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Glory Combat Difficulty?

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Sun, 2010-12-12 11:52
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Foucault Foucault's picture
Glory Combat Difficulty?
Hello, I'm finally going to be running EP for this first time, and I've got the Glory scenario from the gamemaster pack and I have a question about the difficulty of the fights on the Song Cai Flower. I've played the game only once before, so I'm not sure how to gauge how difficult the fights are, though the caveat that only a well set up direct assault would work sounds true to me. So I'm then wondering what sort of combat outfitting to recommend to my players for their characters. This is particularly important because two of my players are particularly interested in the non-combat aspects of the setting, and are building for that. By way of example one is using the Brinker Genehacker as his starting point and the other is a sort of hypercorp CEO/Aerospace engineer interested in von Neumann probes. So I've recommended to the others they may want to be more focused on violence and infiltration, but what's the likelyhood my Dr. and CEO will make it through the ship? The corollary to that is how much slack should I give them in combat, like toning down powers or making the drones act stupider. Another idea to that is are there any combat rules that you can recommend forgetting about for our first game? We don't need strict adherence to the rules of full verisimilitude, so what might we drop for fun's sake our first time sleeving in? Thank you very much for your help!
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Sun, 2010-12-12 21:10
kindalas kindalas's picture
Re: Glory Combat Difficulty?
As far as Slack Goes, I say give them some understanding the rules slack. As far was weapons go, try and have everyone have access to 2 types of weapons. Usually Kinetic and... On a space station or other enclosed spaces seeker missiles are very effective. I would if you're worried about survivability give the players a couple of the oneshot seeker missile launchers. But remember missiles do double damage, so 2x the dice +DV and -AP. Also burstfire is your friend as is suppressive fire. Generally Homing Hollow Point rounds are the best to use. With RAP homing rounds coming in a close 2nd.
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Mon, 2010-12-13 08:54
nick012000 nick012000's picture
Re: Glory Combat Difficulty?
My group prefers RAP Biter rounds; they've already got pretty high Kinetic Weapons skills, and in my last session, the octopus killed a HOPLITE battlesuit in one round by burst firing a half-dozen heavy pistols at it. Also: ranged attacks are your friends. Melee is nigh-useless, since you can only kill one person per initiative pass with it, while you will typically kill two or three if you're dual-weilding ranged weapons.
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Mon, 2010-12-13 10:04
nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture
Re: Glory Combat Difficulty?
If you are concerned about the scenario being too difficult, feed additional information to them early on, and give them some extra tools on their shuttle. Combat is the most obvious solution, but there's no reason they couldn't, for instance, collection a biological sample from one of the infected and create a targeted virus, or inundate the area with gamma radiation (actually, there might be, I don't remember the goal of the mission). Give them the tools, and encourage them to think outside of the box.
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Fri, 2010-12-17 21:01
Monican Monican's picture
Re: Glory Combat Difficulty?
If my players wanted to do something like that in this campaign, I'm not sure where I'd begin. A targeted virus? Gamma rays? They'd at least need to ascertain the fate of Tara Yu first. I wouldn't have any idea how to let them make a WMD like you describe, nor the effects of it.
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Sat, 2010-12-18 08:08
nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture
Re: Glory Combat Difficulty?
To a degree, EP is freeform. Your players say 'my character is super-genius, and he will devise a way to destroy everyone on board by [insert Star Trek speak here]," and you respond either by saying "the bad guys have planned for that. It fails," or "go ahead and roll" (and they will almost always succeed). Unless you're playing in a group with Aremantounerous, just figure out if a particular action will be fun or is truly inspired, and encourage that, while carefully guiding them away from the others.
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Sat, 2010-12-18 11:59
Monican Monican's picture
Re: Glory Combat Difficulty?
I see what you mean. I have been trying to always say "Yes but..." or "Yes, and..." instead of "No" when we play. One problem I have as a new GM is that I have a planned-out, fleshed-out adventure path, but since I don't want to railroad my players at all (which Glory seems to require because otherwise they won't meet Bey or Wang) they often stray far from the main road. Then the issue is that I can't improvise fast enough to "load the level" as they go off-path, and the game slows down while I try to think things up. In my group of 4 players, 3 are totally new to roleplaying in general and while they're super enthusiastic about the game, one of them really enjoys going as far off the main road as he can. I want to humor him but I can't keep pace! My plan in the future is to make the main path so tempting that he doesn't want to stray too far away from it.
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Sat, 2010-12-18 18:18
nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture
Re: Glory Combat Difficulty?
Unfortunately, that's the problem with some missions. Glory is cut out to be a hack-n-slash mission. If your party isn't equipped for that, or works hard to avoid it, the mission won't go far. Fortunately, out of four missions so far, I think that's the one which would suffer the problems you describe most severely. Other ones should be a little easier on your group.
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