The "rapid fire rate" might be just relative. That type of heavy ordinance might have only been burst 1 before the invention of the Feuerbach. The Swedish Bandkanon 1 could fire 15 shells in 45 seconds, which doesn't sound like a lot, but as far as arty goes is really motherflippin fast
My personal headcanon is that it fires a lot of projectiles at pseudo-simultaneously, kinda like missile barrages in anime, rather than operating like a gatling gun
I've played some SciFi RPGs which, while we did have a good time playing them, had a slightly annoying system where the rate of fire of your weapon was directly linked to the Dexterity of your character. And that ain't single shots - that's trigger locking weapons that can do 1,200rpm. We try to rationalise it by saying maybe your Dexterity determines how well you can guide the weapon onto the target but it still doesn't work, as the lower-Dex characters will either expend less bullets in a turn by shooting as often as their Dex allows, or expend bullets to absolutely no effect and with no obligation to do so. It was a weird system...
Well they have to tie it to a stat. Strength would be weird, since you don't throw the bullets yourself. Dex is usually tied to how well you can aim, adjust for movements, your reflexes, recoil handling and so on. If we go by logic, bows in Fantasy would be Strength weapons. For balance, they chose Dex.
I've tinkered a lot with game mechanics, including working on my own RPG design (along with almost every other nerd out there). Sometimes you have to makes some less than realistic adjustments to make the system work. And in my opinion, some game designers just don't understand mechanics very well. But RPG's are a sum of more than just their mechanics, some games have some awesome ideas and just fall down in other areas. That is why house rules are so prevalent in pen and paper RPG. If it doesn't make sense to you, change it, as long as everyone is having fun, it doesn't really matter.
In pathfinder, D&D 3.5 and the old Conan d20 (1st and 2nd editions, by Moongoose) the hititing bonus was tied to Dex (unlike most melee weapons that used Strength... but in Conan the default for armor was not adding AC but Damage Reduction, and you could attack using str... or attempt DEX attacks to bypass all armor with certain weapons like daggers), but the bows could be reinforced (a non-magical extra) allowing to add up to that reinforced bonus from your STR stat bonus... as long as said bonus were at least equal or higher that the bow's bonus... So a barbarian with Strenght 20 (typicial cimmerian barbarian in Conan) and Dex 14 could shoot, at level 1, a reinforced bow +3 with a hitting bonus of +2 (Dex) and a damage of 1d6+3, but the group's rogue (STR 6, Dex 18) would be totally unable to shoot with that bow.
The issue I had wasn't tying being able to hit the target to a stat, but that the Dex literally determined the rate of fire of the weapon, even when trigger-locking - not being able to hit the target, but how many bullets will exit the weapon. The real trick which made it odd, was that a turn lasted 3 seconds, divided into 0.6 second intervals. "Full auto burst" was an action that could be performed in each of those intervals. A higher-Dex character would make more bullets come out of their gun if doing a full-auto spray, as they could act in each of those 5 intervals. Whereas lower-Dex, for some reason, couldn't hold the trigger for 3 seconds and make the same number of bullets fire, as they'd act in only 2 or 3 of those intervals. It wasn't that they'd be shooting and miss the targets; it was that the mechanism would simply stop cycling for those intervals in which they could not act, and no bullets would fire. Recoil handling was actually a separate skill. Dex is typically used in the games we play for actually firing the gun and being able to hit, sure, but those games just have a "turn" in which the PC performs all their actions. Two PCs doing a full-auto burst in say, Shadowrun, would fire the exact same number of bullets, regadless of how good a shot they were.
While I see your point, the attack and fire rate still has to be tied to a stat, even if it may not make sense. Guns are always a problem to make fit in many systems. Single shot guns like a flintlock or even a revolver are fine, but the moment you get into automatics, it's troublesome. By the way, the moment you give a set time to each turns, you're creating potential arguments and troubles. You'll get people trying to argue that they should get more attacks because of the time should allow it. Or people wanting more movements and so one. Better keep it vague. In one turn, everyone gets to do something.
That was the main source of the problem - making a turn a specific time and with each action lasting exactly 0.6 seconds. If it was just "turn" then there wouldn't be any problem - two different people firing the same type of weapon on full-auto would result in the same number of bullets fired. With the 0.6 second phases, for some reason it would be physically impossible for anyone but the most dexterous to hold a trigger for 3 seconds, which is my problem. I've never disputed the attack being tied to a stat - it's the phsyical mechanics of the weapon. Rate of Fire being tied to a stat would make sense on weapons which cannot do full-auto; machine guns are just a machine and you're flipping the "go" switch.
Ironically Shadowrun has the same problem, a character with 4 initiative passes can fire a Full Auto weapon four times faster than a character with only one. Last time I ran it we stripped out initiative passes, made the characters more rounded and we saw money/Essense/Power points being used in more interesting utility stuff, rather than the street Sam losing half his essence to Wired Reflexes 2 just so he could compete with NPCs. Made turn order easier too.
