C-12 Hvy. Assault Laser Rifle (Old Style)

[HarleeKnight]

The Coalition War Campaign says it can shoot a 5 shot burst fire; the RUE says it can shoot a 3 shot burst fire... which is it? Also, what is the damage of a 2D6 3 shot and 5 shot, and a 4D6 3 shot and 5 shot?

[valise]

well to your first question i would say it would be which book the GM uses. I normally allow the players to use the better one if they can get there hands on one. Old CS equipment is easy to get, new stuff is harder and more expensive on the black market unless you are up to slaughtering the little black nazi ants.

[Mechghost]

generally I would go with RUE as it's the more recent of the 2 books.

single shot = 2d6 MD
3 rd burst = 6d6 MD
single SD = 6d6 SD

[Killer Cyborg]

The Coalition War Campaign says it can shoot a 5 shot burst fire; the RUE says it can shoot a 3 shot burst fire... which is it? Also, what is the damage of a 2D6 3 shot and 5 shot, and a 4D6 3 shot and 5 shot?

The original damage was supposed to be 2d6 MD per shot, with a 5-shot burst for 4d6 MD, but that got screwed up with the ROF listing.
The CWC corrected things.
RUE initially swapped the damage with the CV-212, but I believe that was later corrected.

The correct current damage and ROF is 2d6 MD per shot, with a 3-shot burst for 4d6 MD.

[flatline]

Well, shoot. Now I have to pull out my copy of RUE and see what it says.

--flatline

[Alrik Vas]

if its 2d6 per single shot and the pulse is 3, I'd go with 6d6 or the C-17 is the most inefficient pile in the megaverse. pulses are so close together that its really just one big shot going at the speed if light. most rifles with the same damage rating do triple a single shot of damage from the tri-pulse.

if the CS main battle rifle from back in the day is that terrible when based off golden age tech, you have to wonder.

[Killer Cyborg]

if its 2d6 per single shot and the pulse is 3, I'd go with 6d6 or the C-17 is the most inefficient pile in the megaverse. pulses are so close together that its really just one big shot going at the speed if light. most rifles with the same damage rating do triple a single shot of damage from the tri-pulse.

if the CS main battle rifle from back in the day is that terrible when based off golden age tech, you have to wonder.

The C-12 isn't a pulse rifle. It's a laser rifle with a burst setting.

[Slight001]

if its 2d6 per single shot and the pulse is 3, I'd go with 6d6 or the C-17 is the most inefficient pile in the megaverse. pulses are so close together that its really just one big shot going at the speed if light. most rifles with the same damage rating do triple a single shot of damage from the tri-pulse.

if the CS main battle rifle from back in the day is that terrible when based off golden age tech, you have to wonder.

wasn't/isn't a pulse rifle it just has specific rules for 3 round burst fire... stupid rules yeah, but specific none the less...

Just like most things in literature it is because the author says it is even if just a little out of the box thinking would bring the world crashing to it's knees... simply by applying tech/properties discussed in ways the author didn't think of.

[Alrik Vas]

what a headache

[say652]

You can still dump the e clip in burst though??

[Svartalf]

if its 2d6 per single shot and the pulse is 3, I'd go with 6d6 or the C-17 is the most inefficient pile in the megaverse. pulses are so close together that its really just one big shot going at the speed if light. most rifles with the same damage rating do triple a single shot of damage from the tri-pulse.

if the CS main battle rifle from back in the day is that terrible when based off golden age tech, you have to wonder.

The C-12 isn't a pulse rifle. It's a laser rifle with a burst setting.

the difference between the two in game terms being?

[Mack]

if its 2d6 per single shot and the pulse is 3, I'd go with 6d6 or the C-17 is the most inefficient pile in the megaverse. pulses are so close together that its really just one big shot going at the speed if light. most rifles with the same damage rating do triple a single shot of damage from the tri-pulse.

if the CS main battle rifle from back in the day is that terrible when based off golden age tech, you have to wonder.

The C-12 isn't a pulse rifle. It's a laser rifle with a burst setting.

the difference between the two in game terms being?

The difference being how fast it happens.

A pulse happens fast enough that all rounds fired hit the same spot. That's why weapons like the L-20 hit for x3 damage on a pulse.

A burst occurs slow enough that the rounds spread out (blame the shooter wiggling a bit) with some missing the target entirely. Hence the burst rules where 5 rounds are fired yet the damage is only x3.

[guardiandashi]

if its 2d6 per single shot and the pulse is 3, I'd go with 6d6 or the C-17 is the most inefficient pile in the megaverse. pulses are so close together that its really just one big shot going at the speed if light. most rifles with the same damage rating do triple a single shot of damage from the tri-pulse.

if the CS main battle rifle from back in the day is that terrible when based off golden age tech, you have to wonder.

The C-12 isn't a pulse rifle. It's a laser rifle with a burst setting.

the difference between the two in game terms being?

The difference being how fast it happens.

A pulse happens fast enough that all rounds fired hit the same spot. That's why weapons like the L-20 hit for x3 damage on a pulse.

A burst occurs slow enough that the rounds spread out (blame the shooter wiggling a bit) with some missing the target entirely. Hence the burst rules where 5 rounds are fired yet the damage is only x3.

look at it in an example of "real" guns firing bullets. the "burst" setting is like rapidly firing 3 rounds out of a revolver or semi auto weapon happens fast but there is some delay between shots.

the pulse laser is more like firing 3 rounds from a minigun or other weapon that has a 1000+ rounds per minute cycle rate there is "effectively" no delay, and the bullets are effectively all 1 attack

[Tor]

I have never seen any phrasing to convince me that 4D6 was intended to represent a 5-shot burst. It has always appeared to be an option for the single shot.

CWC didn't change that at all, people just seem to assume this based on some of the phrasing in the newer rifles.

[Killer Cyborg]

I have never seen any phrasing to convince me that 4D6 was intended to represent a 5-shot burst. It has always appeared to be an option for the single shot.

CWC didn't change that at all, people just seem to assume this based on some of the phrasing in the newer rifles.

I've posted to the remaining threads from the the years-long arguments about the subject where every angle was govered, and mentioned that KS himself told me that the 4d6 setting was the 5-shot burst.

You can remain unconvinced, but that's not from a lack of proof.

[Tor]

There's a difference between KS overriding the text and the text actually having said that. RAW the 4D6 was and has still always been printed as a single-shot setting. For all KS' whispered intent to you it didn't make it into the books.

[Killer Cyborg]

There's a difference between KS overriding the text and the text actually having said that.

Just as there is a difference between KS explaining what the description is supposed to mean, and in KS "overriding" the text.

RAW the 4D6 was and has still always been printed as a single-shot setting.

No, not EVER.
Never ONCE does the book actually state that 4d6 is a single-shot setting.

What the book actually says is:
"Mega-Damage: Setting One: 4d6 MD or Setting Two: 2d6 MD"

There's nothing in that about Setting 1 being a single shot.

The book also says:
"The rifle has three settings, one SDC and two MDC settings."

Again, there is nothing there stating that all three settings are single-shot settings

[Killer Cyborg]

Here's the description of the C-12 from the RMB:
"The rifle has three settings, one SDC and two MDC settings. The rifle can also be set to fire a single shot or a burst of five."

As mentioned, we know that the word "also" has zero meaning in this context, because it's used the same way with the CP-40, and it has zero meaning there.
That leaves us with:
"The rifle has three settings, one SDC and two MDC settings. The rifle can be set to fire a single shot or a burst of five."

Now account further for Palladium's lousy English skills, and make a couple of minor corrections:
The rifle has three settings, one SDC and two MDC settings: the rifle can be set to fire a single shot or a burst of five.

Do you find it impossible that what the book actually says was intended to say the bolded sentence above?

Do you find it more likely that the book meant that the weapon had three damage settings (6d6 SDC, 4d6 MD, and 2d6 MD), and that any one of these settings could be set to fire a single shot, or a 5-shot burst, AND that not one of the burst damages was ever listed in any of the books, and eventually changed the nature of the gun to something else?

Any way you slice it, the C-12's original description is messed up, and errors were made.
We're left to assume which errors were made.
One set of assumptions about which parts were errors fits the rest of the facts given by later books (and by KS), and the other set does not.
Why assume that the set of assumptions that goes against the grain is the one to go with?

[Tor]

there is a difference between KS explaining what the description is supposed to mean, and in KS "overriding" the text.

Explanations that contradict text are retcons.

Never ONCE does the book actually state that 4d6 is a single-shot setting.

I understand this to be the meaning of damage not otherwise specified to be of a burst. We see this in RMBp224 for the Laser Torch/Wand and the NG-57. Plus the JA-11 on the next page. On pg 225 the L-20 by contrast specifies a multiple pulse burst when a higher MD amount is due to this.

What the book actually says is: "Mega-Damage: Setting One: 4d6 MD or Setting Two: 2d6 MD"

Sounds a lot like the JA-11.

Looking at the C-10 also informs us. It had "no variable settings" yet was a "burst" weapon. So clearly bursting was not a variable setting. Variable settings listed under damage are for single shots unless explicitly noted to be pulse damage.

The 5-shot burst was simply an aberrent burst that did not conform to the 20/50 percent burst rules.

Perhaps it was meant to say "burst of four" and author got alliterative wires crossed. Perhaps payload was originally 10/25.

Perhaps a x3 for 25% clip rule was intended to be added but didn't. *shrug* I don't go with author testimonials based on decades-old minor stuff lost in the shuffle which in all realism would've been forgotten leading me to think it's being made up on the fly to sate a fan.

The book also says:
"The rifle has three settings, one SDC and two MDC settings."
Again, there is nothing there stating that all three settings are single-shot settings

Nor do we see this for any other weapon except in the case of the L-20 pulse laser which also explicitly tells us if it is a burst.

we know that the word "also" has zero meaning in this context, because it's used the same way with the CP-40, and it has zero meaning there.

Wrong, we cannot retcon the obvious meaning of 'also' just because of how it is used (abused?) in a later book. "Has 3 settings" .. "can also be set to fire a single shot or a burst" shows that single/burst shooting is a separate feature from the 3 damage settings.

account further for Palladium's lousy English skills, and make a couple of minor corrections:
The rifle has three settings, one SDC and two MDC settings: the rifle can be set to fire a single shot or a burst of five.

Do you find it impossible that what the book actually says was intended to say the bolded sentence above?

I have never seen it presented in this way, now that you have used the colon line that I can certainly see how that may've been intended. ALSO ruins everything though, pertaining to RAW, so it's still a retcon/clarify.

Do you find it more likely that the book meant that the weapon had three damage settings (6d6 SDC, 4d6 MD, and 2d6 MD), and that any one of these settings could be set to fire a single shot, or a 5-shot burst, AND that not one of the burst damages was ever listed in any of the books, and eventually changed the nature of the gun to something else?

RAW doesn't care about likelihoods.

What I think most likely is that a 5-shot burst was initially designed and then later scrapped in favor of using standard burst rules and removing it from the intro was forgotten.

Another possibility is that 5-shot burst could've fallen under standard burst rules in two ways:
*it would have been a short burst if the payload was 25 shots, so it is possible the payload was originally 25 and then lowered to 20. This would certainly fit the 2d6x2 narrative.
*it would have been a long burst if the payload was 10 shots, if CS rifles (like the C-27 plasma cannon) had the same payload as the C-18 and their advantage was range and either accuracy (C-10) or damage (C-12)

One set of assumptions about which parts were errors fits the rest of the facts given by later books (and by KS), and the other set does not. Why assume that the set of assumptions that goes against the grain is the one to go with?

because reading the language is more important than accounting for later materials, we know full well that KS changes rules throughout the series and doesn't respect earlier canon too well

[Killer Cyborg]

there is a difference between KS explaining what the description is supposed to mean, and in KS "overriding" the text.

Explanations that contradict text are retcons.

And the Moops invaded Spain in the 8th century.

Never ONCE does the book actually state that 4d6 is a single-shot setting.

I understand this to be the meaning of damage not otherwise specified to be of a burst.

By "I understand," what you mean is "I make certain assumptions that are never actually stated anywhere."

We see this in RMBp224 for the Laser Torch/Wand and the NG-57. Plus the JA-11 on the next page. On pg 225 the L-20 by contrast specifies a multiple pulse burst when a higher MD amount is due to this.

Note that the L-20 specifies that the single shot setting is the single shot setting.
It doesn't leave it just as a flat damage.
Same with other burst weapons, even with Rail Guns, where the single shot damage is listed for informational purposes only.
In weapons with selective fire, the damage for the single shot is specified as often as the damage for a burst is specified.
The C-12 breaks both patterns, never specifying either the burst setting or the single shot setting.

What the book actually says is: "Mega-Damage: Setting One: 4d6 MD or Setting Two: 2d6 MD"

Sounds a lot like the JA-11.

Except that the JA-11 does not have a burst setting.

Looking at the C-10 also informs us. It had "no variable settings" yet was a "burst" weapon.

Incorrect.
The C-10 was a semi-automatic weapon that was capable of firing bursts.
A burst weapon is a weapon that has a specific setting that fires a set number of rounds in a burst.

Perhaps it was meant to say "burst of four" and author got alliterative wires crossed.

That, by your logic, would be a retcon.

I don't go with author testimonials based on decades-old minor stuff lost in the shuffle

The basic function of the primary weapon of the primary bad guys of the setting is not "minor stuff."

The book also says:
"The rifle has three settings, one SDC and two MDC settings."
Again, there is nothing there stating that all three settings are single-shot settings

Nor do we see this for any other weapon except in the case of the L-20 pulse laser which also explicitly tells us if it is a burst.

You claimed that the books stated that the 4d6 setting was a single shot setting.
I am pointing out that you were wrong in that claim

And, again, burst weapons as a rule specify which damage was for a single shot, and which damage was for a burst.
The L-20, rail guns, the machine guns on vehicles, etc.
It's very consistent.

we know that the word "also" has zero meaning in this context, because it's used the same way with the CP-40, and it has zero meaning there.

Wrong, we cannot retcon the obvious meaning of 'also' just because of how it is used (abused?)

I am losing faith that you know what the word "recon" means, because that is not an appropriate use.

Regardless, the CP-40 demonstrates that Palladium uses the word incorrectly in the context of describing burst fire settings in laser rifles.
Which means that it would be illogical to assume in any case where they use that term in that context that they are correct.

in a later book. "Has 3 settings" .. "can also be set to fire a single shot or a burst" shows that single/burst shooting is a separate feature from the 3 damage settings.

Incorrect, because the CP-40 demonstrates that Palladium does not use the word "also" correctly in that context.
We know that the CP-40 doesn't work the way described when it comes to that word, therefore it is not logical to assume that the C-12 does.

account further for Palladium's lousy English skills, and make a couple of minor corrections:
The rifle has three settings, one SDC and two MDC settings: the rifle can be set to fire a single shot or a burst of five.

Do you find it impossible that what the book actually says was intended to say the bolded sentence above?

I have never seen it presented in this way, now that you have used the colon line that I can certainly see how that may've been intended.

Okay.

ALSO ruins everything though, pertaining to RAW, so it's still a retcon/clarify.

Correcting an editorial/writing mistake is not a retcon.

Do you find it more likely that the book meant that the weapon had three damage settings (6d6 SDC, 4d6 MD, and 2d6 MD), and that any one of these settings could be set to fire a single shot, or a 5-shot burst, AND that not one of the burst damages was ever listed in any of the books, and eventually changed the nature of the gun to something else?

RAW doesn't care about likelihoods.

Agreed.
But the RAW version of the C-12 was inoperable in the first place, so it's clear that there were mistakes in the description.

What I think most likely is that a 5-shot burst was initially designed and then later scrapped in favor of using standard burst rules and removing it from the intro was forgotten.

And that they changed their mind again in CWC.
And that the same mistake was made with the CV-212.
And that KS forgot how he intended the weapon to work.
And so forth.

All of which in combination seems a LOT less likely than Palladium screwing up the ROF, and use the word "also," and slowly trying to correct things here or there over time.

Another possibility is that 5-shot burst could've fallen under standard burst rules in two ways:
*it would have been a short burst if the payload was 25 shots, so it is possible the payload was originally 25 and then lowered to 20. This would certainly fit the 2d6x2 narrative.
*it would have been a long burst if the payload was 10 shots, if CS rifles (like the C-27 plasma cannon) had the same payload as the C-18 and their advantage was range and either accuracy (C-10) or damage (C-12)

A preset burst is by definition not standard, in that it always fires a specific number of shots regardless of total ammunition, and does not need to interact with the burst/spray rules on p. 34.

One set of assumptions about which parts were errors fits the rest of the facts given by later books (and by KS), and the other set does not. Why assume that the set of assumptions that goes against the grain is the one to go with?

because reading the language is more important than accounting for later materials, we know full well that KS changes rules throughout the series and doesn't respect earlier canon too well

We also know that KS makes mistakes when writing/editing the books in the first place, and I see no reason to assume any kind of covert rule-change and coverup instead of assuming clarification when the changes in later books make things make more sense.
The original ROF of the C-12 conflicted with the description of the weapon as having a 5-round burst.
The CWC version changed the ROF to be compatible with the 5-round burst.

Considering the following options...
1. The weapon was originally intended to have a ROF of Aimed, Burst, Wild, and the mention of a 5-shot burst was an error. Later the CWC changed the function of the weapon to conform with the error instead of changing it to match the intended ROF.
2. The weapon was originally intended to have an ROF that conformed to the intended description of the weapon as having a 5-shot burst. Later, the CWC corrected the erroneous ROF description to match the intent of the weapon.

... I have to consider the first option to be illogical, and the second option to be logical.

[eliakon]

Looking at the C-10 also informs us. It had "no variable settings" yet was a "burst" weapon. So clearly bursting was not a variable setting. Variable settings listed under damage are for single shots unless explicitly noted to be pulse damage.

Variable settings in this game has a specific meaning. That meaning is that variable lasers....can vary their frequency and thus defeat laser reflective armor.
Every use of 'variable settings' on a laser that I can see talks about the weapon being a variable laser. Thus I would challenge the idea that claims that it has 'no variable settings' means other than its not a variable weapon


And even if it does....
no variable settings could mean
setting 1 was ALWAYS a burst of 3 MD blasts
Setting 2 was ALWAYS a single shot of 1 MD blast
Setting 3 was ALWAYS a single shot of 1 SD blast

Poof, the settings can not be varied and yet it is still a burst weapon....

[Tor]

the Moops invaded Spain in the 8th century.

There's a diff between books' accuracy in describing a pre-existing history and books which actually create a non-existing fictional history.

By "I understand," what you mean is "I make certain assumptions that are never actually stated anywhere."

Not necessarily, it might well say somewhere that damage is per-shot and I just forgot where. Seems like the kind of thing to be buried in basic rules.

The JA-11 example strongly indicates to me that it describes per-shot. Following this example, I do not assume the 3d6 MD setting of the NG-57 to be representing a short burst due to it having standard RoF.

We see this in RMBp224 for the Laser Torch/Wand and the NG-57. Plus the JA-11 on the next page. On pg 225 the L-20 by contrast specifies a multiple pulse burst when a higher MD amount is due to this.

Note that the L-20 specifies that the single shot setting is the single shot setting. It doesn't leave it just as a flat damage.

True, but it sets the example that it will explicitly point out single/burst damage dichotomy when it exists. Other weapons that do not point this out I think we must reasonably interpret are describing single-round damage.

Same with other burst weapons, even with Rail Guns, where the single shot damage is listed for informational purposes only. In weapons with selective fire, the damage for the single shot is specified as often as the damage for a burst is specified.

There were multiple "burst" weapons in the RMB which only listed 1 damage which was obviously for single shots and then you multiplied it using the standard RoF burst rules for automatic weapons.

Looking at RMBp34 we see phrases like "normal damage dice" (automatic/sub-machine) or "normal damage" (machine) being used for single rounds. This means that describing a single round is the natural state of describing weapons unless otherwise indicated.

RUEp328 does not specify it is describing "per single bullet" or "per single round" under WP Hanguns like it does for WP Rifles right after, we are just expected to understand that, and that we apply the burst-doubling after that. Specifying per-single is an unnecessary luxury.

Except that the JA-11 does not have a burst setting.

It still sets a precident that variable damage is per-shot. They are listed the same way. As is the torch and the ion blaster mentioned before.

Looking at the C-10 also informs us. It had "no variable settings" yet was a "burst" weapon.

Incorrect. The C-10 was a semi-automatic weapon that was capable of firing bursts. A burst weapon is a weapon that has a specific setting that fires a set number of rounds in a burst.

I'll agree to disagree on this. I use it in the broad sense of any weapon which can fire bursts. Like those which explicitly listed "burst" under rate of fire, or "standard" rate of fire energy weapons as of CB1's generalizations. Obv. RUE ret-conned a lot of weapons out of the ability.

If it was more narrowly defined elsewhere, meh, I don't like it, I'd prefer some other more specific term. We need a collective term and I don't know what else to use.

Perhaps it was meant to say "burst of four" and author got alliterative wires crossed.

That, by your logic, would be a retcon.

Yes, I am just indulging in speculation with you.

RAW: we simply never were told how the 5-shot burst worked, so it was not something we could use, even though the flavor text described it. Kind of like the mini missile payload of the GBK when it was introduced in CWC. We never got those stats until it was reprinted in SoT with those stats added in finally.

It's like yeah, you know the C-12 has a mysterious 5-shot burst, you know the GBK has mysterious missile launchers, but you never had stats, so you couldn't use them.

I don't go with author testimonials based on decades-old minor stuff lost in the shuffle

The basic function of the primary weapon of the primary bad guys of the setting is not "minor stuff."

Good point, yet it was still a mistake.

Using standard burst rules, a short burst with a 20-shot weapon used 4 shots to double the damage.

So why would you do some special "4D6 using 5 shots" thing with the C-12 when you can just short-burst with the 2D6 and get 2D6x2 using 4 shots?

About the only advantage is a lower likelihood of rolling minimum damage (1 in 1296 versus 36) but that also resulted in a lower likelihood of rolling maximum damage. I guess that gives you an advantage in trying to kill low MDC targets quickly and a disadvantage in trying to kill high MDC targets quickly.

A big issue here is also the semantics of the weapons. The C-10 is "Light" assault while the C-12 is "Heavy" assault. They have equal range. They are both bursting weapons. They have the same range. The only thing that could make it 'heavy' to me is being able to do twice as much damage in a single shot. Having a more evenly space burst at the cost of consuming an extra shot doesn't scream 'heavy' to me. Nor does having a larger payload via new E-cannisters. Heavy weapon screams higher-damage not 'more-shots'. This is why I view the NG-57 as being a 'Heavy Duty' ion blaster: because of it having a higher damage setting for single shots.

This is also why the NG-L5 Northern Gun Laser Rifle (RMBp225) is a "heavy-duty" laser rifle. This is listed separately after 'durable' so the 'heavy' clearly refers to the damage, nto the durability. This weapon doesn't have much of a payload, showing that 'heavy' is descriptive of damage not payload.

You claimed that the books stated that the 4d6 setting was a single shot setting. I am pointing out that you were wrong in that claim

When I said "RAW the 4D6 was and has still always been printed as a single-shot setting" I did not mean that it explicitly denoted "single shot" like it sometimes/often bothers to do for bursting weapons, just that it is presented in the undocumented (and thus reverting to single-as-default) fashion as all other weapons, and like other variable laser or other energy weapons.

burst weapons as a rule specify which damage was for a single shot, and which damage was for a burst. The L-20, rail guns, the machine guns on vehicles, etc. It's very consistent.

Wrong, we did not see this for RoF: aimed/burst (C-10, the NG-Super's grenades, the JA-11's ion beam) or any of the 'standard' weapons (also indicated to mean aimed/burst per the "as standard" note under JA-11 or CB1 statements)

we know that the word "also" has zero meaning in this context, because it's used the same way with the CP-40, and it has zero meaning there.

Wrong, we cannot retcon the obvious meaning of 'also' just because of how it is used (abused?)

I am losing faith that you know what the word "recon" means, because that is not an appropriate use.

I know exactly what it means.

Srsly though, ignoring RAW text with clear distinctions like 'also' is indeed a change to the game's original function, if not the game's original intentions. Written reality trumps intention. When DC Comics reboots its universes and character history is rewrote, this is indeed a retcon (albeit one explained via universe-rewriting rather than author-shrug) even if it allows authors to rewrite a char closer to how they think they were intended to be. Kind of like how grim 80s/90s Batman is actually a return to how he was originally written by retconning his campy 60s/70s colorful-happy adventures.

the CP-40 demonstrates that Palladium uses the word incorrectly in the context of describing burst fire settings in laser rifles. Which means that it would be illogical to assume in any case where they use that term in that context that they are correct.

You are assuming that the word "also" has been used with consistent proficiency by Kev between 1990 and whenever it was (1995?) that CWC came out. A young Kev could start off using it properly when designing the core book and then older-Kev could use it improperly when rushing out a World Book years later.

Given that burst rules are not the only instance of 'also' I find it easier to believe the C-12 uses it properly like the many other instances where Kev uses it competently and that the CP-40 is a rare mistake, rather than assume a decade-long pattern of ALSO-fail.

Correcting an editorial/writing mistake is not a retcon.

Only for obvious typo-slips (ie 3d6x100 dinobot kicks). Adding in an entire word is not a slip. You're allowing too much room for Kev to misrepresent his original intentions to sneak in a nerf for the C-12's damage.

the RAW version of the C-12 was inoperable in the first place, so it's clear that there were mistakes in the description.

It was not inoperable, it just had an undefined feature like the GBK's mini-missiles. You could just ignore the 5-shot thing and operate it normally.

What I think most likely is that a 5-shot burst was initially designed and then later scrapped in favor of using standard burst rules and removing it from the intro was forgotten.

And that they changed their mind again in CWC.

I don't think we can judge anything reasonable from CWCp92. The CP-40 can't even keep its ammo straight. It says "single shot or a pulse of three". Then we are told 30 SDC shots = 1 MD blast and 6 SDC pulses = 1 MD blast. This would mean that an SDC pulse uses up as much energy as 5 shots even though it only fires 3? Not to mention that the damage of the SDC pulse is higher than the sum of 3 individual SDC shots, which suggests it might've been intended to be a 4 or 5 shot SDC pulse. Not the first weapon to exhibit greater-than-sum burst synergy so I guess I can let it go.

And that the same mistake was made with the CV-212. And that KS forgot how he intended the weapon to work. And so forth.

Kev could have forgot or could just misrepresent his original beliefs on the issue.

Where does the "number of settings" thing happen with the CV-212? I don't see anything about there being 3 settings, although the lack of listing an SDC burst damage implies that it might be locked to single shots unlike the CP-40.

A preset burst is by definition not standard, in that it always fires a specific number of shots regardless of total ammunition, and does not need to interact with the burst/spray rules on p. 34.

The C-12 and C-10 saying "see Modern Weapon Proficiencies" suggests they still used the standard rules.

The 5-shot burst would thus be a supplementary feature that added an additional burst option besides short/long/full, yet it was never defined.

If we look at the L-20 Pulse Rifle it said 'Standard' so you could still use the short/long/full burst rules for it. The special burst rules were supplementary not replacing. It just didn't make much sense to do so. The pulse setting was superior. A short burst only did double damage for 5 shots, inferior to triple for 3.

There could be a reason to use a long burst with the L-20 though. Spending 20 shots to inflict x5 damage could have been a frantic move. CB1 nerfing the long burst multiplier removed this, so only the x10/x7 from a full-clip burst remained a viable option. Considering you could get x6 from firing two triple pulses in 2 actions, spending the entire clip to get a x7 wasn't very smart as of CB1.

For all we know the 5-shot pulse couldn't been something like x3 or x4 or x5 all of which would've been better than using a short burst and would have provided similar incentive.

We also know that KS makes mistakes when writing/editing the books in the first place, and I see no reason to assume any kind of covert rule-change and coverup instead of assuming clarification when the changes in later books make things make more sense.

because Palladium never makes covert rule changes to things as time goes on?

*let's just pretend the Brodkil's stats were not altered without announcing a change*

The original ROF of the C-12 conflicted with the description of the weapon as having a 5-round burst.

Nope, not a conflict, just GBKminiMissiles.

The CWC version changed the ROF to be compatible with the 5-round burst.

Except that if this were intended for the C-12 the 4D6 would've been explicitly listed as a burst/pulse damage... which did not happen in CWC...

