I think everything's been mostly covered already but I agree naming it as a skill was misleading when it has more to do with the weapon and supporting equipment. MG operators are normally trained to fire in bursts for 3 main reasons: 1) Weapon stability and accuracy, as already mentioned. That said, with a proper mount this is reduced and a trained gunner will be able to return to more accurate fire on the target on long bursts after adjusting for the initial kick back of the weapon system. (Burst fire also allow target observation between bursts) 2) Barrels overheating. This is the biggest reason with current MGs for controlled bursts, and all come with a second or tertiary barrel to be swapped during protracted firing. Although I'm guessing not an issue in the infinity future due to new materials, etc. 3) Ammunition. As already mentioned, HI carry capacity and smaller rounds, however, wouldn't explain why not all HI have the ability. On a side note about fireteams, real life assault rifles tend to have an effective range of 300-400m individually but that increases to 600m as part of a section. That's my understanding of +1B and +3BS. All of this is also conflating rate of fire with accuracy in an imaginary game. At the end of the day Full Auto may have some minor non-intuitive aspects to it but is by no stretch the worst offender of the current skills.
They exist, sure, but your personal skill isn't going to increase the speed at which an automatic rifle can eject bullets. It's more of a.. suppression... kind of thing...
I think it's pretty easy what @Papa Bey means: Instead of, for instance, controlled 3-round-bursts the Trooper with Full Auto can shoot controlled 6-round bursts, while on the move. The FA-Trooper has more ammunition, more strength (or equipment) to control recoil and another trigger group with a different selector switch. The gun itself is not firing faster, the (controlled) bursts are longer.
Okay, but hear me out here. What makes it so that a person who can have a similar effect using longer controlled bursts to someone using shorter controlled bursts, can't have an even better accuracy using the shorter bursts?
Absolutely possible, but that would be another skill. Maybe Marksmanship. If you let every other variable constant (Trooper Zero) someone who can shoot more bullets (than Trooper Zero) with the same accuracy (as Trooper Zero) would have Full Auto, while someone who would shoot the same amount of bullets (as Troper Zero) with a higher accuracy (than Trooper Zero) would have Marksmanship (for instance) With this I am not saying that Full Auto is a great skill (although I don't think it is broken, if you need it to get 50:50 chances against a Kamau sniper who is in ARO, more on the contrary) just that I can understand the logic behind such a skill. If you are not assuming it is normal to fire throughout the whole order, but instead controlled bursts are used, it is possible to shoot more bullets in one order than standard.
Because of the factors affecting ballistic accuracy weapon stability is only one. Basically we're saying that "Full Auto" is the anime-loving Clockmaker name for a suite of upgrades that allow accuracy to degrade more slowly over a burst but don't increase peak accuracy. This allows a higher weight of relatively accurate fire, but doesn't actually increase single shot accuracy. Compare PanO HI systems, which have a suite of upgrades that increase peak accuracy but have not invested in systems that allow an increased weight of fire.
Ahh ... this is what @Mahtamori meant. This can be argued as well. If Trooper A has a system that absorbs recoil completely from a 3-round-burst and Trooper B (The FA-Trooper) a system that absorbs recoils completely from a 6-round-burst, a 3-round-burst of Trooper B would not necessarily bemore accurate than a 3-round-burst from Trooper A. Because both have no recoil, so every other variable constant again, they have the same accuracy with 3-round-bursts.
No, mate, someone who can shoot the same amount of bullets with higher accuracy has higher BS skill, that's literally what that stat represents. Marksmanship seems to be skill in zeroing in on particular body parts, rather than centre of mass, at no additional accuracy penalty. If only this system was a bit better at differentiating between what is a skill and what is a piece of equipment... This is a skill, not a piece of automatic equipment, that literally says it squeezes out higher rate of fire out of a weapon without sacrificing accuracy. Which still begs the question; wouldn't you have higher accuracy if you didn't crank out accuracy?
Remember 'Non-hackable' is a skill. A skill is essentially 'Automatic Equipment that can't be looted' in a lot cases. No, it doesn't. It's about what limits maximum accuracy across multiple rounds.
Like I wrote, if only this game system was a bit better at distinguishing between what is equipment and what is a skill. It's also got programs loaded into devices that are skills, hazard suits are skills, being delivered by an armoured vehicle to the front is a skill, and combat drugs that are skills. The equipment list is fairly decent in that it's actually equipment in there. But this particular skill has a pretty dumb name and description. If it was a Full Auto Device or some gadget like that, then sure, but as described it's just dumb territory. Or rather "because the author said so, that's why" territory. What is about what limits multiple rounds? I can't follow what that is answering.
BS is already abstract enough that Moving and firing full tilt do not effect hit probability when it is almost impossible to hit a distant target while moving. When you start putting in drastic effects for things as vague as anime training and stabilisers, it gets stupid given these movement and ROF are not factors that modify accuracy. Rolling extra dice already decreases your target's chance of success in a face to face. Why on earth does there need to be -3 to do the same thing in the same roll, to represent the volume of fire that burst already represents. Full Auto is a mess. Full Auto is a big fat mistake.
That's why I wrote "for instance". Depends on your definition of accuracy. My argument stays the same if you substitute "Marksmanship" for "higher BS"
Even this can be argued: Imagine full Auto is not just better recoil, so being able to shoot 1 bullet more. Maybe it is another weapon, with a slightly smaller calibre. So instead of shooting 4-round-bursts with a Standard HMG, die FA-Trooper can shoot 8-round-bursts with a smaller-calibre-HMG. These 8-round-bursts with the smaller calibre have the same impact as a 5-round-burst with the Standard HMG, hence the Trooper gets B+1. Additionally there is a psychological effect with having much more lead in the air, because of the 8-round-bursts, so every enemy is more likely to keep it's head down, because there just are much more bullets flying around (like with supressive fire). Again, I am only saying I can understand the logic behind the skill, not that the skill must stay the same. Again I don't think the skill is too strong, if it just counters another (ARO)-piece while being in active turn. The skill could be weakened if the BS+3-BS (pun intended) from fireteams is dropped. This weekend I had to face B2 BS-19 AROs. Yes, he was in good range band, and the game wasn't going in my favour anyways (cause I had no heavy weapons left), but still ... not fun.
Remember this full auto "mental effect" effect of taking on high ROF exists for Remote TAG being shot at by a Kriza Borac's heavy pistol, but not for a Metro bring shot at by a Szalamandra's gattling railgun.
Yes. It also exists for that same Salzy shooting at the Metro in Suppressive Fire. It's a game, some things are abstracted because it makes good game play. You're arguing two different things: first that FA2 is mechanically a bad rule and second that it's fluff description is bad. But you keep jumping between those two separate issues. The 2 mechanics of +1 B and Suppressive -3 (which I think everyone agrees is a better implementation than Full Auto L2) are useful from a game play POV. They offer ways of buffing a unit that are different that +3 BS or Mimmetism, with slightly different advantages and disadvantages. They do this without adding significant complexity (yes there is room for improvement, but FA2 is hardly a poorly understood or complex rule). The fluff is OTT. But that's Infinity. We've described several different ways that "more bullets but not more accurate" make sense.
