Quote:
Originally Posted by Tegyrius
I haven't examined this issue in detail yet but it seems like the easy fix is to give MGs a limited ability to ignore 1s on ammo dice - possibly ignore the first X 1s, where X equals half of current Reliability, rounded up (so at Reliability 5, you'd have to roll four 1s to affect Reliability and five 1s to jam - not counting any 1s on your base attack dice). This would reflect their designed capability for reliable sustained automatic fire in a better way than just pointing to the action economy advantage of belt feed.
They still have the disadvantages of encumbrance, reduced performance when hip-fired, and high consumption of your most precious natural resource (i.e., lead).
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Another update after 12 sessions and 8 combats of play in my current campaign. We have one machinegunner (a very large Estonian with an MG3) in the party; everyone else is using an assault rifle, sniper rifle, or (sigh) SMG + machete combo.
Our table's implementation has been to ignore 1s on pushed ammo dice. When pushing a machine gun attack, only 1s on the base dice will reduce Reliability or cause jams.
Observation in play is that this doesn’t seem to be game-breaking. Balancing factors include increased ammo consumption (he’s encouraged to use his full ROF more, so his 7.62x51mm supply has been dwindling) and rigid enforcement of the penalty for hip-shooting a MG (p. 65 for those following along in the Player’s Manual). The net effect is that he spends the first turn or two of combat getting into a good shooting location with partial cover before he opens up, which, to my mind, is functioning as designed. He has jammed twice with double 1s on base dice, and he usually loses at least one point of Reliability each combat (which sucks up downtime actions for the party's techs to address).
- C.