[Herr Brackhaus]

I've somehow completely overlooked tracer rounds as a viable piece of gear and I'm wondering if it's just me. By themselves, they're not great if a character relies on smartgun equipped weapons, and they are only compatible with Full Auto firing modes. However, especially for Missions characters where Noise can be a problem and/or for characters who don't trust the Matrix they can be one of very few methods to deal with wind modifiers. But wait, there's more!

From the Tracer Rounds description:

Tracer ammo burns along the line of flight, making it easier for the shooter to home in on the target. This type of ammunition can only be used in Full Auto weapons and, being loaded as every third round in a clip, is an exception to the restriction of one type of ammunition per clip. They improve the Accuracy of your gun by 1 when you fire more than one round in an Action Phase (cumulative with a laser sight but not a smartgun).

Tracer Rounds (FA)
Wind in rows below Light Winds and Range in rows below Short shift one row up

So you're already getting a +1 Accuracy which stacks with a Laser Sight, as well as compensation for wind and range. Additionally, if using expensive ammo you get both benefits of the tracer rounds and the specialized ammunition, but at a cheaper cost per burst because every third round loaded is a 6¥ tracer instead of an 8¥ explosive round, a 12¥ APDS round, or even a 100¥ Depleted Uranium round; that's an incredible cost savings in the long run if you burn through a lot of ammo with full auto fire.

Now take all of that and combine it with Hawk Eye:

Characters with the Hawk Eye quality have exceptionally keen natural vision. They can identify a face a block away without binoculars or spot a spent casing in a shadowy crack at five meters. Characters gain a +1 dice pool modifier to their Perception Tests and shift all Range Environmental modifiers up one category (e.g., Medium becomes Short). The quality is part of characters’ natural eyes and is not compatible with electronic vision enhancements and/or cyber- or bioware augmentations or replacements.

Not only can you be effectively immune to hackers bricking your firearm unless you absolutely have to have the ability to change firing modes as a free action (you shouldn't, as tracers are FA only) or quick clip eject (OK, so you lose 1 simple action every 10+ bursts if using extended clips), but you also get to fire out to Long range with no penalties. Let's put that into perspective; a shooter with a smartgun system and vision magnification has to take aim to negate a single category of range penalties, whereas a  character with Hawk Eye and Tracer Rounds can fire out all the way to extreme range with a measly -1 penalty.

Combined with the updated recoil rules (yes, I know some of you don't use these so feel free to ignore this part if you do ), this means that a character with Hawk Eye and tracer rounds can effectively ignore range penalties for FA assault rifles, giving him an effective range of 0-350m with 0 range penalties or all the way out to 550m with a meager -1.

There are some drawbacks to this build; no low-light or thermal vision enhancements means you have to resort to drugs to get low-light, and you have no means to deal with visibility modifiers (rain/fog/smoke). Still, I think that's a fair price to pay.

So, what do you think; have you overlooked Tracer Rounds in general, or are you an avid user?

[Novocrane]

no low-light or thermal vision enhancements means you have to resort to drugs to get low-light

Metatype or Tetrachromacy also work.

[Herr Brackhaus]

Good catch on Metatype; tetrachromacy is stretching it if you ask me, but I'd agree that by RAW it's not forbidden given that Hawk Eye only states "cyber- or bioware augmentations or replacements" and tetrachromatic vision is a geneware mod.

You could also combine Hawk Eye with the Night Vision quality, but that comes with it's own, rather harsh, downsides.

ETA:
Ah, there is a Thermographic Vision quality in Run Faster that only costs 3 Karma; perfect fit

ETA2:
Argh, but it's only negative qualities that can be bought without SURGE. Bummer.

[Hobbes]

So you're already getting a +1 Accuracy which stacks with a Laser Sight, as well as compensation for wind and range. Additionally, if using expensive ammo you get both benefits of the tracer rounds and the specialized ammunition, but at a cheaper cost per burst because every third round loaded is a 6¥ tracer instead of an 8¥ explosive round, a 12¥ APDS round, or even a 100¥ Depleted Uranium round; that's an incredible cost savings in the long run if you burn through a lot of ammo with full auto fire.

Wouldn't Tracers be in addition to the other Ammo costs?  They're normally Phosphorous "painted" on the bullet.  Not sure why you'd get the benefit of DU or APDS rounds without paying for them if you're occasionally switching fire modes, or don't have a magazine that is a convenient multiple.  Tracers don't do you a lot of good when they're the last round in a burst if you do take a single shot or two and throw off your rotation.

[Herr Brackhaus]

How do you figure that, Hobbes?
And yes, the clip size is something I thought about too; I was just going to load a multiple of 6 in my AK-97 extended clips which can hold a maximum of 76, so 2 APDS, 1 Tracer times 24.

Which means you're loading 48 APDS rounds @ 12 nuyen a piece, and 24 Tracer rounds @ 6 nuyen a piece, for a total of 72 rounds @ 720 nuyen per clip.

Remember, Tracer rounds specifically state that they are an exception to the rule about loading different types of rounds in a clip, and their price is not +60 but 60 nuyen per 10 rounds.

[Duellist_D]

Thats a really good find and i already have one character that is absolutely made for this. Need to squeeze in Hawk Eye, but the rest is already there and he always uses guns with Laserpointers.

The interaction with stuff like APDS and Depleted Uranium though...
While i suppose its RAW, its really cheesy. I would probably throw a dice for which bullet hits in cases like a normal burst and disallow stuff like bullseye doubletap if one of the bullets is a tracer (and thus also downgrading tripple to double BE if a tracer is among the shots fired).
Or simply change the Tracerround in a mod available for any bullet, with a + pricetag and a + in availability.
Getting benefits is nice, but getting benefits AND cheating up to 94Y out of every short burst is a bit to much.

