For many assault rifles, LMGs and SMGs there are only options for single shot semi-auto or a full-auto which fires off at least 10 rounds and is a huge waste of ammo.
Shoudn’t you be able to burst fire any automatic weapon though? Even if the weapon does not have an actual burst-fire setting, you can still just hold the trigger long enough to only fire ~3 rounds at a time. This should be an option for all automatic fire weapons which do not have an integrated burst setting.
Further thoughts;
-Full-auto bursting should be less accurate than using an integrated burst-mode, especially at lower firearm skill.
-Full-auto bursting should also fire a random number of shots, anywhere from 1-5 for low levels, 2-4 at mid-high level.
What I intend to do is have a “burst” at 0 skill that will fire a tenth of a second worth of rounds or so. So with a gun that fires 600 rounds per minute, it will fire 10 rounds, if it fires 300 rounds per minute it will fire 5. At some higher skill level, a “short burst” will unlock that exercises better trigger control and fires a twentieth of a second worth of rounds or so, cutting the burst size in half.
The issue is I have no idea if that tenth and twentieth of a second worth of burst fire is reasonable, if it should be higher or lower, etc.
I haven’t been able to find any good sources on the matter.
Seems pretty reasonable to me, at least from my experience playing Counter-Strike lol. Ten rounds isn’t really a “burst” but it still makes sense that someone with zero skill with automatic rifles might not even realize that burst firing is a thing.
On the other hand, I’m pretty sure you did your math wrong, 600 rounds/per minute should be equal to ten round per second. The time between shots fired is 0.1 of a second. An ideal burst is 2-4 shots, so .3 seconds should be ideal.
600 rounds per minute equals 1 round per second? I’m assuming you mistyped somehow.
yeah, that was a typo. It’s 10 rounds per second (x 60 seconds = 600RPM)
Okay, that makes sense.
The issue is I have no idea if that tenth and twentieth of a second worth of burst fire is reasonable, if it should be higher or lower, etc.
I haven’t been able to find any good sources on the matter.
Reasonable in what regard? Reasonable for gameplay? Consistent with what is done in the real world?
Through way too much time spent on Youtube, I can relay my observation that, at least in military doctrine, burst fire is primarily relegated to machine gunners and limited to maybe five rounds. Your average rifleman seems to usually stick to semi-auto since, as far as my understanding goes, that’s the best way to get rounds reliably on target without a stabilized firing platform. Anyone more formally educated on the subject is free to chime in and tell me I’m an idiot.
Yea I was careless, just getting the idea across.
Consistent with real world behavior.
That’s not a particularly useful observation since players will use burst fire when available, so it’s a matter of how, not if.
Well, then, as a general approximation, I would agree with Hobophobe in that 0.3 seconds of firing would be a decent ballpark figure from an experienced shooter. And double that for an inexperienced user. Characters that are trigger happy might not have access to the “novice tier” burst fire at all initially, and can only unlock it at the point other characters get access to the “proficient tier” burst fire.
If you want to talk about real world behavior, I did explain how the military operates, but I suppose from a more first principles perspective, the length of a burst is limited primarily by how many rounds can be fired whilst still remaining acceptably on target. You could try to break down the factors that determine this, but that would risk over complicating things. 22LR for instance is so benign on the recoil that burst fire would almost be unnecessary altogether, at least if you’re talking about close encounters with zombies.
So anyway, if you want to keep things simple, 0.3 seconds worth of firing seems a decent ballpark, maybe double that for novices. Any longer and you’re getting into that 10 round fire regime for many of the higher fire rate battle rifles (which in reality will dump a 30 round magazine in 2-3 seconds), which is already covered by full auto mode.
To throw an alternative out there for consideration, you could design burst fire mode to simply keep firing until a certain recoil threshold is reached. This threshold would be higher for novices as they don’t have as fine control of the weapon. Thus, novices will tend to naturally fire more rounds in a burst and get more off target. More proficient shooters have a lower threshold and will cease firing after fewer shots, before the rounds start dispersing too much. This would also reflect generally being able to get more rounds in a burst from a low recoil weapon than a high one.
I like this idea a lot. Experienced shooters wouldn’t risk spraying shots all over, and it means low calibre guns have nice high burst sizes to make up for their low damage.
Plus power armoured cyber mutants can burst fire a .50 cal and that makes me happy.
I assume you mean this.
This isn’t helpful as it seems like a goal rather than actual performance, it says nothing about what a low-skill character is going to do, or if it varies based on the gun.
