firearms & combat tactics - how to dissuade the bigger gun?

[Glistam]

Here's a couple of options:

Option 1: Standardization. Make all weapons do equal damage based on bullet calibur. Makk all weapons of a certain type have equal range. This way, it doesn't matter which actual weapon they take, since the actual damage and range are based on weapon type.

Option 2: Blind Choice. Don't let the players see the stats on the weapons at all. Let them pick the weapons based solely on the pictures of the weapon. Either from the Compendium of Contemporary Weapons or doing internet image searches. With this method they end up picking weapons in more of a real-world style.

[znbrtn]

i don't think this is something you can get away from. if given a choice, any gun enthusiast worth their salt will choose the most qualified weapon for the perceived situation.

about the only thing you can make them think about is how concealable a given firearm would be, if that's even an issue.

[RockJock]

The only thing like what you are looking for that I have every tried was an initiative penalty to bring up the gun, or find a target with the M4 vs the MP5 in a hallway or such.

[GhostKnight]

i don't think this is something you can get away from. if given a choice, any gun enthusiast worth their salt will choose the most qualified weapon for the perceived situation.

That's just it. I'm not sure how to reflect situations where a submachine gun trumps an assault rifle.

Have you ever tried to hide an M16 under a jacket? Won't work. Smaller weapon... probably.

[Prince Cherico]

another option is to have a weapon
class become a charaters lucky weapon.
In exchange for a charater developing
a history with a weapon and using it
over a stronger one the player gains
a set amount of fudged dice per gaming
session or give them a bonus to hit,
maby let them use wild stunt thats
nigh impossible and let them roll to hit.

[Stattick]

There's the concealability of any given weapon. Anything much bigger then a submachine gun is nearly impossible to conceal on one's person... (an exception would be a shotgun modified to have a pistol grip and a short barrel).

One could deal with this by using additional penalties, but I'd prefer to deal with it by using addtional bonuses. At short range, the smaller weapon would have bonuses to Initiative since it's far easier to quickly change the angle of attack on one then it would be with a standard long gun. At point blank range, a long gun would be very difficult to use effectively, so give bonuses to the defender in that situation to parry/dodge or entangle the long gun. But the guy using a pistol - he's still got an effective weapon at point blank range, so the defender gets no bonuses, and the pistol guy still gets his IN bonus.

Perhaps one could go with a system that include both penalties and bonuses?

The point is, we're trying to immulate that different weapons are more effective at different tasks. Pistols and sub-machine guns are lousy for distance accuracy. Long rifles and shotguns are horrible for close quarters fighting, especially for clearing buildings. Frankly, the best general purpose weapon for a wide variety of tasks is the assualt rifle - there's a reason why all modern military forces worldwide use assualt rifles as the standard issued weapon.

Presently, there is an increased focus on a new generation of assault rifles that are better at short ranged combat for clearing buildings and such. These weapons generally have a magazine that is rear of the trigger, and a barrel that extends partially into the stock of the weapon (bull-pup configuration). The purpose of these weapons is to reduce the overall length of the weapon, while still providing a useful barrel length for distance shooting. The FN F2000 assault rifle, pictured in the link below with an attached telescopic sight and grenade launcher, is one example of this type of assault rifle.

http://world.guns.ru/assault/fn_f2000_3.jpg

LINK

[RockJock]

Limit them to rocks and slingshots Z.

[Glistam]

You coul dput the players in situations where the foes they face will survive low calibur weapons, but likely be killed from the high-calibur weapons they prefer. If they are playing characters that care about whether or not their foes die then after a few tries it could be effective to dissuade the players from always chosing the "big guns".

Match force for force. If the heroes consistently thwart their enemies by using bigger guns, eventually the enemy is going to realize they need even bigger guns. Or heavier armor protection. Or both. Impress upon the heroes that this situation came about because of their high powered guns. Run an adventure or two where teh heroes have to stop the thugs of the city being armed like this.

On second thought that second idea may not be worth much, as it doesn't make the heroes inclined to stop using their big weapons.

Some scenarios where having big guns would be inappropriate:
-Making deliberate public appearances (depending on the place)
-During a hostage negotiation/trade
-Infiltration
-When in civilian identity
-A bigger gun/weapon could be easier to disarm
-During police interviews (Are those weapons legal? Do you have the proper permits for them?)

Somethign to go with the second choice above, especially if these weapons were custom made by a player, is that the thugs in the town could start showing up with duplicate copies of the hero's unique guns. This could lead into some police investigation and cause problems for the players if they keep using the guns (are they supplying them to the underworld?).

Or even more so, have a couple of kids or families gunned down by those copies of guns that the heroes use. Public outcry against the heroes and their perceived lack of "gun safety" could create a situation where they decide to stop or downgrade their weapons. Alternatively, you could have some school shootings - vigilante/punisher style, and the kids cite the heroes as their role models for why they decided to shoot their classmates that broke the rules. Again, public outcry should be swift and merciless, causing the heroes to at least start concealing their weapons.

