In the IE comics and as far as I can tell in the BE text, most of the weapons are single shot, kinda star wars style. Not much in the way of “hold down the trigger and fill 'em with lead.”
Probably because it’s not that practical. Except maybe in a close combat face-stabby kind of way? Imagine that example with Mayuran’s character trying to escape, but the guards have something more like MP5Ks, so he wrestles it out of one guard’s hands and hoses the other two down with a maniacal laugh.
Could you use the tech burner to give a jack gun or similar a device effect that allows it to be used against more than one target like that?
Or damnit is that already something that’s worked into the rules and I overlooked it?
The assault and heavy assault guns are autofire weapons (the jack gun might also be, it also might be more of a CQB shotgun). I also think of the PAc as being a rapid fire particle blaster. So either you can model it by giving it the intuitive trait (point gun at target, pull trigger, worry about aiming later) or if it’s some serious full-auto beltfed system give it Blast. Generally speaking though, mini-firefights are a little weird to think about. In the book example, the prince is one “unit” and the guards are another “unit” so the number of guards only kind of matters since it’s more of a disposition battle than a “do I kill everyone” battle.
Consider giving a weapon with a disgustingly high rate of fire (e.g. minguns and chain-cannons) a +1D or +2D advantage to Suppressive Fire actions.
Remember that extra successes the Unit gets on it’s Firefight action mean you can buy more Shot Opportunities for fireteam members. More Shot Opportunities = more chances to KO members of the opposing team. And as per pg.486 of Burning Empires: “Incapacitation of a team member from Direct Fire degrades that unit’s disposition by 1. If the target was the source of a disposition bonus— Superior Comm, Superior Weaponry, etc. you lose that, too.”