Nor even in RUE. The changed stats in RUEp257-258 for C-12 were identified as a misprint/mixup with the CV-212 per http://www.palladium-megaverse.com/cutt ... Eratta.pdf page 14:

p. 258 Both Columns. C-12 damage, C-27 metric range, and CV-212 damage have all been adjusted.
combat abuse and activity without mechanical failure. The rifle has three settings, one S.D.C. and two M.D.C. settings.
The rifle can also be set to fire a single shot or a burst of three. Comes standard with a passive nightvision scope and
laser targeting.
Weight: 7 lbs (3.2 kg).
Mega-Damage: 2D6 M.D. or 4D6 M.D., or 6D6 S.D.C.
Rate of Fire: Each laser blast or burst counts as one melee attack.
Effective Range: 2000 feet (610 m).
Payload: 20 M.D. blasts from standard E-Clip or 30 from a long E-Clip, plus another 30 can be added with one E-Clip
canister, a new Coalition invention. Note that six S.D.C. shots equals one Mega-Damage blast.
Laser Targeting: Add +1 to strike on an Aimed shot.
Black Market Cost: 20,000 credits for the rifle.

The RUE changes to the C-12 (pre or post errata) do not inform us in any way of how the C-12 originally operated or was intended to operate. Namely because in both versions it has a "3 shot burst" (leading me to think he did not completely unmix it from the CV-212) rather than the "5 shot burst" RMB/CWC had. RUE and the RUE Errata are both littered with wieirdness:
*it still has "can also" indicating distinction between 3 settings for damage and 2 settings for single/burst RoF
*it lists SDC damage under Mega-Damage
*it says 'blast or burst' but does not specify anything about 4D6 being for a 3-shot MD burst or being unable to do a 3-shot burst with SDC setting

[Svartalf]

Or just the 3 settings are just different power settings and have nothing to do with a burst or pulse.

[Killer Cyborg]

the Moops invaded Spain in the 8th century.

There's a diff between books' accuracy in describing a pre-existing history and books which actually create a non-existing fictional history.

Not a significant one in this case.
If an author writes something other than his/her intent by mistake, then later corrects that mistake, that's not a retcon.
That's editing.

By "I understand," what you mean is "I make certain assumptions that are never actually stated anywhere."

Not necessarily, it might well say somewhere that damage is per-shot and I just forgot where. Seems like the kind of thing to be buried in basic rules.

Let me know if that assumption ever pans out.

The JA-11 example strongly indicates to me that it describes per-shot. Following this example, I do not assume the 3d6 MD setting of the NG-57 to be representing a short burst due to it having standard RoF.

Of course not. Weapons only list the damage for specific settings, not for bursts/sprays as per the p.34 rules.

Note that the L-20 specifies that the single shot setting is the single shot setting. It doesn't leave it just as a flat damage.

True, but it sets the example that it will explicitly point out single/burst damage dichotomy when it exists. Other weapons that do not point this out I think we must reasonably interpret are describing single-round damage.

It is not reasonable to interpret a weapon that mentions having a preset burst capability as having only single shot damage listed.
Because that would go further against quite a few precedents.

Same with other burst weapons, even with Rail Guns, where the single shot damage is listed for informational purposes only. In weapons with selective fire, the damage for the single shot is specified as often as the damage for a burst is specified.

There were multiple "burst" weapons in the RMB which only listed 1 damage which was obviously for single shots and then you multiplied it using the standard RoF burst rules for automatic weapons.

A burst weapon is a weapon with a specific burst setting, not a semi-automatic or automatic weapon that uses the p.34 rules.

Looking at RMBp34 we see phrases like "normal damage dice" (automatic/sub-machine) or "normal damage" (machine) being used for single rounds. This means that describing a single round is the natural state of describing weapons unless otherwise indicated.

For semi-automatics, yes. But not for burst weapons, such as railguns, pulse rifles, and laser rifles with preset burst settings such as the C-12.

Except that the JA-11 does not have a burst setting.

It still sets a precident that variable damage is per-shot. They are listed the same way. As is the torch and the ion blaster mentioned before.

Again, none of those weapons mentions having a preset burst, so it's not the same kind of weapon.
With those weapons, no vacuum is left if the damages stated each apply to single shot. Single shot is the default for semi-automatic weapons.
But if a railgun, or a pulse rifle, or other burst weapons were to list ONLY the single shot damage, while NOT listing the burst damage, there would be a vacuum of necessary information for the function of the weapon, which is why burst weapons as a rule include specific mention of which damage is for a single shot, and which is for the burst.
There are no weapons with preset bursts that fail to include the damage of that burst in the weapon's stats.

Looking at the C-10 also informs us. It had "no variable settings" yet was a "burst" weapon.

Incorrect. The C-10 was a semi-automatic weapon that was capable of firing bursts. A burst weapon is a weapon that has a specific setting that fires a set number of rounds in a burst.

I'll agree to disagree on this. I use it in the broad sense of any weapon which can fire bursts.

Use the term how you please, but understand how I'm using the term, and respond to my points accordingly.

RAW: we simply never were told how the 5-shot burst worked, so it was not something we could use, even though the flavor text described it.

RAW, we were never told how ROF Standard or ROF Aimed, Burst, Wild worked.

It's like yeah, you know the C-12 has a mysterious 5-shot burst, you know the GBK has mysterious missile launchers, but you never had stats, so you couldn't use them.

Except with the C-12, there are multiple interpretations of how the 5-shot burst worked, and any of those interpretations that does not conflict with specifically written rules would be within RAW.

I don't go with author testimonials based on decades-old minor stuff lost in the shuffle

The basic function of the primary weapon of the primary bad guys of the setting is not "minor stuff."

Good point, yet it was still a mistake.

Using standard burst rules, a short burst with a 20-shot weapon used 4 shots to double the damage.

The C-12 isn't a 20-shot weapon as a rule, it's a 30-shot weapon. That's what the E-Cannister provides, and that's what a Long Clip provides.
2 out of 3 possible options for ammo capacity are 30, so that's the more logical assumption.
In which case a short burst would be 6 shots normally, and the preset option would save 1 shot per short burst off of semi-automatic fire.

So why would you do some special "4D6 using 5 shots" thing with the C-12 when you can just short-burst with the 2D6 and get 2D6x2 using 4 shots?

Why not just have 10 shots per clip, and get the same damage with 2 shots?
Most likely, because the burst/spray rules were poorly thought-out, and/or poorly explained, and are prone to abuse by players who think things through like that.

A big issue here is also the semantics of the weapons. The C-10 is "Light" assault while the C-12 is "Heavy" assault. They have equal range. They are both bursting weapons. They have the same range. The only thing that could make it 'heavy' to me is being able to do twice as much damage in a single shot. Having a more evenly space burst at the cost of consuming an extra shot doesn't scream 'heavy' to me. Nor does having a larger payload via new E-cannisters. Heavy weapon screams higher-damage not 'more-shots'. This is why I view the NG-57 as being a 'Heavy Duty' ion blaster: because of it having a higher damage setting for single shots.

I would agree with that sentiment, and in fact have made a similar argument in the past.
It makes logical sense for a "light" assault weapon to do x damage per shot, and for the "heavy" assault weapon to do 2x damage per shot.
Unfortunately, that's not the way Palladium wrote the weapons, and instead we have a "heavy" assault weapon whose chief advantage is that it has more ammunition, more durability for field conditions, and a preset burst to keep troops from ripping off entire clips and wasting ammo.
Oh, and the "heavy" rifle has an SDC setting to further avoid wasting unnecessary ammunition, and it lacks the laser targeting system.
It IS 2 lbs heavier, and with Palladium, that might have been enough to justify the label. I can't really say.

This is also why the NG-L5 Northern Gun Laser Rifle (RMBp225) is a "heavy-duty" laser rifle. This is listed separately after 'durable' so the 'heavy' clearly refers to the damage, nto the durability. This weapon doesn't have much of a payload, showing that 'heavy' is descriptive of damage not payload.

If only Palladium were consistent in its descriptions.

You claimed that the books stated that the 4d6 setting was a single shot setting. I am pointing out that you were wrong in that claim

When I said "RAW the 4D6 was and has still always been printed as a single-shot setting" I did not mean that it explicitly denoted "single shot" like it sometimes/often bothers to do for bursting weapons, just that it is presented in the undocumented (and thus reverting to single-as-default) fashion as all other weapons, and like other variable laser or other energy weapons.

"Rules As Written" means "as written," not "interpreted by some readers as falling into an assumed default."

burst weapons as a rule specify which damage was for a single shot, and which damage was for a burst. The L-20, rail guns, the machine guns on vehicles, etc. It's very consistent.

Wrong, we did not see this for RoF: aimed/burst (C-10, the NG-Super's grenades, the JA-11's ion beam) or any of the 'standard' weapons (also indicated to mean aimed/burst per the "as standard" note under JA-11 or CB1 statements)

Already addressed: those are not burst weapons, they are simply weapons capable of bursts.
However you wish to term it, the line is clear: weapons with preset bursts listed the damage per single shot as a rule, as well as the damage for the burst.

I am losing faith that you know what the word "recon" means, because that is not an appropriate use.

I know exactly what it means.

Srsly though, ignoring RAW text with clear distinctions like 'also' is indeed a change to the game's original function, if not the game's original intentions. Written reality trumps intention.

Then we're back to the moops invading Spain, regardless of what the authors of that trivia card intended to say.

When DC Comics reboots its universes and character history is rewrote, this is indeed a retcon (albeit one explained via universe-rewriting rather than author-shrug) even if it allows authors to rewrite a char closer to how they think they were intended to be. Kind of like how grim 80s/90s Batman is actually a return to how he was originally written by retconning his campy 60s/70s colorful-happy adventures.

Deliberate changes to canon are retcons.
Editing corrections are not, and neither is editing for clarity.

the CP-40 demonstrates that Palladium uses the word incorrectly in the context of describing burst fire settings in laser rifles. Which means that it would be illogical to assume in any case where they use that term in that context that they are correct.

You are assuming that the word "also" has been used with consistent proficiency by Kev between 1990 and whenever it was (1995?) that CWC came out. A young Kev could start off using it properly when designing the core book and then older-Kev could use it improperly when rushing out a World Book years later.

If our default assumption is that different books use the same words in the same context differently, then the game becomes unplayable.
If our default assumption is that different books use the same words in the same context in the same way, then the game is playable.
It's pretty clear which default assumption makes more sense.

Correcting an editorial/writing mistake is not a retcon.

Only for obvious typo-slips (ie 3d6x100 dinobot kicks). Adding in an entire word is not a slip.

I would say that adding in an entire word can definitely be a slip. I've done it while writing posts here, while writing papers for school, and while writing fiction.
Adding an unnecessary word is a very common mistake.

You're allowing too much room for Kev to misrepresent his original intentions to sneak in a nerf for the C-12's damage.

I see absolutely no reason to assume that Kevin is engaged in secret machinations to sabotage his own weapons, and to cover it up.

the RAW version of the C-12 was inoperable in the first place, so it's clear that there were mistakes in the description.

It was not inoperable, it just had an undefined feature like the GBK's mini-missiles. You could just ignore the 5-shot thing and operate it normally.

Ignoring part of the text is not RAW.

What I think most likely is that a 5-shot burst was initially designed and then later scrapped in favor of using standard burst rules and removing it from the intro was forgotten.

And that they changed their mind again in CWC.

I don't think we can judge anything reasonable from CWCp92. The CP-40 can't even keep its ammo straight. It says "single shot or a pulse of three". Then we are told 30 SDC shots = 1 MD blast and 6 SDC pulses = 1 MD blast. This would mean that an SDC pulse uses up as much energy as 5 shots even though it only fires 3? Not to mention that the damage of the SDC pulse is higher than the sum of 3 individual SDC shots, which suggests it might've been intended to be a 4 or 5 shot SDC pulse. Not the first weapon to exhibit greater-than-sum burst synergy so I guess I can let it go.

All that means is that the weapon is inefficient, and that the damage is quirky.
Welcome to Palladium.

Unless you think that the CP-40 description is claiming that in addition the listed damages, the weapon also has a burst setting that in addition to each damage setting, then it's pretty clear that "also" doesn't mean "also" when Palladium uses it in this context.

And that the same mistake was made with the CV-212. And that KS forgot how he intended the weapon to work. And so forth.

Kev could have forgot or could just misrepresent his original beliefs on the issue.

There is no reason to believe that Kevin is wrong about his own work, especially when it comes to the primary weapon of the main empire in the setting.

Where does the "number of settings" thing happen with the CV-212? I don't see anything about there being 3 settings, although the lack of listing an SDC burst damage implies that it might be locked to single shots unlike the CP-40.

SB1 57
The rifle can also be set to fire in a single shot mode or a burst of five.
The damage is, like the C-12, 2d6 MD or 4d6 MD, with a 6d6 SDC damage mode, and a note that 6 SDC shots equal 1 MD shot.

I'm guessing you were looking at the CV-213?

A preset burst is by definition not standard, in that it always fires a specific number of shots regardless of total ammunition, and does not need to interact with the burst/spray rules on p. 34.

The C-12 and C-10 saying "see Modern Weapon Proficiencies" suggests they still used the standard rules.

The C-10 does use those rules.
The C-12 does not, because it has a preset burst, and weapons with preset bursts do not use the standard burst/spray rules.
This is one reason why the C-12 doesn't work RAW, because the preset burst conflicts with the ROF of Aimed, Burst, Wild.
To me, it's obvious that CWC fixed an erroneous ROF, and that the Aimed, Burst, Wild ROF was a mistake, not only because the ROF was changed, but because it makes more sense to me that they'd cut and paste (or even retype) the ROF of the C-10 into the C-12 by mistake than that they'd type out an entire sentence describing the weapon as having a 5-shot burst setting that it wasn't intended to have.

The 5-shot burst would thus be a supplementary feature that added an additional burst option besides short/long/full, yet it was never defined.

CB1 9
These rules apply to automatic energy weapons, as well as conventional, bullet-shooting, automatic and semiautomatic weapons. Unless otherwise noted, most energy weapons are considered to be automatic weapons. Only weapons that state a specific limited number of shots per melee are not automatic. A pulse blast is always a burst shot.
And so forth.

Weapons that state a specific number of shots in their preset burst are not automatic, and are therefore not eligible for the rules on p. 34 of the RMB.

If we look at the L-20 Pulse Rifle it said 'Standard' so you could still use the short/long/full burst rules for it. The special burst rules were supplementary not replacing. It just didn't make much sense to do so. The pulse setting was superior. A short burst only did double damage for 5 shots, inferior to triple for 3.

Incorrect. "Standard" for a pulse rifle is different from "Standard" for an automatic weapon, just as it means something else for Heavy weapons and such.

We also know that KS makes mistakes when writing/editing the books in the first place, and I see no reason to assume any kind of covert rule-change and coverup instead of assuming clarification when the changes in later books make things make more sense.

because Palladium never makes covert rule changes to things as time goes on?

They make rule changes without telling anybody.
I have never seen Kevin Siembieda make a rule change and deny that there was a change.

The original ROF of the C-12 conflicted with the description of the weapon as having a 5-round burst.

Nope, not a conflict, just GBKminiMissiles.

Yes, conflict, because a weapon with a ROF of Aimed, Burst, Wild, cannot have a preset burst setting, and vice-versa.

The CWC version changed the ROF to be compatible with the 5-round burst.

Except that if this were intended for the C-12 the 4D6 would've been explicitly listed as a burst/pulse damage... which did not happen in CWC...

By that logic...
"If the 5-shot burst were supposed to have a damage other than 4d6 MD, then the actual damage for that burst would have been explicitly listed, which did not happen in CWC."
And
"If the 4d6 setting were supposed to be a single shot, not the 5-shot burst setting mentioned in the text, then the fact that it was a single shot would have been explicitly listed, which did not happen in CWC."

Nor even in RUE. The changed stats in RUEp257-258 for C-12 were identified as a misprint/mixup with the CV-212 per http://www.palladium-megaverse.com/cutt ... Eratta.pdf page 14:

p. 258 Both Columns. C-12 damage, C-27 metric range, and CV-212 damage have all been adjusted.
combat abuse and activity without mechanical failure. The rifle has three settings, one S.D.C. and two M.D.C. settings.
The rifle can also be set to fire a single shot or a burst of three. Comes standard with a passive nightvision scope and
laser targeting.
Weight: 7 lbs (3.2 kg).
Mega-Damage: 2D6 M.D. or 4D6 M.D., or 6D6 S.D.C.
Rate of Fire: Each laser blast or burst counts as one melee attack.
Effective Range: 2000 feet (610 m).
Payload: 20 M.D. blasts from standard E-Clip or 30 from a long E-Clip, plus another 30 can be added with one E-Clip
canister, a new Coalition invention. Note that six S.D.C. shots equals one Mega-Damage blast.
Laser Targeting: Add +1 to strike on an Aimed shot.
Black Market Cost: 20,000 credits for the rifle.

The RUE changes to the C-12 (pre or post errata) do not inform us in any way of how the C-12 originally operated or was intended to operate. Namely because in both versions it has a "3 shot burst" (leading me to think he did not completely unmix it from the CV-212) rather than the "5 shot burst" RMB/CWC had.

Actually, I believe THAT is a retcon.
A 5-shot burst made some kind of sense when compared to the original burst/spray rules, but not when compared to RUE's new standard for bursts (as seen with SDC weapon descriptions), where a 3-shot burst resulted in x2 damage, so they dropped the number of shots down to 3 from 5.
Under RUE, an M-16 inflicts 6d6 per single shot, or 6d6x2 per burst of three.
Just as the C-12 inflicts 2d6 MD per single shot, and 4d6 MD per burst of three.

RUE and the RUE Errata are both littered with wieirdness:
*it still has "can also" indicating distinction between 3 settings for damage and 2 settings for single/burst RoF
*it lists SDC damage under Mega-Damage
*it says 'blast or burst' but does not specify anything about 4D6 being for a 3-shot MD burst or being unable to do a 3-shot burst with SDC setting

Agreed that there is weirdness, and the lack of specificity that the 4d6 damage is the burst damage (or, if it isn't, that it isn't) is irritating.
As is their persistence of using the word "also," even though it's clear (as per the CP-40) that they don't actually mean "also."

From my perspective, things remain pretty much the same as in the RMB:
-The weapon does 2d4 damage on a single shot, 4d6 on a preset burst.
-The SDC burst damage isn't listed or mentioned, because there's only one burst setting, the 4d6 MD setting.
-Things are badly worded.

[Tor]

It is not reasonable to interpret a weapon that mentions having a preset burst capability as having only single shot damage listed. Because that would go further against quite a few precedents.

Possibly less reasonable to interpret weapons' damage listing to indicate that of a burst without it specifying burst, since that would also go against quite a few precedents.

A burst weapon is a weapon with a specific burst setting, not a semi-automatic or automatic weapon that uses the p.34 rules.

Like I said before, whatever the books may say, I need a term to collective describe a weapon that fires a burst, whether standard or preset. I'm going to call these 'burst weapon' until something better comes along.

Your use of adjectives already give us guidelines as to how to divide that: "standard burst weapon" and "preset burst weapon".

none of those weapons mentions having a preset burst, so it's not the same kind of weapon.

Yet they do show that in general RMB did not go out of its way to specify 'per single shot', this was the understood default. NGR began to move away with this although there was still a mix of un-noted weapons and 'per single shot' weapons.

With those weapons, no vacuum is left if the damages stated each apply to single shot. Single shot is the default for semi-automatic weapons.

Just because something generates a vacuum doesn't give us license to make stuff up. I can't just declare the 4D6 to violate the single-shot default pattern to fill that void.

if a railgun, or a pulse rifle, or other burst weapons were to list ONLY the single shot damage, while NOT listing the burst damage, there would be a vacuum of necessary information for the function of the weapon

Naw, the pulse weapons used by UWW in DB3 do this, you just use the standard burst rules in a case like this.

The dilemma only exists because 5/20 shots is 25% not 20% or 50% so we don't know what multiplier to use. But that's okay, because I didn't know how many mini-missiles a GBK had either.

Part of this is also looking at relative tech. CS is shipped as being top-tier tech. Why would it be limited to 2d6 per laser blast when mainstream mass-produced laser rifles could do 3d6? It being 4d6 per blast makes more sense.

Use the term how you please, but understand how I'm using the term, and respond to my points accordingly.

Ugh no, let's use 'preset burst' or 'deviant burst' or something. It's okay to invent terms that better describe an idea.

RAW, we were never told how ROF Standard or ROF Aimed, Burst, Wild worked.

Sure we were, in the Modern Weapons section. For those who missed it KS reminded us in CB1 that most energy weapons can burst unless otherwise indicated (while nerfing long/full) before the whole RUEclysm of burst-kill.

with the C-12, there are multiple interpretations of how the 5-shot burst worked, and any of those interpretations that does not conflict with specifically written rules would be within RAW.

No, it wouldn't. Not conflicting with existing written rules does not mean something is "within" RAW so much as... a house rule which doesn't conflict with it. Like how if you invented bathroom rules or something.

Any interpretation was baseless since we were never told how much damage a 5-shot burst does.

How would we even know if the 5-shot burst was a MD one?

What if firing 5 SDC shots is the '5 shot burst' that results in 2D6 MD?

What if it was 4D6 per single shot and 2D6 per burst because the weapon sucks and trying to fire more than once compromises the beam by trying to expend too much energy too fast?

We just don't know.

The C-12 isn't a 20-shot weapon as a rule, it's a 30-shot weapon. That's what the E-Cannister provides, and that's what a Long Clip provides.
2 out of 3 possible options for ammo capacity are 30, so that's the more logical assumption.

I figure most people, when figuring out how many shots a short/long/full uses, will base the % on the lowest payload (usually a short clip) and then apply that number of shots used to greater clips.

Otherwise it generates the wonderful-absurd "doing same damage bursting with mah long clip, using more shots"

"Rules As Written" means "as written," not "interpreted by some readers as falling into an assumed default."

All analysis of RAW requires interpretation and recognition of default meanings, objection is invalid.

those are not burst weapons, they are simply weapons capable of bursts.

Ugh can you at least call them 'pulse weapons' or something? If it fires a burst I will forever call it a burst weapon.

Maybe not burst-only or burst-primed or pulse-burst or efficient-burst, but burst.

we're back to the moops invading Spain, regardless of what the authors of that trivia card intended to say.

Spain actually exists, Coalition States do not. The cards do not invent the Moors, Kevin invents Thromm and Prosek.

Deliberate changes to canon are retcons.
Editing corrections are not, and neither is editing for clarity.

Both are deliberate acts. The Q is whether to perceive it as a 'change' or a 'correction'. A correction is a form of change and it implies a basic error to me, like adding an extra zero, an accidentally deleted line of text, etc. Entire words incorporated into phrases go outside the scope of basic errors and become changes.

Editing for clarity would not involve changing anything only explaining things for better understanding. It would not conflict with text, only present it in a new way that people may read better.

If our default assumption is that different books use the same words in the same context differently, then the game becomes unplayable.

I don't agree. If this is the case we have 1 error in CWC vs 2 errors in RMC and CWC. Fewer errors by embracing RMB's "also" is greater playability. Believing a consistent pattern of word abuse of basic terms like "also" would float beyond that of laser guns and lead us to question the Alsos everywhere else.

I would say that adding in an entire word can definitely be a slip. I've done it while writing posts here, while writing papers for school, and while writing fiction.
Adding an unnecessary word is a very common mistake.

Okay well... a bigger slip. So big that I don't believe it. It flows too well, it's not awkward. 3 damage settings, 2 firing rates, 6 combos. If anything, Kev prob wrote up a way to calc damage with 5 shot burst and then accidentally deleted it and forgot about it, or intended to add it then forgot, etc.

I see absolutely no reason to assume that Kevin is engaged in secret machinations to sabotage his own weapons, and to cover it up.

You have to dig deeper. If he shrinks the C-12 from 4d6/shot to 4d6/5shots that makes everyone want to move up to his new CWC weapons. Increases book sales, embracing the SoT, etc.

So far looking for NPCs using the C-12, I only found Marcus Larsen, and sadly it didn't list the damage so it couldn't add to this discussion. I remember some other NPC had a C-10 but can't recall who.

Ignoring part of the text is not RAW.

Actually it is. If a description of a feature is incomplete then a GM either has to house-rule it or just ignore it.

You're not ignoring the GBK having missiles, you're just either guessing how they work or avoiding using them until you know you do.

I've nothing against inventing 5-shot burst house rules for the C-12, just the stance that there's really a RAW-supported answer to the dilemma of the mysterious statement.

Unless you think that the CP-40 description is claiming that in addition the listed damages, the weapon also has a burst setting that in addition to each damage setting, then it's pretty clear that "also" doesn't mean "also" when Palladium uses it in this context.

I don't really care what it says, will not retroactively interpret 1990 also based on years-later use of it. This isn't the only time KS has written the word and I believe all other uses show competence with it. I would rather think "KS made a CP-40 error" than "KS has an ongoing problem understanding what the word 'also' means that only seems to crop up when he is describing burst-capable Coalition laser rifles".

There is no reason to believe that Kevin is wrong about his own work, especially when it comes to the primary weapon of the main empire in the setting.

Sure there is: passage of time and pattern of sneaky rewrite practices company's done.

You talk about the main empire's primary weapon: how often have we been told how impressive the CS is? WB5p17 Operative G15 ranks Triax as 10, CS tying with Atlantis at 7, and NG/Manistique at best a 5.

Why would an informed CS operative tell his superiors that NG ranks 5 when they produce a 3D6 MD laser rifle and the CS ranks 8 when they only produces 2D6 MD laser rifle?

SB1 57
The rifle can also be set to fire in a single shot mode or a burst of five.
The damage is, like the C-12, 2d6 MD or 4d6 MD, with a 6d6 SDC damage mode, and a note that 6 SDC shots equal 1 MD shot.

I'm guessing you were looking at the CV-213?

Nope, looking at CWCp94. There the CV-212 does 6d6 on a triple-pulse burst. Perhaps it was changed between SB1 and CWC?

*coming to realize more an more how much stuff I thought came first in other books like Mercs/NGR came first in SB1, noticing Vampire Kingsoms (unrevised) NPCs with this gear

The C-10 does use those rules.
The C-12 does not, because it has a preset burst, and weapons with preset bursts do not use the standard burst/spray rules.

Why shouldn't preset-burst weapons ALSO use the burst rules if their rate of fire indicates it?

It just gives 4 options (3 standard + 1 preset)

it's obvious that CWC fixed an erroneous ROF, and that the Aimed, Burst, Wild ROF was a mistake, not only because the ROF was changed, but because it makes more sense to me that they'd cut and paste (or even retype) the ROF of the C-10 into the C-12 by mistake than that they'd type out an entire sentence describing the weapon as having a 5-shot burst setting that it wasn't intended to have.

If it was so strongly intended to have 5 shots why did RUE/Errata change it to 3?

I'm not saying the 5-shot sentence was put there accidentally. Just that it might have been intended for removal (then removal intent was forgot) like Tromm or that it might have been intended for expansion (then expansion intent was forgot) like GBK missiles.

CB1 9
These rules apply to automatic energy weapons, as well as conventional, bullet-shooting, automatic and semiautomatic weapons. Unless otherwise noted, most energy weapons are considered to be automatic weapons. Only weapons that state a specific limited number of shots per melee are not automatic. A pulse blast is always a burst shot.
And so forth.

Weapons that state a specific number of shots in their preset burst are not automatic, and are therefore not eligible for the rules on p. 34 of the RMB.

You are mixing up "a specific limited number of shots per melee" with "a specific number of shots per pulse burst".

The statement you're relying on here is intended for things like the Stun Gun (RMBp245, Mii-Taar has one of these, great weapon IMO, not sure if it uses E-clips or wut) which say '5 per melee'. It can't fire faster, and it's not automatic.

Saying a weapon can 5-shot burst is not 'otherwise noting' it out of being considered an automatic weapon, because 5-shot burst capability is not limiting the amount of shots per melee, it is instead expanding the amount of shots you can do per burst.

Incorrect. "Standard" for a pulse rifle is different from "Standard" for an automatic weapon, just as it means something else for Heavy weapons and such.

There is no pulse standard, there is only energy weapon standards, which is automatic fire. Pulse capability is an added option which does not remove standard burst capability if it is either explicitly noted via standard/seeWP/burst in RoF or assumed via CB1 generalizations about 'unless otherwise noted' energy weapons.

I have never seen Kevin Siembieda make a rule change and deny that there was a change.

PE in hours changed to PE in minutes for PPE storage. "It was always intended to be minutes" or something. Yeah okay =/ Faith shattered.

onflict, because a weapon with a ROF of Aimed, Burst, Wild, cannot have a preset burst setting

Source? The CB1p9 quote (which I love for other reasons, like defending pre-RUE bursts) does not lead to that conclusion.

This might end if we can either find a statement saying "automatic/semi-automatic" and "pulse" are mutually exclusive, or reverse, one saying that they overlap.

A single weapon being called both auto/semi-auto and 'pulse' would disprove the assumption of mutual exclusivity.