You’re still not first principles enough, you’re focusing on the goal of halting fire before you start missing the target, what I’m concerned with are the mechanical limits of the trigger pull. i.e. if you tell a novice, “fire a short burst” or, “pull the trigger and release as fast as you can”, what’s the result? Then repeat that process with an expert, how does the outcome change?
Specifically, if we’re talking about halting fire once some recoil limit has been reached, the shooter has very little information about what level of recoil they’re dealing with from instant to instant, and things are happening way to fast to act on that kind of feedback. The goal here is to represent the habit of firing in short bursts, and how it improves with training.
As for things like .22 SMGs with extremely light recoil, that wold be handled either by repeated short bursts (which is what’s recommended anyway) or a different “long burst” action.
Don’t know if this was intentional/has been fixed, but I’ll burst fire a 10 shot round into a horde of zombies, kill the first in 1 or 2 shots, and then the rest of the bullets will vanish into the ether instead of going to kill the next zombie.
You’re still not first principles enough, you’re focusing on the goal of halting fire before you start missing the target, what I’m concerned with are the mechanical limits of the trigger pull. i.e. if you tell a novice, “fire a short burst” or, “pull the trigger and release as fast as you can”, what’s the result? Then repeat that process with an expert, how does the outcome change?
Mechanical limitations and the semantics of what constitutes a “short burst” to a novice are two unrelated things. If you’re referring to the operation of the firing mechanism itself and the physical ability of the shooter to operate the trigger, there is nothing preventing you from flicking a firearm onto full auto and then firing as few as two or even one round at a time. Though this becomes more challenging with firearms having very high cyclic rates (MAC-10 for example)
“pull the trigger and release as fast as you can” - again, this is a semantic thing and is going to depend on which novice is using the weapon. If one interprets this as meaning to give the trigger a rapid yank and release, you’ll probably end up with a one or two round burst, no different from what a proficient shooter can do intentionally. If a more hesitant novice squeezes the trigger slowly until the weapon fires, then only releases the trigger once their brain has caught up and realizes the weapon is firing, then of course you’re going to get a much longer burst.
Specifically, if we’re talking about halting fire once some recoil limit has been reached, the shooter has very little information about what level of recoil they’re dealing with from instant to instant, and things are happening way to fast to act on that kind of feedback. The goal here is to represent the habit of firing in short bursts, and how it improves with training.
Kind of like how I pointed out previously, firing in short bursts is not a habit that arises simply out of better muscle memory or motor skills (though that is a factor) - it is done as opposed to “spraying and praying” specifically because it more reliably puts rounds on target. It is a goal-driven habit by definition. And the length of the burst is going to be determined primarily by how well the shooter feels they can control the weapon, not by how quickly they can pull and release the trigger. Which is why I think referring to the mechanical limits of the weapon (which are mostly a non-factor as it is very possible to fire single rounds even on full-auto), or “what would a novice do if you told them to pull the trigger and release” are not very relevant ways of going about modeling this.
If you tell a novice to “pull and release the trigger as fast as you can”, you might get one of the scenarios I described above. If you tell a novice “there’s a zombie coming at you, and you need to kill it before it reaches you”, it’s anybody’s guess how many rounds they would fire off.
My suggestion of halting fire when recoil accumulates too much was only a suggestion of how to approximately model this phenomenon in the confines of the game’s shooting formulas (assuming I understand them correctly). Of course no shooter is actually tabulating bullet dispersion in their head while they’re pulling the trigger. I simply figured that tying the number of rounds fired to how much recoil has accumulated (and having this be a lower number for experienced shooters versus novice ones) might be a more accurate representation of what determines burst length than a guesstimated and over-generalized “0.3 seconds worth of trigger pull”. Having this cutoff be sooner for a proficient shooter reflects their better experience, feel, and intuition.
I should add the disclaimer that all this is from a hands-off enthusiast’s perspective - it’d be great if anybody else on the forums who has actual experience with automatic weapons could chime in on the subject…
Has anybody tried cutting cartridge recoil by 50% across the board?
Honestly, has anyone considered the possibility of firing a small barrage of rounds on SEMI mode? It’s not that hard to fire a couple of shots in a quick succession while staying on target AND exactly controlling the amount of shots fired. That is, if you’re not shooting a Browning MG from the hip. Precise aim and rapid fire, which should probably depend slightly on dexterity. That is the case where that ‘accumulated recoil’ comes in place, since rapidly firing a .50 BMG rifle is near to impossible, and a 9x19 rifle is not that hard to control (of course, if you’re not still shaking after looking at that damned Flaming Eye).
I plan on adding “double tap” and “triple tap” to semi-auto guns at higher skill levels, which I think is more or less what you’re asking about.