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Eliminating Speed in combat

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Wed, 2011-03-02 03:40

Andinel

Eliminating Speed in combat

I've been considering a way to make combat a little bit more fair and sensible, and a comment in the thread about the new potential errata made me think that one way of doing this would be to eliminate the Speed mechanic from the game. Is this reasonable, or possible at all? And what benefit would the speed-enhancing items give instead?

Wed, 2011-03-02 04:19

Rcarter

Re: Eliminating Speed in combat

I like that the speed mechanic allows for multiple combat actions personally. Given that the combat round is only 3 seconds however it does mean that people with a speed greater than 1 are acting INCREDIBLY fast. That being said if it was removed/altered that speed enhancing drugs/items would most likely grant bonuses to Initiative or more directly to combat actions -weapon skill/fray/freerunning.

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Mon, 2011-03-07 00:12

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Re: Eliminating Speed in combat

Assuming that people who have a problem with the multiple action phases per turn have an issue with some players only having 25% of the actions that others have or that all players will act in multiple initiative passes because Speed boosts are cheap. I believe that making the speed mechanic work is largely up to the GM. I'll try to make some points about that but first let me defend that the Speed (multiple phases per turn) mechanic is a necessary part of a game where computers and machines are characters and humans can have neurological upgrades that will compete with machine reaction times. I'd implore GM's to let EP be the Transhuman game it's supposed to be. I think that multiple initiative passes are only an issue when the GM doesn't force players to play tactically. It can be a challenge when your ambidexterous dual pistol toting gun bunnies shoot all their opponents dead in the first combat turn because they attacked with two weapons and filled a large volume of space with a fairly dense cloud of high-velocity metal. However there are many things PC's should be forced to do that aren't offensive or will impose negative modifiers on offensive actions; Maneuvering and Observing are big ones, players should be making multiple freefall/freerunning, and perception tests. Often they should need to make Infosec and Interfacing tests. (because if your opponent isn't conducting netwar he deserves to die. Yes brute force hacking takes 20 combat turns but that's only an issue if the players managed to surprise thier opponents, and if they manage to pull off something like that then they probably deserve to win. And don't forget the potential of signal jamming p.262) So there are just a few of the ways to suck some offense out of a team. Don't forget the strategic play either. There aren't very many stories you can tell where the players have managed to avoid being the underdog. It should take some heavy roleplay for a team to avoid a situation where they're facing serious deficits in Manpower, Firepower and Intelligence. If they can play well enough to honestly get the upper hand then they probably deserve to win. [edit] if the issue is that multiple phases leaves some players sitting on their hand for a large part of the action then that's just too bad. If those players wanted to play gun bunnies then they should have played gun bunnies. I'm sure they had plenty of action in the other parts of the story, Right?[/edit]

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Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Mon, 2011-03-07 04:01

Decivre

Re: Eliminating Speed in combat

I don't agree that it is a necessary part. I agree that there should be a mechanic that discerns a character's speed in all aspects, but I feel that the speed mechanic is inadequate for doing so. I have many of the same problems here that I did when playing Shadowrun; the speed mechanic has a nasty tendency for altering the laws of physics in baffling ways. As I already mentioned in another thread, one major gripe is when dealing with automatic weapons. Someone with speed 1 firing a machine gun is putting out 10 rounds every 3 seconds... 200 rounds per minute. That same gun in the hands of someone with a speed of 4 is firing at 800 rounds per minute... even though it's the same exact gun. Does that make any sense? Then there's the problem with task actions. Why does someone with a speed of 4 repair a car or hack a system at the same pace as someone with a speed of 1? If speed enhancements should stay in the game, they certainly need some reconfiguration.

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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Mon, 2011-03-07 05:07

Andinel

Re: Eliminating Speed in combat

I had an idea recently of how I might house-rule Speed in my future Eclipse Phase games. First, I should say I'm planning on using the new Initiative rules posted over in another thread, where you roll 1d10 plus a number. What I'm considering is that you roll 1d10 for each point of Speed and keep the best result. Basically, a person with high Speed will consistently go earlier in an Action Turn than someone with a lower Speed but the same Initiative Score. It's still an idea, and would probably need testing, but it's one "fix" I've thought of. In fact, Decivre's points are exactly my problems with the Speed mechanic. @Decivre r-Rep +1

Mon, 2011-03-07 14:00

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Re: Eliminating Speed in combat

Decivre wrote:
I don't agree that it is a necessary part. I agree that there should be a mechanic that discerns a character's speed in all aspects, but I feel that the speed mechanic is inadequate for doing so. I have many of the same problems here that I did when playing Shadowrun; the speed mechanic has a nasty tendency for altering the laws of physics in baffling ways.

I don't disagree that the mechanic for multiple actions in a turn is clunky. If a GM gets caught up in organizing the mechanics and tracking all the actions he can loose fluidity and story telling ability. The game becomes Dice play not Role play and that is un-fun and wierd because it's really difficult to describe physics with dice. On the other hand, in my gaming experience, EP and SR III/IV do a pretty good job at providing a 'High Resolution' set of mechanics without getting into massive sets of tables (like Traveler). And it's the best representation of characters with increased reflexes and response time that I'm aware of. It's certainly better than d20 or Earthdawn. (I remember Talislanta being pretty cool but that was a really 'low rez' game)

Decivre wrote:
As I already mentioned in another thread, one major gripe is when dealing with automatic weapons. Someone with speed 1 firing a machine gun is putting out 10 rounds every 3 seconds... 200 rounds per minute. That same gun in the hands of someone with a speed of 4 is firing at 800 rounds per minute... even though it's the same exact gun. Does that make any sense? Then there's the problem with task actions. Why does someone with a speed of 4 repair a car or hack a system at the same pace as someone with a speed of 1? If speed enhancements should stay in the game, they certainly need some reconfiguration.

About physics and Rate of Fire; I think most of us understand that in hand to hand combat a single dice roll represents more than one punch or strike, Right? I know it's heresy to say this but; one Kinetics dice roll may not represent any specific number of slugs in the air! Really, there are NO rules for rate of fire in EP, (or SR for that matter) there are only rules for how many times you can pull the trigger in SA/BF/FA mode before you run out of ammo. It's easy to make the logic leap and figgure that that means there is a RoF but it's not really RAW. Think of it this way. If kinetic weapons were described as having ammo percentages instead of ammo capacity would people still feel the same way? To be more specific; if Burst fire was described as depleting the ammo in your magazine by 10% instead of 3/30ths would anyone really worry about how many actual rounds they were spraying? The rules mechanics of EP/SR do not actually have that level of resolution. Its interesting that people get that idea with energy weapons. I don't think anyone has ever been concerned that a guy with Speed 4 and a Plasma Bolter can put more Kilowats in the air, per turn, than a guy with Speed 1. This is only an issue with Kinetic weapons. (but really it's a made up issue.) Iterative Action Phases only determine How many times; (in something [u]around[/u] three seconds) a person can set up an attack and make a series of strikes, (or joint locks or throws) a person can purposly target (not Aim) and pull a trigger complete a task that is sufficiently simple for any person to have a reasonable expectation of completing it in 1-5 seconds. And about task actions; I'm not sure that a person really can repair a car in a series of [u]Action Phases[/u]. For that to work the [u]Timeframe[/u] of the Task action would have to be listed in Action Phases. The only reference to [u]Task Actions[/u] and Action Phases that I can find is in reference to climbing;

Quote:
"Climbing is handled as a Task Action with a time frame equivalent to one meter per Action Phase..."