Considering that the "a pulse blast is always a burst shot" statement occurs within the paragraph headed by a "automatic weaopns and sub-machine guns in Rifts page 34" it leads me to perceive pulse weapons as being a kind of automatic weapon. Just one that has custom burst settings (like rail guns).

Like rail guns, you could use the standard RoF rules. The prob is pulse/rail stuff tends to have high ammo and low per-round damage so the custom pulse option tends to be superior to applying the standard rules.

Looking to NGRp144's TX-24 Ion Pulse Pistol: RoF is "standard, see Modern Weapon" so this means you can use a short/long/full burst with it. Based on the 10 shots/short that's actually a decent option. However if you based it on the 30 from FSE it'd suck.

While on that page, will point out, there's a clear lack of consistency as the TX-26 says "MD per shot" while the WR-10 says "MD" even though both are "Standard, see Modern" noted.

WB5p145's TX-30 on the other hand, since it has a higher payload, benefits much more from its fixed pulse setting. A short burst would cost 8 shots for x2, inferior to 3 shots for x3. Since CB1's burst-nerf was in effect bt this time, a long burst's x3 for 20 shots was also inferior. Only the 40 shots for x7 would have any kind of purpose for a superior damage/time, and even then it would only barely get ahead. You get a x6 spending 2 actions on the pulse burst and will have 11 more after that.

Except that if this were intended for the C-12 the 4D6 would've been explicitly listed as a burst/pulse damage... which did not happen in CWC...

By that logic...

If the 5-shot burst were supposed to have a damage other than 4d6 MD, then the actual damage for that burst would have been explicitly listed, which did not happen in CWC.

And

If the 4d6 setting were supposed to be a single shot, not the 5-shot burst setting mentioned in the text, then the fact that it was a single shot would have been explicitly listed, which did not happen in CWC.

Not the same logic. Re your 2nd quote, it being a single shot does not have to be explicitly listed since it is the default, even though some weapons (like particle beam pistol and TX-43) do so.

Having mysterious feature defined doesn't mean we see a listed stat and interpret it in a non-standard way because we want to see it defined. We ought to just accept that it wasn't defined. GBKmissiles. Tromm. Sometimes allusions are intended and scrapped, other times intended but not followed through on. Still not sure which was the case with the C-12.

Actually, I believe THAT is a retcon.

Well at least we can agree that far

their persistence of using the word "also,"

"persistance" sure attributes a sense of action when the reality seems more like 'cut and paste with as little attention to detail as possible'. The minimal changes in a lot o reprinted content are why this wasn't solved soon as CWC came out.

The weird thing is... Kev does put effort into some reprints. Like the MDC and altitude boost the improved basic SAMAS got (even if it didn't get a new model number, which would've made sense) in CWC.

From my perspective, things remain pretty much the same as in the RMB:
-The weapon does 2d4 damage on a single shot, 4d6 on a preset burst.

Now you sound like you're talking about the C-18.

[Killer Cyborg]

It is not reasonable to interpret a weapon that mentions having a preset burst capability as having only single shot damage listed. Because that would go further against quite a few precedents.

Possibly less reasonable to interpret weapons' damage listing to indicate that of a burst without it specifying burst, since that would also go against quite a few precedents.

The weapon's damage listing isn't being used to indicate a bust. The description of a burst is being used to indicate a burst.
The damage listing is simply being matched to the described burst.

A burst weapon is a weapon with a specific burst setting, not a semi-automatic or automatic weapon that uses the p.34 rules.

Like I said before, whatever the books may say, I need a term to collective describe a weapon that fires a burst, whether standard or preset. I'm going to call these 'burst weapon' until something better comes along.

"Burst-capable" is the term I've used.
Versus "Burst weapon," which is a weapon specifically designed to fire preset bursts.

Your use of adjectives already give us guidelines as to how to divide that: "standard burst weapon" and "preset burst weapon".

I wouldn't consider a semi-automatic weapon to be a "standard burst weapon," because single shots are the standard for those weapons.

none of those weapons mentions having a preset burst, so it's not the same kind of weapon.

Yet they do show that in general RMB did not go out of its way to specify 'per single shot', this was the understood default.

It was the default on semi-automatic weapons, because single shots are the norm.
For weapons with preset bursts (such as rail guns, pulse rifles, etc.), the RMB does specify "per single shot" in the description.

With those weapons, no vacuum is left if the damages stated each apply to single shot. Single shot is the default for semi-automatic weapons.

Just because something generates a vacuum doesn't give us license to make stuff up. I can't just declare the 4D6 to violate the single-shot default pattern to fill that void.

The pattern with preset burst weapons is that single shots are specified along with the bursts. The C-12 has a preset burst.

if a railgun, or a pulse rifle, or other burst weapons were to list ONLY the single shot damage, while NOT listing the burst damage, there would be a vacuum of necessary information for the function of the weapon

Naw, the pulse weapons used by UWW in DB3 do this, you just use the standard burst rules in a case like this.

Stick to the RMB, instead of using stuff that came out by other authors years later.
The RMB can set precedents for later books.
Later books cannot set or establish precedents for the RMB.

Part of this is also looking at relative tech. CS is shipped as being top-tier tech. Why would it be limited to 2d6 per laser blast when mainstream mass-produced laser rifles could do 3d6? It being 4d6 per blast makes more sense.

The C-12 was a modified version of a light laser rifle.
The CS also produced the C-14, which had a 3d6 MD laser.

Although I would agree that a 4d6/shot weapon would make more sense in the context of the CS' advanced tech, and have made that same argument myself in the past, that's not what the C-12 is.

Use the term how you please, but understand how I'm using the term, and respond to my points accordingly.

Ugh no, let's use 'preset burst' or 'deviant burst' or something. It's okay to invent terms that better describe an idea.

I'm open to discussion on this, because using the same terms facilitates conversation.

RAW, we were never told how ROF Standard or ROF Aimed, Burst, Wild worked.

Sure we were, in the Modern Weapons section. For those who missed it KS reminded us in CB1 that most energy weapons can burst unless otherwise indicated (while nerfing long/full) before the whole RUEclysm of burst-kill.

Nope. Those terms were never defined.
KS does remind us in CB1 that most energy weapons can fire bursts unless otherwise indicated, but he also reminds us that rail guns only fire bursts, and that the single-shot damage is for informational purposes only.
Yet Rail Guns in the RMB have ROF Standard.
Also, you seem to be claiming that ROF Standard and ROF Aimed, Burst, Wild are the same thing. If so, then why use two different terms?

with the C-12, there are multiple interpretations of how the 5-shot burst worked, and any of those interpretations that does not conflict with specifically written rules would be within RAW.

No, it wouldn't. Not conflicting with existing written rules does not mean something is "within" RAW so much as... a house rule which doesn't conflict with it. Like how if you invented bathroom rules or something.

A house rule is a house rule.
A house interpretation is an interpretation.
When RAW can be legitimately interpreted more than one way, which way is RAW?

Any interpretation was baseless since we were never told how much damage a 5-shot burst does.

Yeah, we were: it's 4d6 MD.
We just weren't told clearly.
Just like we weren't told clearly what the single-shot damage is.

How would we even know if the 5-shot burst was a MD one?

By deciphering Palladium's badly-written description of the weapon, and understanding that it's attempting to describe a weapon with two MD settings--a single-shot setting, and a burst setting.
Then you just look at the damages, note that one damage does 2x the other, and understand that's the burst setting.

What if firing 5 SDC shots is the '5 shot burst' that results in 2D6 MD?

What if it was 4D6 per single shot and 2D6 per burst because the weapon sucks and trying to fire more than once compromises the beam by trying to expend too much energy too fast?

We just don't know.

We do, though.
We can see what the sentence was intended to mean.
KS told me how the gun was intended to work.
We can look at the puzzle, and we can see which way the pieces fit, plus we have an answer from the guy who built the puzzle.
That means that we know what it means.

The C-12 isn't a 20-shot weapon as a rule, it's a 30-shot weapon. That's what the E-Cannister provides, and that's what a Long Clip provides.
2 out of 3 possible options for ammo capacity are 30, so that's the more logical assumption.

I figure most people, when figuring out how many shots a short/long/full uses, will base the % on the lowest payload (usually a short clip) and then apply that number of shots used to greater clips.

You're probably not the only person who has made that particular assumption.
But you are the only person I can recall having ever made it.

Otherwise it generates the wonderful-absurd "doing same damage bursting with mah long clip, using more shots"

Welcome to Rifts RAW.

"Rules As Written" means "as written," not "interpreted by some readers as falling into an assumed default."

All analysis of RAW requires interpretation and recognition of default meanings, objection is invalid.

Analysis, yes.
But that's not the same as what I said, nor the same as what you're doing.
You're relying on a default assumption you have, and trying to make what you see fit that mold.
That's not proper analysis.

those are not burst weapons, they are simply weapons capable of bursts.

Ugh can you at least call them 'pulse weapons' or something? If it fires a burst I will forever call it a burst weapon.

Pulse weapons are a specific subset of burst weapons (or burst capable weapons, or whatever.)
The L-20 is a pulse weapon.
The C-12 is not.
The C-10 is not.

we're back to the moops invading Spain, regardless of what the authors of that trivia card intended to say.

Spain actually exists, Coalition States do not. The cards do not invent the Moors, Kevin invents Thromm and Prosek.

Irrelevant. The point is that writers make mistakes, and it is the intent that matters more than the rule, and that it is not a retcon to edit the rule to match intent.
When a PFRPG Adventure calls for players to make a "dexterity check," and later that book is changed to say "Physical Prowess check," that is not a retcon.
It's simply catching and correcting an error.

Deliberate changes to canon are retcons.
Editing corrections are not, and neither is editing for clarity.

Both are deliberate acts. The Q is whether to perceive it as a 'change' or a 'correction'. A correction is a form of change and it implies a basic error to me, like adding an extra zero, an accidentally deleted line of text, etc. Entire words incorporated into phrases go outside the scope of basic errors and become changes.

That is an arbitrary and personal standard.

Editing for clarity would not involve changing anything only explaining things for better understanding. It would not conflict with text, only present it in a new way that people may read better.

"Moors" conflicts with "moops" inherently.

If our default assumption is that different books use the same words in the same context differently, then the game becomes unplayable.

I don't agree.

You do not agree that assuming that no two usages of the same word in the same context in Rifts books means the same thing...?
Okay.
The RMB has multiple weapons listed.
I'm curious what different meanings to "range" and "damage" you believe are being used, since our default is now to assume that the words are being used differently in each case.

If this is the case we have 1 error in CWC vs 2 errors in RMC and CWC. Fewer errors by embracing RMB's "also" is greater playability. Believing a consistent pattern of word abuse of basic terms like "also" would float beyond that of laser guns and lead us to question the Alsos everywhere else.

If you embrace the "Also":
-The ROF and the weapon's description of having a preset burst are in conflict.
-The C-12 is the only preset burst weapon which does not list the damage for its preset bursts.
-The CP-40 description is in error

If you look at the sentence as attempting to describe a weapon that has three settings, 1 SDC setting and two MD settings (1 single-shot MD setting, and 1 5-shot burst MD setting), then there are only two errors:
-The ROF of Aimed, Burst, Wild
-The RMB phrasing of the sentence in question, including the word "Also"

I would say that adding in an entire word can definitely be a slip. I've done it while writing posts here, while writing papers for school, and while writing fiction.
Adding an unnecessary word is a very common mistake.

Okay well... a bigger slip. So big that I don't believe it. It flows too well, it's not awkward. 3 damage settings, 2 firing rates, 6 combos. If anything, Kev prob wrote up a way to calc damage with 5 shot burst and then accidentally deleted it and forgot about it, or intended to add it then forgot, etc.

I'd say that leaving out three different burst damages for the C-12 would be a much bigger mistake than mis-phrasing one sentence in the weapon's description.

I see absolutely no reason to assume that Kevin is engaged in secret machinations to sabotage his own weapons, and to cover it up.

You have to dig deeper. If he shrinks the C-12 from 4d6/shot to 4d6/5shots that makes everyone want to move up to his new CWC weapons. Increases book sales, embracing the SoT, etc.

Not buying that for a second. If he thought that CWC sales hinged on the CP-40, all he'd have to do is to give it a higher burst damage.
Weapon balance is not such a well-oiled machine in Rifts that the kind of shady maneuvering you're describing is plausible.

So far looking for NPCs using the C-12, I only found Marcus Larsen, and sadly it didn't list the damage so it couldn't add to this discussion. I remember some other NPC had a C-10 but can't recall who.

A number of NPCs in SB1 have C-12s, but no damage is listed.
The CS Grunt in the back of the RMB has a C-12: "Two settings; 2d6 or 4d6"
Which you will likely look at and say, "See? That's the two single shot settings."
And I will look at and say, "See? We know the weapon can fire single shots, and we know that the weapon can fire 5-shot bursts. That's the two settings: single shot, and burst."
And not much will be accomplished.

Ignoring part of the text is not RAW.

Actually it is. If a description of a feature is incomplete then a GM either has to house-rule it or just ignore it.

Neither of which is RAW.
Unless there is a Rule Written somewhere that directs us to do those things in that situation specifically...?

I've nothing against inventing 5-shot burst house rules for the C-12, just the stance that there's really a RAW-supported answer to the dilemma of the mysterious statement.

It's not a rule, it's an interpretation.
Just as deciding that the 4d6 MD setting is a single shot setting is an interpretation.
We're never specifically told which it is--we're left to interpret the rules and patterns and to discern for ourselves.

Unless you think that the CP-40 description is claiming that in addition the listed damages, the weapon also has a burst setting that in addition to each damage setting, then it's pretty clear that "also" doesn't mean "also" when Palladium uses it in this context.

I don't really care what it says, will not retroactively interpret 1990 also based on years-later use of it.

Fine. Then interpret the later use based on the 1990 use.
Let me know how that works out for you.

This isn't the only time KS has written the word and I believe all other uses show competence with it. I would rather think "KS made a CP-40 error" than "KS has an ongoing problem understanding what the word 'also' means that only seems to crop up when he is describing burst-capable Coalition laser rifles".

I'd rather think a lot of things, but the facts speak for themselves.
Remember, it's not just "KS made a CP-40 error"...
It's "KS intended for the C-12 to work one way, a way which appears to conflict with several precedents, then he secretly changed his mind in order to sell more books, and he started covertly changing the text. Also, when asked about the intended nature of the C-12, he either lied about his original intent, or he forgot what his original intent for the weapon even was, even after the secret changes he made in order to sell books."

There is no reason to believe that Kevin is wrong about his own work, especially when it comes to the primary weapon of the main empire in the setting.

Sure there is: passage of time and pattern of sneaky rewrite practices company's done.

Feel free to start a new thread detailing that. This one is getting too cluttered.
Suffice to say, I don't see the same patterns that you seem to.

You talk about the main empire's primary weapon: how often have we been told how impressive the CS is? WB5p17 Operative G15 ranks Triax as 10, CS tying with Atlantis at 7, and NG/Manistique at best a 5.

Why would an informed CS operative tell his superiors that NG ranks 5 when they produce a 3D6 MD laser rifle and the CS ranks 8 when they only produces 2D6 MD laser rifle?

The CS also produces a 3d6 MD laser rifle, and they have superior tech in many other areas, such as genetic engineering and such.

SB1 57
The rifle can also be set to fire in a single shot mode or a burst of five.
The damage is, like the C-12, 2d6 MD or 4d6 MD, with a 6d6 SDC damage mode, and a note that 6 SDC shots equal 1 MD shot.

I'm guessing you were looking at the CV-213?

Nope, looking at CWCp94. There the CV-212 does 6d6 on a triple-pulse burst. Perhaps it was changed between SB1 and CWC?

Yup.
Unfortunately, the original analysis of this seems to be lost to the archives, but I now remember Doom discussing this in some detail.
Take note the weapon names:
C-12
CV-212
They're essentially the same weapons (initially, at least), and they share almost identical names.

The C-10 does use those rules.
The C-12 does not, because it has a preset burst, and weapons with preset bursts do not use the standard burst/spray rules.

Why shouldn't preset-burst weapons ALSO use the burst rules if their rate of fire indicates it?

Because the burst/spray rules are for automatic weapons, not preset burst weapons.
Other than that, you'd have to ask KS.

it's obvious that CWC fixed an erroneous ROF, and that the Aimed, Burst, Wild ROF was a mistake, not only because the ROF was changed, but because it makes more sense to me that they'd cut and paste (or even retype) the ROF of the C-10 into the C-12 by mistake than that they'd type out an entire sentence describing the weapon as having a 5-shot burst setting that it wasn't intended to have.

If it was so strongly intended to have 5 shots why did RUE/Errata change it to 3?

Because 5 shots was comparable to the burst/spray rules in the RMB, but not the burst rules in RUE.
Originally, a 5-shot burst for x2 damage was pretty average.
These days, a 3-shot burst for x2 damage is the average.

I'm not saying the 5-shot sentence was put there accidentally. Just that it might have been intended for removal (then removal intent was forgot) like Tromm or that it might have been intended for expansion (then expansion intent was forgot) like GBK missiles.

Ok.

CB1 9
These rules apply to automatic energy weapons, as well as conventional, bullet-shooting, automatic and semiautomatic weapons. Unless otherwise noted, most energy weapons are considered to be automatic weapons. Only weapons that state a specific limited number of shots per melee are not automatic. A pulse blast is always a burst shot.
And so forth.

Weapons that state a specific number of shots in their preset burst are not automatic, and are therefore not eligible for the rules on p. 34 of the RMB.

You are mixing up "a specific limited number of shots per melee" with "a specific number of shots per pulse burst".

The statement you're relying on here is intended for things like the Stun Gun (RMBp245, Mii-Taar has one of these, great weapon IMO, not sure if it uses E-clips or wut) which say '5 per melee'. It can't fire faster, and it's not automatic.

I would say that it's intended for the stun gun AND for preset burst weapons.

Saying a weapon can 5-shot burst is not 'otherwise noting' it out of being considered an automatic weapon, because 5-shot burst capability is not limiting the amount of shots per melee, it is instead expanding the amount of shots you can do per burst.

I see what you're saying, and you are technically correct.
But there is also this:
Pulse rifles (like the Wilks 457) can NOT fire bursts on the single shot setting, but must be set for a burst.

And perhaps some other indications or statements buried elsewhere in the rules.

Incorrect. "Standard" for a pulse rifle is different from "Standard" for an automatic weapon, just as it means something else for Heavy weapons and such.

There is no pulse standard, there is only energy weapon standards, which is automatic fire.
Pulse capability is an added option which does not remove standard burst capability

See above.

I have never seen Kevin Siembieda make a rule change and deny that there was a change.

PE in hours changed to PE in minutes for PPE storage. "It was always intended to be minutes" or something. Yeah okay =/ Faith shattered.

I don't remember that one.

Looking to NGRp144's TX-24 Ion Pulse Pistol: RoF is "standard, see Modern Weapon" so this means you can use a short/long/full burst with it.

No.
That means that you should see "Modern Weapons" for unspecified information, a section which covers a variety of possible rules, including rules for natural energy blasts and double-barreled shotguns.

Except that if this were intended for the C-12 the 4D6 would've been explicitly listed as a burst/pulse damage... which did not happen in CWC...

By that logic...

If the 5-shot burst were supposed to have a damage other than 4d6 MD, then the actual damage for that burst would have been explicitly listed, which did not happen in CWC.

And

If the 4d6 setting were supposed to be a single shot, not the 5-shot burst setting mentioned in the text, then the fact that it was a single shot would have been explicitly listed, which did not happen in CWC.

Not the same logic. Re your 2nd quote, it being a single shot does not have to be explicitly listed since it is the default, even though some weapons (like particle beam pistol and TX-43) do so.

It is NOT the default in weapons with preset bursts.

Having mysterious feature defined doesn't mean we see a listed stat and interpret it in a non-standard way because we want to see it defined. We ought to just accept that it wasn't defined. GBKmissiles. Tromm. Sometimes allusions are intended and scrapped, other times intended but not followed through on. Still not sure which was the case with the C-12.

The case is that the burst damage was listed, but that the weapon description was badly written, and the ROF was initially incorrect.

Actually, I believe THAT is a retcon.

Well at least we can agree that far

their persistence of using the word "also,"

"persistance" sure attributes a sense of action when the reality seems more like 'cut and paste with as little attention to detail as possible'. The minimal changes in a lot o reprinted content are why this wasn't solved soon as CWC came out.

The weird thing is... Kev does put effort into some reprints. Like the MDC and altitude boost the improved basic SAMAS got (even if it didn't get a new model number, which would've made sense) in CWC.

It is frustrating.

[Tor]

I would like to introduce a comparison with the C-14.

We are told that it can do a burst of 4 grenades.

Yet we are only told the damage for 1 grenade.

So if we are expected to figure out 2D6x4 dmg for a grenade burst for the C-14...

Perhaps we were also expected to figure out 4D6x4 dmg for a strong laser burst from the C-12.

"Burst-capable" is the term I've used.
Versus "Burst weapon," which is a weapon specifically designed to fire preset bursts.
I wouldn't consider a semi-automatic weapon to be a "standard burst weapon," because single shots are the standard for those weapons.

I meant more like 'bursts operate as standard' not 'bursts are the standard shot'.

I don't see why you would take it as you did. Does anything necessarily have a 'standard' mode? Or is there 1-only or multi-option ones?

I'd still say 'burst weapon' and 'burst capable' sound like synonyms to me. I guess the contrast is 'sniper weapon' but I wouldn't limit sniper weapons to single-shot-only weapons even though a lot of sniper weapons are like that. Some sniper weapons can pulse/burst as well.

The pattern with preset burst weapons is that single shots are specified along with the bursts. The C-12 has a preset burst.

I can't apply that pattern without notation though, given the pattern of identifying damage-from-burst semantically in everything else I've seen.

he also reminds us that rail guns only fire bursts, and that the single-shot damage is for informational purposes only. Yet Rail Guns in the RMB have ROF Standard.

I seem to remembering some kind of 'machine guns only fire bursts' rule appearing in a Modern Weapons section, so in this case a rail-gun machine-gun not firing aimed shots could fall under standard.

ROF Standard and ROF Aimed, Burst, Wild are the same thing. If so, then why use two different terms?

I'm led to think that by "aimed, burst, as standard" which depicts them as the same thing for energy weapons since it appears next to an energy weapon. Couldn't say why the inconsistency.

When RAW can be legitimately interpreted more than one way, which way is RAW?

I should've never learned this acronym. Perhaps TAW (text as written) can be interpreted different ways. Worth determining case by case which is validly coexistent in 2 forms though.

We can see what the sentence was intended to mean. KS told me how the gun was intended to work.

Naw, we speculate on its possible meanings. The PE in hours/minutes debacle wiped defunct trust I had in Kev to be candid about these things.

you are the only person I can recall having ever made it.

I can't recall specifics either, I think it came up a few months ago and I could've sworn a person or two stated the idea. Not sure if I want to go on the adventure to dig it up to check though.

The point is that writers make mistakes

You're missing my point though: the errors of a historian can be checked against an objective reality which may be documented by peers. The errors of an author can't be checked against anything, so they can treat an error as truth, or claim the intended reality was anything they want, without any way of verifying the authencity.

If our default assumption is that different books use the same words in the same context differently, then the game becomes unplayable.

I don't agree.

You do not agree that assuming that no two usages of the same word in the same context in Rifts books means the same thing...?

No, you're twisting that. Acknowledging that the same word can be used differently in similar (not same) contexts is not the same as assuming no 2 usages mean the same thing.

I don't see context as being as important as you're playing at here. Regulary competent use of also leads me to think that incompetency is the odd man out. So I think it just happens in CWC for the new CP-40 and not for the C-12.

I think we also may be focusing too much on the 'abuse' of also. If we entertain the idea that the problem may occur with other details, then in the right context 'also' would be correctly be used.

*The burst damages or multiplier for the C-12 may have been left out
**The five-shot burst may have been a miscount
**The 20-shot clip may have been changed without accounting for how this altered relative burst percent
*The second SDC and second MD firing mode of the CP-40 may have been left out
**Four/two/two may have been intended to be scaled down to 2/1/1

What I believe is more likely: the CP-40's description was based partially on a copy/paste of text from the C-12 which modified the setting numbers and left the 'also set to fire' sentence intact except for a five>three.

Another thing that just occurred to me...

This could actually be an issue of sentence ordering. Consider...
1) The CP-40 has four settings, two SDC and two MD
2) The rifle can also be set to fire a single shot or a pulse of three nearly simultanoues blasts
3) It comes standard with a passive nightvision scope and laser targetting.

Imagine if you switched sentence 1 and 3. Well leave "The CP-40" and "It" where they are, but switch the rest. The 'also' would be in addition to scope/targeting and then the 4-setting bit could follow the single/pulse as a way of elaborating on it.

Does make me wonder if last minute sentence-swapping could be to blame.

If you embrace the "Also":
-The ROF and the weapon's description of having a preset burst are in conflict

I don't see it that way since I think one can have a preset burst in addition to standard bursting.

The C-12 is the only preset burst weapon which does not list the damage for its preset bursts.

and the GBK is the only power armor with mini-missiles which does not list how many it can fire in a volley? Not seeing point

I'd say that leaving out three different burst damages for the C-12 would be a much bigger mistake than mis-phrasing one sentence in the weapon's description.

If a 5-shot burst were simply a normal short burst (if the weapon's payload was originally 25) then listing the multiplier would not be necessary.

The CS Grunt in the back of the RMB has a C-12: "Two settings; 2d6 or 4d6"
Which you will likely look at and say, "See? That's the two single shot settings."

Naw more like "where is the SDC setting?" Am interested in checking out the SB1 stuff though. Tell me if you remember who that guy with the C-10 was. I remember him...

If a description of a feature is incomplete then a GM either has to house-rule it or just ignore it.

Neither of which is RAW. Unless there is a Rule Written somewhere that directs us to do those things in that situation specifically...?

The RAW is incomplete.
How we respond to RAW, be they complete or incomplete, is never RAW, it is responding to RAW and reading/interpreting what is written.

deciding that the 4d6 MD setting is a single shot setting is an interpretation.

Based on the predominant patterns yup.

It's "KS intended for the C-12 to work one way, a way which appears to conflict with several precedents

Er, I don't see how any of the possibilities I bring up of how the weapon might've been intended to work conflict with nay precedents. Particularly since this weapon was in the first book and thus nothing preceded it.

then he secretly changed his mind in order to sell more books, and he started covertly changing the text.

We know full well that the text was covertly changed. C-12 was Aimed, burst, wild; see Modern Weapon Proficiencies (like the C-10) in RMB then changed to "Equal to the number of combined attacks of its user" in CWCp91 (while the C-10 remained unchanged)

All mind-changing is secret unless it gets bothered to be announced.

Take note the weapon names:
C-12
CV-212
They're essentially the same weapons (initially, at least), and they share almost identical names.

...if that stands for "version 2" then that is the worst possible place they could have stuck it

Although I believe the V is actually for "variable" since it is a variable laser for combatting Glitter Boys and stuff.

burst/spray rules are for automatic weapons, not preset burst weapons.

Where are you getting the impression that preset burst weapons can't also be automatic weapons?

Originally, a 5-shot burst for x2 damage was pretty average.

Which weapons produce this average? The Wilk's 447 with 20 shots used 4 shots. The NG-L5, JA-9 and JA-11 could do it in 2 using short clips. The L-20 pulse wouldn't bother with it since it gets triple for 3.

I would say that it's intended for the stun gun AND for preset burst weapons.

Then you would be wrong, because having a fixed number of shots per melee ROUND is entirely different from having a fixed number of shots per melee ATTACK

there is also this: http://www.palladiumbooks.com/index.php ... cle&id=234
Pulse rifles (like the Wilks 457) can NOT fire bursts on the single shot setting, but must be set for a burst.

*briefly joins the 'snub FAQ' club for purposes of winning argument, plots to exit and re-enter the 'cite the fun FAQ' club later on

Far as I know, a pulse weapon, when you pull the trigger sharply, will fire the pre-planned pulse.

But what if you HOLD DOWN the trigger of a pulse weapon while in pulse mode?

Perhaps that is when it fires via normal bursting rules. Whereas doing the single brief pull in pulse mode is what releases the pulse.

But hey, if you're going to cite the FAQ...

http://www.palladiumbooks.com/index.php ... cle&id=213

72. The C-12 has three damage settings
and is able to fire a single shot or a burst of five.
Now the question- is the burst of five
five simultaneous shots for 20d6 mdc, 10d6 sdc, or 30d6 sdc (single shot x5)
or does it come under a short burst,
single shot x2 damage as per the rifle w.p. burst rule?

Answer: It is considered a short burst (damage x 2)

Answer clearly accepts the 3 damage settings being distinct feature from the 5 shots. The 5 shots operate like a short burst but apparently just a less efficient one (using 5 instead of 4). So it would inflict 4d6x2md / 2d6x2md / 6d6 x 2sd

I don't remember that one.

