Seeing how much fun the four Showdown participants are having, I have a
question regarding the firing order game mechanics in PBEM games - after
movement do you try and simulate the normal initiative/fire-by-ship
sequencing in the regular rules, or do you have all of the players write all
of their firing orders and then apply the results simultaneously? The former
mimics a
"live" game at the expense of real-life timer-per-turn, while the latter
speeds up game play at the expense of the original game mechanics. I can see
both styles as being valid.
> -MWS- wrote:
Hello!
I'm running Showdown, so I guess I can comment here. (8-) I prefer
simultaneous fire, even in real-life games. I've never liked the
'initiative' system of resolving fire because, on the scale that
I think most starship games operate on, a split-second reaction
difference (or even a several second reaction difference) doesn't change how
the damage is done in any significant way.
However, I have seen PBeM games where initiative was important; basically a
'Fleet Admiral' would decide on what order the ships would fire in, and take
things from there.
Thanks,
J.
> On Mon, 25 Jan 1999, Jerry Han wrote:
<creaking of bones as old-timer stirs>
totally! just like it was in ft1! if i remember that right. i recall being
really horrified when ft2 introduced alternating fire, and we just kept on
using the old rules.
mind you, we misunderstood the movement rules and ended up doing a
N-point
turn at speed V as N 1-point turns separated by N movement bounds of V/N
units. it worked quite well, once you were used to it.
anyway, simultaneous fire rocks. ships fire, then damage effects are
applied at turn-end. when a ship takes a hit, put a diagonal slash
through a damage box. at the end of the turn, put another, perpendicular slash
to turn the slash into a cross (like spares and strikes in bowling). write a
big 'T' if you have to take a threshold check and cross it out when done.
another step would be to pre-plot firing. that would be tough, but if
you allowed reaction fire (unplotted, after movement) as well, with some
relative disadvantage (say, pre-plotted fire gets +1 to all rolls, or
gets to fire twice), it might work. this is how harpoon did it, and it makes a
lot of sense. mind you, i worked on adding pre-plotting to ds2 for a
while. now *that* would be cool. and bloody hard.
> I've never liked the
exactly - especially if you fight at ranges of several lightseconds,
when some of your fire is going to be in flight (eg missiles) before you even
get hit.
i'd cite peter f hamilton at this point; read the first chapter of 'the
reality dysfunction' for a battle which lasts about 20 seconds but takes up
several pages. quite a lot of ships get turned into debris clouds.
Tom
> I prefer
Given that turns are (in general consensus) on the order of ten minutes long,
it's hard to justify the back and forth system except as convenience to the
players. It should be simultaneous. Alternately, give each ship its own
initiative roll, instead of each side.