The Infinity RPG deals with this by giving guns that an go full auto the "Spread" quality. What it does is that while you use the Ballistic stat to determine if you hit, how many times you hit depend on the number of 6 you get. You do the base damage (+ however many you roll) and depending on how many 6 you get, more bullets will hit the target and cause more damage (Half the damage you dealt on different bodyparts). It can result in some impressive amount of damage. But that's balanced by the number of dices. For instance, a HMG will do 1+8d6 of damage. Only 1s and 2s count as damage and 6 triggers the effect. Imagine you roll 1 1 2 4 4 6 6 6. Total damage is 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 so 5. That's your main damage number. Each 6 means more bullets hit, so 3 other hits at half the damage, rounded down if I remember right. So 2 damage 3 times. An extra 6 damage. Total is thus 11, minus the armor value where hit. It means the more 6 you have, the less damage you will actually do since the base damage will be lower, but it means you hit more locations, allowing you to bypass more armor. It's probably not ideal, but I think it's a good way to simulate a hail of bullets. Many bullets in one area (aka few 6s) will do more damage there there, while bullets spread all over (many 6s) will do less but can be more crippling.
A bit late, but no, i dont and i dont know anyone who does it virtual. I only know females doing it in real life and need muscles to move furniture around. At least there is real cake reward.
Cyberpunk (2013/2020/203x and now, apparently, RED, though the "Jumpstart kit" does not cover autofire) have set Rate of Fire per gun per round (~3,2 seconds). No matter how strong or fast you are, a cyclic rate of fire in a gun going full-auto remains defined by the weapon, not your skills (placing any of that hail of bullets on target, well, that's another kettle of fish). The rules (I'm most familiar with the 2020 version) do not put it in stone how it goes about semiauto & manually operated weapons - but while most have a set Rate of Fire too (heavy calibers and manually-operated weapons being usually slower to spit out bullets / round, but then you have weapon modifications), you could probably persuade your GM into letting you pull the trigger more times per round. The trick would be - you'd be taking the multiple action penalty, and this would be accumulating pretty quickly, so even an expert marksman would be sending a lot of leadoff-target if he's concentrate on squeezing them out as fast as he could. Actually, with firearms (especially handguns) in a "Dex vs Str" ruleset, I'd go for Strength as a limiter. Training and expertise would be a major factor, but if you're a big strong beefy guy, you're likely to handle the recoil much better than a small skinny wimpy type. Meaning you'll have it easier to control the recoil, so he could squeeze the trigger again without spending much time to bring the gun on target again. Keep in mind - this doesn't have anything to do with his ability to put those rounds on target, merely to keep the gun from jumping around. Then again, Jerry Miculek is not a huge hunk of muscle - he's a consummate expert in the art of speedy shooting...
Remember that stats doesn't necessarily equate to a specific appearance. Very High STR doesn't mean you look like hulk, simply that you are very strong (You CAN look like hulk, of coruse). The same way, lower STR doesn't mean you're a stick. Same as how low charisma can mean you're ugly, but you can still look good but be awkward sociably. A High Dex character can still be physically (and visibly) strong, he just applies said strength differently. For Dex, shooting can mean that you know exactly how to use the recoil to your advantage, instead of simply absorbing it. A trick shooter if you will. STR and DEX are in the end two different way of applying physical force. If we default guns and bows to STR, we would end up defaulting to STR for pretty much everything since basically anything related to force can work with it.
Sure, and WEG d6 has Dexterity and Strength, but they don't have anything to do with weapon's rate-of-fire (except for DEX allowing you to launch more attacks before multiple action penalty makes your ability to hit a target basically nonexistent). Similar to Interlock, in fact. I don't really see why - as you've said - the attack and fire rate still has to be tied to a stat. In real life, they aren't. I shot automatic weapons myself (a SMG, a handful of automatic rifle types, and a general-purpose machinegun) and their rate of fire had nothing to do with me: once I squeeze the trigger, the gun keeps spitting lead downrange at the rate it is set to, until a) I stop squeezing the trigger, b) the gun runs out of ammo, c) something goes wrong (jam / misfire). None of my mates in the same platoon was to make any difference there - agile or clumsy, beefy nor wimpy, bright or less so (a long story, but we had no dummies in the group), keen-eyed or half-blind... the volume of lead-per-second going downrange remained the same. With semi-automatic fire, well, it was a bit different, but we were generally told to take our time: it was accuracy rather than rate of fire that mattered. Which is the point where I - respectfully - disagree. With hand-to-hand, the attack rate might be tied to how fast you can swing / thrust / kick based on your stat. Though my limited experience seems to imply it is more a matter of training (many untrained people throw out an attack or two, then get away into distnace. It is possible, howeer, to teach them to throw out a hailstorm of punches - or hand-to-hand attacks with a lgiht weapon) and weapon used (due to mass and inertia, long and / or heavy melee weapons are going to be slower to use than small and light ones). Then again, large / long wepaons have the advantage of reach, so you could keep a lightly-armed opponent in distance, where he couldn't pepper you with multiple attacks...
With a liquid-cooled trigger finger! I absolutely bow down to his mastery of shooting very, very, quickly and still hitting what he aims at! I think his video of the Barrett is more impressive, .50BMG is a LOT of recoil to deal with (on par with 12gauge shotgun loaded with slugs).
Having a shorter barrel probably didn't help with that recoil much either. Guess it's just a damn good muzzle brake.