Originally there was an official FAQ in the rifter said in hours, then I think in Book of Magic or something he changed to minutes 'as always intended'. But then who edits the Rifter?

That means that you should see "Modern Weapons" for unspecified information, a section which covers a variety of possible rules, including rules for natural energy blasts and double-barreled shotguns.

At the point of NGR, the CB1 'most energy can burst unless we note otherwise' thing would've been out as a 'standard' policy.

It is NOT the default in weapons with preset bursts.

I find it odd that of all energy weapons only the C-12 would operate like a rail gun. Those have a tendency of listing how many bursts you get from the clip too.

[Killer Cyborg]

I would like to introduce a comparison with the C-14.

We are told that it can do a burst of 4 grenades.

Yet we are only told the damage for 1 grenade.

So if we are expected to figure out 2D6x4 dmg for a grenade burst for the C-14...

Perhaps we were also expected to figure out 4D6x4 dmg for a strong laser burst from the C-12.

A burst of 4 grenades from a weapon that holds 12 grenades would be 33% of the clip, which doesn't fit the standard burst/spray rules.
Maybe we were supposed to figure it out, but there's no real way to guess with any accuracy.
Since there's no alternate damage for the grenades, though, it's not an applicable comparison.
If the stats for the weapon said "2d6 or 4d6 MD," we could guess that the second number was the volley, and argue about that. But it doesn't.

"Burst-capable" is the term I've used.
Versus "Burst weapon," which is a weapon specifically designed to fire preset bursts.
I wouldn't consider a semi-automatic weapon to be a "standard burst weapon," because single shots are the standard for those weapons.

I meant more like 'bursts operate as standard' not 'bursts are the standard shot'.

Okay.

I don't see why you would take it as you did. Does anything necessarily have a 'standard' mode? Or is there 1-only or multi-option ones?

Standard mode is what happens when you squeeze the trigger once, as a default.
With selective fire weapons, single shot is the default.

The pattern with preset burst weapons is that single shots are specified along with the bursts. The C-12 has a preset burst.

I can't apply that pattern without notation though, given the pattern of identifying damage-from-burst semantically in everything else I've seen.

You've lost me.

he also reminds us that rail guns only fire bursts, and that the single-shot damage is for informational purposes only. Yet Rail Guns in the RMB have ROF Standard.

I seem to remembering some kind of 'machine guns only fire bursts' rule appearing in a Modern Weapons section, so in this case a rail-gun machine-gun not firing aimed shots could fall under standard.

Right. "Standard" means different things for different weapons. It doesn't mean that a weapon with ROF Standard can necessarily fire all the ways described on p. 34.

ROF Standard and ROF Aimed, Burst, Wild are the same thing. If so, then why use two different terms?

I'm led to think that by "aimed, burst, as standard" which depicts them as the same thing for energy weapons since it appears next to an energy weapon. Couldn't say why the inconsistency.

It's never been explained.
Although since the A,B,W weapons tend to allow for higher ammo capacity, and the machinegun burst rules state that they're the same except for ammo capacity, I did once ponder the possibility that A,B,W indicated that the machinegun bursts were applicable instead of the automatic/semi-automatic burst rules.
Either way, the point is that the ROF terms are never actually defined.

When RAW can be legitimately interpreted more than one way, which way is RAW?

I should've never learned this acronym. Perhaps TAW (text as written) can be interpreted different ways. Worth determining case by case which is validly coexistent in 2 forms though.

Not sure that answers the question.

Take the old MtG card that said, ""Opponent loses next turn."
Which is RAW:
a) Your opponent loses his/her next turn, so you get to go twice in a row.
or
b) Your opponent loses the game on his/her next turn

The text As Written could mean either one.
Which means to me that both options are RAW, it's just that the first one is both RAW and RAI

We can see what the sentence was intended to mean. KS told me how the gun was intended to work.

Naw, we speculate on its possible meanings. The PE in hours/minutes debacle wiped defunct trust I had in Kev to be candid about these things.

Okay, I can see what the sentence was intended to mean.

Again, the weapon didn't function as originally written, so it's clear that there was a mistake.
I don't see any reason to distrust KS about what the mistake was, or to assume that the later books were making changes instead of corrections when they altered the weapon to where it functioned.

The point is that writers make mistakes

You're missing my point though: the errors of a historian can be checked against an objective reality which may be documented by peers. The errors of an author can't be checked against anything, so they can treat an error as truth, or claim the intended reality was anything they want, without any way of verifying the authencity.

That doesn't mean that there isn't any authenticity.
We can be sure that when KS wrote "Emperor Tromm" that his later explanation about the name was correct, not that he's covering up a secret second emperor of the CS, because "Emperor Tromm" isn't compatible with "Emperor Prosek."
Just as the original ROF wasn't compatible with the description of the 5-shot burst.

If our default assumption is that different books use the same words in the same context differently, then the game becomes unplayable.

I don't agree.

You do not agree that assuming that no two usages of the same word in the same context in Rifts books means the same thing...?

No, you're twisting that. Acknowledging that the same word can be used differently in similar (not same) contexts is not the same as assuming no 2 usages mean the same thing.

I'm not twisting it. I'm saying the same thing that I said the first time, that it is illogical for our default assumption to be that different books use the same word differently in the same context.

I don't see context as being as important as you're playing at here

The word "range" can mean any number of things. Context tells us what it means when it's used in weapon descriptions. That's what lets us know that it's not talking about an open plain, or a gas stove, or a variety, when it talks about the weapon having a "range."
I don't think that I'm overplaying context at all.

. Regulary competent use of also leads me to think that incompetency is the odd man out. So I think it just happens in CWC for the new CP-40 and not for the C-12.

The sentence and use is exactly the same.
It seems much more likely that KS cut-and-pasted a strange use of "also" than to think that he wrote the sentence from scratch for the C-12, using the word correctly, then wrote out the same sentence for the CP-40 from scratch, using the word incorrectly.

I think we also may be focusing too much on the 'abuse' of also. If we entertain the idea that the problem may occur with other details, then in the right context 'also' would be correctly be used.

*The burst damages or multiplier for the C-12 may have been left out

Which would leave a conflict with the ROF, KS as handing out misinformation, the oddity of the CS only ever making one weapon with a 4d6 MD/shot laser, the clear misuse of "also" in the CP-40's description, and the change to the CV-212 in CWC.

**The five-shot burst may have been a miscount
**The 20-shot clip may have been changed without accounting for how this altered relative burst percent

Not seeing how that would change/fix/answer anything.

*The second SDC and second MD firing mode of the CP-40 may have been left out

You mean that the CS might have chosen to replace their 4d6/shot weapon with a 2d6/shot weapon?

**Four/two/two may have been intended to be scaled down to 2/1/1

?

What I believe is more likely: the CP-40's description was based partially on a copy/paste of text from the C-12 which modified the setting numbers and left the 'also set to fire' sentence intact except for a five>three.

Agreed.
Which is an action that makes sense if the sentence was intended to have the same meaning in both cases, and the guns were intended to be essentially the same except that the CP-40 replaced a 5-shot burst with a 3-shot pulse.
But it wouldn't make sense if the C-12 was intended to function significantly differently, having multiple single-shot MD modes AND a burst option, while the CP-40 had only one single-shot MD mode and a pulse.

Another thing that just occurred to me...

This could actually be an issue of sentence ordering. Consider...
1) The CP-40 has four settings, two SDC and two MD
2) The rifle can also be set to fire a single shot or a pulse of three nearly simultanoues blasts
3) It comes standard with a passive nightvision scope and laser targetting.

Imagine if you switched sentence 1 and 3. Well leave "The CP-40" and "It" where they are, but switch the rest. The 'also' would be in addition to scope/targeting and then the 4-setting bit could follow the single/pulse as a way of elaborating on it.

Does make me wonder if last minute sentence-swapping could be to blame.

So the C-12's description might have originally been intended to say something like:
Comes standard with a passive nightvision scope and laser targeting. The rifle can also be set to fire a single shot or a burst of five. The rifle has three settings, one SDC and two MDC settings.
Making it clearer that the two MD settings were the single shot (2d6) and the burst of five (4f6 MD).
That's possible.

If you embrace the "Also":
-The ROF and the weapon's description of having a preset burst are in conflict

I don't see it that way since I think one can have a preset burst in addition to standard bursting.

The rules contradict that.

The C-12 is the only preset burst weapon which does not list the damage for its preset bursts.

and the GBK is the only power armor with mini-missiles which does not list how many it can fire in a volley? Not seeing point

The GBK's lack of information creates a vacuum, no matter how you interpret the text.
The C-12 only has a vacuum if you interpret the written text in a specific way.
If there are multiple possible interpretations of the text, and one interpretation results in a hole in the rules, or a break/conflict in the rules, than that interpretation is the least likely to be correct.

I'd say that leaving out three different burst damages for the C-12 would be a much bigger mistake than mis-phrasing one sentence in the weapon's description.

If a 5-shot burst were simply a normal short burst (if the weapon's payload was originally 25) then listing the multiplier would not be necessary.

But it would be the standard for how Palladium does things. It's not necessary to list the damage for a pulse, but all pulse weapons do so, for example.

The CS Grunt in the back of the RMB has a C-12: "Two settings; 2d6 or 4d6"
Which you will likely look at and say, "See? That's the two single shot settings."

Naw more like "where is the SDC setting?" Am interested in checking out the SB1 stuff though. Tell me if you remember who that guy with the C-10 was. I remember him...

The SDC setting in that case went the same place as the SDC setting on the CV-213 on p. 34 of SB1, I think: it was left out for succinctness.

In SB1:
Karl Prosek "usually carries" a C-18 and a C-12. The C-18 lists damage, the C-12 does not.
Joseph Prosek carries either a C-27 or a C-10 "depending on the situation." Neither lists damage.

If a description of a feature is incomplete then a GM either has to house-rule it or just ignore it.

Neither of which is RAW. Unless there is a Rule Written somewhere that directs us to do those things in that situation specifically...?

The RAW is incomplete.
How we respond to RAW, be they complete or incomplete, is never RAW, it is responding to RAW and reading/interpreting what is written.[/quote]

Agreed.

deciding that the 4d6 MD setting is a single shot setting is an interpretation.

Based on the predominant patterns yup.

Not on the predominant patterns for weapons with preset bursts.

It's "KS intended for the C-12 to work one way, a way which appears to conflict with several precedents

Er, I don't see how any of the possibilities I bring up of how the weapon might've been intended to work conflict with any precedents. Particularly since this weapon was in the first book and thus nothing preceded it.

All the other weapons in the RMB with preset bursts specify the damage for single shots and for bursts.
The C-12 alone does not.

then he secretly changed his mind in order to sell more books, and he started covertly changing the text.

We know full well that the text was covertly changed. C-12 was Aimed, burst, wild; see Modern Weapon Proficiencies (like the C-10) in RMB then changed to "Equal to the number of combined attacks of its user" in CWCp91 (while the C-10 remained unchanged)

All mind-changing is secret unless it gets bothered to be announced.

The C-12's original ROF was incompatible with the weapon's preset burst, so the ROF was changed to be compatible with it, allowing the weapon to function.
The C-10 had no preset burst, so there was no incompatibility with the ROF, and the ROF was left the same.

Take note the weapon names:
C-12
CV-212
They're essentially the same weapons (initially, at least), and they share almost identical names.

...if that stands for "version 2" then that is the worst possible place they could have stuck it

I think the V stands for "Variable Frequency," and the 2 was just there to make it look cooler or something.

Although I believe the V is actually for "variable" since it is a variable laser for combatting Glitter Boys and stuff.

Yup.

burst/spray rules are for automatic weapons, not preset burst weapons.

Where are you getting the impression that preset burst weapons can't also be automatic weapons?

The Cutting Room Floor, for one. I forget if there are other sources.
But it's been made clear that weapons with preset bursts lose the ability to burst/spray on the single-shot setting.

Originally, a 5-shot burst for x2 damage was pretty average.

Which weapons produce this average? The Wilk's 447 with 20 shots used 4 shots. The NG-L5, JA-9 and JA-11 could do it in 2 using short clips. The L-20 pulse wouldn't bother with it since it gets triple for 3.

The L-20 is a pulse weapon, which isn't a standard burst.
"Pretty average" is not "exactly average."
Most rifles with a long clip or an e-cannister held 30 rounds, so 6 shots was the average short burst for those.
With a short clip, most rifles held 20 shots, and 4 shots was the average for a short burst.
If you fire short bursts with a JA-11 until you completely run out of ammo, you're going to fire 5 short bursts of 4 shots, then 5 short bursts of 6 shots, for an average of about 5 shots per burst.

I would say that it's intended for the stun gun AND for preset burst weapons.

Then you would be wrong, because having a fixed number of shots per melee ROUND is entirely different from having a fixed number of shots per melee ATTACK

If an individual character has a fixed number of shots per attack, then he also has a fixed number of shots per round.
I do get where you're coming from, though, and am willing to drop this particular angle.

Instead, let's focus on the rule (CB1 that "A burst is fired whenever somebody fires a pulse weapon, rail gun, or a rapid succession of blasts from a semiautomatic or automatic weapons (bullets or energy)."
A weapon with a preset burst with ROF Standard could be interpreted to be semi-automatic on a single-shot setting, but it could also be that the single-shot setting was the equivalent to "Single Shot Only," which would preclude using the burst/spray rules. Since the ROFs of pulse weapons were changed in later books to "Equal to the number of melee attacks" or other such phrasing that indicates you can only fire one shot per attack, I'd say that such edits were made to clarify the intended function of the weapon, not to change it.

Also, of course, there's the Cutting Room Floor section that I linked to earlier.

there is also this: http://www.palladiumbooks.com/index.php ... cle&id=234
Pulse rifles (like the Wilks 457) can NOT fire bursts on the single shot setting, but must be set for a burst.

*briefly joins the 'snub FAQ' club for purposes of winning argument, plots to exit and re-enter the 'cite the fun FAQ' club later on

The Cutting Room Floor is not the FAQ.
This is a link to official errata for Rifts Africa, where they apparently finally meant to include definitions of the ROFs, but left it out due to space or some reason.

Far as I know, a pulse weapon, when you pull the trigger sharply, will fire the pre-planned pulse.

But what if you HOLD DOWN the trigger of a pulse weapon while in pulse mode?

Same thing that happens if you hold down the trigger of a M-16 on 3-shot burst mode. You fire once, then nothing.

I don't remember that one.

Originally there was an official FAQ in the rifter said in hours, then I think in Book of Magic or something he changed to minutes 'as always intended'. But then who edits the Rifter?

Sounds like it could be a legitimate editorial mistake.

It is NOT the default in weapons with preset bursts.

I find it odd that of all energy weapons only the C-12 would operate like a rail gun. Those have a tendency of listing how many bursts you get from the clip too.

Of all energy weapons, it's the only non-pulse laser I know of that has a preset burst.
Of all energy weapons with a preset burst, it's the only one that does not list a single-shot damage.

[eliakon]

I don't remember that one.

Originally there was an official FAQ in the rifter said in hours, then I think in Book of Magic or something he changed to minutes 'as always intended'. But then who edits the Rifter?

Sounds like it could be a legitimate editorial mistake.

Also remember that this was not a 'covert change that was denied to ever be a change'
The fully said that it was intended to be one way, but that they had mistakenly put out the wrong answer (in a FAQ) and that they were now putting out the corrected right version.
To support the 'secret changes that are denied to ever be changed' you would have to cite a change that KS said 'no that was never the other way'

The first is correcting a mistake, the second is conspiracy.

I do not think you will find an instance of the second personally though

[Alrik Vas]

I choose to put my C-12 on overcharge before ripping into a crowd of d-bee's with pulse fire.

12d6 is best d6.

absolutely not how it was intended to work, but I'd step lightly around the CS if it was.

[Tor]

A burst of 4 grenades from a weapon that holds 12 grenades would be 33% of the clip, which doesn't fit the standard burst/spray rules.

True. So this might be a situation like the 5-shot laser burst where we don't know what it is. Or we just assume it's a full x 4 with none missing.

Come to think of it, beyond the C-14 Firebreather, this issue of how much damage a grenade burst does is also an issue with the CP-50 Dragonfire and the Forearm Grenade Launchers of the Super SAMAS. Only the 8-shot volley (since each arm stores 40) would fit the (short) burst parameter.

This makes me wonder if there might be an NPC or FAQ that could give us some indicator of how to treat grenade bursts in these situations.

Where I have seen damage given to grenade bursts (like in some of the launchers in Mercs) it is not a perfect sum, so it does seem like there is some loss, but I don't know if that efficiency would be identical in the CS weapons.

Standard mode is what happens when you squeeze the trigger once, as a default.
With selective fire weapons, single shot is the default.

If something has 2 modes, one or the other is not necessarily a default. I have a reversible driver. Even if by nature of the name you consider driving the screw (clockwise turn) the default, functionally the unscrew (counter-clockwise) function is just as default. I can leave it in either position where I need to change to the other.

The pattern with preset burst weapons is that single shots are specified along with the bursts. The C-12 has a preset burst.

I can't apply that pattern without notation though, given the pattern of identifying damage-from-burst semantically in everything else I've seen.

You've lost me.

The pattern of preset burst weapons listing single and burst is a pattern that also specifies which is which (single/burst) so since this doesn't do that, it doesn't fit that pattern.

A,B,W weapons tend to allow for higher ammo capacity

the machinegun burst rules state that they're the same except for ammo capacity

I did once ponder the possibility that A,B,W indicated that the machinegun bursts were applicable instead of the automatic/semi-automatic burst rules.

Being able to Spray with more weapons would certainly be nice. Or to use the better multipliers for things with 20 or more shots.

Take the old MtG card that said, ""Opponent loses next turn."
Which is RAW:
a) Your opponent loses his/her next turn, so you get to go twice in a row.
or
b) Your opponent loses the game on his/her next turn

The text As Written could mean either one.

I'll dispute that interpretation. If "next turn" is the setting when you lose something, then it does not actually say WHAT the Opponent loses. Since 'the game' is not put in. Since it does not specify, and it is without object, better to assume the object of loss is 'next turn' and that the setting defaults to 'now'.

I don't see any reason to distrust KS about what the mistake was, or to assume that the later books were making changes instead of corrections when they altered the weapon to where it functioned.

Going with the second part: how about because the changes in later books never actually corrected anything to make it function per any '5 shot' parameters?

Shrinking it to a 3-shot burst was clearly a balance change. The CWC change in RoF never explicitly said the 4D6 was a burst.

We can be sure that when KS wrote "Emperor Tromm" that his later explanation about the name was correct, not that he's covering up a secret second emperor of the CS, because "Emperor Tromm" isn't compatible with "Emperor Prosek."

I can't be sure of that. His explanation for that seems reasonable enough. The mysterious convo you had with Kev needs an official transcript put up somewhere for it to be assessed directly for reasonability.

You do not agree that assuming that no two usages of the same word in the same context in Rifts books means the same thing...?

I'm saying the same thing that I said the first time, that it is illogical for our default assumption to be that different books use the same word differently in the same context.

I hope in putting these side by side that why I felt it was being twisted is apparent.

In looking at the first one though...

"Assuming that no two usages of the same word in the same context in Rifts books means the same thing"

I'm actually having trouble discerning the meaning of this phrase. It's jumbly in a way that I cannot pinpoint. Maybe not a major way, just a conjugation or two. I am wondering if there is a way this could be tweaked for better understandability. I'm not sure what is being expressed in it.

In reference to your second statement, I believe that if we accept the premise that the CP-40 description was constructed out of a copy-paste of a portion of the C-12 (which used it properly) and then tweaked, that in the process of tweaking it was possible to (mistake built upon mistake) use it wrong.

It seems much more likely that KS cut-and-pasted a strange use of "also" than to think that he wrote the sentence from scratch for the C-12, using the word correctly, then wrote out the same sentence for the CP-40 from scratch, using the word incorrectly.

I agree completely about this. Which is why I am nor sure why the incorrect use of Also for the CP-40 is being used to indicate some kind of ongoing pattern of Also-abuse. Only if it was made from scratch would it have any meaning.

Which would leave a conflict with the ROF, KS as handing out misinformation,

Why would not listing the burst damage conflict with RoF? Neglecting to include details isn't so much a conflict as a void. Like not knowing how many mini-missiles a GBK can fire in a volley because the SoT reveal of how many they could carry neglected to include that aspect.

I also don't see this as KS handing out misinformation so much as neglecting to include important information or checking how things line up, which does happen.

the oddity of the CS only ever making one weapon with a 4d6 MD/shot laser

That's not odd at all.

Or is the Fire Breather "odd" because it's the only 3d6 laser?

The C-12 having better-damage laser shot advantage over the fire-breather or C-10 makes more sense to me. It gives a tradeoff for having grenades or great accuracy.

Sides, there is a 4d6 laser, the note cannon on the chin of Black Lightning helicopter It has 35 MDC, while a typical CS laser rifle has 30 MDC, pretty similar.

the clear misuse of "also" in the CP-40's description, and the change to the CV-212 in CWC.

Not understanding why the CV-212 keeps being brought into this since it lacks the 'also' bit. The misuse of also in CP-40 only shows some copy-paste from the C-12 description. Diff between ignoring the abused also and re-abusing the also by creating it from scratch seems pertinant.

[quote=KC"]Not seeing how that would change/fix/answer anything.[/quote]
If ammo was 25 then 5 shot burst would be 20% thus a short burst thus x2 damage thus fitting more snugly into the assumption the 4D6 was a short burst.

The C-10 would still be able to short burst with 4 shots to do 2D6x2.

Why go out of the way to describe the C-12 having an INFERIOR feature?

Actually yeah... it only adds to the confusion. The 5-shot burst would have to do triple or more damage to be worth describing.

You mean that the CS might have chosen to replace their 4d6/shot weapon with a 2d6/shot weapon?

A 2d6/shot weapon which can fire a 6d6 pulse, yes. It's still a per-attack upgrade since he was already on the way to getting rid of the bursting rules.

He effectively did this in GMG via the double-tap thing. Though I don't recall whether GMG or CWC came out first.

Which is an action that makes sense if the sentence was intended to have the same meaning in both cases

I think we read too much into the idea of him assigning meaning everything rather then just hacking out a copy-paste job.

The CP-40 went out of its way to specify single-shot and pulse-shot damage.

When KS did this in CWC, he would have recognized the lack of specificity in the C-12, since the damage in the CP-40 was specific.

Yet the C-12's reprint in CWC remained unspecific.

Making it clearer that the two MD settings were the single shot (2d6) and the burst of five (4f6 MD). That's possible.

I wouldn't say clearer, just that the relocation of 'also' no longer applies the single/burst on top of the 3 modes as a distinct area.

I think one can have a preset burst in addition to standard bursting.

The rules contradict that.

Actually I think the bit you found in CB1 only contradicts this for PULSE weapons, where are we told that preset burst weapons cannot standard burst too if listed as standard?

The C-12 only has a vacuum if you interpret the written text in a specific way.

The specific way being the usual 'damage represents 1 hit' policy, yup.

It's not necessary to list the damage for a pulse, but all pulse weapons do so, for example.

It is necessary since the damage pulses do is not always calculated through the same means. Sometimes a pulse does the sum of shots, sometimes less, sometimes more. In all cases we are told the higher damage is a pulse. If we are told it is just a MD setting, that's assumed to be a per-shot setting in every other weapon we look at, no?

Not on the predominant patterns for weapons with preset bursts.

Which are invalid since that pattern requires a per-shot/per-burst notation.

It sounds like you're referring to rail guns here... which can't even fire single shots per the celebrated 'for info purposes only' amendment in CB1 (per just RMB I would say single shots were possible) so they seem off in an entirely other wing.

All the other weapons in the RMB with preset bursts specify the damage for single shots and for bursts. The C-12 alone does not.

All other preset burst weapons (IE rail guns, unless there is some non-railgun example in RMB you want to ID) also specified single/burst.

The funny thing is... if either:
*The C-12 originally had 25 shots
*Kev planned to change short bursting rules to 25% instead of 20%

Then 5 shots wouldn't have been a preset burst, it would be a mention of the standard short burst.

In which case you would not need to fit any pattern of listing its damage.

it's been made clear that weapons with preset bursts lose the ability to burst/spray on the single-shot setting.

I'm arguing that if this is the case, it can still burst/spray on the pulse-shot setting.

IE it fires a pulse when you pull it and let go... and fires bursts/sprays as standard when you keep the trigger depressed in pulse setting.

The L-20 is a pulse weapon, which isn't a standard burst.

You could fire a long or full burst with the L-20 if you wanted to waste the ammo. Any later rules added about inability to standard-burst on single-shot setting just means the standard-bursting would have to be done on the pulse setting via trigger-holding.

If an individual character has a fixed number of shots per attack, then he also has a fixed number of shots per round.

The statement specifies the weapon, not the character.

"Only weapons that state a specific number of shots per melee are not automatic."

This is weapons like the Stun Gun (5/round) or the CR-1 Rocket Launcher (1 or 2 per round)

If characters having limited melee attacks were a factor then automatic weapons could not exist at all. But this is about the limit of the weapon, not the limit of the user.

since the ROFs of pulse weapons were changed in later books to "Equal to the number of melee attacks" or other such phrasing that indicates you can only fire one shot per attack, I'd say that such edits were made to clarify the intended function of the weapon, not to change it.

Possibly, but it was still a change.

I do question assumptions of "it was always intended this way" though.

The C-18 is a good example of why. It was changed from 'standard' to 'equal to the number' too. Yet we can clearly see in the combat example in CB-1 that Kev was allowing it to short burst.

This shows us that a change in RoF does not necessarily mean "it was always intended this way" it could also be a nerf.

Same thing that happens if you hold down the trigger of a M-16 on 3-shot burst mode. You fire once, then nothing.

I dunno about that, the L-20 may work differently, doing 3-shot bursts on a single depression (I would say they wold reasonably disable the 'short' burst since it sucks) but that if you wanted to hold it super long to get a super-inefficient long/full you could do so.

Sounds like it could be a legitimate editorial mistake.

Naw, you don't just hours into minutes.

Of all energy weapons, it's the only non-pulse laser I know of that has a preset burst.
Of all energy weapons with a preset burst, it's the only one that does not list a single-shot damage.

Or heck, maybe it was intended to be a pulse-burst but that bit was left out, just like the damage?

KC what about Techno-Wizard conversions? I used to think of the 2D6 laser cap as a nerf on the CS rifle. But you think it could fire a 4D6 burst-o-5 too?

With a payload of 10 shots it could get that 4D6 by doing a short burst with 2 shots though. =/

remember that this was not a 'covert change that was denied to ever be a change'
The fully said that it was intended to be one way, but that they had mistakenly put out the wrong answer (in a FAQ) and that they were now putting out the corrected right version.

This is all heresay, there is absolutely no proof besides trusting the top guy's memory/accountability.

It is entirely plausible that KS might have initially told the FAQ guys "hours", realized the balance-of-power it created, and nerfed it to minutes to adjust the balance.

He doesn't go out of his way in RUE to state how he changed stuff, he just changes it.

Heck, KS might have forgotten that he said "hours" and thought "I would have never said something so unbalanced, I bet I said minutes and they misheard me". This is possible to do without questioning his honesty, we all get memory glitches and different opinions on what balance should be at different times.

[Killer Cyborg]

A burst of 4 grenades from a weapon that holds 12 grenades would be 33% of the clip, which doesn't fit the standard burst/spray rules.

True. So this might be a situation like the 5-shot laser burst where we don't know what it is. Or we just assume it's a full x 4 with none missing.

If it was a volley, then it would be x4. As a burst, it seems much more likely to be only x2.

Come to think of it, beyond the C-14 Firebreather, this issue of how much damage a grenade burst does is also an issue with the CP-50 Dragonfire and the Forearm Grenade Launchers of the Super SAMAS. Only the 8-shot volley (since each arm stores 40) would fit the (short) burst parameter.

Yup.

Standard mode is what happens when you squeeze the trigger once, as a default.
With selective fire weapons, single shot is the default.

If something has 2 modes, one or the other is not necessarily a default. I have a reversible driver. Even if by nature of the name you consider driving the screw (clockwise turn) the default, functionally the unscrew (counter-clockwise) function is just as default. I can leave it in either position where I need to change to the other.

No... the forward is the default.
That's why the other is "reversible," not "standardable."

The pattern with preset burst weapons is that single shots are specified along with the bursts. The C-12 has a preset burst.

I can't apply that pattern without notation though, given the pattern of identifying damage-from-burst semantically in everything else I've seen.

You've lost me.

The pattern of preset burst weapons listing single and burst is a pattern that also specifies which is which (single/burst) so since this doesn't do that, it doesn't fit that pattern.