In that case I can see that extra Speed would help. But no where in the rules can I find any other Task Action that is related to Action Phases. Even Brute Force Hacking has a time frame of 1 minute. In that case I can see that Iterative Mental Actions might be applied but that would be GM caveat (a house rule.)

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Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Mon, 2011-03-07 14:28

Yerameyahu Yerameyahu's picture

Re: Eliminating Speed in combat

I don't think anyone has particularly *not* complained about putting 'too many' kilowatts in the air, either. :) It's just that kinetics are vastly more popular and powerful. The point about Task Actions is a good one. Is it a problem to be fixed, or a simplifying feature that keep +Speed a matter of (mostly) combat only?

Mon, 2011-03-07 15:25

Decivre

Re: Eliminating Speed in combat

OneTrikPony wrote:
I don't disagree that the mechanic for multiple actions in a turn is clunky. If a GM gets caught up in organizing the mechanics and tracking all the actions he can loose fluidity and story telling ability. The game becomes Dice play not Role play and that is un-fun and wierd because it's really difficult to describe physics with dice. On the other hand, in my gaming experience, EP and SR III/IV do a pretty good job at providing a 'High Resolution' set of mechanics without getting into massive sets of tables (like Traveler). And it's the best representation of characters with increased reflexes and response time that I'm aware of. It's certainly better than d20 or Earthdawn. (I remember Talislanta being pretty cool but that was a really 'low rez' game)

I've already mentioned this previously on another thread, but I think the best way to handle it might be to simply eliminate the multiple rounds and give fast characters multiple complex actions, with certain caveats (like not being able to do multiple identical actions). It needs to be done, but the current implementation has some... quirks.

OneTrikPony wrote:
About physics and Rate of Fire; I think most of us understand that in hand to hand combat a single dice roll represents more than one punch or strike, Right? I know it's heresy to say this but; one Kinetics dice roll may not represent any specific number of slugs in the air! Really, there are NO rules for rate of fire in EP, (or SR for that matter) there are only rules for how many times you can pull the trigger in SA/BF/FA mode before you run out of ammo. It's easy to make the logic leap and figgure that that means there is a RoF but it's not really RAW.

This is where the problem exists. The firing rate rules of the game do not take into account the passage of time. It's the peasant railgun of D&D all over again, only this problem affects every combat where fully automatic weapons and fast characters are present. It's not just some theoretical quirk, but a real and present problem.

OneTrikPony wrote:
Think of it this way. If kinetic weapons were described as having ammo percentages instead of ammo capacity would people still feel the same way? To be more specific; if Burst fire was described as depleting the ammo in your magazine by 10% instead of 3/30ths would anyone really worry about how many actual rounds they were spraying? The rules mechanics of EP/SR do not actually have that level of resolution.

Yes I would, because the gun would still be firing faster in one person's hand than in another, despite the limitations of fully-automatic fire. Plus, this isn't even the only quirk of full auto fire involving speed... a character with a speed of 1 can keep an area suppressed with gunfire for a full turn, while a character with any faster speed can only keep it suppressed for a single action phase (or for every phase that comes after their last-used phase). The current rules make it so that your suppression only lasts until the next time you get to use actions. So yes, I would still have a problem with it if we were to use percentages... or ammo MP, or ammo points, or ammo tokens, or ammo candy. Combat abstraction is fine and good, but keep it abstract. Don't mix abstract elements with concrete ones like ammo expenditure.

OneTrikPony wrote:
Its interesting that people get that idea with energy weapons. I don't think anyone has ever been concerned that a guy with Speed 4 and a Plasma Bolter can put more Kilowats in the air, per turn, than a guy with Speed 1. This is only an issue with Kinetic weapons. (but really it's a made up issue.)

Is the plasma bolter semi automatic? It makes sense if so... a semi-automatic weapon does not fire at a pre-fixed rate, but rather at the speed the user pulls the trigger. If it's a fully-automatic weapon, then yes... I have a problem. Why does my character's speed magically make the plasma bolter fire faster?

OneTrikPony wrote:
Iterative Action Phases only determine How many times; (in something [u]around[/u] three seconds) a person can set up an attack and make a series of strikes, (or joint locks or throws) a person can purposly target (not Aim) and pull a trigger complete a task that is sufficiently simple for any person to have a reasonable expectation of completing it in 1-5 seconds.

So a person that moves four times as fast can make his gun fire four times faster in full auto, but can't pop the lugnuts off a wheel with his tire iron any quicker than a normal human?

OneTrikPony wrote:
And about task actions; I'm not sure that a person really can repair a car in a series of [u]Action Phases[/u]. For that to work the [u]Timeframe[/u] of the Task action would have to be listed in Action Phases. The only reference to [u]Task Actions[/u] and Action Phases that I can find is in reference to climbing;
Quote:
"Climbing is handled as a Task Action with a time frame equivalent to one meter per Action Phase..."
In that case I can see that extra Speed would help. But no where in the rules can I find any other Task Action that is related to Action Phases. Even Brute Force Hacking has a time frame of 1 minute. In that case I can see that Iterative Mental Actions might be applied but that would be GM caveat (a house rule.)

Actually, extra speed explicitly does not speed up movement... a person runs at the same pace whether they are speed 1 or 4. I don't think you'd be able to move up a ladder too fast, for that exact reason.

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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Mon, 2011-03-07 19:13

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Re: Eliminating Speed in combat

Seems to me that Decivre and I just choose to explain what a kinetics dice roll means in different ways. In my interpretation iterative Action Phases don't break physics or have any thing to do with the cyclic rate of a Kinetic weapon. I believe that the problem is not the mechanics but trying to relate terminology that is borrowed from real life to what a dice roll means.

Quote:
The [u]firing rate[/u] rules of the game do not take into account the passage of time.

I'm not clear weather you're talking about [u]Rate of Fire[/u], which would be cyclic rate I think, or are you talking about how many times a character can acquire a target and pull the trigger. I totally agree with you that EP rules do not account for discrete elements of time. 3 seconds is a guidline not a rule. So it's really impossible to calculate RoF unless you turn 3 seconds into a hard rule. There are no Firing Rate or Rate of Fire rules in EP, only rules for how quickly a character can acquire a target and pull the trigger. I encourage GM's to be flexible in their thinking about initiative and time, and don't get locked into contemporary terminology that sounds cool but may or may not actually be aplicable

Quote:
the gun would still be firing faster in one person's hand than in another, despite the limitations of fully-automatic fire. Plus, this isn't even the only quirk of full auto fire involving speed...

I just don't think that's what a Kinetics dice roll means; not in SA, not in BF and especially not in FA. I'll try to be clear about what I mean. Having multiple action phases to fire a weapon in a single action turn only means that you get to make multiple Kinetics tests in a turn. Making a Kinetics test is an arbitration of how good you are at getting rounds on target. That would be finding, pointing, tracking, and then pulling the trigger. That specific Complex Action accounts for much more than how many bullets leave the barrel in a single trigger pull. I think it accounts for much more time than the fraction of a second it take X rounds in a Burst to leave the barrel. You can get away with hard thinking that 1 Kinetics test = 3 rounds in Burst Fire mode. But really it's arbitrary. And making that a rule will give you story telling and sometimes physics problems. I agree with you that you can not get away with thinking that 1 Kinetics test = 1 pull of the trigger = 10 rounds in Full Auto mode. That's just dumb. It forces you to describe a characters action as doing nothing but holding the trigger down for a full Action Phase and firing 10 slugs at an area. That forces you to rule that a Combat Turn is 1 second or that the cyclic rate of the weapon being fired is somehow linked to the number of Actions a character has. Obviously the two are not related and a 1 second combat turn is rarely warranted so [b]some flexibility in description of events according to the rules is in order.[/b] Full Auto mode really has nothing to do with the number or rounds in the air during an Action Phase or a Combat turn. Any firing mode is completely disconnected from the actual rounds on target. Higher order firing modes don't mean anything but increased damage potential. However, for people who would like Higher Resolution in their arbitration of Full Auto fire, but don't want to fuck around with the whole Initiative system try this; Work Full Auto like movement rules, set the ammo expended in a Full Auto burst to a number > 10 [u]per Combat Turn[/u] then divide that number by the number of Full Auto Kinetics tests made in one Combat Turn to determine how much ammo came out of the clip in each Action Phase. (I'm just spitballin here EP is almost exactly complex enough for me but I'd like to hear reasons this won't work.)

