scenario - do you take the long range shot, or
close for the money shot? You only have five fire actions worth of
ammo... and there are three or four other players out there in the
same boat...) - these can be covered in the scenario. As a rule, you
should have ammo. You just might (much as it chafes me to say it) run
out of it suddenly... (not so bad if you include stoppages, jams, hang
fires, etc - even in 2185 guns will get dirty...).

Shotguns:

Ken, you made some interesting assertions about shotguns. I won't
disagree that at closer ranges, spread is not much of a factor (the
shot tends to hit the same target). Mind you, I'd sure like to see the
data you use to support your idea (if you have some in particular
sources which you could quote - I have a gut feeling you are right
under some constraints but I'd like to see hard data). I also bet that
most of your data (if it comes from Law Enforcement sources) would
feature a .12ga semi-auto or pump firing 00 buck. If you fired smaller
shot, the spread might be increased. If I'm not mistaken, most combat
shotguns will be modified choke. A Full choke double barrelled or
sawed off shotgun surely has spread even firing 00 buck, and an
autoshotgun will have one heck of a lot of spread. Heck, that was the
POINT of the sawed off shotgun, so I think you do sort of have to
model spread effects. At medium and longer ranges even with a modified
choke, the spread could be noticeable. Now in support of your point,
many games have made shotgun spread a menace out of reasonable
proportion. But you need it for gangers and even for other shotguns at
range.

Ryan Fisk made a good argument of more or less what I said here,
although he didn't mention an additional round of some significance to
shotguns: Flechette. Military shotguns firing flechette have (with
relative ease) (or so I recall) torn to fragments most modern
ballistic cloth body armour. The sharp flechette has better ranged
characteristics than the shot and will sliver its way through much
armour. A truly nasty round. Well worth installation in military
combat shotguns. I don't know if you can fire it from an autoshotgun
though. I hope not, or whoever is in front of the atchison, SPAS or
H&K when it cuts loose on full auto with flechette is gonna look like
hamburger.