Agreed. It doesn't fit any of the standard patterns, therefore assuming a standard pattern is illogical.

Take the old MtG card that said, ""Opponent loses next turn."
Which is RAW:
a) Your opponent loses his/her next turn, so you get to go twice in a row.
or
b) Your opponent loses the game on his/her next turn

The text As Written could mean either one.

I'll dispute that interpretation. If "next turn" is the setting when you lose something, then it does not actually say WHAT the Opponent loses. Since 'the game' is not put in. Since it does not specify, and it is without object, better to assume the object of loss is 'next turn' and that the setting defaults to 'now'.

Either way, it's an assumption, and assumptions aren't RAW.

I don't see any reason to distrust KS about what the mistake was, or to assume that the later books were making changes instead of corrections when they altered the weapon to where it functioned.

Going with the second part: how about because the changes in later books never actually corrected anything to make it function per any '5 shot' parameters?

Shrinking it to a 3-shot burst was clearly a balance change. The CWC change in RoF never explicitly said the 4D6 was a burst.

But CWC did change the ROF to something that was compatible with a 5-shot burst.
From there, we can assume one of two things:
1. That the 5-shot burst damage is never listed, so Palladium repeatedly left that key information out, even when fixing/upgrading other parts of the weapon
2. That the 5-shot burst damage IS listed, because it's the 4d6 MD setting.

The second seems the more likely, although the first is also technically possible (if one assumes that KS was lying/mistaken about the C-12's nature).
I see no reason to assume the first.

We can be sure that when KS wrote "Emperor Tromm" that his later explanation about the name was correct, not that he's covering up a secret second emperor of the CS, because "Emperor Tromm" isn't compatible with "Emperor Prosek."

I can't be sure of that. His explanation for that seems reasonable enough. The mysterious convo you had with Kev needs an official transcript put up somewhere for it to be assessed directly for reasonability.

You can't be sure that Emperor Tromm was supposed to be a reference to Emperor Prosek?
Or you can't be sure that I'm telling the truth about my conversation with KS?
If the first, then that seems paranoid.
If the second, then talk to KS yourself sometime and see.

You do not agree that assuming that no two usages of the same word in the same context in Rifts books means the same thing...?

I'm saying the same thing that I said the first time, that it is illogical for our default assumption to be that different books use the same word differently in the same context.

I hope in putting these side by side that why I felt it was being twisted is apparent.

In looking at the first one though...

"Assuming that no two usages of the same word in the same context in Rifts books means the same thing"

I'm actually having trouble discerning the meaning of this phrase. It's jumbly in a way that I cannot pinpoint. Maybe not a major way, just a conjugation or two. I am wondering if there is a way this could be tweaked for better understandability. I'm not sure what is being expressed in it.

In reference to your second statement, I believe that if we accept the premise that the CP-40 description was constructed out of a copy-paste of a portion of the C-12 (which used it properly) and then tweaked, that in the process of tweaking it was possible to (mistake built upon mistake) use it wrong.

1. If you cannot discern the meaning of the first phrase, then it's illogical to say that the meaning is not the same as the second phrase.
2. Do you see logic in the CS changing from a weapon with a 5-shot burst that inflicts 1d6x10 MD to a 3-shot pulse that inflicts 6d6 MD?
Do you see any reason why the CS--if they possessed the technology for a 4d6 MD single-shot weapon that could fire bursts at that damage setting, to NOT upgrade to a weapon that has a 3-shot pulse for 12d6 MD?

It seems much more likely that KS cut-and-pasted a strange use of "also" than to think that he wrote the sentence from scratch for the C-12, using the word correctly, then wrote out the same sentence for the CP-40 from scratch, using the word incorrectly.

I agree completely about this. Which is why I am nor sure why the incorrect use of Also for the CP-40 is being used to indicate some kind of ongoing pattern of Also-abuse. Only if it was made from scratch would it have any meaning.

If it's cut and paste, then the natural assumption would be that the context remained the same, needing no manual alteration.

Which would leave a conflict with the ROF, KS as handing out misinformation,

Why would not listing the burst damage conflict with RoF?

It's not the listing, it's the existence. A preset burst doesn't co-exist with the p.34 burst/spray rules in Palladium's rules.

the oddity of the CS only ever making one weapon with a 4d6 MD/shot laser

That's not odd at all.

Or is the Fire Breather "odd" because it's the only 3d6 laser?

Not at all.

The C-12 having better-damage laser shot advantage over the fire-breather or C-10 makes more sense to me. It gives a tradeoff for having grenades or great accuracy.

And the CP-40 having only half the per-shot damage of the C-12 likewise makes sense to you?

Sides, there is a 4d6 laser, the note cannon on the chin of Black Lightning helicopter It has 35 MDC, while a typical CS laser rifle has 30 MDC, pretty similar.

Vehicle mounted weapons aren't the same as hand-held.

the clear misuse of "also" in the CP-40's description, and the change to the CV-212 in CWC.

Not understanding why the CV-212 keeps being brought into this since it lacks the 'also' bit.

As pointed out, it does in fact include the "also" bit in the SB1 description, before it was upgraded in CWC from a 5-shot burst to a 3-shot pulse.

The misuse of also in CP-40 only shows some copy-paste from the C-12 description.

Which shows in its own right that the context was intended to be the same, that they're essentially the same weapon.

[quote=KC"]Not seeing how that would change/fix/answer anything.

If ammo was 25 then 5 shot burst would be 20% thus a short burst thus x2 damage thus fitting more snugly into the assumption the 4D6 was a short burst.[/quote]

If the 5-shot burst was intended to be an advantage over the 6-shot burst, then x2 damage would be a benefit.

The C-10 would still be able to short burst with 4 shots to do 2D6x2.

If you stick to short clips.

Why go out of the way to describe the C-12 having an INFERIOR feature?

It's only inferior if you stick to short clips.

Actually yeah... it only adds to the confusion. The 5-shot burst would have to do triple or more damage to be worth describing.

Unless you're comparing it to the 6-shot burst from long clips.

You mean that the CS might have chosen to replace their 4d6/shot weapon with a 2d6/shot weapon?

A 2d6/shot weapon which can fire a 6d6 pulse, yes. It's still a per-attack upgrade since he was already on the way to getting rid of the bursting rules.

He effectively did this in GMG via the double-tap thing. Though I don't recall whether GMG or CWC came out first.

CWC came out first.
4d6 MD for 5 shots is NOT an improvement on 4d6 MD for 2 shots. Not even close.

Which is an action that makes sense if the sentence was intended to have the same meaning in both cases

I think we read too much into the idea of him assigning meaning everything rather then just hacking out a copy-paste job.

The CP-40 went out of its way to specify single-shot and pulse-shot damage.

I'd say that it was on the way.

When KS did this in CWC, he would have recognized the lack of specificity in the C-12, since the damage in the CP-40 was specific.

Yet the C-12's reprint in CWC remained unspecific.

I think it's illogical to assume what KS would or would not notice when it comes to that kind of thing.
He and Palladium have a long history of assuming that they're being perfectly clear, when they're not.

I think one can have a preset burst in addition to standard bursting.

The rules contradict that.

Actually I think the bit you found in CB1 only contradicts this for PULSE weapons, where are we told that preset burst weapons cannot standard burst too if listed as standard?

If for pulse, why not for preset bursts?
Do you have a logical reason, or just an emotional reason?

The C-12 only has a vacuum if you interpret the written text in a specific way.

The specific way being the usual 'damage represents 1 hit' policy, yup.

"Usual" meaning "for weapons that don't have preset pulses."
"Usual" for weapons that DO have preset pulses is to list the per-shot damage specifically.

It's not necessary to list the damage for a pulse, but all pulse weapons do so, for example.

It is necessary since the damage pulses do is not always calculated through the same means. Sometimes a pulse does the sum of shots, sometimes less, sometimes more. In all cases we are told the higher damage is a pulse. If we are told it is just a MD setting, that's assumed to be a per-shot setting in every other weapon we look at, no?

Pulses are always the sum of shots.
It's just that Palladium damage math isn't necessarily the same as normal math. They try to shorthand things.

Not on the predominant patterns for weapons with preset bursts.

Which are invalid since that pattern requires a per-shot/per-burst notation.

It sounds like you're referring to rail guns here... which can't even fire single shots per the celebrated 'for info purposes only' amendment in CB1 (per just RMB I would say single shots were possible) so they seem off in an entirely other wing.

I'm referring to rail guns, pulse weapons, and any other weapons in the RMB other than the C-12 that have a preset burst.

All the other weapons in the RMB with preset bursts specify the damage for single shots and for bursts. The C-12 alone does not.

All other preset burst weapons (IE rail guns, unless there is some non-railgun example in RMB you want to ID) also specified single/burst.

Exactly.
But the C-12 does not. It breaks the patterns, which is why it's not inherently safe to assume that the damage listings follow the standard patterns.

it's been made clear that weapons with preset bursts lose the ability to burst/spray on the single-shot setting.

I'm arguing that if this is the case, it can still burst/spray on the pulse-shot setting.

Have fun with that.

The L-20 is a pulse weapon, which isn't a standard burst.

You could fire a long or full burst with the L-20 if you wanted to waste the ammo.

Source?

If an individual character has a fixed number of shots per attack, then he also has a fixed number of shots per round.

The statement specifies the weapon, not the character.

A weapon without a character cannot fire any shots at all.

since the ROFs of pulse weapons were changed in later books to "Equal to the number of melee attacks" or other such phrasing that indicates you can only fire one shot per attack, I'd say that such edits were made to clarify the intended function of the weapon, not to change it.

Possibly, but it was still a change.

Or a correction to bad writing.

I do question assumptions of "it was always intended this way" though.

The C-18 is a good example of why. It was changed from 'standard' to 'equal to the number' too. Yet we can clearly see in the combat example in CB-1 that Kev was allowing it to short burst.

This shows us that a change in RoF does not necessarily mean "it was always intended this way" it could also be a nerf.

Fair point. But the C-18's ROF wasn't incompatible with the weapon's description, and the C-12's was.

Same thing that happens if you hold down the trigger of a M-16 on 3-shot burst mode. You fire once, then nothing.

I dunno about that, the L-20 may work differently, doing 3-shot bursts on a single depression (I would say they wold reasonably disable the 'short' burst since it sucks) but that if you wanted to hold it super long to get a super-inefficient long/full you could do so.

Do you have ANY reason other than desire for assuming that it does work differently?

Sounds like it could be a legitimate editorial mistake.

Naw, you don't just hours into minutes.

I don't.
But Palladium might.

Of all energy weapons, it's the only non-pulse laser I know of that has a preset burst.
Of all energy weapons with a preset burst, it's the only one that does not list a single-shot damage.

Or heck, maybe it was intended to be a pulse-burst but that bit was left out, just like the damage?

Doubtful.

KC what about Techno-Wizard conversions? I used to think of the 2D6 laser cap as a nerf on the CS rifle. But you think it could fire a 4D6 burst-o-5 too?

It was never clear if TW weapons ROF remained the same.
Either way, TW weapons are TW weapons.

[Tor]

CWC did change the ROF to something that was compatible with a 5-shot burst.
From there, we can assume one of two things:
1. That the 5-shot burst damage is never listed, so Palladium repeatedly left that key information out, even when fixing/upgrading other parts of the weapon
2. That the 5-shot burst damage IS listed, because it's the 4d6 MD setting.

1 is more likely because Palladium did repeatedly leave the key information out of not specifying single/burst next to those damages if they were intended to represent different firing formats.

Based on leaving out that criteria which has been included for all other burst/pulse weapons, one can easily understand that the burst damage itself was left out.

Or simply ignored altogether because in copy/pasting the description KS forgot about discussing a burst.

1. If you cannot discern the meaning of the first phrase, then it's illogical to say that the meaning is not the same as the second phrase.

No it isn't, because the first time I read it, I thought I discerned the meaning well enough, but I didn't realize it was an incomplete sentence until looking at it again.

Do you see logic in the CS changing from a weapon with a 5-shot burst that inflicts 1d6x10 MD to a 3-shot pulse that inflicts 6d6 MD?

I don't recall siding with it being 2d6x5 damage. Per the FAQ the 5-shot burst was x2 so tha would by 2d6x2 or 4d6x2.

Of course that does leave us with a 8d6 v 6d6 dilemma.

This is solved by a possibility: these new weapons are cheaper to produce.

The black market doesn't reflect that at present, but that could be due to the new weapons being a unique commodity.

Cheaper production costs might also explain why the CS used the C-12 at all when they could've just bought or made L-20 pulse rifles.

If it's cut and paste, then the natural assumption would be that the context remained the same, needing no manual alteration.

and yet manual alteration was done.

I think 'also' came along for the ride, that it was not the primary focus of the cut-and-paste.

A preset burst doesn't co-exist with the p.34 burst/spray rules in Palladium's rules.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. I don't see why preset burst rules can't coexist as an option for a weapon alongside standard ones.

And the CP-40 having only half the per-shot damage of the C-12 likewise makes sense to you?

Sure, skimping on laser-focusing components may have cut costs for them. Or they might not like the idea of the standard-issue rifle being such an effective sniper tool.

As pointed out, it does in fact include the "also" bit in the SB1 description, before it was upgraded in CWC from a 5-shot burst to a 3-shot pulse.

Hm okay, I was looking at my CWC copy and did not see also, will make a note.

Does make you wonder, if KS was intentionally removing the 'also' in this weapon's CWC port, why he didn't also remove it for C-12 or the new CP-40.

Which shows in its own right that the context was intended to be the same, that they're essentially the same weapon.

nope, CP-40 can fire a pulse with either it's MD or SDC setting, you're alleging the C-12 could only fire a burst with the MD setting

If the 5-shot burst was intended to be an advantage over the 6-shot burst, then x2 damage would be a benefit.

In respect to long clips? Agreed. Although if this issue existed I think anyone wanting to burst would be using short clips and saving long clips for single-shot sniping, to avoid the issue.

4d6 MD for 5 shots is NOT an improvement on 4d6 MD for 2 shots. Not even close.

I said 6d6 pulse was more per attack than a 4d6 shot. Not sure what you're contradicting here.

Even if GMG wasn't out by the time of CWC it's clear KS had plans to alter the RoF of many energy weapons. We could see 'standard' and 'aimed burst wild' absent in the new weapons coming out in books, even if the old RoFs hadn't yet been amended.

I think it's illogical to assume what KS would or would not notice when it comes to that kind of thing.

He and Palladium have a long history of assuming that they're being perfectly clear, when they're not.

But if he assumes he is being clear, then he would not notice there was a problem

If for pulse, why not for preset bursts? Do you have a logical reason, or just an emotional reason?

"why not"? just going with what it says. If they meant the same thing they'd be used interchangeably. The term 'pulse' was in use in RMB, so if 'pulse' was just a preset burst for energy weapons they would've used it in the C-12 like in the L-20.

"Usual" meaning "for weapons that don't have preset pulses."

Naw the L-20 has a preset pulse and it still starts off with the single-shot damage.

The C-12 lists the higher damage first. Like with rail guns, as you've pointed out, but unlike a rail gun, it doesn't specify first=burst second=single

Pulses are always the sum of shots. It's just that Palladium damage math isn't necessarily the same as normal math. They try to shorthand things.

No, there are flagrant counter-examples to this, I agree some situations could be written off as short-hand but others definitely cannot be.

The NGR rifle's 3d6 shot triple pulse doing 1D6x10 for example. KS would clearly know 10d6 > 9d6.

You could fire a long or full burst with the L-20 if you wanted to waste the ammo.

Source?

"Rate of Fire: Standard; see Modern Weapon Proficiency Section"
"See the data and explanations under Bursts or Sprays from automatic weapons"
"Rifts, page 34. These rules apply to automatic energy weapons"
"Only weapons that state a specific number of shots per melee are not automatic"
"An automatic weapon can fire a burst by simply holding the trigger down"

A weapon without a character cannot fire any shots at all.

That is a pretty impressive attempt at skirting my criticism of your 'number of shots per melee' misinterpretation.

Do you have ANY reason other than desire for assuming that it does work differently?

Yup, as cited above, the RoF and CB1.

[Killer Cyborg]

CWC did change the ROF to something that was compatible with a 5-shot burst.
From there, we can assume one of two things:
1. That the 5-shot burst damage is never listed, so Palladium repeatedly left that key information out, even when fixing/upgrading other parts of the weapon
2. That the 5-shot burst damage IS listed, because it's the 4d6 MD setting.

1 is more likely because Palladium did repeatedly leave the key information out of not specifying single/burst next to those damages if they were intended to represent different firing formats.

Based on leaving out that criteria which has been included for all other burst/pulse weapons, one can easily understand that the burst damage itself was left out.

Or simply ignored altogether because in copy/pasting the description KS forgot about discussing a burst.

Or, based on leaving out that criteria which as been included for all other burst/pulse weapons, on can easily understand that the burst damage was left IN, but not noted as being a burst.
It's more plausible that KS thinks that the description is clear enough because it includes the single-shot and the burst damages, than that he thinks that it's clear enough even though he left out burst damage entirely.

1. If you cannot discern the meaning of the first phrase, then it's illogical to say that the meaning is not the same as the second phrase.

No it isn't, because the first time I read it, I thought I discerned the meaning well enough, but I didn't realize it was an incomplete sentence until looking at it again.

Any way you slice it, it makes more sense to assume that the same word in the same context has the same meaning, than to assume that the same word in the same context has a different meaning.

Do you see logic in the CS changing from a weapon with a 5-shot burst that inflicts 1d6x10 MD to a 3-shot pulse that inflicts 6d6 MD?

I don't recall siding with it being 2d6x5 damage. Per the FAQ the 5-shot burst was x2 so tha would by 2d6x2 or 4d6x2.

Of course that does leave us with a 8d6 v 6d6 dilemma.

Right- I should have put 8d6.

This is solved by a possibility: these new weapons are cheaper to produce.

You are needlessly multiplying entities, inventing possible but unmentioned in-game reasons when there's a pretty clear metagame reason: the gun doesn't work that way.

Compare the two scenarios:
1. The C-12 inflicts 2d6 MD on a single shot, and 4d6 MD on a burst of 5.
The CP-40 inflicts 2d6 MD on a single shot, and 6d6 MD on a pulse of 3.
They do the same damage because they're basically the same laser, only the inefficient burst has been replaced with a more modern pulse for greater efficiency and damage.
The writers decided that the CS would replace the older weapon with a better version, just like the military tends to do in the real world.

2. The C-12 inflicts 2d6 or 4d6 MD on a single shot, and inflicted 4d6 or 8d6 on a burst of 5.
The CP-40 inflicts 2d6 MD on a single shot, and 6d6 MD on a pulse of 3.
The older weapon was capable of inflicting more damage per single shot, but that single-shot feature is lost entirely, even though it took no more energy to use than the 2d6 MD shot. Instead of upgrading the C-12 from a weapon that inflicted 8d6 MD on a burst of 5 to a weapon that inflicted 12d6 on a pulse of three, the writers decided that the CS--with their incredibly vast resources--decided to save some money and downgrade to a weapon with half the per-shot damage of the previous weapon.
Also, the writers never bothered to mention anything about the weapon being cheap in the weapon description, nor did they ever mention anything about the CS' motivations for downgrading to a weaker weapon on the per-shot scale, nor did they introduce any new weapons that take advantage of the CS' 4d6 MD per shot rifle capabilities.

In the first scenario, everything makes sense.
The second scenario is more convoluted.

If it's cut and paste, then the natural assumption would be that the context remained the same, needing no manual alteration.

and yet manual alteration was done.

I think 'also' came along for the ride, that it was not the primary focus of the cut-and-paste.

Agreed- the primary focus was the weapon's preset burst capability.
The word "also" is superfluous, affecting neither weapon.

A preset burst doesn't co-exist with the p.34 burst/spray rules in Palladium's rules.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. I don't see why preset burst rules can't coexist as an option for a weapon alongside standard ones.

As per the rules from the Cutting Room Floor errata, previously cited, and my previous mention that there's no reason to believe that such weapons are semi-automatic instead of "Each shot takes one attack" type weapons.

And the CP-40 having only half the per-shot damage of the C-12 likewise makes sense to you?

Sure, skimping on laser-focusing components may have cut costs for them.

Find something to support the idea that it IS cutting costs for them, if you want to push that notion. Or even support for the idea that the CS was even trying to cut costs when cranking out their new armor and weapons for the CWC.
The C-10 was CR 16,000. The C-12 was CR 20,000.
Don't have CWC right now, so I can't say how much the CP-40 was, but I doubt it's less than CR 20,000.
Either way, if it only costs CR 4,000 more per unit to double the per-shot firepower (from the C-10 to the C-12), I don't see the CS thinking that's a bad investment.

Or they might not like the idea of the standard-issue rifle being such an effective sniper tool.

Why?

Which shows in its own right that the context was intended to be the same, that they're essentially the same weapon.

nope, CP-40 can fire a pulse with either it's MD or SDC setting, you're alleging the C-12 could only fire a burst with the MD setting

Adding pulse capability to the SDC setting doesn't mean it's not essentially the same weapon.

If the 5-shot burst was intended to be an advantage over the 6-shot burst, then x2 damage would be a benefit.

In respect to long clips? Agreed. Although if this issue existed I think anyone wanting to burst would be using short clips and saving long clips for single-shot sniping, to avoid the issue.

That's the kind of metagaming that KS doesn't seem to consider when he writes the books.

4d6 MD for 5 shots is NOT an improvement on 4d6 MD for 2 shots. Not even close.

I said 6d6 pulse was more per attack than a 4d6 shot. Not sure what you're contradicting here.

You claimed that he was adjusting the weapon to have a per-attack upgrade since he was getting rid of the burst rules, which he did with the double-tap rules in the RGMG.
Double-tap = 2 shots for 4d6 MD under those rules, which has the same efficiency as a pulse.

Even if GMG wasn't out by the time of CWC it's clear KS had plans to alter the RoF of many energy weapons. We could see 'standard' and 'aimed burst wild' absent in the new weapons coming out in books, even if the old RoFs hadn't yet been amended.

Agreed.

I think it's illogical to assume what KS would or would not notice when it comes to that kind of thing.

He and Palladium have a long history of assuming that they're being perfectly clear, when they're not.

But if he assumes he is being clear, then he would not notice there was a problem

Exactly.
Which is why claims like "he would have recognized the lack of specificity in the C-12" don't have any traction.

If for pulse, why not for preset bursts? Do you have a logical reason, or just an emotional reason?

"why not"? just going with what it says. If they meant the same thing they'd be used interchangeably. The term 'pulse' was in use in RMB, so if 'pulse' was just a preset burst for energy weapons they would've used it in the C-12 like in the L-20.

So, no logical reason why the rule would apply to pulse, but not to preset bursts in general.

"Usual" meaning "for weapons that don't have preset pulses."

Naw the L-20 has a preset pulse and it still starts off with the single-shot damage.

The C-12 lists the higher damage first. Like with rail guns, as you've pointed out, but unlike a rail gun, it doesn't specify first=burst second=single

An oddity regardless.
Note that the NG-57 lists the lower damage setting first as well.
The L-20 specifies the damage for single shot, and the damage for the pulse, regardless of which order it's in. As does every other weapon with a preset burst/pulse.
The C-12 doesn't fit with the standard patterns.

Pulses are always the sum of shots. It's just that Palladium damage math isn't necessarily the same as normal math. They try to shorthand things.

No, there are flagrant counter-examples to this, I agree some situations could be written off as short-hand but others definitely cannot be.

The NGR rifle's 3d6 shot triple pulse doing 1D6x10 for example. KS would clearly know 10d6 > 9d6.

That's not a counter-example.
That's just an example.
Kevin knows that 10d6 is more than 9d6... he just doesn't care, because the math is easier for 1d6x10 than for 9d6.
That's how Palladium damage math works.

(Another reason, btw, why the 8d6 burst damage for the C-12 isn't likely. Palladium shies away from rolling more than 6 dice, tending to convert it to multipliers like 1d4x10 and such).

You could fire a long or full burst with the L-20 if you wanted to waste the ammo.

Source?

"Rate of Fire: Standard; see Modern Weapon Proficiency Section"
"See the data and explanations under Bursts or Sprays from automatic weapons"
"Rifts, page 34. These rules apply to automatic energy weapons"
"Only weapons that state a specific number of shots per melee are not automatic"
"An automatic weapon can fire a burst by simply holding the trigger down"

Again, "see Modern Weapon Proficiency Section" doesn't necessarily mean the bursts and sprays tables.
Since the Modern Weapon Proficiency section doesn't tell us what ROF Standard means, that reference doesn't provide anything useful.

Again, from the official errata:
"Pulse rifles (like the Wilks 457) can NOT fire bursts on the single shot setting, but must be set for a burst."

And in case I didn't point it out earlier, note that the CB1 text on p. 8 states:
A burst is fired whenever somebody fires a pulse weapon, rail gun, or a rapid succession of blasts from a semi-automatic or automatic weapon (bullets or energy).
Note the use of the word OR in that sentence.
A burst is fired when somebody fires a pulse weapon... OR a rapid succession of blasts from a semi-automatic/automatic weapon.
Not when somebody fires a rapid succession of blasts from a pulse-rifle on single-shot setting.

A weapon without a character cannot fire any shots at all.

That is a pretty impressive attempt at skirting my criticism of your 'number of shots per melee' misinterpretation.

Thank you.

Of course, I already said that I'd let that one drop, so I'm not sure what you're looking for here.

[Tor]

It's more plausible that KS thinks that the description is clear enough because it includes the single-shot and the burst damages, than that he thinks that it's clear enough even though he left out burst damage entirely.

This assumes KS had put the finishing touches on the weapon. If he forgot about detailing the burst mechanics in the damage (perhaps forgot he added this to the description at all) then this would not be the case.

Any way you slice it, it makes more sense to assume that the same word in the same context has the same meaning, than to assume that the same word in the same context has a different meaning.

Not to me, I find it more belieable that C-12 was competent use with proper maths, aligning with uses in other contexts, and that the later variations became non-functional with ill-attended copy-paste.

You are needlessly multiplying entities, inventing possible but unmentioned in-game reasons when there's a pretty clear metagame reason: the gun doesn't work that way.

Saying the 4D6 is for the unspecified burst is also inventing a possible but unmentioned in-game reason.

Production costs (which we do not know) could account for ANY change in weapons. Even if it meant to less effective ones.

2. The C-12 inflicts 2d6 or 4d6 MD on a single shot, and inflicted 4d6 or 8d6 on a burst of 5.
The CP-40 inflicts 2d6 MD on a single shot, and 6d6 MD on a pulse of 3.

Compare per 15 shots: the C-12 would do 24d6, the CP-40 would do 30d6. A clear advantage.

The older weapon was capable of inflicting more damage per single shot, but that single-shot feature is lost entirely, even though it took no more energy to use than the 2d6 MD shot.

But if the CP-40 was cheaper to produce, you could equip twice as many soldiers, so it's all worth it.

the writers decided that the CS--with their incredibly vast resources--decided to save some money and downgrade to a weapon with half the per-shot damage of the previous weapon.

Very possible. Or else why would you use the C-12 at all when you use the more efficient laser of the C-14?

Also with all the complaint of the per-shot damage shrink of 4d6>2d6 in the C-12 v CP-40...

Damage shrink happened when we look at the C-14 "Firebreather" changing to the CP-50 "Dragonfire".

So why it is hard to believe that 14>50 damage shrink could also happen with the 12>40?

If the 'Breather can have a lost better-laser in changing to the pulsey Dragon then I think this could have also happened with the main rifles too.

the writers never bothered to mention anything about the weapon being cheap in the weapon description, nor did they ever mention anything about the CS' motivations for downgrading to a weaker weapon on the per-shot scale

Not necessary, it could explain why people would stick to an inferior weapon. Or else why wouldn't the CS just use L-20 pulse rifles?

You're talking 4 bursts of 4d6 per short clip versus 13 bursts of 6d6. Getting an L-20 on the black market only costs 25k, you could sell a C-12 on the black market for 20k. I think the majority of that price comes from being able to use it to go undercover as CS using their standard gear.

The consideration of long-clips alters this a bit. 6 bursts of 4d6 versus 16 bursts of 6d6.

Even when taking into account the canister, this bumps the short/long comparisons to 10 bursts of 4d6 versus 13 bursts of 6d6 (short) or 12 bursts of 4d6 versus 16 bursts of 6d6. Even taking this into account, the L-20 comes out on top. This isn't even acknowledging the benefit of how much easier it is to slap in a new e-clip than it is to recharge a canister.

The only advantages I can see to the C-12 are the better range (400ft) the laser-targetting (which you could still add on to an L-20) and the SDC options. Not sure that's enough to account for the price difference though.

Maybe a better comparison would be the JA-9 since it has same range / single shot damage / laser target. Horrible with short clips but match in long clip. Has standard RoF to make for mega-bursts when using short clips.