Quote:
a character with a speed of 1 can keep an area suppressed with gunfire for a full turn, while a character with any faster speed can only keep it suppressed for a single action phase (or for every phase that comes after their last-used phase). The current rules make it so that your suppression only lasts until the next time you get to use actions.

That makes sense to me. If you're suppressing an area and then decide to do something else then you're no longer paying attention to and shooting at stuff that moves through your suppressed area. I don't equate the Activity of Suppression with a single trigger pull. Suppression is nothing more than an exclusive action with the intent to pay attention to an area and target opponents while you [u]intimidate them into keeping their heads down[/u] by means of putting a significant amount of rounds in their general area. The Kinetics attack roll is triggered by the actions of the opponents. This can be described as a single trigger pull or multiple trigger pulls. The point is you use a large fraction of your ammo and you pay attention to a specific area.

Quote:
Is the plasma bolter semi automatic? It makes sense if so... a semi-automatic weapon does not fire at a pre-fixed rate, but rather at the speed the user pulls the trigger. If it's a fully-automatic weapon, then yes... I have a problem. Why does my character's speed magically make the plasma bolter fire faster?

I should have said [i]Particle Beam[/i] Bolter. Thanks for not jumping on me about that error. My point there was that the Particle Beam Bolter is a weapon with the capability of [u]Sweeping Fire[/u], and [u]Concentrated Fire[/u] and if any mechanics indicate that you're going to pull and hold the trigger for an entire Action Phase those would be the ones. To me the Sweeping Fire and Concentrated fire rules indicate that most beam weapons will fire for as long as you hold the trigger down. Sounds a lot like full auto to me. 'Walking' your fire is a common tactic with kinetic weapons, (the function of tracer rounds) and I've often wondered why this mechanic wasn't applied to Full Auto fire also. Conversely I've wondered why Suppression isn't an option with beam weapons by RAW. But no one seems to have an issue with the idea that you can do Sweeping and Concentrated fire up to [b]8 times in a single Combat Turn[/b] if you've got the mods, or that if you don't have the mods you can only do it twice. And I've never noticed anyone complain that holding the trigger across two attacks doesn't deplete the ammo more than two attacks would.

Quote:
So a person that moves four times as fast can make his gun fire four times faster in full auto, but can't pop the lugnuts off a wheel with his tire iron any quicker than a normal human?

I don't think that Speed enhancement are simply a modification of how fast a character can move their body. That's what SOM is for. I think that speed enhancements are also cognitive enhancements that increase a persons motor control and neuro response. Yes that would mean that your body responds faster but it can't translate directly to movement. As you say, Increased Initiative Speed does not give you increased running speed. It's much more than that. If a GM want's to reduce a complex Task Action such as 'Changing a Tire' with a Timeframe of 10 minutes, to a whole bunch of complex Actions such as; 'remember where you put the lug wrench', 'open the trunk', 'figure out how to get the spare out', 'look for the place to put the jack', 'place the jack', 'pump the jack'... The point of Task Actions is that they're not purely physical, they require a greater level of planning, and have an Over-All level of complexity that Initiative Speed is usually not a determining factor in the Timeframe. If a job can be done in a few Action Phases then it probably shouldn't be resolved via the Task Action mechanics.

Quote:
Actually, extra speed explicitly does not speed up movement...

Except that in the case of climbing, by RAW, extra Speed does increase your movement rate. I was quoting directly from the book. Should have included the reference; p.177 Just a note; I only make these arguments because I believe that some flexibility in the way players and GM's think about and describe the Initiative system will increase their enjoyment and decrease their frustration with the game in the way that I've experienced. Typically I'm a whiney cunt, but I've never had so few complaints about a rules system so I believe that the system deserves some defense.

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Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Tue, 2011-03-08 00:30

#10

Decivre

Re: Eliminating Speed in combat

OneTrikPony wrote:
I'm not clear weather you're talking about [u]Rate of Fire[/u], which would be cyclic rate I think, or are you talking about how many times a character can acquire a target and pull the trigger. I totally agree with you that EP rules do not account for discrete elements of time. 3 seconds is a guidline not a rule. So it's really impossible to calculate RoF unless you turn 3 seconds into a hard rule. There are no Firing Rate or Rate of Fire rules in EP, only rules for how quickly a character can acquire a target and pull the trigger. I encourage GM's to be flexible in their thinking about initiative and time, and don't get locked into contemporary terminology that sounds cool but may or may not actually be aplicable

I'm talking more about the former, in a sense. Fully-automatic fire is primarily an issue of how fast the bullets re-chamber, and the gun system cycles the next shot. For some reason, that same gun in the hands of a different person cycles at a slower pace in one person's hand than another. I'm fine and good with abstraction of mechanics, but I think it's absolutely bizarre that you're fine with combining abstract with concrete in such a way that the concrete ceases to make sense. If the person moving 4 times as fast isn't really pumping out four times the speed rounds in fully auto fire, at least tell me why his clip empties out 4 times as fast.

OneTrikPony wrote:
I just don't think that's what a Kinetics dice roll means; not in SA, not in BF and especially not in FA. I'll try to be clear about what I mean. Having multiple action phases to fire a weapon in a single action turn only means that you get to make multiple Kinetics tests in a turn. Making a Kinetics test is an arbitration of how good you are at getting rounds on target. That would be finding, pointing, tracking, and then pulling the trigger. That specific Complex Action accounts for much more than how many bullets leave the barrel in a single trigger pull. I think it accounts for much more time than the fraction of a second it take X rounds in a Burst to leave the barrel. You can get away with hard thinking that 1 Kinetics test = 3 rounds in Burst Fire mode. But really it's arbitrary. And making that a rule will give you story telling and sometimes physics problems. I agree with you that you can not get away with thinking that 1 Kinetics test = 1 pull of the trigger = 10 rounds in Full Auto mode. That's just dumb. It forces you to describe a characters action as doing nothing but holding the trigger down for a full Action Phase and firing 10 slugs at an area. That forces you to rule that a Combat Turn is 1 second or that the cyclic rate of the weapon being fired is somehow linked to the number of Actions a character has. Obviously the two are not related and a 1 second combat turn is rarely warranted so [b]some flexibility in description of events according to the rules is in order.[/b] Full Auto mode really has nothing to do with the number or rounds in the air during an Action Phase or a Combat turn. Any firing mode is completely disconnected from the actual rounds on target. Higher order firing modes don't mean anything but increased damage potential. However, for people who would like Higher Resolution in their arbitration of Full Auto fire, but don't want to fuck around with the whole Initiative system try this; Work Full Auto like movement rules, set the ammo expended in a Full Auto burst to a number > 10 [u]per Combat Turn[/u] then divide that number by the number of Full Auto Kinetics tests made in one Combat Turn to determine how much ammo came out of the clip in each Action Phase. (I'm just spitballin here EP is almost exactly complex enough for me but I'd like to hear reasons this won't work.)