Also, if they're firing bursts and there's crowds of people, well, not every bullet from the burst hits it's target. Some collateral damage (and by collateral damage I mean property damage or injury/death of people) might also cause them to scale back a bit.

I hope that's all coherent, I was just kind of brainstorming here.

[Glistam]

I just realized that the name of the organization there implies that the characters are fighting inhuman monsters, and not specifically going up against humans. Here's some more brainstorming that may be more applicable.

-Posessing entities taking over normal people. Smaller calibur weapons would be less likely to kill innocents. This assumes there is a reason for the characters to not want to kill innocents.

-Make the specialty bullets the characters need (silver, iron, uranium, etcetera) only available in smaller calibur sizes.

-Heavier weapons could only be "authorized" when expecting a confrontation with powerful, more obvious threats. Some supernatural beings are capable of disguising their power, leaving the PC's possibly facing powerful foes they didn't expect.

-The PC's likely need to be seen in public on their way to missions. Carrying around heavy ordinance will prompt police involvement, could cause passerby panic, and other problems. If their organization wants to stay low-key, then they could be mandated to keep a lower profile and thus, carry "weaker" but more easily concealable weapons.

-Have their heavy weapons destroyed somehow by the menance they are facing. Have it happen a couple of times. A smart supernatural creature, faced with humans weilding big guns, could realize that humans without big guns make for tasty snacks instead of threats. If they have enough of their big weapons damaged or destroyed, the organization may restrict them to smaller, more easily-replacable ones. At least temporarily.

-The above can be true for non-supernatural threats, too. A human in heavy body armor is a lot less of a threat when they only have their fists as weapons.

-Bigger weapons could be easier to disarm or damage. Having it happen a few times can be an eye-opener.

-A creature with a natural AR should have bullets bouncing off of him. Where do those stray bullets go? If you were going to be hit by your own reflected bullets, what calibur would you rather be hit with? Don't go into situations with guns that are more powerful than your armor.

-By the same token, a gun that was successfully been disarmed could now be used against the team. There's a painful lesson in why not to bring heavy ordinance.

-Intangible creatures like spirits and such can't be harmed by bullets at all. There's no need to bring heavy weapons when expecting something like that. Until the tectonic entity forms a 10 foot tall body made out of scrap metal, of course.

If I think of others I'll post more.

EDIT

Another idea could be to give the players some sort of limit on what they can take. It can be a monetary limit or some other factor, but what it boils down to is that they can carry only ONE weapon if they chose the heavier weapons, but more than one if they carry smaller, more concealable weapons. Then throw foes at them that can destroy the guns or disarm them. The folks who chose the ONE big gun will hopefully learn a valuable lesson. At the very least, you could still have a member or two with a big gun, but in the spirit of teamwork hopefully a few other members would decide to carry multiple smaller weapons so that they can share if something happens to the big guns.

Yet another idea, if PC death is not a huge deal in the game, is to have the players who chose the bigger guns attacked more visciously than others with smaller guns. Point out that while the monster was tearing the PC's apart the security guard and his 9mm constantly firing was the last person attacked, since he was seen as the lowest threat.

[NMI]

So I've built up a nice little Heroes Unlimited game wherein the players have access to a rather large selection of weaponry

Printed and stored in my GM Folder.

[R Ditto]

I can think of reasons to avoid big weapons.

Overpenetration.

Lower power rounds, like from SMGs and pistols, lack any serious penetration.
Stuff like assault rifles use rounds made to punch through stuff, be it walls, car doors, not so durable predators, etc.

This can result in bullet fragments, or even whole bullets, going clean through a target or terrain feature/obstacle/cover and have a chance to do damage to something else.

An assault rifle usually has full metal jacket style rounds, and they can apparently punch through entire cars (except maybe the engine block), as apparently evident from one robbery where police were faced with criminals packing body armor and assault rifles.

That there is probably one reason even SWAT typically only packed SMG type weapons, with the only high powered weapons being single shot weapons in the hands of trained marksmen, because assault rifle rounds could punch clean through walls much more easily, increasing the chances of unwanted casualties in the area.
That means combat in or near inhabited areas is going to require some care and caution, and running around with grenade launchers or heavy machine guns is going to be out of the question unless there is actually no other choice.


Also, stuff like collateral damage, sometimes taking down an nasty target includes trying to not level the immediate area in the process.
Ghostbusters comes to mind, their first major catch, they caught the ghost, but devestated a lot of stuff in the process, like hunting a bull in a china shop with HMGs and LAAWs.
People aren't going to call if the thing running loose is going to do less damage to the area than those who come to hunt it.

