Follow-up musing on Rcl and Unready Weapons

+Harold Bauerle had an interesting comment/idea in response to my post yesterday. He posited . . . well, I’ll just quote his idea in full:

Totally off the top of my head, but what if there was a stat whereby if you fired too many shot with a weapon it became Unready, and would need to be Readied again before being used?  This would be like Firing until the recoil pulled the gun completely off-target and out of control.  Handling, or something?  Or maybe based on Bulk?

This has some interesting  concepts attached to it. What I’d want is for even a good shot to have the potential to render the weapon Unready, but a bad miss having a higher chance.

I’d want high Rcl weapons to have this problem more than low Rcl weapons.

Heavy weapons (physical weight) should resist this more (but that’s in Rcl, I think), and bulky weapons might go either way. Harder to get off target, but also harder to bring it back? Hrm. A Ready is a Ready, so that probably won’t work well.

I’d like to make determination not require extra rolls. That might mean using one of the d6s from the usual 3d6 hit roll as the determining factor. Maybe a red Recoil die, though this mechanic can get quite clunky. 

So let’s assume we take one of those d6s. High rolls are more likely to trigger an “off-target” response. High RoF (as expressed by a bonus) should make this worse, so we’ll add the RoF bonus to the die. 

Low Rcl should be “better” than high Rcl. So maybe there’s a target of something like if the total is 9-Rcl or higher, you have to spend a turn readying. If you Brace the weapon (+1 to skill) you can add this as well.

So if you are firing a Rcl 2 weapon at +0 bonus for RoF, you will never have to spend a turn readying the weapon.

Occasionally, Rcl will drive a Rcl 3 weapon off target (roll a 6 against a 9-3 target).

Firing a Rcl 2 weapon at RoF 12 (+2 RoF bonus) would trigger at 7+, so a 5 or 6 on the chosen die would cause a forced Ready.

A MAC-11, at RoF 20 for a +4 bonus, is Rcl 2 (Target 7) will force a Ready on a 3 or higher, or 66% of the time. 

Can you fire an Unready weapon? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe you can only use Suppression Fire with an Unready weapon, which will cap skill at a pretty low level. Perhaps you take an additional penalty of -2 or -4 or something, so that even a gigantic RoF bonus won’t give you a 50% to hit.

Parting Shot

This is deliberately incomplete, in that I haven’t dealt with mounted weapons or other stabilization, looked at the interaction of sights (especially those that add to skill rather than Acc) and other concerns.

What I like about Harold’s suggestion, though, is that the forced Ready maneuver has just the right feel to me.