I'm fine and good with a degree of vagueness regarding the rules mechanics as it suits the actual physics of the world. My problem is that the game mechanics don't give you a lot of options regarding those mechanics. Let's assume that the 10 rounds per action in full auto means that you are just shooting in spurts... if that's the case, why doesn't the game allow for larger bursts of ammunition than 10 for characters with lower speed, for purposes that might not need high degrees of accuracy? I should be able to dump 40 rounds in a minute (or more, if that's still not the cap) if I'm targeting say... a stationary target. Especially at close to medium range. Plus, if we're going to render the game more abstract, then perhaps we should make that a core mechanic of the game. Plenty of games nowadays reference things in the context of "scenes" and "encounters", and don't make any hard statements regarding time and turns. Maybe that should be done in Eclipse Phase as well.

OneTrikPony wrote:
That makes sense to me. If you're suppressing an area and then decide to do something else then you're no longer paying attention to and shooting at stuff that moves through your suppressed area. I don't equate the Activity of Suppression with a single trigger pull. Suppression is nothing more than an exclusive action with the intent to pay attention to an area and target opponents while you [u]intimidate them into keeping their heads down[/u] by means of putting a significant amount of rounds in their general area. The Kinetics attack roll is triggered by the actions of the opponents. This can be described as a single trigger pull or multiple trigger pulls. The point is you use a large fraction of your ammo and you pay attention to a specific area.

The problem is a bit bigger than that. Suppression fire lasts until the next time your character [i]can[/i] act, not the next time your character [i]does[/i] act, meaning that a person with speed 4 needs to burn through 4 times as much ammo to suppress an area for the same length of time that a person with speed 1 needs. That's what bothers me... apparently the lightning fast are incapable of managing their rounds as easily as someone moving normal pace, and that's just odd.

OneTrikPony wrote:
I should have said [i]Particle Beam[/i] Bolter. Thanks for not jumping on me about that error. My point there was that the Particle Beam Bolter is a weapon with the capability of [u]Sweeping Fire[/u], and [u]Concentrated Fire[/u] and if any mechanics indicate that you're going to pull and hold the trigger for an entire Action Phase those would be the ones. To me the Sweeping Fire and Concentrated fire rules indicate that most beam weapons will fire for as long as you hold the trigger down. Sounds a lot like full auto to me. 'Walking' your fire is a common tactic with kinetic weapons, (the function of tracer rounds) and I've often wondered why this mechanic wasn't applied to Full Auto fire also. Conversely I've wondered why Suppression isn't an option with beam weapons by RAW. But no one seems to have an issue with the idea that you can do Sweeping and Concentrated fire up to [b]8 times in a single Combat Turn[/b] if you've got the mods, or that if you don't have the mods you can only do it twice. And I've never noticed anyone complain that holding the trigger across two attacks doesn't deplete the ammo more than two attacks would.

It's fine. I just worked on the assumption we were talking about a theoretical weapon rather than one in the books, and went with it. That said, I do think that the particle beam bolter should use a fixed amount of ammo over the course of a round, rather than draining faster in the hands of a quick character. If walking your fire was something that could be added to kinetic weapons, it would probably require tracer rounds. Personally, I think that suppressive fire should be something that can be feasible with any weapon, regardless of firing mode; even with a semi-automatic weapon, you can unload in a direction and prevent your opponents from wanting to come out of cover. A laser weapon might not be as good at it though, primarily because suppressive fire tends to rely on the show of force that gunfire has. People react to the loud noise of gunfire, and the sound of bullets impacting near them. It might be difficult to get the same effect with a laser weapon, except when they have a visible impact (laser pulsers, particle beam bolters and plasma rifles being the ones in the core book capable of this). Invisible weapons like the microwave agonizers are probably worthless in creating suppressive fire.

OneTrikPony wrote:
I don't think that Speed enhancement are simply a modification of how fast a character can move their body. That's what SOM is for. I think that speed enhancements are also cognitive enhancements that increase a persons motor control and neuro response. Yes that would mean that your body responds faster but it can't translate directly to movement. As you say, Increased Initiative Speed does not give you increased running speed. It's much more than that. If a GM want's to reduce a complex Task Action such as 'Changing a Tire' with a Timeframe of 10 minutes, to a whole bunch of complex Actions such as; 'remember where you put the lug wrench', 'open the trunk', 'figure out how to get the spare out', 'look for the place to put the jack', 'place the jack', 'pump the jack'... The point of Task Actions is that they're not purely physical, they require a greater level of planning, and have an Over-All level of complexity that Initiative Speed is usually not a determining factor in the Timeframe. If a job can be done in a few Action Phases then it probably shouldn't be resolved via the Task Action mechanics.

Even if they are both mental and physical actions, a person with enhanced speed also gets to do mental actions faster and more often than someone without (example; infomorphs). So it still should equate to more getting done by someone moving faster.

OneTrikPony wrote:
Except that in the case of climbing, by RAW, extra Speed does increase your movement rate. I was quoting directly from the book. Should have included the reference; p.177

To me, that means there's just one more discrepancy. Why is someone with enhanced speed capable of climbing faster, but can only run at the same pace as someone with no speed enhancement (Movement Rates, page 191)?

OneTrikPony wrote:
Just a note; I only make these arguments because I believe that some flexibility in the way players and GM's think about and describe the Initiative system will increase their enjoyment and decrease their frustration with the game in the way that I've experienced. Typically I'm a whiney cunt, but I've never had so few complaints about a rules system so I believe that the system deserves some defense.

I agree, Eclipse Phase's core mechanic is very fluid and simple, I just want to improve upon the design. In most cases, the complaints I have about the game are more about clarification than modification; as an effect of the game being fresh and yet to be expanded on to a large degree, there is a lot of things that the core books simply don't touch on (if you look around long enough on these forums, you'll find plenty of questions on merging forks, joining flexbots, parallel processing ectos, and a multitude of other elements that simply need to be discussed to a greater detail).

—

Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Tue, 2011-03-08 14:17

#11

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Re: Eliminating Speed in combat

Hmm. I guess I just don't know how to explain myself. I don't feel that I'm making the firearms rules more abstract than they're written. They allow me to determine the effect of my attack and when I run out of ammo; nothing more nothing less. I don't need more than that to tell the story of what my characters are doing. I just assume that the Rifles of my Speed 3 Russian super soldier and my Speed 1 Lunar Journalist have the same cyclic rate but my soldier shoots more and runs out of ammo sooner because it takes my journalist longer to set up his shots. By the same token it doesn't bother me that both of my characters--if they were just pulling the trigger of a SA pistol as fast as they can--could each empty a twelve round clip in under six seconds. And despite that my Journalist can only shoot that pistol twice in a combat turn. Because it takes longer for him to set up the shot. I'm just sorry that the firearms rules make people unhappy and frustrated. I think that if you need to count each bullet and measure time to a fraction of a second you're bound to be unhappy and frustrated. If you're looking for greater detail and accuracy in the mechanics I don't think eliminating the Speed Stat is a good way to do it. That just makes the Ninja/Gunbunny/Hacker archetypes less fun. The independent Speed Stat makes the game less D20ish and I say that's a good thing. I like the EP/SR initiative systems better than any other game I've played. (you wanna see a really fucked up system try Palladium LOL) If you can divorce yourself from the ideas that a combat turn is an exact and consistent unit of time, and that the listed ammo capacity of a weapon actually equals a specific number of bullets. Then accept the idea that Task Actions are just a story telling device that frees a GM from having to track minutia, you'll be a happier gamer. [edit] Oh and also:

Quote:
Suppression fire lasts until the next time your character can act, not the next time your character does act,

I never noticed that that distinction in the text (p. 204) I guess my mind just skipped over it and read it in a way that made sense. It should definitely be 'till the character takes another action' like the aiming rules. But technically that would be a house rule. Same with the climbing thing. But that really falls under the concept of a GM can break down a Task Action to as many small Timeframe elements as he feels like dealing with if he feels the situation warrants that level of detail. I'd be fine with changing 1 meter to 2 meters and Action Phase to Combat Turn.