[Beta]

I thought hawk eye just reduced range penalties for perception checks?  (Not weapons).  After all, the range penalties on a hold out are not that you can't see the target ten metres away, they are that such short guns just aren't all that accurate.

[Herr Brackhaus]

Duelist
Keep in mind that tracers are Full Auto only, so you're firing at least 6 rounds per attack for it to take effect. That means 4 rounds of ammunition of your choice and 2 tracers per burst. I don't particularly think it's all that cheesy, personally. You're sacrificing smart guns and all the benefits these bring for situational benefits.

I would be astonished if the people who wrote Hard Targets didn't consider Tracer Rounds when they wrote Depleted Uranium rounds.

Beta
What gave you that idea?

The quality specifically states that it shifts "all Range Environmental modifiers up one category (e.g., Medium becomes Short)". Last I checked, you don't actually use range for perception tests (at least not by RAW, though that's certainly a good house rule option), and shooting a weapon most definitely does.

Combine that with the fact that Hawk Eye specifically makes a character unable to use vision enhancers, and it seems pretty clear cut that the quality is both RAW and RAI intended to work with firearms.

[Beta]

I guess I never even considered than sharp eyesight would make most moderate range shooting easier, so assumed that it had to be talking about perception.  Darn, I liked this quality already, now I love it!

[Kiirnodel]

I have often wished there was a set of Ranges for baseline Perception (or even better, one each for sight, sound, and smell). If anyone has any suggestions for distances to use, I know I would appreciate input.

[Herr Brackhaus]

At our table we use range modifiers for spellcasting based on Magic, but now that I think about it there really is no reason it shouldn't or couldn't be based on Intuition or even the Perception skill instead.

Here's how we currently treat Magic in terms of ranges:
Short: Magic x 10m
Medium: Magic x 25m
Long: Magic x 50m
Extreme: Magic x 100m

Substituting Intuition for Magic, this gives you the following Range minimums and maximums:
Short: 0-10m / 0-60m
Medium: 11-25m / 61-150m
Long: 26-50m / 151-300m
Extreme: 51-100m / 301-600m

Granted, these are relatively short distances in terms of being able to spot something, so you could also base it off of the Perception skill directly, which gives someone with Perception 12 an unparalleled advantage at spotting this at range:
Short: 0-10m / 0-120m
Medium: 11-25m / 121-300m
Long: 26-50m / 301-600m
Extreme: 51-100m / 601-1200m

We also allow (optical) vision magnification systems to double the effective range of a spellcasting test, which could easily be applied to the above as well.

This would make it harder for someone to spot the sniper who just took a shot at them from 1500m away, or the drone in the sky which currently only suffers a negative penalty for size. I absolutely agree that Perception based range modifiers should be a thing.

[Kiirnodel]

Not sure I like the idea of basing the range increments on skill rating. That's sort of like saying you can't fire a gun at long range without more training. I would prefer a simple set of Ranges (no variable). Otherwise you run into the problem that not being trained is doubly penalizing. Not only do you have a smaller die pool to begin with, but you take higher penalties faster. The Intuition 2 Perception 1 mediocre human is essentially blind at 50 meters by that standard.

[Herr Brackhaus]

I wouldn't suggest using both perception and weapon range modifiers, Kiirnodel. Perception modifiers would only be relevant to seeing a particular object in the first place; you can't shoot something you can't see, after all.

That being said, there's an argument to be made for having a static range of vision, but that presents it's own set of problems. The human eye can technically perceive light at extreme distances (think celestial objects, under the right conditions). But, and I'm not 100% sure of the exact distances, recognizing a human shaped object with the naked eye becomes extremely challenging past 3km (or just under 2 miles). So, you could set a static range of perception based on a maximum range of 3000 meters by simply doubling the Sniper Rifle ranges:
Short: 0-100m
Medium: 101-700m
Long: 701-1600m
Extreme: 1601-3000m

Qualities like Hawk Eye would affect this, allowing someone with exceptionally keen vision to see out to 3km more easily (i.e. with less penalty). This is a rather simplistic approach in my opinion, but given the difficulty most people will have with identifying objects using only the naked eye at ranges beyond 3km I think it's a fair approximation. Adjust to suit your own tastes, of course

[Kiirnodel]

I wasn't suggesting stacking a vision penalty and a weapon range penalty. I was just making an example of what basing the range increments based on skill (or even an attribute) would be like.

That being said, I do like the idea of using double sniper rifle ranges. That ends up with a similar situation as with matrix devices. A perfectly noticeable (out in the open) object is nearly automatically noticed if it's within 100m.

Of course for noticing precise details you might increase penalties (or increase the threshold). And smaller objects of course have a concealment rating that adds its own penalty as well.

[Herr Brackhaus]

I'm actually suggesting we implement double sniper rifles at my table, with appropriate modifiers for size (and speed, if applicable, as per Pedal to the Metal in Run & Gun, page 180-181) of object also affecting the dice pool.

So trying to spot a microdrone (-3) flying at speed 3 (-3) at 2000m (-6) would total a -12 dice pool modifier. If the drone was running in stealth mode using the onboard pilot program, the test would become opposed with the perceiver rolling Perception + Intuition -12 and the drone rolling it's Stealth Autosoft + Pilot dice pool.

A character with Hawk Eye in this instance would "only" take a -9 to spot the drone, however. Of course, at 2000m there isn't much he can do about it even if he did spot it