Sorry for not being in the discussion chaps, been away...
Sorry Aotrs Commander, I looked through SM2 and couldn't find the rules for suppressive fire. Do you have a specific reference?
It's in Blaster Law (SM:P), pg19.
To summarise, it affects an area
1. A static manoeuvre roll using Suppressive fire is made, and the result of which (a number from -40 to +45 (with success being +20 for firearms and +30 for energy weapons)) is used as an OB. The targets in the affected area have two choices - to ignore the effect and take an attack roll, or to take cover. Taking cover gives double cover DB, but loses all activity this round and reduces activity to 50% next round. A target that is already in cover may choose to claim it, with normal cover DB, may act normally this round, but is reduced to 75% activity next round. (Or take the attack with no cover DB.)
As written, the target would get their normal DB against the attack as well. This is where I first ran into problems, because high QU and/or shields (i.e. energy shields) and/or armour quality rendered any attack basically moot. I thus followed what other people suggested and removed DB (save for obviously static sources like energy shields and armour). That wasn't enough.
The rules as written, then, make it SPECIFIC that the character is taking a suppressive fire action (so the PCs and/or NPCs DO know what it is); and the penalty for ignoring it is basically negligible. So, at the moment, it doesn't work. I looked at the tables. On an AT 1 unarmoured human, you need a result of 86 on most of the energy weapon tables and the firearms tables to even hit, so even with a successful energy weapon attack has to get a 55 on the dice to even get any hit points (and it's worse for machine-guns). Let me reiterate that: a modally com petant suppressive fire will miss an average human target standing up into a barrage of fire 55% of the time (65% of the time with firearms).
If (rules-as-written) the target has any DB to speak of, then suppressive fire can basically be ignored, especially if you're already in cover; you're then almost certainly no worse of than if the enemy takes a normal shot at you (since he won't get his OB) and the higher level you are (and the enemy is) the more useless suppressive fire becomes.
(In the party in question, the PCs OB ranged from 80 to 145, which at minimum is already better than the absolute best the suppressive fire table will give you (+75 verses one target +45 verses the others).)
I'm not sure how modelling suppressive fire as solely a psychological effect, works, mechanically. If things are being shot at, they will tend to take cover for the DB bonus anyway (since even if you allow energy parry a la SM2 (i.e. half OB from ranged fire goes to DB) you need cover to do it). (Especially as my players are 25-year RM veterans well used to the vagaries of the system, not newcomers used to D&D or something where the system is modally more predictably less lethal.) Unless the PCs are lying prone where they can't be shot at all, they are far less protected against ordinary shots under the current rules (where the enemy gets their full OB) than they are against a suppressive fire action.
I don't think that's a good way to model it, personally. If you were behind a wall and a chap was spraying a machine gun above it and you stood up, you are not going to have a good chance of survival. You don't stand up, not because you MIGHT get hit, you don't stand up because you almost certainly WILL get hit.
But let's say we start making people make moral checks to stand up in the teeth of the fire - and what happens when they
do? And what about creatures that don't have morale? If you model it just as a fear check, you're only skirting the issue, because as soon as something shrugs off that effect, under the current rules, there's no more slap on the wrist than being shot at NORMALLY (less even).
I think it's far better for the PCs to be deciding whether or not they want to take that risk - give them the rope and let them hang themselves - rather than a dice-roll telling them whether they can or not. (Especially as you would then have to ask why this does not apply to ANY form of attack (particularly burst fire).) But to make that a cost-benefit decision, you have to make the slap on the wrist - the risk - a LOT higher; at the moment, it's weighted heavily towards "don't bother using suppressive fire, just shoot them."
At the moment, the penalty for ignoring it is... basically a 5% chance of Getting Killed; at any modest level, less than the usual chance of Getting Killed in the course of
any RM combat. It HAS to be (both for a consistent simulation and a mechanical function) at LEAST as threatening as a regular attack, bare minimum. Otherwise, why should it be treated as of any more concern than someone shooting at you regularly? And as it currently stands, it really isn't.
The other question is, if shooting on full automatic into a horde of charging demons is
not something to be modelled as a suppressive fire action (which seemed good as it had the "you don't dodge, you take the hit"), then what
is it? It's not Continuous Burst or Aimed Fire, which (again, rules-as-written in Blaster Law et al) are not multiple target actions. Rapid fire skill only applies to being able to make a single-shot fire a burst. (And if there is no such rule and you have to house-rule or hand-wave it, then one has to ask - why not?)
1On of the things I recently changed was the area, since as written, it was a cone; which is not how suppressive fire really works. I had a discussion with the author of Maneuver Group, which is a WW2-moderns wargame that is basically a tactics simulator (and whose authors have done all the reading in the field manuals about how suppressive fire really works) and amended the area accordingly to basically an area, with a limit on how much you could suppress per bullet/charge fired. It is still "wrong" of course, but it is now "less wrong" than before.