—

Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Tue, 2011-03-08 15:40

#12

Decivre

Re: Eliminating Speed in combat

OneTrikPony wrote:
I'm just sorry that the firearms rules make people unhappy and frustrated. I think that if you need to count each bullet and measure time to a fraction of a second you're bound to be unhappy and frustrated.

I disagree with that. If the game should be treated more abstractly, I simply think it should have more abstract rules. Scion is a game rife with abstraction, and it does so by allowing the GM to decide for plot purposes with a gun runs out. It even goes so far as to make money and currency completely plot-based. Time is measured in "scenes" and "stories", rather than seconds and minutes. That's abstract. Eclipse Phase sits somewhere in the middle between that and more concrete rules, in a way that detracts from the mechanics. As an old friend would say, shit or get off the pot... we should make the game abstract if it is to be abstract, and concrete if the game is to be concrete; not both.

OneTrikPony wrote:
If you're looking for greater detail and accuracy in the mechanics I don't think eliminating the Speed Stat is a good way to do it. That just makes the Ninja/Gunbunny/Hacker archetypes less fun. The independent Speed Stat makes the game less D20ish and I say that's a good thing. I like the EP/SR initiative systems better than any other game I've played. (you wanna see a really fucked up system try Palladium LOL)

I don't know about that. In combat, the independent speed stat rings of the Base Attack Bonus mechanic from 3rd edition, where characters earned multiple attacks a turn. If there was anything that EP should have pulled from the most recent D&D, it should have been knowing that characters that can do more a turn have a significant advantage over those that can't. I certainly think that there should be physical enhancements that deal with speed increase, but simply giving those characters more actions a turn is a potentially frustrating way to handle it. More importantly, I've found in my games that the roleplayers have the hardest time of it. I have two players that wanted to roleplay Jovians, but changed their minds when they realized in only two adventures that they were largely worthless in combat. They'd get one or two actual bullets into the battlefield before the rest of the crew overtook every opponent in short order. And what should they expect? They want to roleplay characters that disdain nanotechnology, but the game basically treats those characters like crap. It doesn't stop at combat usefulness; how could any Jovian hacker keep up when he gets one complex action a turn, and the team's dedicated hacker gets 16 actions a turn. Even if he were to suck it up and get reflex boosters (going against his tenets as a hardcore Jovian), he'd still get outpaced 8 times over. Short of exploiting all the technologies explicitly forbidden to him (forking, psi, nanoware), he's shit out of luck. Speed boosts don't make gun bunnies, ninjas and hackers more fun; it just makes life shitty if you don't have speed boosts. Shadowrun handled the mechanic by making speed enhancement extremely costly... Eclipse Phase can't really do that. There's no metamagic rules which make it take longer to get to extreme psi speed enhancement, and the implants don't lower an essence score to make it a non-option for the asyncs. It's just a ridiculously overpowered advantage. And even if we were to make the argument that it makes sense in the setting, what doesn't make sense is the fact that most NPC enemies don't have much speed boosts at all. Hell, the reaper and fury morphs only have a single speed boosts. Every single combat character in every adventure should have 3 or 4 phases a turn, if these things are truly what defines combat and hacking characters... but they don't. Instead, you're either stuck with PC gunmen and hackers that outpace every enemy they'll face short of a TITAN monstrosity, or PCs that don't have speed enhancements that get thoroughly raped by anything and everything they're put up against because you raised NPC speeds to match your fastest characters.

OneTrikPony wrote:
If you can divorce yourself from the ideas that a combat turn is an exact and consistent unit of time, and that the listed ammo capacity of a weapon actually equals a specific number of bullets. Then accept the idea that Task Actions are just a story telling device that frees a GM from having to track minutia, you'll be a happier gamer. [edit] Oh and also:
Quote:
Suppression fire lasts until the next time your character can act, not the next time your character does act,
I never noticed that that distinction in the text (p. 204) I guess my mind just skipped over it and read it in a way that made sense. It should definitely be 'till the character takes another action' like the aiming rules. But technically that would be a house rule. Same with the climbing thing. But that really falls under the concept of a GM can break down a Task Action to as many small Timeframe elements as he feels like dealing with if he feels the situation warrants that level of detail. I'd be fine with changing 1 meter to 2 meters and Action Phase to Combat Turn.

Again, I'm all for abstracting the rules... but the rules in the books aren't abstract. Action turns sum to exactly 3 seconds, and bullets are a concrete value of each gun. It's in the book. Even if you are arguing that the rules are better in abstract form, that very well means that you want them to change the rules so that the mechanics are abstract rather than concrete. I'm fine with that, and I would certainly like that better than mechanics that just seem odd at times. At least if the mechanics were plot-driven, I could just fiat-tell my players when their gun is out for the sake of the plot rather than them keeping track of every round they put out on the field. As for suppression, even if it were until the character takes another action it would still result in wasted actions. Plus, it means that a speedy character that suppresses an area for less than a second blows through the same amount of ammo that a normal speed character does for 3 full seconds. That's still a bit problematic.

—

Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Wed, 2011-03-09 12:03

#13

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Re: Eliminating Speed in combat

OK. Couple of caveats; I'm not a good communicator and trying to speak diplomatically just overtaxes my limited skill. I'm going to speak plainly, the way i would IRL, and it's probably going to come across as inflamitory and beligerant in text. Please assume that only kindness and friendship are intended and that this post is not at all personal. I understand that anything I type outside of quote code is just my opinion and interperetation. also, I suspect that I'm beating a dead horse here. Probably only I, and maybe Decivre, will ever read this. But there are some things in the above post that are so Joy-suckingly wrong that I think it's important to address lest they spread the frustration virus.

Quote:
but the rules in the books aren't abstract. Action turns sum to [b]exactly 3 seconds[/b], and [i]bullets are a concrete value of each gun[/i]. It's in the book.

(emphasis mine) No. this is what's in the book;

p.188 wrote:
[b]Action Turns[/b] Action scenes in Eclipse Phase are handled in bite size chunks called Action Turns, each [u]approximately[/u] three seconds in length. We say "approximately" because the methodical, step-by-step system used to resolve actions does [u]not[/u] necessarily translate realistically to real life, [u]where people often pause to take breaks to assess the situation, take a breather, and so on.[/u] A combat that begins and ends within 5 Action Turns (15 seconds) in Eclipse Phase could last half a minute to several minutes in real life.

By corollary a 5 Turn combat might take less than 15 seconds too. Don't get locked into tracking actual time minutely. That type of GMing *does* break the game. The real GM skill while adjudicating EP's initiative system is understanding and being able to portray [b]simultaneity[/b] of actions and the [b]Extended Representation[/b] of what each dice roll means. That is; an Action Phase is [u]shared[/u] by several characters and the dice roll a player makes to determine the success of his Complex Action often accounts for a complex activity that requires most characters something like, (but not exactly), 3 seconds to complete. I often make the mistake of speaking of a character with Speed Stat of 2,3 or 4 as having 2,3 or 4 Action Phases. That's not the case. It's an important distinction that multiple characters may act during an Action Phase and also that the actions of fast characters in later Action Phases may overlap the actions of slower characters in earlier ones.

