Not a bad idea... I know plenty of incidents where I find myself debate the merits of overkill versus no underkill and this would be very helpful. Of course, people will bitch when they see the AP cost is up...
But what it would mean is a higher accuracy rate at longer distances for bursters and less ammo consumption when a 10+ bullet burst is not necessary or useful.
The only exploit involved abusing your intelligence
On longer distances you hit only 2-3 rounds anyway. So you won't get any more damage than now. About the ammo consumption - you need 10 bullets to hit with 3, if you shoot three forget about hitting anything. Well skilled character will hit more bullets even with 12 bullets burst.
I only think that certain weapons would have this like maybe certain variants of the assualt rifle, maybe fn fal? If all machine guns would happen to have that ability what would be the purpose of having a fully automatic weapon then?
It makes the current burst mode redundant in anything other than pve or one hex. It also means that every burst weapon may need rebalancing. Iirc bursting doesnt reduce your accuracy it just reduces the range.Id rather just use the 3round theme to differentiate one weapon from another, the xle from the ar for instance.
Number of bullets shot in bursts is tied to the "burst" option in the engine - said option being one of the maximum 5 you can give a weapon/object. Single Shot and Reload take away 2 slots aswell, so you are left with 2 additional slots which may even be used for better things in the future. I don't see how one, maybe 2 more options to burst can balled "controlled", unless you want some engine hackery.
bursters already try to get as close as possible to maximize there damage and hit ratio. Further more if the 'cover' suggestion gets implemented it would more than validate this imo. Also I fail to see how this would make the burster build less relevant as it only makes him more adaptable. Remember the idea here is create a viable long range attack for bursters in the scenario that they should need it.
If it takes the last one available slot of the weapon, it would be the best decision to use it for that kind of shooting tactic.