Or maybe to the Wilk's 447. Same ammo per standard, bonus to strike is actually better (presumably from balance/weight like the Wilk's 320, not laser target, so you could stack that on), cost is lower, 50% better per-shot damage, standard RoF allows burst, lighter.. why wouldn't CS just obtain 447s? Has to be the cost. When slapping in a new e-clip takes just an action, that canister isn't useful enough to account for this.

The word "also" is superfluous, affecting neither weapon.

In contrary, also is a word inserted to create a relationship with preceding statements.

I don't see why preset burst rules can't coexist as an option for a weapon alongside standard ones.

As per

the rules from the Cutting Room Floor errata, previously cited
my previous mention that there's no reason to believe that such weapons are semi-automatic instead of "Each shot takes one attack" type weapons.

These have been addressed:

the cutting room floor Africa errata only says pulse weapons "can NOT fire bursts on the single shot setting, but must be set for a burst." This does not mean that only the pulse can be fired on the burst setting.

This very source you cite to try to support your first point also contradicts your second: "generally, figure that energy rifles can fire bursts unless it specifically says that particular weapon cannot". Since the L-20 in question is a rifle... well, your argument would be better suited for discussion of energy pistols.

Speaking of energy pistols, the ability of the C-18 to burst in CB1 clearly indicates that this:

("Standard" weapons may only be fired in single shots (unless noted otherwise).

is not applicable for energy pistols either. They are an 'unless noted otherwise' situation, since CB1 does note otherwise.

Find something to support the idea that it IS cutting costs for them, if you want to push that notion. Or even support for the idea that the CS was even trying to cut costs when cranking out their new armor and weapons for the CWC.
The C-10 was CR 16,000. The C-12 was CR 20,000. Don't have CWC right now, so I can't say how much the CP-40 was, but I doubt it's less than CR 20,000.

CWCp92 the cost is 40 000 for the CP-40. The problem with using these is that they are Black Market costs, not production costs.

Since the CWC weapons were new, they would not be widely available on the black market so this would explain their cost being high.

Other things in CWC do have a "CS cost" indicating production, but this was not the case with the handguns.

they might not like the idea of the standard-issue rifle being such an effective sniper tool.

Why?

Too much power in the common man? Too dangerous if stolen/sold?

Adding pulse capability to the SDC setting doesn't mean it's not essentially the same weapon.

You're going into the territory of discussing "essence", I can't have a specific debate here. They are not the same weapons, there are similarities, more than I might mark between them and other weapons, but beyond that I don't go so far as to draw conclusions from this.

You claimed that he was adjusting the weapon to have a per-attack upgrade since he was getting rid of the burst rules, which he did with the double-tap rules in the RGMG. Double-tap = 2 shots for 4d6 MD under those rules, which has the same efficiency as a pulse.

I still got the atmosphere of the GMG's double-tab being a house rule option for how KS treats it rather than mandatory or RAW to the setting as a replacement.

When KS introduces rules like this, he may not be thinking of the C-12 in particular when he does it. Or he may have forgotten the rule by the time he designed CP-40 for CWC.

Or... and this bears looking at... when the CP-40 was introduced in CWC, he simultaneously nerfed the RoF of the C-12 to "number of hand" so it would not be able to double-tap at that point, so it could not longer challenge the CP-40, even though by earlier rules it was more powerful than it ended up being. The same could be said, of course, of doing a 6D6x2 short burst with a C-27 Heavy Plasma vs the C-29 Hellfire.

Which is why claims like "he would have recognized the lack of specificity in the C-12" don't have any traction.

I think it does, since in all other burst weapons we see that he does see the importance of specifying.

So, no logical reason why the rule would apply to pulse, but not to preset bursts in general.

Pulse being a unique term is why.

*still thinks that ammo 25 would've made it a standard short burst instead of a unique preset*

Note that the NG-57 lists the lower damage setting first as well.
The L-20 specifies the damage for single shot, and the damage for the pulse, regardless of which order it's in. As does every other weapon with a preset burst/pulse.
The C-12 doesn't fit with the standard patterns.

Admittedly the 4d6/2d6 compared to 2d4/3d6 (NG-57) or 2d6/4d6 (JA-11) or d4/d6/2d4/3d6/4d6 (laser torch) does stand out as an oddity.

That said... if 4D6 indicated a primary burst for the C-12, I would expect this to be reflected in the description.

Yet it is "a single shot or a burst of 5". The burst of 5 should be listed first if it is primary to match with the initial damage.

Also worth noting that for weapons like the C-12 or Laser Torch or Laser Wand or JA-11 that the trend of listing MD first SDC second is a higher/lower pattern too. So the C-12 being higher/lower for its MD isn't that incredible.

Also if we look to WB5p148's WR-17, although the Ion's MD does go lower/higher, the 2 ion MDs are higher than the laser MD which is listed 2nd.

That's not a counter-example.
That's just an example.
Kevin knows that 10d6 is more than 9d6... he just doesn't care, because the math is easier for 1d6x10 than for 9d6.
That's how Palladium damage math works.

I have provided evidence that pulse damage can be less, equal or more than the sum of the damage of the individual shots in the pulse.

Motive for authors doing so is irrelevant.

Palladium shies away from rolling more than 6 dice, tending to convert it to multipliers like 1d4x10 and such).

and yet what does a level 9 call lightning do?

anyway I didn't argue for 8d6 burst damage, per the FAQ it would be 4d6x2, it says to double the result not double the dice. I shorthand that to 8d6 since it makes it easier to compare the amounts.

Again, "see Modern Weapon Proficiency Section" doesn't necessarily mean the bursts and sprays tables.
Since the Modern Weapon Proficiency section doesn't tell us what ROF Standard means, that reference doesn't provide anything useful.

Again, from the official errata:
"Pulse rifles (like the Wilks 457) can NOT fire bursts on the single shot setting, but must be set for a burst."

"see Modern" indicates to use the rules there, CB1 and GMG further clarified to use those rules

The Africa errata doesn't restrict anything. Pulse rifles can only fire bursts (which includes pulses and standard bursts, if RoF indicates) on the non-single setting.

The main distinction with pulse rifles I see is this: if it says "aimed/burst/wild" you could assume the 'burst' to refer to the pulse setting. But if it says 'standard' then it means it can do something besides the pulse setting, and be capable of normal bursting as well, per energy rifle policy.

A burst is fired when somebody fires a pulse weapon... OR a rapid succession of blasts from a semi-automatic/automatic weapon.
Not when somebody fires a rapid succession of blasts from a pulse-rifle on single-shot setting.

A critical hit happens when you roll a natural 20, or when you hit someone from behind (per some combat skills).

That doesn't mean you can't get a natural 20 when hitting from behind.

Your second sentence is inapplicable. I'm not saying you can fire a standard burst from a pulse rifle on single shot setting.

I'm saying you can fire a standard burst from a pulse rifle on pulse setting, because pulse setting fires a pulse when you pull the trigger and let go, so clearly the standard bursting is automatic (keeping trigger depressed)

I already said that I'd let that one drop, so I'm not sure what you're looking for here.

Actually letting something drop means not replying to it at all Saying "I'm dropping this" while still making arguments about it... smacks of "I'm not going to talk politics but Obama has the least appreciation for the educational value of video games of all the presidents, but let's drop it."

[1stTimeGM]

I'm not sure what editions of the MRB (pg 203 in mine) and WB11 (pg 91) I have, but in both the C-12 has listed:
Mega Damage: Setting One: 4D6 MD, Setting Two: 2D6 MD
SDC Damage: Setting Three 6D6 SDC
ROF: A,B,W see MWPs

That, to me, shows that the three settings listed in the description are damage settings, and that you can fire in either single shot mode or a 5-shot burst mode.
As to the whole % of E-clip per burst shot, I don't think that rule applies here because in it's description we are told it's burst mode is 5 shots.

[Tor]

You may have an earlier printing of CWC than I do (mine is 3rd) because in mine the C-12's RoF was changed to 'number of attacks' instead of the A/B/WseeMWPs from RMB.

"see MWP" doesn't help much in knowing how to multiply damage for a 5/20 (25%) burst since rules exist for 4/20 (20%) or 10/20 (50%) per standard.

Back when short/long was x2/x5 one could extrapolate a x3 (seems balanced enough) but with long nerfed to x3 it gets weird (maybe x2.5 ?)

The % of clip info determines the damage multiplier. We are not told that a 5-shot burst is the only kind of burst a C-12 can make, so a standard short/long/full might have originally still been possible.

Maybe I just like the '4d6 with a laser' match-up of the C-12 vs the JA-10. The Juicer rifle still has it beat in range but loses out in the bursting department since the 4d6 is single-shot. It can almost keep up by bursting with the ion feature, of course. Both its laser and ion would bypass GB resistance too, something the C-12 can't speak to.

[Killer Cyborg]

You may have an earlier printing of CWC than I do (mine is 3rd) because in mine the C-12's RoF was changed to 'number of attacks' instead of the A/B/WseeMWPs from RMB.

Same.

[Killer Cyborg]

It's more plausible that KS thinks that the description is clear enough because it includes the single-shot and the burst damages, than that he thinks that it's clear enough even though he left out burst damage entirely.

This assumes KS had put the finishing touches on the weapon. If he forgot about detailing the burst mechanics in the damage (perhaps forgot he added this to the description at all) then this would not be the case.

Needlessly multiplying entities there.

Any way you slice it, it makes more sense to assume that the same word in the same context has the same meaning, than to assume that the same word in the same context has a different meaning.

Not to me, I find it more belieable that C-12 was competent use with proper maths, aligning with uses in other contexts, and that the later variations became non-functional with ill-attended copy-paste.

You believe that they copy and pasted the "also" part of the sentence, but not the part about the 5 shot burst?
That's some pretty precise and sloppy cut-and-pasting.

You are needlessly multiplying entities, inventing possible but unmentioned in-game reasons when there's a pretty clear metagame reason: the gun doesn't work that way.

Saying the 4D6 is for the unspecified burst is also inventing a possible but unmentioned in-game reason.

Not at all. It's just recognizing a metagame reason.

Production costs (which we do not know) could account for ANY change in weapons. Even if it meant to less effective ones.

You'd have to believe that KS puts a lot of thought into production costs in order for that claim to make sense in this context.
I don't have much faith in that leap.

2. The C-12 inflicts 2d6 or 4d6 MD on a single shot, and inflicted 4d6 or 8d6 on a burst of 5.
The CP-40 inflicts 2d6 MD on a single shot, and 6d6 MD on a pulse of 3.

Compare per 15 shots: the C-12 would do 24d6, the CP-40 would do 30d6. A clear advantage.

Only when measured against the C-12's least efficient setting.
Otherwise, you're looking at 60d6 MD per 15 single shots from the C-12, vs. half that from the CP-40.
That leaves the C-12 as the clearly superior weapon. More efficient and more powerful on single shots, less efficient but more damaging on bursts.
When efficiency is the way to go, the C-12 wins.
When damage is the way to go, the C-12 wins.

The older weapon was capable of inflicting more damage per single shot, but that single-shot feature is lost entirely, even though it took no more energy to use than the 2d6 MD shot.

But if the CP-40 was cheaper to produce,

Nope.

the writers decided that the CS--with their incredibly vast resources--decided to save some money and downgrade to a weapon with half the per-shot damage of the previous weapon.

Very possible. Or else why would you use the C-12 at all when you use the more efficient laser of the C-14?

In the RMB, the reasons would probably be the extra ammo capacity and the preset burst option.
In CWC onward, it would be because of the extra ammo capacity and the ability to burst at all.

Also with all the complaint of the per-shot damage shrink of 4d6>2d6 in the C-12 v CP-40...

Damage shrink happened when we look at the C-14 "Firebreather" changing to the CP-50 "Dragonfire".

So why it is hard to believe that 14>50 damage shrink could also happen with the 12>40?

If the 'Breather can have a lost better-laser in changing to the pulsey Dragon then I think this could have also happened with the main rifles too.

I don't have CWC or RGMG with me, so I can't compare the two weapons.

the writers never bothered to mention anything about the weapon being cheap in the weapon description, nor did they ever mention anything about the CS' motivations for downgrading to a weaker weapon on the per-shot scale

Not necessary, it could explain why people would stick to an inferior weapon. Or else why wouldn't the CS just use L-20 pulse rifles?

Frankly, everybody should have used the L-20. It's powerful and effective to the point of being fairly broken.
But "it could explain..." doesn't cut it. Anybody can make up any kind of convoluted story they want to explain anything, but that doesn't make it right.
All else being equal, the least convoluted story is the one that makes the most sense.

Or maybe to the Wilk's 447. Same ammo per standard, bonus to strike is actually better (presumably from balance/weight like the Wilk's 320, not laser target, so you could stack that on), cost is lower, 50% better per-shot damage, standard RoF allows burst, lighter.. why wouldn't CS just obtain 447s? Has to be the cost.

Not at all.
When it comes to military arms manufacturing, one heck of a lot more goes into the equation other than cost.
The CS sees Wilk's as their competitor, and nations tend not to buy weapons manufactured by their rivals.

The word "also" is superfluous, affecting neither weapon.

In contrary, also is a word inserted to create a relationship with preceding statements.

But it doesn't, demonstrably so in the case of the CP-40, and inferrably so in the case of the C-12.

the cutting room floor Africa errata only says pulse weapons "can NOT fire bursts on the single shot setting, but must be set for a burst." This does not mean that only the pulse can be fired on the burst setting.

Try again.

And let me know when you get around to the "my previous mention that there's no reason to believe that such weapons are semi-automatic instead of 'Each shot takes one attack' type weapons" part.

This very source you cite to try to support your first point also contradicts your second: "generally, figure that energy rifles can fire bursts unless it specifically says that particular weapon cannot". Since the L-20 in question is a rifle... well, your argument would be better suited for discussion of energy pistols.

The passage we're talking about specifies that the particular weapon cannot, because it's a pulse rifle.

Speaking of energy pistols, the ability of the C-18 to burst in CB1 clearly indicates that this:

("Standard" weapons may only be fired in single shots (unless noted otherwise).

is not applicable for energy pistols either. They are an 'unless noted otherwise' situation, since CB1 does note otherwise.

Agreed.
I think that Palladium flubbed their own definition for "standard" there.

Find something to support the idea that it IS cutting costs for them, if you want to push that notion. Or even support for the idea that the CS was even trying to cut costs when cranking out their new armor and weapons for the CWC.
The C-10 was CR 16,000. The C-12 was CR 20,000. Don't have CWC right now, so I can't say how much the CP-40 was, but I doubt it's less than CR 20,000.

CWCp92 the cost is 40 000 for the CP-40. The problem with using these is that they are Black Market costs, not production costs.

Those are the only costs we have, and they do not indicate that the CP-40 is cheaper to manufacture.
So... let me know if you do find something, otherwise we have no reason to believe that it's cheaper.

they might not like the idea of the standard-issue rifle being such an effective sniper tool.

Why?

Too much power in the common man? Too dangerous if stolen/sold?

Come up with something at least semi-plausible, or drop this angle.

Adding pulse capability to the SDC setting doesn't mean it's not essentially the same weapon.

You're going into the territory of discussing "essence", I can't have a specific debate here. They are not the same weapons, there are similarities, more than I might mark between them and other weapons, but beyond that I don't go so far as to draw conclusions from this.

They are not the same weapon.
They are essentially the same weapon.
If you want to pick nits, no two C-12s are "the same weapon" when it gets right down to it. It's all about the number of differences, and how big those differences are.
Adding a burst option on the SDC setting isn't a big difference.

You claimed that he was adjusting the weapon to have a per-attack upgrade since he was getting rid of the burst rules, which he did with the double-tap rules in the RGMG. Double-tap = 2 shots for 4d6 MD under those rules, which has the same efficiency as a pulse.

I still got the atmosphere of the GMG's double-tab being a house rule option for how KS treats it rather than mandatory or RAW to the setting as a replacement.

IIRC, he gave permission for people to stick with the old rules if they wanted to, but gave the new rules for everybody else.
I don't believe that they were labeled as "optional," although I could be wrong about that.
Either way, since that's where KS was going, it would be odd for him to adjust the weapons in a way that didn't work with what he was doing, and where he wanted to take people.

Or... and this bears looking at... when the CP-40 was introduced in CWC, he simultaneously nerfed the RoF of the C-12 to "number of hand" so it would not be able to double-tap at that point, so it could not longer challenge the CP-40, even though by earlier rules it was more powerful than it ended up being. The same could be said, of course, of doing a 6D6x2 short burst with a C-27 Heavy Plasma vs the C-29 Hellfire.

Except that preset burst weapons weren't supposed to fire standard bursts in the first place.

Which is why claims like "he would have recognized the lack of specificity in the C-12" don't have any traction.

I think it does, since in all other burst weapons we see that he does see the importance of specifying.

Name one other preset burst laser rifle in the RMB where he specifies.

So, no logical reason why the rule would apply to pulse, but not to preset bursts in general.

Pulse being a unique term is why.

Semantics is not a logical reason in this case.
Think mechanically.

Note that the NG-57 lists the lower damage setting first as well.
The L-20 specifies the damage for single shot, and the damage for the pulse, regardless of which order it's in. As does every other weapon with a preset burst/pulse.
The C-12 doesn't fit with the standard patterns.

Admittedly the 4d6/2d6 compared to 2d4/3d6 (NG-57) or 2d6/4d6 (JA-11) or d4/d6/2d4/3d6/4d6 (laser torch) does stand out as an oddity.

Yes.

That said... if 4D6 indicated a primary burst for the C-12, I would expect this to be reflected in the description.

Any way you slice it, the C-12 defies expectations and does not conform to the standards.
Which is why "I would expect to find..." is a rather meaningless phrase when it comes to this weapon.
Discard expectations, and look at what we actually have: a weapon that describes having a preset short burst setting, and that lists two damages (one of which is double the other damage, which would make sense if it was the burst setting)."
The only two reasons NOT to naturally assume, in a vacuum of specificity, that the 4d6 setting is a single shot setting are the word "also" (which we know for a fact has no meaning in the only other same-context description that we can find), and the ROF of Aimed, Burst, Wild, which was changed the very next time the gun was updated, and which conflicts with the idea that energy weapons with preset bursts/pulses can't fire semi-auto on single shot settings.

Yet it is "a single shot or a burst of 5". The burst of 5 should be listed first if it is primary to match with the initial damage.

?

Also worth noting that for weapons like the C-12 or Laser Torch or Laser Wand or JA-11 that the trend of listing MD first SDC second is a higher/lower pattern too. So the C-12 being higher/lower for its MD isn't that incredible.

The Laser Torch lists lower MD first (1d4) and works its way up to the highest (4d6).
The wand only has one MD setting.

Also if we look to WB5p148's WR-17, although the Ion's MD does go lower/higher, the 2 ion MDs are higher than the laser MD which is listed 2nd.

Different energy types.

That's not a counter-example.
That's just an example.
Kevin knows that 10d6 is more than 9d6... he just doesn't care, because the math is easier for 1d6x10 than for 9d6.
That's how Palladium damage math works.

I have provided evidence that pulse damage can be less, equal or more than the sum of the damage of the individual shots in the pulse.

Motive for authors doing so is irrelevant.

So... what IS relevant about it...?

Palladium shies away from rolling more than 6 dice, tending to convert it to multipliers like 1d4x10 and such).

and yet what does a level 9 call lightning do?

It shows the kind of spell that Palladium doesn't make much anymore.

anyway I didn't argue for 8d6 burst damage, per the FAQ it would be 4d6x2, it says to double the result not double the dice. I shorthand that to 8d6 since it makes it easier to compare the amounts.

Just like the damage for the L-20 is 6d6, not 2d6x3. And the C-40R is 1d4x10, not 10d4.
Because Palladium also shies away from that kind of damage listing as a rule.

Again, "see Modern Weapon Proficiency Section" doesn't necessarily mean the bursts and sprays tables.
Since the Modern Weapon Proficiency section doesn't tell us what ROF Standard means, that reference doesn't provide anything useful.

Again, from the official errata:
"Pulse rifles (like the Wilks 457) can NOT fire bursts on the single shot setting, but must be set for a burst."

"see Modern" indicates to use the rules there, CB1 and GMG further clarified to use those rules

Which rules there?
The machinegun burst rules?
The rules for single shots?
The rules for Wild Shots
The rules for burst?
The rules for sprays?
Or all of the above?

OR does it simply mean "use whichever rules in this section are applicable," without ever actually specifying which of the rules are applicable?

The Africa errata doesn't restrict anything. Pulse rifles can only fire bursts (which includes pulses and standard bursts, if RoF indicates) on the non-single setting.

Sounds like you're trying to claim that they can fire bursts of pulses.
Or that you can fire non-pulses on the pulse setting.
Either way... I'm not buying it, and you shouldn't either.

The main distinction with pulse rifles I see is this: if it says "aimed/burst/wild" you could assume the 'burst' to refer to the pulse setting. But if it says 'standard' then it means it can do something besides the pulse setting, and be capable of normal bursting as well, per energy rifle policy.

Except that pulse rifles cannot fire normal bursts on their single-shot setting, and it would be nonsensical for them to fire non-pulses on their pulse setting.

A burst is fired when somebody fires a pulse weapon... OR a rapid succession of blasts from a semi-automatic/automatic weapon.
Not when somebody fires a rapid succession of blasts from a pulse-rifle on single-shot setting.

A critical hit happens when you roll a natural 20, or when you hit someone from behind (per some combat skills).

That doesn't mean you can't get a natural 20 when hitting from behind.

True, and that would be a double-crit for x3 damage, IIRC.
Not a great comparison, because you're discussing stacking effects vs overlapping effects.

[Tor]

Needlessly multiplying entities there.

I don't follow your meaning here. Your premise is that 'Kev thinks the description is clear'. This assumes he rereads possibly incomplete entries for clarity before publishing them. May not happen in all cases. There are many cases with weapons (like a massive amount of undefined ammo costs for non-E-clip weapons) where we see unpolishedness. RMB lacked rail gun shot fees altogether.

You believe that they copy and pasted the "also" part of the sentence, but not the part about the 5 shot burst? That's some pretty precise and sloppy cut-and-pasting.

Yes. But it's not sloppy: the 5-shot burst was copied and pasted and then changed to a 3-shot burst.

just recognizing a metagame reason.

"recognize" assumes your stance is correct and you are recognizing truth instead of inventing it, I may equally be recognizing that 4D6 was intended for a single shot.

You'd have to believe that KS puts a lot of thought into production costs in order for that claim to make sense in this context.
I don't have much faith in that leap.

No, you don't have to think he has to put a LOT in. To recognize "black market costs can be higher than production costs" is not a big leap in logic.

We know that these are not interchangeable concepts, he has written things like 'Cost to the CS' or 'Warlord Production Cost' in CWC/WoR.

Only when measured against the C-12's least efficient setting.
Otherwise, you're looking at 60d6 MD per 15 single shots from the C-12

If be 'least efficient' you mean 'most damage per melee attack' then sure. It would also be 'most deadly'.

That leaves the C-12 as the clearly superior weapon. More efficient and more powerful on single shots

That would be my preference in a weapon, but in terms of "bursting every attack for max damage" the CP-40 will pull ahead because the C-12 burns through e-clips too fast on burst.

You're looking at absolute efficiency (single shot) or max damage in short period (8d6 trumping 6d6) but not at the middle ground where they meet up where the CP-40 shines.

Nope.

Source on CP-40 being more expensive to produce than the C-12?

In the RMB, the reasons would probably be the extra ammo capacity and the preset burst option.

So people would want to use 5 shots to inflict 4D6 instead of using 1 shot to inflict 3D6? If you're doing that, does the extra ammo go to any benefit?

The C-14 if you took the 'standard' to mean short/long burst, could do 3D6x2 (~6D6) for 4 shots... how is the C-12 doing 4D6 (~2D6x2) for 5 shots an advantage?

Main benefit I could see is being able to fire lots and lots of SDC shots. Or to be able to single-shot a lot of 1-hit-dead opponents using the cannister/long clip.

I don't have CWC or RGMG with me, so I can't compare the two weapons.

The Firebreather does 3D6 per laser shot and the Dragonfire does 2D6 per laser shot. Proof that 'better equivalents' can shrink their per-shot damage in favor of relying on more efficient bursting.

"it could explain..." doesn't cut it. Anybody can make up any kind of convoluted story they want to explain anything, but that doesn't make it right.

An explanation simply isn't even owed to you here KC. You were making assessments based on the effectiveness of the weapons compared to the black market costs of the weapons. I'm just pointing out that black market costs reflect things besides how good the weapon is.

But it doesn't, demonstrably so in the case of the CP-40, and inferrably so in the case of the C-12

You infer the C-12 demonstrates a neuter also, I infer the CP-40 demonstrates reckless copy-paste. Could go back and forth without resolution, can't see any way to settle it.

let me know when you get around to the "my previous mention that there's no reason to believe that such weapons are semi-automatic instead of 'Each shot takes one attack' type weapons" part.

Is this something you said?

I don't assume it's 1 shot per attack unless it says so.

Otherwise, I default 'standard' to CB1 policies where we assume by default that energy rifles are automatic weapons. Even ones with pulse settings.

The passage we're talking about specifies that the particular weapon cannot, because it's a pulse rifle.

Wrong, the passage only says that pulse rifles don't burst on the single-shot setting. This means they burst on the pulse setting. Brief pull = pulse-birst, long pull = standard bursts.

Those are the only costs we have, and they do not indicate that the CP-40 is cheaper to manufacture.
So... let me know if you do find something, otherwise we have no reason to believe that it's cheaper

If it is an inferior weapon to the C-12, a cheaper production cost is one possible explanation for why it may become the new standard.

Another would be "we don't like giving high single-shot sniper guns to our grunts" or "we don't like giving wasteful bursting guns to our grunts".

There are multiple explanations. All are merely a counter to a sort of 'it costs more so it must be better' line of thinking that might crop up. I was pre-empting that.

You asked if I saw logic for the CS switching from a higher-damage shot to a lower-damage shot and I said that cost can be one of those reasons, and exactly this happened in the Firebreather>Dragonfire.

Come up with something at least semi-plausible, or drop this angle.

Standard issue weapons are possessed by every grunt. Bottom-line, Burbs-recruited trash.

It is entirely plausible that the CS would not want to give powerful weapons to these guys if they are mass-recruiting them and accelerating them through the system.

These guys are going to war, dying, a lot of these weapons are going to be lost. It may be less scary to have mages wielding 2D6/snipe weapons compared to 4D6/snipe weapons.

They are essentially the same weapon"

I suggest we just drop arguing this as trying to determine 'essence' is too subjective.

preset burst weapons weren't supposed to fire standard bursts in the first place.

Nothing in the book supports that exclusivity.

The NG-101 Rail Gun (page 226) since it had 'standard' rate of fire, could burst using the 'machine gun' rules in addition to its preset "6d6 for 30 shots" setting. However, since it used a 300-round belt, to do so would be very wasteful:
*30 shots = 2D4
*90 shots = 1D4x5
*300 shots = 1D4x20

In the case of high-ammo guns with preset bursts, you just simply avoided the burst rules (unless spraying) since the presets were superior.

This is less of a case in lower-ammunition guns with preset bursts.

Name one other preset burst laser rifle in the RMB where he specifies.

Why? If he did it for the rail guns and the pulse guns, he should do it for this too.

I find it easier to think the 5-round is a leftover of a past conception where the gun got 25 shots per clip. Then it was just describing a short burst. Then he nerfed it to 20 and forgot to change 5 to 4 along with it.

The Laser Torch lists lower MD first (1d4) and works its way up to the highest (4d6).

But it still lists MD before SDC, which is a highThenLow pattern.

Different energy types

Still, if low damage must always be listed first, then the laser should be listed first.

It just shows that order doesn't necessarily mean anything. It may mean the primary form of shot, in which case the C-12 may be more often used by the CS at 4D6 (because they're destructive folk) and the NG-57 might default on the lower setting for safety as a weapon you're more likely to catch on your pants.

So... what IS relevant about it...?

It's relevant because you said "It's not necessary to list the damage of a pulse" and then claimed "Pulses are always the sum of shots." to support it.

By showing that pulsese are not always the sum of shots, this demonstrates the necessity of listing the damage of a pulse, since it cannot necessarily be known by standard multipliers.

Which rules there?
The machinegun burst rules?
The rules for single shots?
The rules for Wild Shots
The rules for burst?
The rules for sprays?
Or all of the above?

Whatever is appropriate depending on the weapon. In the case of 'machinegun' style rail guns, you could use the machinegun burst/spray rules.

Don't all weapon use the same rules for wild shots?

In the case of non-machine guns this admittedly did not seem clarified until CB1 where we learn it is "standard" for energy weapons to be able to use the short/long/full burst rules. This clarified matters for the C-18 pistol and C-14 firebreather.