Quote:
Bullets are a concrete value of each gun

I disagree, the text can be interpreted that way but it's not necessary to do so and my argument is supported by the fact that the rules have internal consistency if you don't. I hate to have to parse the jargon, but I find no reference to actual Bullets, Rounds, Slugs or distinct singular units of ammunition associated with Kinetic Weapons anywhere in the text. On page 193; Reloading and page 198; Rates of Fire, I find the word "shots" "Shots" can be defined as The fireing of a gun, An attempt to hit a target, or A ball of stone or metal fired from a large gun or cannon (websters). It's your choice as to which definition you read into the context. However the complete text indicates that the meaning of the word in context refers to a dice roll rather than an object. p. 198: Burst Fire; "[i]A number[/i] of quick shots with a single trigger pull...Bursts use up 3 [i]shots worth[/i] of ammunition" p. 198: Full Automatic; "[i]A hail[/i] of shots with a single trigger pull" this is distinct from the use of the word "Rounds" specifically applied to Seeker Weapons on page 339. And the word "shots" is also applied to Beam Weapons, page 193; "Every weapon has a listed ammunition capacity that indicates how many [i]shots[/i] that weapon can carry" Beam weapons obviously do fire "shot" in the sense of a bullet or ball nor do their batteries hold shot.

Quote:
Even if you are arguing that the rules are better in abstract form, that very well means that you want them to change the rules so that the mechanics are abstract rather than concrete.

I am not abstracting the rules or encouraging further abstraction. What I am saying is that trying to calculate cyclic rate for weapons that are only listed in broad classes from the word "shots" and the general guideline of 3 seconds for a Combat Turn is asking greater resolution from the RAW than RAW provides. I appreciate Simulationist gamers and I support that style of play in as much as it facilitates my role play and comprehension of the setting, but you've got to draw the line somewhere and I say it's been drawn in exactly the right place.

Quote:
Speed boosts don't make gun bunnies, ninjas and hackers more fun; it just makes life shitty if you don't have speed boosts... It's just a ridiculously overpowered advantage... doesn't make sense is the fact that most NPC enemies don't have much speed boosts at all...

Speed boost are not overpowered. [u]Speed boost is nothing more than a stop-gap [b]Force Mulitplier[/b] that is tactically inferior to actually having more Forces[/u] PC teams NEED force multipliers because they usually have fewer resources to call upon than their opponents. If a team of 4 with 16 Action Phases between them is facing a team of 4 with fewer than 16 Action Phases then the Players can expect to win the contest through [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_%28military_strategist%29#Militar... Boyd[/url] style [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_Loop]OODA Loop[/url] Superiority. In a combat between a team of 4 with 16 Action Phases and a team of 8 with 16 Action Phases the characters can expect to to get Resleeved at some point in the future because they should loose due to envelopment, maneuver combat, and the simple fact that the opposing force has more Durability points, and can take more Wounds. I honestly don't understand why people complain about the fact that force mulitpliers will decide combat. A note of caution:

Quote:
I have two players that wanted to roleplay Jovians, but changed their minds when they realized in only two adventures that they were largely worthless in combat.

I hope that these Jovians didn't forgo speed increases at the discretion of the GM. Note that the Jovian spy (EP sample character) has a speed of 2 with neurachem, and the Jovian Soldier (NPC file 1: Prime) has a speed of 2 with Reflex boosters. There's nothing in the setting that would keep your Jovian character from having a speed of 4. He can have implants he just can't have medichines.

—

Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Wed, 2011-03-09 16:02

#14

Decivre

Re: Eliminating Speed in combat

OneTrikPony wrote:
No. this is what's in the book;
p.188 wrote:
[b]Action Turns[/b] Action scenes in Eclipse Phase are handled in bite size chunks called Action Turns, each [u]approximately[/u] three seconds in length. We say "approximately" because the methodical, step-by-step system used to resolve actions does [u]not[/u] necessarily translate realistically to real life, [u]where people often pause to take breaks to assess the situation, take a breather, and so on.[/u] A combat that begins and ends within 5 Action Turns (15 seconds) in Eclipse Phase could last half a minute to several minutes in real life.
By corollary a 5 Turn combat might take less than 15 seconds too. Don't get locked into tracking actual time minutely. That type of GMing *does* break the game. The real GM skill while adjudicating EP's initiative system is understanding and being able to portray [b]simultaneity[/b] of actions and the [b]Extended Representation[/b] of what each dice roll means. That is; an Action Phase is [u]shared[/u] by several characters and the dice roll a player makes to determine the success of his Complex Action often accounts for a complex activity that requires most characters something like, (but not exactly), 3 seconds to complete. I often make the mistake of speaking of a character with Speed Stat of 2,3 or 4 as having 2,3 or 4 Action Phases. That's not the case. It's an important distinction that multiple characters may act during an Action Phase and also that the actions of fast characters in later Action Phases may overlap the actions of slower characters in earlier ones.

This doesn't really ring of abstraction either. Whether you use the term "exactly", "approximately", or even "vaguely", they've still tied the length of a turn to 3 seconds. That isn't really abstraction.

OneTrikPony wrote:
I disagree, the text can be interpreted that way but it's not necessary to do so and my argument is supported by the fact that the rules have internal consistency if you don't. I hate to have to parse the jargon, but I find no reference to actual Bullets, Rounds, Slugs or distinct singular units of ammunition associated with Kinetic Weapons anywhere in the text. On page 193; Reloading and page 198; Rates of Fire, I find the word "shots" "Shots" can be defined as The fireing of a gun, An attempt to hit a target, or A ball of stone or metal fired from a large gun or cannon (websters). It's your choice as to which definition you read into the context. However the complete text indicates that the meaning of the word in context refers to a dice roll rather than an object. p. 198: Burst Fire; "[i]A number[/i] of quick shots with a single trigger pull...Bursts use up 3 [i]shots worth[/i] of ammunition" p. 198: Full Automatic; "[i]A hail[/i] of shots with a single trigger pull" this is distinct from the use of the word "Rounds" specifically applied to Seeker Weapons on page 339. And the word "shots" is also applied to Beam Weapons, page 193; "Every weapon has a listed ammunition capacity that indicates how many [i]shots[/i] that weapon can carry" Beam weapons obviously do fire "shot" in the sense of a bullet or ball nor do their batteries hold shot.

I think a generally obvious definition of "shot" is the singular pull of the trigger, the singular firing of a gun. They used the term shot because not all weapons use a single bullet within a shot. My favorite example of this would be the Yamaha Sakura Fubuki from Shadowrun 4th edition... a weapon which uses 4 bullets per pull of the trigger (firing them simultaneously). A burst fire from that same weapon would waste 12 bullets... the equivalent of 3 shots (the same as it is in Shadowrun). In fact, these rules, much like speed rules in general, are at least partially lifted from Shadowrun.

OneTrikPony wrote:
I am not abstracting the rules or encouraging further abstraction. What I am saying is that trying to calculate cyclic rate for weapons that are only listed in broad classes from the word "shots" and the general guideline of 3 seconds for a Combat Turn is asking greater resolution from the RAW than RAW provides. I appreciate Simulationist gamers and I support that style of play in as much as it facilitates my role play and comprehension of the setting, but you've got to draw the line somewhere and I say it's been drawn in exactly the right place.