[csbioborg]

i don't think this is something you can get away from. if given a choice, any gun enthusiast worth their salt will choose the most qualified weapon for the perceived situation.

That's just it. I'm not sure how to reflect situations where a submachine gun trumps an assault rifle.

Have you ever tried to hide an M16 under a jacket? Won't work. Smaller weapon... probably.

to be far its real easy to break the upper reciever and lower reciver in half and that would be concealable with a little imagination not that I've ever tried
and putting the pins back in can be done in a couple second.

As to the bullets traveling though people and hitting bysatanders that is a legit argeument and there are manstopper rounds I've never seen in rifles they make for pistols. They have a blkue palstic tip and serated sides so when they fire the tip melts and the round opens up like a flower. They are meant to kill on one shot but I suppose they have the benefot of not travling through the body also.

[G]

If they were smart and had access to a large array of weapons they would take ones that worked well against the specific opponents they are going up against. That's what the villians will do, as they should know who the cities heroes are.

I use mostly stun weapons. I think of it this way - if the villians know that all they are up against is a stun weapon or embaresment by being pummelled into submission, they don't need big guns...so they don't use them. De-escalation if you will. They may even surrender when caught (vs people fighting with bazookas tend to use them). Heavy weapons are expensive, heavy, need special skills to use, are never around when you need them, always breaking or running out of ammo...they just aren't practical.

Glistam - you had tons of wonderful ideas, thanks for the post!

[Glistam]

Yet another idea: If you allow Paired Weapons to work with handguns (as I believe the RUE version of the skill does) then reminding them of this option might give them the higher damage they're looking for from a smaller weapon, by having them using two at once. This way you get them to use weapons they can conceal and they get the higher damage number they want. Win-win.

[Rallan]

Houseruling's pretty much the only way out of this. If you go with the rules as written, all that really matters is damage per round, maximum range, whether it can fire bursts, and how many shots before you reload. Thanks to the total lack of modifiers, a group of characters who are going to storm a crowded apartment building and clear it room by room would be better off bringing sniper rifles than handguns.

[Rallan]

So here's what I've come up with.

Restrictions: Heavy Weapons (missile launchers), by virtue of their weapon class, are restricted simply: most of them are one-shot and very few of them can be effectively shot with a single action.

If your players are anything like mine have been, there's a chance they'll still carry 'em anyway. Sure their limited ammunition puts a restriction on them, but they'll just treat 'em like smart bombs in old video games (you don't get many, so it's best to hang onto them and then spam 'em at the boss).

Anti-Material Rifles, again by virtue of their class, are too large to be effectively used as standard combat rifles. Also, I have yet to hear of any high-capacity ammunition drums for these rifles, so ammo is typically limited to 10 shots or less per very heavy, very large magazine.

These aren't really a common choice for twinky players anyway. Unless you're running a lot of situations where ridiculously long range sniper fire is important, the lack of burst fire means that players looking to exploit the rules for maximum pwnage will skip these things. Why pick the gun that does the most damage per shot when anything with burst fire will be able to beat it on most damage per single melee action?

Carbines, Assault Rifles, LMG's, and explosives are limited by mission specs. You don't carry such weapons into a low-threat situation, but you certainly might to a high-threat situation.

That won't be enough to stop players from picking whichever burst-capable assault rifle has the highest damage per shot (or if there's several with the same damage, whichever has the longest range). If you don't flat-out ban these weapons, everyone who can carry them will use machineguns, and everyone else will use the nastiest assault rifles available.

Likewise, Pistols-only situations include controlled investigations, off-duty situations, etc.

Again, it won't work unless you ban heavier stuff. If the players have a choice, they'll always go for the big guns except in situations where you specifically tell them up front that they'll need to pick something concealable.

[Dog_O_War]

Offer a close-quarters combat bonus/penalty for weapon sizes. SMG's & pistols would have a +3 bonus to strike targets within 30 feet, while Longarms have a penalty of -3. Shotguns, carbines, and bullpup config. rifles have no bonus or penalty.

For bursts, it's +1/-3.

[Dog_O_War]

Who brings a knife to a gunfight?

EDIT: If its not one thing, it's another, eh?

[Sir Neil]

The answer to my original question came up rather incidentally: overpenetration.

Not really. At the police academy they warned us that a 9mm round will penetrate further than a .223 round.

The real life answer is the same as the game answer. Units are switching over to carbines because they are better than SMG's. I can think of several reasons to limit the weapons:

*HQ got a good deal on 9mm ammo, so they bought a ton of it.
*Budget cuts! They have to use up whatever ammo is left in the arms room before they can get more.
*There was a mix-up on the order and they got sent 7.62 Russian instead of 7.62 NATO.
*They need to blame the hit on another country who only uses X firearm.
*Weight limitations, like you already mentioned.
*A need for stealth. An MP-5SD is smaller than an M-4 with suppressor, and probably a lot quieter.