TheSagaContinues

I believe the intent of Heavy Fire Zone effectively is to allow someone to get shots in on a target before it can get through that zone.

In many ways HFZ is a slightly larger version of a house rule I already consider for ranged weapons. It's NEVER made sense to me why just moving by someone who's using a ranged weapon would somehow give you a free attack but moving by five feet further away wouldn't; instead of normal AoO my HR would have a character spend the swift action to designate a square within Point Blank Range as the "threatened space" where a character is prepared to make a snap shot at someone who would do something provoking in that space.  HFZ would allow the Noble to designate a larger area which I'm ok with but gives any ally a potential AoO at that target.

You might consider that having a rifle trained on a doorway and trying to rush through that doorway SHOULD be a formula for disaster so it's perfectly logical that those foolish Gammoreans could take losses from moving through that fire.  Now I figure they should be able to recognize what's going on and potentially change tactics but the question of "can a character recognize the effect of some feat/talent when used in game?" is one the GM may need to answer for you.

Now I'm not sure what the Bipod does in this situation.

I'll probably merge this topic with the older topic on HFZ that was bumped when you posted this if there are no objections.

No objections at all. I guess I really needed to know if Combat expertise works with the talent.

Sure you can. It is very effective and it is supposed to be.

But why the bi-pod. Unless you are an assassin of high level or otherwise can aim for free, that would not be very helpful. Also, you can't brace the weapon, especially not with the stock folded.