I'm not even really asking for greater degrees of resolution. I'm saying that maybe fully automatic weapons should be restricted to a single usage of full auto fire during a turn, or a max of 3 burst fire rounds during a turn... at which point you have reached the cap of rapid fire for your weapon. I don't think that a weapon's ability to fire should be open-ended to the point that it disregards all laws of physics regarding the mechanical feed of a gun. Machine guns don't fire faster if faster people are firing it.

OneTrikPony wrote:
Speed boost are not overpowered. [u]Speed boost is nothing more than a stop-gap [b]Force Mulitplier[/b] that is tactically inferior to actually having more Forces[/u] PC teams NEED force multipliers because they usually have fewer resources to call upon than their opponents. If a team of 4 with 16 Action Phases between them is facing a team of 4 with fewer than 16 Action Phases then the Players can expect to win the contest through [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_%28military_strategist%29#Militar... Boyd[/url] style [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_Loop]OODA Loop[/url] Superiority. In a combat between a team of 4 with 16 Action Phases and a team of 8 with 16 Action Phases the characters can expect to to get Resleeved at some point in the future because they should loose due to envelopment, maneuver combat, and the simple fact that the opposing force has more Durability points, and can take more Wounds. I honestly don't understand why people complain about the fact that force mulitpliers will decide combat.

Because they [i]will[/i] decide combat. Turn advantage is actually far more effective than a number advantage, because it combines the tactical benefits of whatever superior position you happen to be capable of moving yourself into with all the benefits of moving singular battle units four times as often. You are correct that it is inferior to having more units on the field Just to check your theory, I went through the entirety of Glory to see just how big a threat the team was looking at going against. All in all, the encounter consisted of 14 potential opponents (discounting the stationary queen and traps), with at most 4-5 being encountered in any given room (14 only being possible if the team is detected and cornered... what should be a failure scenario). In accordance with your theory, this encounter is designed for a team of 4 to not need any stealth at all if they have a speed of 4 (16 turns versus 14 turns). The largest single-room encounter is designed to be a breeze (4-5 turns for enemies versus 12-16 turns for players), and all other encounters are designed to be non-efforts (1-2 per room). I'd like to think that this is intended to be a gauge by which most released adventures are set, but according to you this was designed as an easy adventure. What makes your claim more baffling is that only two morphs among the sample PCs of the quickstart have any speed increase (up to speed 2). Of the sample characters of the core book, only 5 of them have any speed increase, only one of which goes as high as 3 (infomorph). If your theory is sound and characters require a speed of 3-4 to be worthwhile characters, why wouldn't the designers of the game make sample characters that are at least feasibly playable? To me, your claim is further proof that speed modifiers are broken... you said that players NEED them to function. The very fact that the game designers provided sample characters that don't have high speed capabilities means either one of two things... either they are playing their own game wrong because they failed to adequately supply those sample characters with a speed increase that they NEED to function, or you are playing the game wrong assuming that the speed increase is suppose to be necessary, and this is virtually proof present that the extreme advantage it applies needs to be addressed.

OneTrikPony wrote:
I hope that these Jovians didn't forgo speed increases at the discretion of the GM. Note that the Jovian spy (EP sample character) has a speed of 2 with neurachem, and the Jovian Soldier (NPC file 1: Prime) has a speed of 2 with Reflex boosters. There's nothing in the setting that would keep your Jovian character from having a speed of 4. He can have implants he just can't have medichines.

I never force my players to do any roleplaying that they don't want to. I expect all roleplay to be voluntary. This prevents the newcomers to roleplaying from being intimidated by the fact that they might not know how to portray a character at the table. That said, these were both longtime players who decided that they wished to play very devout bioconservatives, which refused to get any implants unless it was necessary (due to injury or illness). The game mechanics as present punished them for it.

—

Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Wed, 2011-03-09 17:09

#15

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Re: Eliminating Speed in combat

Huh??? You're bothered that most published NPC's don't have their Speed Stat maxed. You've noticed that most of the sample characters in the book don't have their Speed Stat maxed. I have no idea what you're trying to say about the Glory Adventure except you assume that a team of 4 will have their speed stat maxed even though you've noticed that most characters don't. You also completly ignored the fact that the characters in that adventure have to: A. Start the adventure on Casa Arturo (which is not recommended) B. Farcast out to Casa Arturo and rent morps. In which case How are they going to AFFORD +3 speed? Glory is a balanced but extremely dangerous adventure even though the opponents are stupid by design and have no recourse to reinforcements. Which side are you on, or are you just going in circles?

Decivre wrote:
your claim is further proof that speed modifiers are broken... you said that players NEED them to function.

No. That's not what I said and it's a little annoying to be misquoted. For the record; [b]It's not MY claim that "baffles" you.[/b] I said players need force multipliers. Speed increase is one type, A Burst Fire or Full Auto Weapon is another, Spending a Favor to call in someone to fight with you would be another (aquire services p 290) Using Bots and drones would be another. Those last two are lots cheaper Force Multipliers than boosting a character's speed up to 4. Do you have a problem with them also? Finally; Sounds like your players were pissed because they wanted to play Extreme bioconservatives who beat up on people who accept the technological advantages that are available. Surprise! It aint gonna happen without LOTS of role play, planning, and groundwork. Why should the rules conflict with the setting to to make a fight fair between a well equipped combatant and one who is not?

—

Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Wed, 2011-03-09 17:48

#16

Decivre

Re: Eliminating Speed in combat

OneTrikPony wrote:
No. That's not what I said and it's a little annoying to be misquoted. For the record; [b]It's not MY claim that "baffles" you.[/b] I said players need force multipliers. Speed increase is one type, A Burst Fire or Full Auto Weapon is another, Spending a Favor to call in someone to fight with you would be another (aquire services p 290) Using Bots and drones would be another. Those last two are lots cheaper Force Multipliers than boosting a character's speed up to 4. Do you have a problem with them also?

Not really, because they rarely (if ever) interact with one another in ways that exponentially increases the effects of others. Burst fire is not the equivalent to firing 3 rounds, nor is full auto the equivalent of 10 rounds. Outside of forking, bots and drones are not the equivalent of extra fully-skilled soldiers. However, more speed is exactly equivalent to more turns. This directly increases [i]all other effects tied to it[/i]. Fully automatic fire is multiplied by however high your speed score is, effectively multiplying your average damage by the same amount. For all purposes, speed multiplies your every single effort, outside of the few mechanics unaffected by your character's speed (movement and task actions being the only ones to come to mind). It even has the further disgusting effect of multiplying all other action enhancements... a character with bonus mental actions and speed-enhancements get extra mental actions [i]every phase[/i]. It's a decidedly better advantage than simply adding more bots and bullets to the equation And before you say that I'm only picking on speed mechanics, I do feel that the extra hands mechanics do have the same potential for breaking the game. At least in that case, however, there are off-hand penalties which must be mitigated in order to reach ludicrous levels of damage, and the number of actual actions that the character has access to isn't increased (he has to dedicate all his or her hands to one task). Speed enhancements carry pure benefits without any potential downside.

Decivre wrote:
Finally; Sounds like your players were pissed because they wanted to play Extreme bioconservatives who beat up on people who accept the technological advantages that are available. Surprise! It aint gonna happen without LOTS of role play, planning, and groundwork. Why should the rules conflict with the setting to to make a fight fair between a well equipped combatant and one who is not?