The 'aimed,burstwild' under the C-10 I figured we would use the basic rules. I thought the same of the C-12 since the 5-shot one was an undefined red herring.

Sounds like you're trying to claim that they can fire bursts of pulses.

No, firing bursts of single shots on the pulse setting.

Or that you can fire non-pulses on the pulse setting.

Yes, exactly.

The way normal (non-pulse guns) operate is you get a single shot if you pull the trigger once and depress it.

Burst occur if (semi-auto) you pull it rapidly, or (auto) if you keep the trigger held down.

With pulse weapons on pulse setting, you pull the trigger once and depress it, you get a pulse. So what happens if you keep the trigger depressed? Burst! Well, if the weapon says burst/standard, that is.

it would be nonsensical for them to fire non-pulses on their pulse setting.

Why? If non-pulse automatic weapons can distinguish between a brief-depress (single shot) or long-depress (burst) then why can't pulse weapons do the same on their pulse setting?

[Killer Cyborg]

Needlessly multiplying entities there.

I don't follow your meaning here. Your premise is that 'Kev thinks the description is clear'. This assumes he rereads possibly incomplete entries for clarity before publishing them.

I don't see how it assumes that.

You believe that they copy and pasted the "also" part of the sentence, but not the part about the 5 shot burst? That's some pretty precise and sloppy cut-and-pasting.

Yes. But it's not sloppy: the 5-shot burst was copied and pasted and then changed to a 3-shot burst.

You think that he cut-and-pasted a sentence that he'd have to change twice, then only changed part of the sentence, but not the other part that he'd need to change.
That seems pretty sloppy to me.

just recognizing a metagame reason.

"recognize" assumes your stance is correct and you are recognizing truth instead of inventing it,

Correct.

I may equally be recognizing that 4D6 was intended for a single shot.

Only if one KS was lying about how the gun was intended to work when I talked to him.
If we assume that KS is a liar, then many all of it is lies. Maybe the gun only does 1d6 SDC, and he's been lying about it the whole time.

You'd have to believe that KS puts a lot of thought into production costs in order for that claim to make sense in this context.
I don't have much faith in that leap.

No, you don't have to think he has to put a LOT in. To recognize "black market costs can be higher than production costs" is not a big leap in logic.

Sure, but that's not the leap you're claiming that he's made.
You're claiming that KS thought, "Hm. I think that the CS needs a new rifle. I'll give it a weapon that does less max damage, and that's less efficient overall because it only does 1/2 the per-shot damage of the weapon that it's replacing, but that makes sense because the production cost of this new rifle will be lower than the production cost of the old rifle. I won't reflect that in the stats, because I only publish the Black Market cost, but you know... whatever."
And that's one heck of a lot more thought than "black market costs can be higher than production costs."
That's specifically thinking about the (never printed) production costs of the C-12, the (never-printed) production costs of the CP-40, and it's making a decision based on those (again, never printed) costs.

Only when measured against the C-12's least efficient setting.
Otherwise, you're looking at 60d6 MD per 15 single shots from the C-12

If be 'least efficient' you mean 'most damage per melee attack' then sure. It would also be 'most deadly'.

By "least efficient," I mean "least efficient."
You're the one who was trying to compare efficiency, remember?
8d6 for 5 shots is less efficient than 4d6 for one shot.

That leaves the C-12 as the clearly superior weapon. More efficient and more powerful on single shots

That would be my preference in a weapon, but in terms of "bursting every attack for max damage" the CP-40 will pull ahead because the C-12 burns through e-clips too fast on burst.

You're looking at absolute efficiency (single shot) or max damage in short period (8d6 trumping 6d6) but not at the middle ground where they meet up where the CP-40 shines.

I'm looking at all factors, and pointing out that the C-12 is better in 2 out of 3 of them, and that this makes it the superior weapon overall.

Nope.

Source on CP-40 being more expensive to produce than the C-12?

I'm not saying that it isn't.
I'm saying that I'm not buying for a moment that KS designed the weapon on un-mentioned production costs of the weapon instead of the factors that are actually printed.

In the RMB, the reasons would probably be the extra ammo capacity and the preset burst option.

So people would want to use 5 shots to inflict 4D6 instead of using 1 shot to inflict 3D6? If you're doing that, does the extra ammo go to any benefit?[/quote\

An extra d6 per attack is a benefit.

The C-14 if you took the 'standard' to mean short/long burst, could do 3D6x2 (~6D6) for 4 shots... how is the C-12 doing 4D6 (~2D6x2) for 5 shots an advantage?

Main benefit I could see is being able to fire lots and lots of SDC shots. Or to be able to single-shot a lot of 1-hit-dead opponents using the cannister/long clip.

Again, you're looking at things from a meta-gaming perspective that KS wouldn't.
Choosing a short clip specifically in order to get more efficient burst damage is metagaming.
Without meta-gaming, you look at the long clip, which would be a 6d6 burst for 6 shots.

Although, yeah, the ability to fire LOTS of SDC shots is also an advantage, and so is the ability to one-shot weaker MD foes.

I don't have CWC or RGMG with me, so I can't compare the two weapons.

The Firebreather does 3D6 per laser shot and the Dragonfire does 2D6 per laser shot.

That's not my concern.
Just having the names and per-shot damages doesn't tell me much.

"it could explain..." doesn't cut it. Anybody can make up any kind of convoluted story they want to explain anything, but that doesn't make it right.

An explanation simply isn't even owed to you here KC. You were making assessments based on the effectiveness of the weapons compared to the black market costs of the weapons. I'm just pointing out that black market costs reflect things besides how good the weapon is.

An explanation is owed if you want to convince me.
If you don't, then why bother continue the conversation?

The Black Market costs are all that KS saw fit to print, so the simplest explanation is that he intended those costs to reflect the ability of the weapon, not un-described production costs and such.

But it doesn't, demonstrably so in the case of the CP-40, and inferrably so in the case of the C-12

You infer the C-12 demonstrates a neuter also, I infer the CP-40 demonstrates reckless copy-paste. Could go back and forth without resolution, can't see any way to settle it.

You've lost me.

let me know when you get around to the "my previous mention that there's no reason to believe that such weapons are semi-automatic instead of 'Each shot takes one attack' type weapons" part.

Is this something you said?

I don't assume it's 1 shot per attack unless it says so.

Nice random assumption.

Otherwise, I default 'standard' to CB1 policies where we assume by default that energy rifles are automatic weapons. Even ones with pulse settings.

Pulse weapons have two settings:
1. Single Shot
2. Pulse.
Neither of those settings are automatic.
One setting only fires single shots.
The other setting only fires pulses.

The passage we're talking about specifies that the particular weapon cannot, because it's a pulse rifle.

Wrong, the passage only says that pulse rifles don't burst on the single-shot setting. This means they burst on the pulse setting. Brief pull = pulse-birst, long pull = standard bursts.

Invented nonsense.

Those are the only costs we have, and they do not indicate that the CP-40 is cheaper to manufacture.
So... let me know if you do find something, otherwise we have no reason to believe that it's cheaper

If it is an inferior weapon to the C-12, a cheaper production cost is one possible explanation for why it may become the new standard.

In order for that to be an explanation, we'd have to believe that KS put a lot of thought into the production costs of the weapons, then lied about the C-12's function.
Each of which is implausible, and the combination is absurd.

Come up with something at least semi-plausible, or drop this angle.

Standard issue weapons are possessed by every grunt. Bottom-line, Burbs-recruited trash.

The thing about conversations like this is that if you don't reprint what you're talking about, I might not remember, and I won't bother to scroll back and forth for every quote-and-response portion of a post.
This is one of those times.
Since you didn't quote what angle I was talking about, and you didn't rephrase it, I really don't know what this part was about.

It is entirely plausible that the CS would not want to give powerful weapons to these guys if they are mass-recruiting them and accelerating them through the system.

Not really, no.

They are essentially the same weapon"

I suggest we just drop arguing this as trying to determine 'essence' is too subjective.

Not really.
You have a weapon that is exactly the same as another weapon except for two factors such as a pulse instead of a burst, and a lack of a SDC burst, they're essentially the same weapon.
Don't believe me?
Start a new thread, and take a poll.

preset burst weapons weren't supposed to fire standard bursts in the first place.

Nothing in the book supports that exclusivity.

Sure it does.

The NG-101 Rail Gun (page 226) since it had 'standard' rate of fire, could burst using the 'machine gun' rules in addition to its preset "6d6 for 30 shots" setting.

Again, no.
Nothing about the "Standard" ROF states that it could use Machine Gun Rules.
That's just random assumptions on your part that are never actually stated in text.

Name one other preset burst laser rifle in the RMB where he specifies.

Why? If he did it for the rail guns and the pulse guns, he should do it for this too.

Because you claimed that he would have recognized the lack of specificity, but all you have to offer in support is other kinds of weapons that are described differently.

I find it easier to think the 5-round is a leftover of a past conception where the gun got 25 shots per clip. Then it was just describing a short burst. Then he nerfed it to 20 and forgot to change 5 to 4 along with it.

I don't find it easier to believe that KS left an entire false sentence in the description of the weapon than to believe that he wrote the wrong ROF and neglected to list the single-shot setting.

The Laser Torch lists lower MD first (1d4) and works its way up to the highest (4d6).

But it still lists MD before SDC, which is a highThenLow pattern.

No. That's an "SDC before MD" pattern.
We're looking at the context of the Mega-Damage alone.

Different energy types

Still, if low damage must always be listed first, then the laser should be listed first.

What makes you think that low damage has to be listed first...?

So... what IS relevant about it...?

It's relevant because you said "It's not necessary to list the damage of a pulse" and then claimed "Pulses are always the sum of shots." to support it.

By showing that pulsese are not always the sum of shots, this demonstrates the necessity of listing the damage of a pulse, since it cannot necessarily be known by standard multipliers.

Sounds like you're saying that bursts always conform to the standard burst rules.

Which rules there?
The machinegun burst rules?
The rules for single shots?
The rules for Wild Shots
The rules for burst?
The rules for sprays?
Or all of the above?

Whatever is appropriate depending on the weapon.

Exactly!
And we don't know "whatever is appropriate" for a weapon unless that weapon tells us.
It might be the rules for Aimed Shots. It might be the rules for Semi-Automatic. It might be the rules for Machine Guns.
But we don't know.

In the case of non-machine guns this admittedly did not seem clarified until CB1 where we learn it is "standard" for energy weapons to be able to use the short/long/full burst rules. This clarified matters for the C-18 pistol and C-14 firebreather.
The 'aimed,burstwild' under the C-10 I figured we would use the basic rules. I thought the same of the C-12 since the 5-shot one was an undefined red herring.

Or it meant you could fire an Aimed Shot, or a Burst of 5 (as per the description), or fire Wild aimed shots or burst.
OR the original ROF was a mistake.

Sounds like you're trying to claim that they can fire bursts of pulses.

No, firing bursts of single shots on the pulse setting.

That's not a pulse.

it would be nonsensical for them to fire non-pulses on their pulse setting.

Why?

Because a Pulse Setting is a setting with a preset pulse.
You can't take a M-16 in 3-round mode and fire bursts of single shots. That's not how guns work.

If non-pulse automatic weapons can distinguish between a brief-depress (single shot) or long-depress (burst) then why can't pulse weapons do the same on their pulse setting?

Serious question: have you ever fired a gun in real life?

[Tor]

Only if one KS was lying about how the gun was intended to work when I talked to him.

False dichotomy, he could also misremember. Or forgot and made a guess at what he thought he might have intended in good faith tryingto grasp it.

Plus the idea of Kev lying doesn't bother me, since I think he did that about PE in hours/minutes.

Or you could be lying or misremembering your conversation with him

You're claiming that KS thought, "Hm. I think that the CS needs a new rifle. I'll give it a weapon that does less max damage, and that's less efficient overall because it only does 1/2 the per-shot damage of the weapon that it's replacing, but that makes sense because the production cost of this new rifle will be lower than the production cost of the old rifle. I won't reflect that in the stats, because I only publish the Black Market cost, but you know... whatever."

I'm not making any claims about Kev's thinking this at all.

I think a simpler explanation is that he forgot about the 5-shot burst, or thought changing the RoF to 'number of hand' would remove the burst controversy (and forgot the text still advertised it) and he just thought 6D6 trumped 4D6.

Just because I can make sense of things in-universe with market/BM difference doesn't mean I ascribe that to be a factor considered by the author.

By "least efficient," I mean "least efficient."
You're the one who was trying to compare efficiency, remember?
8d6 for 5 shots is less efficient than 4d6 for one shot.

Shot-efficiency is not the only kind, there is also time-efficiency. There is also an area in the middle where you can simultaneously compare both factors. It is possible for the C-12 to beat the CP-40 on sniping ammunition-efficiency, and to beat it on burst-fire time-efficiency, while the CP-40 still coming on top in the area of shot-efficiency-while-time-efficient-bursting.

pointing out that the C-12 is better in 2 out of 3 of them, and that this makes it the superior weapon overall.

If you assign equal weight to all 3, sure. However the area CP-40 excels in, the middle ground, could be weighted 60 and the others 20 each.

I'm not buying for a moment that KS designed the weapon on un-mentioned production costs of the weapon instead of the factors that are actually printed.

I don't believe I ascribed the production cost as being a guessed author intention, just a valid universe interpretation.

What makes you think that low damage has to be listed first...?

Nothing, I thought you were suggesting it by pointing out how 4D6 preceded 2D6 meaning something.

Sounds like you're saying that bursts always conform to the standard burst rules.

I am, until we are given different ones to use for that weapon.

The FAQ could qualify as changing that, since it says to use x2 for the 5-shot burst. In which case, the C-12 has a sub-par short burst, and may be viewed as lacking as long or full burst which only exists under standard rules, which the FAQ deviates it from.

we don't know "whatever is appropriate" for a weapon unless that weapon tells us.

Or if the weapon falls into a category which is covered there. You could make the arguemnt that most energy weapons were undefined in RMB until RCB came along.

RCB said to assume the energy weapons can burst, so it's at that point I'd say we were told.

That's not a pulse.

What makes you think pulse settings can only fire pulses? Non-pulse weapons are able to fire things besides single shots on their single-shot (solo) setting.

You can't take a M-16 in 3-round mode and fire bursts of single shots. That's not how guns work.

How an M-16 works has no bearing on how new-fangled laser guns work. What may not work with analog settings and physical ammo may be easy with digital settings and energy ammo.

Serious question: have you ever fired a gun in real life?

Have you ever fired a laser gun?

[Killer Cyborg]

Only if one KS was lying about how the gun was intended to work when I talked to him.

False dichotomy, he could also misremember.

Implausible and unlikely.

Or forgot and made a guess at what he thought he might have intended in good faith tryingto grasp it.

Nets out the same as lying.

Plus the idea of Kev lying doesn't bother me, since I think he did that about PE in hours/minutes.

Again, it's illogical to assume as a default that KS lies about the rules, because if that's the default, then the entire system would be assumed to be lies.

Or you could be lying or misremembering your conversation with him

But I know that I'm not lying, and I posted about the conversation after having it:
viewtopic.php?p=861910#p861910

You're claiming that KS thought, "Hm. I think that the CS needs a new rifle. I'll give it a weapon that does less max damage, and that's less efficient overall because it only does 1/2 the per-shot damage of the weapon that it's replacing, but that makes sense because the production cost of this new rifle will be lower than the production cost of the old rifle. I won't reflect that in the stats, because I only publish the Black Market cost, but you know... whatever."

I'm not making any claims about Kev's thinking this at all.

Yeah, you are. You're claiming that he wrote up the CP-40 as a replacement and made it less effective based on cheaper production costs.

I think a simpler explanation is that he forgot about the 5-shot burst, or thought changing the RoF to 'number of hand' would remove the burst controversy (and forgot the text still advertised it) and he just thought 6D6 trumped 4D6.

Just because I can make sense of things in-universe with market/BM difference doesn't mean I ascribe that to be a factor considered by the author.

You've been holding it up as an explanation for why the CP-40 might be written with a lower damage than you claim that the C-12 was intended to have.
That's ascribing it to the author.
If you want to stick to the "it's more likely that Kevin forgot how the weapon that he designed was supposed to work than it is likely that he had a couple of typos that Tor mistakenly takes a gospel" angle, then stick with that instead of bringing in theories of in-game stuff.

By "least efficient," I mean "least efficient."
You're the one who was trying to compare efficiency, remember?
8d6 for 5 shots is less efficient than 4d6 for one shot.

Shot-efficiency is not the only kind, there is also time-efficiency. There is also an area in the middle where you can simultaneously compare both factors. It is possible for the C-12 to beat the CP-40 on sniping ammunition-efficiency, and to beat it on burst-fire time-efficiency, while the CP-40 still coming on top in the area of shot-efficiency-while-time-efficient-bursting.

For time efficiency, you claim that the C-12 could originally fire a full-clip burst for 4d6x10 MD.
So the C-12 wins out yet again.
Face it; any way you slice it, by your own arguments there is only one narrow area where the CP-40 might be better than the C-12 when using your view of the C-12's stats, and that one narrow area wouldn't justify the creation of the CP-40.

pointing out that the C-12 is better in 2 out of 3 of them, and that this makes it the superior weapon overall.

If you assign equal weight to all 3, sure. However the area CP-40 excels in, the middle ground, could be weighted 60 and the others 20 each.

By all means, make an argument why that kind of weighting would be likely and logical.

Sounds like you're saying that bursts always conform to the standard burst rules.

I am, until we are given different ones to use for that weapon.

The FAQ could qualify as changing that, since it says to use x2 for the 5-shot burst. In which case, the C-12 has a sub-par short burst, and may be viewed as lacking as long or full burst which only exists under standard rules, which the FAQ deviates it from.

The FAQ is meaningless, and the C-12's short burst is only sub-par if you metagame for maximum clip efficiency.

we don't know "whatever is appropriate" for a weapon unless that weapon tells us.

Or if the weapon falls into a category which is covered there. You could make the arguemnt that most energy weapons were undefined in RMB until RCB came along.

RCB said to assume the energy weapons can burst, so it's at that point I'd say we were told.

Except that the Conversion Book never says that weapons with preset bursts are automatic.
Yes, the book states: "Only weapons that state a specific limited number of shots per melee are not automatic," but we know that there are exceptions to that rule because of the previous sentence, "Unless otherwise noted, most energy weapons are considered to be automatic weapons," and because KS has stated that Heavy Energy Weapons were never intended to burst/spray as Standard.

That's not a pulse.

What makes you think pulse settings can only fire pulses?

Because it's a Pulse setting.

The way that preset bursts work in guns is that you can select between single shot or a preset burst. You cannot fire anything other than preset bursts on the preset burst setting.
A pulse setting is a preset burst setting.

You can't take a M-16 in 3-round mode and fire bursts of single shots. That's not how guns work.

How an M-16 works has no bearing on how new-fangled laser guns work. What may not work with analog settings and physical ammo may be easy with digital settings and energy ammo.

Try again.

Serious question: have you ever fired a gun in real life?

Have you ever fired a laser gun?

Nice dodge.
Try again.

[Colt47]

I can understand why people would be confused on the damage. The idea the author was going for is that pulse tech is newer technology that has only hit the market recently, and allows infantry to more effectively deal with vehicles and big enemies. Burst lasers were the older means of doing the same thing, but are less efficient and can't hit the exact same point.

Really, there shouldn't even be a penalty for doing pulse aim shots, but there needed to be at least some kind of drawback or it would make it such that there'd be no point in using the single shot setting outside of efficiency.

[Tor]

On other advantage I just realized, relating to why we should consider the efficiency of 8d6/5v6d6/3 is that single shots can be parried while bursts/pulses cannot be parried. So aside from wanting to use higher damage/time stuff, these things will also prevent energy-parriers from doing so.

Implausible and unlikely.

Forgetting is plausible, and likely when you do so much. I think KS spends most of his time working on the setting and flavor text, stats are secondary. Even though they serve a big role as filler to pad out books, and as munch-food to sell them, I don't think designing them takes very much time.

it's illogical to assume as a default that KS lies about the rules

I never said it's a default, I think misremembering or guessing (which I don't think is lying) is more likely.

I posted about the conversation after having it

Did you see him eating anything salty? Could've been a Changeling.

You're claiming that he wrote up the CP-40 as a replacement and made it less effective based on cheaper production costs.

Positing that as a possible in-universe explanation isn't saying that it is necessarily the only explanation. I also presented other theories, like wanting the main gun to be less effective in case it is taken, or wanting better bursting efficiency.

If you want to stick to the "it's more likely that Kevin forgot how the weapon that he designed was supposed to work

The fact that KS has never clarified the 4D6 to be a burst in the books in all the times he has reprinted the weapon is evidence that he forgot how it worked, if it was intended to work that way.

He changed the rate of fire in CWC from burst to 'number of attacks'. He looked at the weapon while using it as a model for the CP-40. In all this time, if he had intended the 4D6 to be a burst, he did not change it. This happened again in RUE when he accidentally inserted CP-40 stats for it, and again in the RUE errata (free online) when he put it back to normal, without bothering to clarify 4D6 being for a burst, if that was the case.

So yeah: this is proof that he forgot about the C-12, on multiple occasions. One way or another.

I'm just proposing that there are different ways to forget about something.

For time efficiency, you claim that the C-12 could originally fire a full-clip burst for 4d6x10 MD.

Yes, in RMB. Nerfed to 4D6x7 in CB, possibly removed altogether in later prints of CWC/RUE.

So the C-12 wins out yet again

In what time period? CWC was post-CB so we can't compare the CP-40 to pre-CB power-level C-12.

All I can think is possibly when the CP-40 got introduced in SB1 as I am not sure whether SB1 or CB1 came out first.

by your own arguments there is only one narrow area where the CP-40 might be better than the C-12 when using your view of the C-12's stats

Nope it could be both burst efficiency and production cost. Also I'm not sure how much durability either weapon has, perhaps it's hardier?

make an argument why that kind of weighting would be likely and logical.

a) people will fire bursts to inflict maximal damage per time

b) efficiency should be considered from that perspective, in this case 8dice/5 shots is 1.6/shot vs 6dice/3shots = 2/shot. The CP-40 will get more damage from its long clips, allowing soldiers to carry fewer, saving money if they have to charge in the field, having fewer targets for theft,and having fewer tarticles for sub-particle acceleration.

c) it's not just how many e-clips you burn through: this also means more frequent reload breaks needed for the C-12. This affects damage over time. Although the C-12 can still inflict more damage over time, it's not as dramatic as 8:6 (being 1/3 better, 1.33), it's actually 528:420 or 132:105 (1.26)

To show you how the CP-40 pulls ahead, I will use long clips, as the CP-40 is even better with short clips (21 shots compared to 20)

1 action to reload a clip means 8d6/5-shot is 48d6/30-shot in 6 actions. For sustained damage, this is 48/7actions including the time to load in a new clip to start a new phase.

For the CP-40, 6d6/3shot is 60d6/30-shot in 10 actions, or 60d6/11actions adding the time to load a new clip.

If you compare these rates, you get (rounding up) 6.86dice/action for the C-12 and (rounding down) 5.45 dice/action for the CP-40. Avoiding fractions, per 77 actions of long-clip fire, the C-12 can dish 528d6 and the CP-40 can dish 420d6.

Keep in mind that in the course of this 77 action sequence, the C-12 has used 10 long clips and the CP-40 has only used 7.

Another thing is that during a reload break, you are missing a chance to fire at a unique target and kill it. There may be some targets where 4D6 is not enough and 8D6 is too much, making 6D6 a prime amount to take them out. Targets with 20 MDC for example.

The FAQ is meaningless

Not meaningless, just easily over-ridden. It's where you go if you want a 5-shot burst to exist at all, and for the C-12 to be able to do more than 4D6 per action.

Otherwise, the 'per number of attack' nerf in later CWC prints (and RUE) shows the CP-40 superior damage/time at 6d6/action compared to 4d6/action.

the C-12's short burst is only sub-par if you metagame for maximum clip efficiency.

I don't see how using fewer e-clips over time while bursting to maximize damage is metagaming.

It's not like e-clip efficiency is only a factor while using the most efficient (single shot) setting of (most) weapons.

the Conversion Book never says that weapons with preset bursts are automatic.

But it does say energy weapons, which includes the C-12.

we know that there are exceptions to that rule because of the previous sentence, "Unless otherwise noted, most energy weapons are considered to be automatic weapons,"

The C-12 did not note otherwise. Having a burst desciptor out of bounds of short/long doesn't mean you're not an automatic weapon.

KS has stated that Heavy Energy Weapons were never intended to burst/spray as Standard.

Intentions, yay. C-12 isn't a HEW, not seeing the link. HEWs being exception doesn't make this rifle one.

The way that preset bursts work in guns is that you can select between single shot or a preset burst. You cannot fire anything other than preset bursts on the preset burst setting.

I think you mean 'the way that preset bursts work in guns that exist IRL'. We have no idea if Rifts weapons have these limits.

A digital weapon should easily be able to do a preset burst/pulse on a press/depress and a standard burst on a press/hold.

Try again ^2

Please provide evidence that what you know about analog M-16s applies to digital laser rifles. These are not the same class of weapon.

[Killer Cyborg]

I can understand why people would be confused on the damage. The idea the author was going for is that pulse tech is newer technology that has only hit the market recently, and allows infantry to more effectively deal with vehicles and big enemies. Burst lasers were the older means of doing the same thing, but are less efficient and can't hit the exact same point.

Bingo.

[Killer Cyborg]

On other advantage I just realized, relating to why we should consider the efficiency of 8d6/5v6d6/3 is that single shots can be parried while bursts/pulses cannot be parried. So aside from wanting to use higher damage/time stuff, these things will also prevent energy-parriers from doing so.

When the RMB came out, none of that was a factor. Even by the time that CWC came out, it was a very rare factor, one so slim as to be an insignificant concern when it comes to designing weapons.
And just like production costs, it's an in-game factor that doesn't explain the metagame decision to replace the C-12.

Implausible and unlikely.

Forgetting is plausible,

No, not at all. That's not the kind of thing that a RPG designer forgets.

it's illogical to assume as a default that KS lies about the rules

I never said it's a default, I think misremembering or guessing (which I don't think is lying) is more likely.

It's just as illogical to assume as a default that the designer of a game is misremembering/guessing.

I posted about the conversation after having it

Did you see him eating anything salty? Could've been a Changeling.

I think it's well past time that you give up your end of the conversation when that's your best argument.

You're claiming that he wrote up the CP-40 as a replacement and made it less effective based on cheaper production costs.

Positing that as a possible in-universe explanation isn't saying that it is necessarily the only explanation. I also presented other theories, like wanting the main gun to be less effective in case it is taken, or wanting better bursting efficiency.

And when I addressed those guesses, you backed into the whole production cost nonsense.

If you want to stick to the "it's more likely that Kevin forgot how the weapon that he designed was supposed to work

The fact that KS has never clarified the 4D6 to be a burst in the books in all the times he has reprinted the weapon is evidence that he forgot how it worked, if it was intended to work that way.

No, not at all.
Again, the simplest explanation is that he doesn't think that it needs to be clarified. That's generally why authors don't clarify things--they don't think that those things need further clarification.
That's the reasonable default assumption, not that the author forgot how his own invention worked, then made stuff up (that happens to fit exactly with the most logical fan theory) when asked about how the invention worked by a customer at a convention.

He changed the rate of fire in CWC from burst to 'number of attacks'.

Which makes sense if the original ROF was incorrect.

He looked at the weapon while using it as a model for the CP-40. In all this time, if he had intended the 4D6 to be a burst, he did not change it.

If he intended it to be a single shot, he did not change it, so that argument isn't getting you anywhere.
Because he never saw any reason to change it, because few people complain about it, because everybody thinks they know how the gun was supposed to work.

This happened again in RUE when he accidentally inserted CP-40 stats for it, and again in the RUE errata (free online) when he put it back to normal, without bothering to clarify 4D6 being for a burst, if that was the case.

So yeah: this is proof that he forgot about the C-12, on multiple occasions. One way or another.

Dude... that's not proof of anything other than Palladium being bad at editing.

I'm just proposing that there are different ways to forget about something.

No. What you're proposing is that you know how the C-12 was originally supposed to work better than the man who created it, and you've got NOTHING to support that claim.
You're making that assumption up out of whole cloth, simply because you don't want to admit that you misunderstood (like the rest of us) how the gun was supposed to work, because it was originally badly written.

[quote[

For time efficiency, you claim that the C-12 could originally fire a full-clip burst for 4d6x10 MD.

Yes, in RMB. Nerfed to 4D6x7 in CB, possibly removed altogether in later prints of CWC/RUE.

So the C-12 wins out yet again

In what time period? CWC was post-CB so we can't compare the CP-40 to pre-CB power-level C-12.[/quote]

In either time period.
4d6x7 > 6d6

All I can think is possibly when the CP-40 got introduced in SB1 as I am not sure whether SB1 or CB1 came out first.

SB1 came out first.
The CP-40 was introduced after either of those books, in CWC.
CB1 rules would be in effect, but 4d6x7 is still more than 6d6.
Heck, a short burst of 4d6x2 is still more damage than 6d6.

Stacking all your ideas together, you're claiming that a rifle that:
-Could inflict 4d6 MD on a single shot
-Could fire a 4-round burst for 8d6 MD (with a short clip)
-Could fire a 10-round burst for 4d6x3
-Could fire a 20-round burst for 4d6x17

Was replaced by a weapon that could:
-Fire a single shot for 2d6 MD
-Fire a short burst of 4 rounds for 4d6 MD
-Fire a pulse of 3 rounds for 6d6 MD
-Fire a 10-round burst for 2d6x3 MD
-Fire a 20-round burst for 2d6x7 MD

And you're claiming that the author to not only took such an action, but that he then forget about the fact that he made the change, as well as how the original weapon was supposed to work.

On the other hand, I'm saying that the author replaced a weapon that could:
-Fire a 2d6 MD single shot
-Fire a 4d6 MD burst of 5 shots

Was replaced by a weapon that could:
-Fire 2d6 MD single shots
-Fire 6d6 MD pulses of 3 shots

And that the C-12's description was originally messed up, and later was fixed (as far as the ROF was concerned), and that KS never felt the need to specify whether the 4d6 setting was single shot or a burst simply because he always thought it was clear enough.

Seriously sit and look at those two claims for a while.
Take a day or two to seriously think about which one makes more sense, setting aside your preconceptions.

by your own arguments there is only one narrow area where the CP-40 might be better than the C-12 when using your view of the C-12's stats

Nope it could be both burst efficiency

In a sustained firefight, a 4-shot burst for 8d6 nets out as 2d6 per shot.
In a sustained firefight, a 3-shot pulse for 6d6 nets out as 2d6 per shot.
That's the same efficiency, except the C-12 has a higher per-attack damage.
Your argument that the CP-40 is more efficient in any way conflicts directly with your claim that the C-12 (or other preset burst weapons) can use the burst/spray rules on p. 34 of the RMB.

and production cost.

Already addressed.
The in-game element of production cost does NOT create any reason why KS would would replace the C-12 with the CP-40.

Also I'm not sure how much durability either weapon has, perhaps it's hardier?

Same issue as production cost. Weapon durability is not a reason why KS would replace the C-12 with the CP-40.
You're making up possible in-game reasons why an author would make a metagame decision, and that doesn't make any sense.
Especially when the author never mentions either factor in the text.

make an argument why that kind of weighting would be likely and logical.

a) people will fire bursts to inflict maximal damage per time

That is not a logical claim.

b) efficiency should be considered from that perspective, in this case 8dice/5 shots is 1.6/shot vs 6dice/3shots = 2/shot. The CP-40 will get more damage from its long clips, allowing soldiers to carry fewer, saving money if they have to charge in the field, having fewer targets for theft,and having fewer tarticles for sub-particle acceleration.

Again, you have claimed that the 5-shot burst setting was likely an error that should not have been included in the weapon description, and you have claimed that even if it was intended, that the C-12 should still be able to fire bursts/sprays as per p. 34 of the RMB.
If either of these claims are correct, then the C-12 would be able to fire 4-shot bursts for 8d6 MD, which would allow them to get the same shot efficiency out of short clips as the CP-40, and you have repeatedly insisted on using short clips as the standard for bursts.
As far as soldiers carrying fewer clips in the field, there has been no change made to the OCC stats in the number of clips that they carry.

Overall, the burst to pulse efficiency does not seem like a logical reason to give up the greater damage of the 8d6 MD burst.
8d6 MD/burst would mean an average of 28 MD per burst, versus the pulse rifle's average damage of 21 MD per pulse.
The higher burst damage means dropping MD foes faster as a rule, which means less armor damage, which means troops can fight longer in combat before needing to swap out armor (which takes longer than swapping clips).
The advantage for a soldier in most situations would be to have the C-12, not the CP-40.

c) it's not just how many e-clips you burn through: this also means more frequent reload breaks needed for the C-12. This affects damage over time. Although the C-12 can still inflict more damage over time, it's not as dramatic as 8:6 (being 1/3 better, 1.33), it's actually 528:420 or 132:105 (1.26)

That only matters in an unusually prolonged firefight, and in that kind of firefight the C-12's single-shot for 4d6 MD would provide much better efficiency than the CP-40's 6d6 pulse, enabling the weapon to inflict 120d6 per long eclip, versus the CP-40's 60d6 per long e-clip.
The C-12 would be able to attack 30 times minimum before needing to spend an attack reloading, 60 if you include the E-Cannister.
Same with the CP-40, but the overall damage would be HALF.

And I see zero reason to believe that the CS routinely gets into firefights that require 77 actions per soldier to resolve.

The FAQ is meaningless

Not meaningless, just easily over-ridden. It's where you go if you want a 5-shot burst to exist at all, and for the C-12 to be able to do more than 4D6 per action.

Otherwise, the 'per number of attack' nerf in later CWC prints (and RUE) shows the CP-40 superior damage/time at 6d6/action compared to 4d6/action.

No, it's actually meaningless as a rule, except in cases where it refers to actual rules in the books.
It's just something that a couple of guys made up, with no more weight than any unsupported claim than you or I make here.

The only place you have to go if you want a 5-shot burst to exist at all is any of the books that describe the C-12, because they all list that setting.

the C-12's short burst is only sub-par if you metagame for maximum clip efficiency.

I don't see how using fewer e-clips over time while bursting to maximize damage is metagaming.

That was referring to your previous discussions of short clips versus long clips.
I agree that it doesn't apply to your new angle of a 77-attack combat.

the Conversion Book never says that weapons with preset bursts are automatic.

But it does say energy weapons, which includes the C-12.

What it says is:
Unless otherwise noted, most energy weapons are considered to be automatic weapons.

"Most" does not mean "all."
Which means that there are some energy weapons that do not note being one-attack-per-shot weapons that ARE one-attack-per-shot weapons.
Also, since we know that pulse weapons as a rule cannot fire standard bursts, it's pretty safe to assume that simply noting that a weapon has a preset burst setting IS a notation that the weapon is not an automatic weapon.

Having a burst desciptor out of bounds of short/long doesn't mean you're not an automatic weapon.

I disagree. A preset burst is specifically NOT fully automatic.

KS has stated that Heavy Energy Weapons were never intended to burst/spray as Standard.

Intentions, yay. C-12 isn't a HEW, not seeing the link. HEWs being exception doesn't make this rifle one.

Agreed. But it does establish that there are cases where Energy Weapons are NOT automatic, even though no specific notation is made to that effect.

The way that preset bursts work in guns is that you can select between single shot or a preset burst. You cannot fire anything other than preset bursts on the preset burst setting.

I think you mean 'the way that preset bursts work in guns that exist IRL'. We have no idea if Rifts weapons have these limits.

Since the game weapons are not noted to be any different, there is no reason to believe that they behave different.
A pulse is a specific number of shots.
A pulse setting is a setting that lets you fire exactly that number of shots.
There is no reason to believe or guess otherwise.

A digital weapon should easily be able to do a preset burst/pulse on a press/depress and a standard burst on a press/hold.

A digital weapon should be able to fire bursts/sprays on single-shot mode, but we know that it cannot.
Trying to hope that it might be able to fire bursts/sprays on a 3-shot pulse setting is just looking for a loophole.

Try again ^2

Please provide evidence that what you know about analog M-16s applies to digital laser rifles. These are not the same class of weapon.

They're both assault rifles, so yeah... they are.

Seriously, I'm not going to further explain why a 3-shot pulse setting specifically and necessarily fires 3 shots only.
It is not an argument that is worth anybody's time.
Preset bursts are preset by definition. End of story.

[Tor]

an in-game factor that doesn't explain the metagame decision to replace the C-12

In-game factors are the only reasons worth exploring here, metagame might be "I want to sell books" or "I made cooler looking guns", I see no point in speculating about that. The new guns just are. You're speculating about why the C-12 must be weak (4d6 in 5 shots instead of 1) based on in-game factors like "why would they switch if it was strong" which leads me to analyze those in-game factors.

Production cost could explain any chance any army ever makes so long as we don't know them, so taking that route of protest doesn't hold weight.

That's not the kind of thing that a RPG designer forgets.

You're assuming you know how important the C-12 was to the scope of Kev's vision at the time.

It's just as illogical to assume as a default that the designer of a game is misremembering/guessing.

Not assuming anything, it's posited as one of seveal possibilities.

when I addressed those guesses, you backed into the whole production cost nonsense.

Production costs are not nonsense, technology becomes cheaper to produce over time, look at computers. CS infrastructure has greatly improved.

the simplest explanation is that he doesn't think that it needs to be clarified.

That is a bad explanation because he saw the need to clarify what was what in other weapons.

that's not proof of anything other than Palladium being bad at editing.

Like forgetting to change a 5-shot short burst to a 4-shot one when you change the payload from 25 to 20? (as a reminder, possible explanation, not 'I am assuming this is the truth')

What you're proposing is that you know how the C-12 was originally supposed to work

Wrong, only analyzing what the RAW patterns are for shot damages representing single ones. A pattern kept in NGR.

I don't know if Kev said to you what you think. What if he misheard your question? What if you misheard his answer? Dishonesty or forgetfulness on either party isn't even necessary if there was communications breakdown at mystery-con. A lucid written statement from him on the matter in present day would help settle things, although at this point 25 years has passed since Rifts was written, so I don't see how reliable memory could be of a gun after this time. Nor even after 15 years.

Do you remember the particulars of every essay you wrote in the past 10 years?

In either time period. 4d6x7 > 6d6

Even if we favor the C-12 by using a short clip (20 shots for C-12, 21 shots for CP-40) the C-12 just used up a whole e-clip to do that 28d6 while the CP-40 can fire 7 of those triple-bursts, which would amass 42d6 in the end.

SB1 came out first. The CP-40 was introduced after either of those books, in CWC.

Ah right, that simplifies things then. Got mixed up with the CV-212 on SB1p57 which was brought up earlier. Did seem like an expensive anti-GB-but-otherwise-identicle to the C-12.

Did notice, although they have the same classification code, that there is a difference in the name. The SB1 version is "Frequency Variable Light" while the CWC version is "Variable Light Frequency". So the FVL is more C-12like while the VLF is more CP-40like. I posit we call them CV-212a (for SB1's FVL) and CV-212b (for CWC's VLF) for ease of distinction.

a short burst of 4d6x2 is still more damage than 6d6

But a less efficient multi-shot setting for ammo. 8x4 dice per short v 6x7 dice per short. 32 vs 42. 8x6 dice per long v 6x10 dice per long. 48 v 60.

Stacking all your ideas together, you're claiming that a rifle that:
-Could inflict 4d6 MD on a single shot
-Could fire a 4-round burst for 8d6 MD (with a short clip)
-Could fire a 10-round burst for 4d6x3
-Could fire a 20-round burst for 4d6x17

The RoF change in CWC removed this aspect of the weapon, the nerf coincided with the CP-40's intro.

The power the C-12 had in RMB/CB is not viable for consideration with the CP-40 in CWC since we should compare that to the nerfed C-12 in CWC.

My thought is that KS nerfed the weapon. I do not speculate on whether he always intended it to be weak, or if he changed his mind upon realizing how strong the CS was. I can't answer that.

In a sustained firefight, a 4-shot burst for 8d6 nets out as 2d6 per shot

That burst stopped existing in CWC, burst was removed from the C-12 at that point.

The in-game element of production cost does NOT create any reason why KS would would replace the C-12 with the CP-40.

The Coalition States are the ones who replaced the weapon. Cost-cutting is a valid reason that can explain a lot of changes.

Weapon durability is not a reason why KS would replace the C-12 with the CP-40. You're making up possible in-game reasons why an author would make a metagame decision

No, I am exploring possible in-universe reasons for why changes could have happened. KS personal reasons are irrelevant, he could add the Kittani because he likes Planet of the Apes, that doesn't mean it's why they serve the Splugorth.

not a logical claim.

Lemme amend: bursting fire for max damage/attack may not always happen, but it will happen frequently in major conflicts where there is an advantage in fast kills, where you do not overwhelm the enemy or control distance and don't have the luxury of slow peppering. Like the Coalition Wars which the new weapons were designed to be used in.

you have claimed that the 5-shot burst setting was likely an error that should not have been included in the weapon description

I view it as equivalent to GBK mini-missiles. I consider it wrong to include a feature you do not detail as that makes it ungameable. But it happens.

you have claimed that even if it was intended, that the C-12 should still be able to fire bursts/sprays as per p. 34 of the RMB.

It could. It said Burst and to see MWP.

It is possible that he intended one or the other and forgot to remove its opposite, or it's possible he intended to include both but did not detail the 5-burst, or it's possible the 5-burst was a short burst on a 25-shot clip. A lot of possibilities, I make no claim of knowing the true thing.

C-12 would be able to fire 4-shot bursts for 8d6 MD, which would allow them to get the same shot efficiency out of short clips as the CP-40

It would have been, past tense.

KS ret-conned this strongly-powered weapon out of existence by amending it's rate of fire in CWC when he introduced the CP-40.

the burst to pulse efficiency does not seem like a logical reason to give up the greater damage of the 8d6 MD burst.

Highest damage/attack isn't the prime consideration of the main weapon, otherwise everyone would be firing plasma mini-missiles, particle beam cannons or Hellfire cannons. A single micro-fusion grenade does as much as a CP-40 pulse, and the Dragonfire can fire a burst of 4 of those, for however much that is.

That only matters in an unusually prolonged firefight, and in that kind of firefight the C-12's single-shot for 4d6 MD would provide much better efficiency than the CP-40's 6d6 pulse

Prolonged firefights can still benefit from having a higher damage output. Having highest damage/time and having highest efficiency happen in mutually exclusive areas of the C-12. It leaves a balanced void where the CP-40's pulse shines.

I see zero reason to believe that the CS routinely gets into firefights that require 77 actions per soldier to resolve.

I only did that to show a decimal-free comparison that was easier for some to understand and did not require rounding.

This also examines fire-fights over time, not a single firefight that has 77 actions.

No, it's actually meaningless as a rule

Then in that case, the 5-shot remains GBKmissiles, unexplained, because it is an 'also' to the damage settings.

That was referring to your previous discussions of short clips versus long clips.

Ah okay I regret the confusion. The advantage of a 1/6 clip (fer long) burst doing x2, yeah.

Unless otherwise noted, most energy weapons are considered to be automatic weapons.

"Most" does not mean "all."

Which means that there are some energy weapons that do not note being one-attack-per-shot weapons that ARE one-attack-per-shot weapons.

Correct, and the sentence after the one you quoted tells us which those are:

"Only weapons that state a specific limited number of shots per melee are not automatic."

This means that (energy, in this paragraph's context) these 'limited shots per melee' energy weapons (like the stun gun) are the ONLY ones not included under "most" here.

The C-12 has no per-melee-round RoF limitation like the stun gun, so it is not one of these.

A preset burst is specifically NOT fully automatic.

It is not intrinsically fully automatic, but it also does not exclude that as an option for the weapon, which can coexist digitally without all your analog complications from M-16s.

it does establish that there are cases where Energy Weapons are NOT automatic, even though no specific notation is made to that effect.

Actually it establishes a rules change that happened later... which had no bearing on CB's text at the time. Much like the C-12's RoF change in CWC was a rule change, and the CV-212 amendment from SB1>CBC was a rules change, or the RoF change in the plasma cannon. The removable of the ionic burst in the JA-12 or the removal of the laser burst in the JA-11 from RMB>RUE is also a change, both were explicitly stated to be sniper rifles with automatic fire capability in CB.

A pulse setting is a setting that lets you fire exactly that number of shots.

CBp7 "Some Rifts high-tech weapons, like the pulse rifle, are designed to automatically release 3 rapid-fire energy pulses, instead of one, every time the trigger is pulled."
CBp8 "An automatic weapon .. continues to fire as long as the trigger is held in the firing position"

The C-12 has no melee-round-limited RoF, so it is an automatic weapon. The pulse mode says nothing about disabling its automatic firing capabilities. Therefore, it must do a pulse on a trigger-pull, and a burst on a trigger-hold.

A digital weapon should be able to fire bursts/sprays on single-shot mode, but we know that it cannot.

Not if the designers code it not to do this for safety reasons.

Trying to hope that it might be able to fire bursts/sprays on a 3-shot pulse setting is just looking for a loophole.

No, it's following the rules of allowing an automatic energy weapon to do a short/long/full, per CBp9.

They're both assault rifles, so yeah... they are.

I guess if you go to a big enough grouping, sure. Crossbows and Bazookas are also 'the same class of weapon' if that class is 'ranged' too, I guess.

Preset bursts are preset

I'm not in disagreement with this. I am just saying that preset bursts are not necessarily the only setting that exists on a weapon.

[Killer Cyborg]

an in-game factor that doesn't explain the metagame decision to replace the C-12

In-game factors are the only reasons worth exploring here, metagame might be "I want to sell books" or "I made cooler looking guns", I see no point in speculating about that. The new guns just are. You're speculating about why the C-12 must be weak (4d6 in 5 shots instead of 1) based on in-game factors like "why would they switch if it was strong" which leads me to analyze those in-game factors.

No.
When I ask "why would they switch," I'm asking "Why would KS/Palladium make such a change?"
You seem to be turning to in-game explanations for meta-game decisions, because you understand that there are no satisfactory meta-game explanations for the change.

That's not the kind of thing that a RPG designer forgets.

You're assuming you know how important the C-12 was to the scope of Kev's vision at the time.

Yes, and it's a safe assumption to make. It was the standard infantry weapon for the main civilization in the setting.
That's something that a designer would remember.

It's just as illogical to assume as a default that the designer of a game is misremembering/guessing.

Not assuming anything, it's posited as one of seveal possibilities.

None of which are worth serious consideration or default assumption.
And yeah, you ARE assuming things. You're assuming that KS was wrong about how the C-12 works.

when I addressed those guesses, you backed into the whole production cost nonsense.

Production costs are not nonsense

What's nonsense is trying to use your own imagined production costs as an explanation for why Kevin made a decision.

the simplest explanation is that he doesn't think that it needs to be clarified.

That is a bad explanation because he saw the need to clarify what was what in other weapons.

So because he clarified other stuff, that necessarily means that he believed that the C-12 also needed clarification, but he chose not to do it?
:help:

that's not proof of anything other than Palladium being bad at editing.

Like forgetting to change a 5-shot short burst to a 4-shot one when you change the payload from 25 to 20? (as a reminder, possible explanation, not 'I am assuming this is the truth')

You're making stuff up that we have absolutely no reason to believe.
It's not necessarily impossible, but it's clearly implausible.

What you're proposing is that you know how the C-12 was originally supposed to work

Wrong, only analyzing what the RAW patterns are for shot damages representing single ones. A pattern kept in NGR.

You're looking for excuses to believe what you already believe, and refusing to entertain alternate possibilities.

I don't know if Kev said to you what you think.

I do.

What if he misheard your question?

Then "Yeah, the 4d6 setting is the burst setting" would be a pretty weird answer.

Dishonesty or forgetfulness on either party isn't even necessary if there was communications breakdown at mystery-con.

Yup.

A lucid written statement from him on the matter in present day would help settle things, although at this point 25 years has passed since Rifts was written, so I don't see how reliable memory could be of a gun after this time. Nor even after 15 years.

Meaning that you better trust your own judgment of how KS intended for the C-12 to work than you'd trust his judgment on how he intended for it to work.

Do you remember the particulars of every essay you wrote in the past 10 years?

Nope. But I do remember the key rules and damages for a RPG that I wrote 20+ years ago.
Because that kind of thing--especially when it's your business--is the kind of thing that a person doesn't simply forget, then make up new answers to when asked.

In either time period. 4d6x7 > 6d6

Even if we favor the C-12 by using a short clip (20 shots for C-12, 21 shots for CP-40) the C-12 just used up a whole e-clip to do that 28d6 while the CP-40 can fire 7 of those triple-bursts, which would amass 42d6 in the end.

The C-12 could fire two full-clip bursts, reload, and fire another full-clip burst in the time it took a guy with the CP-40 to fire those 7 bursts.
84d6 in 7 attacks > 42d6 for the CP-40

It's not as ammo efficient in this case, but it IS more time efficient, which is what what we were talking about here.

SB1 came out first. The CP-40 was introduced after either of those books, in CWC.

Ah right, that simplifies things then. Got mixed up with the CV-212 on SB1p57 which was brought up earlier. Did seem like an expensive anti-GB-but-otherwise-identicle to the C-12.

Did notice, although they have the same classification code, that there is a difference in the name. The SB1 version is "Frequency Variable Light" while the CWC version is "Variable Light Frequency". So the FVL is more C-12like while the VLF is more CP-40like. I posit we call them CV-212a (for SB1's FVL) and CV-212b (for CWC's VLF) for ease of distinction.

Good catch.

a short burst of 4d6x2 is still more damage than 6d6

But a less efficient multi-shot setting for ammo. 8x4 dice per short v 6x7 dice per short. 32 vs 42. 8x6 dice per long v 6x10 dice per long. 48 v 60.

Sure. But how many times is a soldier going to need specifically a weapon that does 6d6 for 3 shots, instead of the more ammo-efficient 4d6 per single shot OR the more time efficient 8d6/5-shot burst?
It just doesn't seem likely, and it's certainly a lot more number-crunching that Kevin seems to put into his weapon creation. He's not very meticulous about this kind of thing, and I simply cannot imagine the man deciding to create a weapon with a 6d6 pulse for the reasons you're positing here.
It's simply not his MO.

Stacking all your ideas together, you're claiming that a rifle that:
-Could inflict 4d6 MD on a single shot
-Could fire a 4-round burst for 8d6 MD (with a short clip)
-Could fire a 10-round burst for 4d6x3
-Could fire a 20-round burst for 4d6x17

The RoF change in CWC removed this aspect of the weapon, the nerf coincided with the CP-40's intro.

Right...
You're claiming that KS nerfed one weapon in order to introduce a new weapon that was inferior to the original weapon, but superior to the nerfed version.
That's not a simpler explanation than KS clarifying an old weapon, and introducing a new weapon that is better than the original.
In fact, there is no simpler explanation that fits the facts.

My thought is that KS nerfed the weapon. I do not speculate on whether he always intended it to be weak, or if he changed his mind upon realizing how strong the CS was. I can't answer that.

You hypothesize action without reason, and hold that up as being more logical than KS making an action with a reason that makes sense.

The in-game element of production cost does NOT create any reason why KS would would replace the C-12 with the CP-40.

The Coalition States are the ones who replaced the weapon. Cost-cutting is a valid reason that can explain a lot of changes.

The CS doesn't exist.
The writers are the ones who make changes in the game, not the characters.
And the writers' costs for the C-12 and the CP-40 are identical--zero.

Weapon durability is not a reason why KS would replace the C-12 with the CP-40. You're making up possible in-game reasons why an author would make a metagame decision

No, I am exploring possible in-universe reasons for why changes could have happened.

In-game explanations don't matter; they didn't prompt KS to create the CP-40.

Lemme amend: bursting fire for max damage/attack may not always happen, but it will happen frequently in major conflicts where there is an advantage in fast kills, where you do not overwhelm the enemy or control distance and don't have the luxury of slow peppering. Like the Coalition Wars which the new weapons were designed to be used in.

Better.
But when it happens in Rifts Earth, it generally happens for a reason, and the ammunition expenditure is justified.
Choosing ammo conservation over firepower would be a mistake, unless there was a very large difference.

you have claimed that the 5-shot burst setting was likely an error that should not have been included in the weapon description

I view it as equivalent to GBK mini-missiles. I consider it wrong to include a feature you do not detail as that makes it ungameable. But it happens.

Circular logic.
You believe that the 4d6 damage setting is not the 5-shot burst because the 5-shot burst isn't detailed, and you believe that the 5-shot burst isn't detailed because you believe that the 4d6 setting is a single-shot.

you have claimed that even if it was intended, that the C-12 should still be able to fire bursts/sprays as per p. 34 of the RMB.

It could. It said Burst and to see MWP.

But not which part of the MWP.

the burst to pulse efficiency does not seem like a logical reason to give up the greater damage of the 8d6 MD burst.

Highest damage/attack isn't the prime consideration of the main weapon, otherwise everyone would be firing plasma mini-missiles, particle beam cannons or Hellfire cannons. A single micro-fusion grenade does as much as a CP-40 pulse, and the Dragonfire can fire a burst of 4 of those, for however much that is.

Apples and oranges.
We're comparing one laser rifle to another laser rifle, NOT comparing a laser rifle to heavy weapons.
Try again.

That only matters in an unusually prolonged firefight, and in that kind of firefight the C-12's single-shot for 4d6 MD would provide much better efficiency than the CP-40's 6d6 pulse

Prolonged firefights can still benefit from having a higher damage output. Having highest damage/time and having highest efficiency happen in mutually exclusive areas of the C-12. It leaves a balanced void where the CP-40's pulse shines.

In the kind of firefight were an extra 2d6 matters, then the odds are great that an extra 4d6 would matter even more.
The advantage that the pulse provides is only in a very narrow window of circumstances, one far too small for me to seriously consider KS considering it when he made the CP-40.

I see zero reason to believe that the CS routinely gets into firefights that require 77 actions per soldier to resolve.

I only did that to show a decimal-free comparison that was easier for some to understand and did not require rounding.

This also examines fire-fights over time, not a single firefight that has 77 actions.

One of the advantages of the CS is that they generally get some down-time between firefights, where they can replenish ammo and such.
I'm still not seeing any reasonable advantage.

No, it's actually meaningless as a rule

Then in that case, the 5-shot remains GBKmissiles, unexplained, because it is an 'also' to the damage settings.

"Also" means the exact same thing in the C-12 as it does in the CP-40: absolutely nothing.
It's a typo or a mis-phrasing.

Unless otherwise noted, most energy weapons are considered to be automatic weapons.

"Most" does not mean "all."

Which means that there are some energy weapons that do not note being one-attack-per-shot weapons that ARE one-attack-per-shot weapons.

Correct, and the sentence after the one you quoted tells us which those are:

"Only weapons that state a specific limited number of shots per melee are not automatic."

No. THAT part is the "otherwise noted' part of the sentence that I quoted, which still leaves the "most."

A preset burst is specifically NOT fully automatic.

It is not intrinsically fully automatic, but it also does not exclude that as an option for the weapon, which can coexist digitally without all your analog complications from M-16s.

A preset burst is specifically preset to a specific number of shots.

it does establish that there are cases where Energy Weapons are NOT automatic, even though no specific notation is made to that effect.

Actually it establishes a rules change that happened later... which had no bearing on CB's text at the time.

It's not a change. It's a clarification.
It doesn't conflict with CB1's rules.

A pulse setting is a setting that lets you fire exactly that number of shots.

CBp7 "Some Rifts high-tech weapons, like the pulse rifle, are designed to automatically release 3 rapid-fire energy pulses, instead of one, every time the trigger is pulled."
CBp8 "An automatic weapon .. continues to fire as long as the trigger is held in the firing position"

The C-12 has no melee-round-limited RoF, so it is an automatic weapon.

Incorrect; it could be (and logically is) an exception to the "most" rule.

The pulse mode says nothing about disabling its automatic firing capabilities.

Except that firing 3 shots specifically is not compatible with firing automatically. That's the whole point of a preset burst--it stops firing after the preset number of shots.

Therefore, it must do a pulse on a trigger-pull, and a burst on a trigger-hold.

A digital weapon should be able to fire bursts/sprays on single-shot mode, but we know that it cannot.

Not if the designers code it not to do this for safety reasons.

The only designers in consideration here are the people at Palladium, and they specified that a pulse weapon cannot fire bursts on its single-shot mode.

Trying to hope that it might be able to fire bursts/sprays on a 3-shot pulse setting is just looking for a loophole.

No, it's following the rules of allowing an automatic energy weapon to do a short/long/full, per CBp9.

Nope.

They're both assault rifles, so yeah... they are.

I guess if you go to a big enough grouping, sure. Crossbows and Bazookas are also 'the same class of weapon' if that class is 'ranged' too, I guess.

Comparing one rifle that can fire single shots or preset bursts to another rifle that can fire single shots or preset bursts is nothing like comparing crossbows to bazookas.

Preset bursts are preset

I'm not in disagreement with this. I am just saying that preset bursts are not necessarily the only setting that exists on a weapon.

With pulse rifles, they can fire single shots or pulses of x shots.
That's it.
No other settings.