I never asked for the setting to conflict or anything of that sort, but there should certainly be better options for those who decide to avoid certain choices. Hell, I think the whole problem with those two players could have been completely avoided if there were a speed-enhancing exoskeleton, or a number of other options regarding speed increases. Instead, players are confined to two different surgical modifications, a sleight, a drug, and an infomorph sleeve. On the other hand, your options are vast if you're going for burst fire, full auto, bots, drones, and nearly every other thing you [i]claim[/i] to be just as effective as speed increases. The game definitely needs some mechanic to differentiate between characters capable of different physical paces, I just don't think that the currently existing speed mechanic suffices. There has to be a better way to do it than "you get more of everything every turn". On the other hand, I find it hypocritically ironic that you should bring up the idea that mechanics shouldn't conflict with the setting, considering that my original point in this thread was that [b]speed increases shouldn't magically make your gun fire faster[/b].

—

Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Wed, 2011-03-09 18:57

#17

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Re: Eliminating Speed in combat

Decivre wrote:
However, more speed is exactly equivalent to more turns.

Perhaps we should keep this discussion constrained to Eclipse Phase terminology and avoid slipping into D20ese. I don't mean to quible but I can only understand what you're saying if make the assumption that, by 'Turns' you mean Complex Actions. In which case; I agree.

Decivre wrote:
This directly increases all other effects tied to it.

And the things that are not tied to it are unimportant? It doesn't increase your Durability, Ammo Capacity, Range, Fire Coordination. It also leaves you in a situation where you can be targeted twice per Action with no modifiers, or hit with a single area effect weapon.

Decivre wrote:
a character with bonus mental actions and speed-enhancements get extra mental actions every phase. It's a decidedly better advantage than simply adding more bots and bullets to the equation

Sorry I don't know what you're talking about. You can take 1 Complex Action per Action Phase. That could be a Mental Action OR a Physical Action. The maximum number of Action Phases in a Combat turn is 4. Perhaps you're complaining about Free and Quick Actions? I'm unaware of any of the lower order actions that can be used offensively. "simply adding more Bots" is an awesome advantage. It adds targets your opponent has to aquire and shoot individually, It increases the aggregate Durability rating and Wounds of your team. Each bot has a speed of 3 when you're just commanding it or you can remote pilot if you need to and the bot acts on your Initiative. (Which works SWEET if you have mental Speed increases :D )

Decivre wrote:
I do feel that the extra hands mechanics do have the same potential for breaking the game.

Are you the guy that had the 16 shot octomorph player who was rapeing the multiple firearms and Smart ammo rules? I agree with you.

Decivre wrote:
Instead, players are confined to two different surgical modifications, a sleight, a drug, and an infomorph sleeve.

And then there's at least two options for bosted speed for Mental only Complex Actions. So, Yes, there are only a dozen ways to increase your Speed Stat in some manner. What is your complaint here? That if you happen to be Even MORE bioconservative than the average Jovian you're fucked? I'd say that's fair.

Quote:
I find it hypocritically ironic that you should bring up the idea that mechanics shouldn't conflict with the setting, considering that my original point in this thread was that [b]speed increases shouldn't magically make your gun fire faster.[/b]

You just called me a hyporcrite? This is after you misquote me and cherry pick the points to respond to. That's just lame. my argument is not hyprocritical because I [u]absolutely[/u] disagree with you that Speed can in any way be tied to rate of fire and I've fully laid out the argument as to why you are wrong. You're making a choice to interpret the text that way and you're drawing parallels that don't exist. On that score you are the cause of your own frustration and, frankly, you're welcome to it!

—

Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Wed, 2011-03-09 19:45

#18

Decivre

Re: Eliminating Speed in combat

OneTrikPony wrote:
Perhaps we should keep this discussion constrained to Eclipse Phase terminology and avoid slipping into D20ese. I don't mean to quible but I can only understand what you're saying if make the assumption that, by 'Turns' you mean Complex Actions. In which case; I agree.

I said it was exactly equivalent to more turns within the context of standard tabletop games. A speed bonus would be very similar to going multiple times in chess or monopoly, with the base premise that the player is not confined to the standard limitation of actions that constitute a usual "turn". Someone with a speed bonus multiplies the total number of actions they may take.

OneTrikPony wrote:
And the things that are not tied to it are unimportant? It doesn't increase your Durability, Ammo Capacity, Range, Fire Coordination. It also leaves you in a situation where you can be targeted twice per Action with no modifiers, or hit with a single area effect weapon.

To some extent, no. If you break down all math into actions, all things affect you at a divided pace as well. A character with speed 4 takes 1/4th the damage per chance he gets to act compared to someone at speed 1. Fire coordination continues to work so long as all involved have speed bonuses (with the added caveat that it works better, in so much as anyone moving at a multiple of speed should). The only limitation you may have provided was ammo capacity and range, the latter of which really isn't a limitation considering that it influences all players equally (if you are out of range of them, they are out of range for you.

OneTrikPony wrote:
Sorry I don't know what you're talking about. You can take 1 Complex Action per Action Phase. That could be a Mental Action OR a Physical Action. The maximum number of Action Phases in a Combat turn is 4. Perhaps you're complaining about Free and Quick Actions? I'm unaware of any of the lower order actions that can be used offensively. "simply adding more Bots" is an awesome advantage. It adds targets your opponent has to aquire and shoot individually, It increases the aggregate Durability rating and Wounds of your team. Each bot has a speed of 3 when you're just commanding it or you can remote pilot if you need to and the bot acts on your Initiative. (Which works SWEET if you have mental Speed increases :D )

There are a few implants and sleights which add mental and mesh complex actions every action phase. The end result is a disgusting amount of total complex actions, many of which have the potential for crossing over to the physical (I can spend those mental actions using sleights, hacks, or even commanding bots) and amounts to a far bigger threat overall. While I agree that adding more bots is an advantage, it's not a major advantage to the same vein as speed increases. Those bots are limited to an AIs shooting skills (unless, again, forking is involved).

OneTrikPony wrote:
Are you the guy that had the 16 shot octomorph player who was rapeing the multiple firearms and Smart ammo rules? I agree with you.

Sadly, I'd still say that the multiple arms issue mechanically a bit more balanced than speedy characters. Besides the common ammo issue, multiple arms means penalties, action limitations, and target limitations that simply don't exist as badly for fast characters. Someone with even speed 2 can take on two different targets without penalty. That's not to even discuss the ridiculous costs involved with getting ahold of enough weapons to equip such a character. Plus, an octomorph with many arms may be dangerous as crap... but that same octomorph with a speed of 4, that's just nasty....

OneTrikPony wrote:
And then there's at least two options for bosted speed for Mental only Complex Actions. So, Yes, there are only a dozen ways to increase your Speed Stat in some manner. What is your complaint here? That if you happen to be Even MORE bioconservative than the average Jovian you're fucked? I'd say that's fair.

Only a dozen? Try 4, 6 if you count mental action enhancements (which aren't speed increases), 7 if you count the infomorph by itself. That's not "a dozen", that's half that at most. Besides, I wouldn't say that these characters were more bioconservative than the average Jovian. They were actually standard bioconservatives, which are very much against genetic, prosthetic, and cognitive enhancement. I don't know where you pulled the idea of the "average Jovian", considering we don't have much info on the Jovians themselves. What we do know is that the Jovians are a feared military force, but that doesn't translate well into the game's mechanics, when the Jovians being played seem like total pushovers.

OneTrikPony wrote:
You just called me a hyporcrite? This is after you misquote me and cherry pick the points to respond to. That's just lame. my argument is not hyprocritical because I [u]absolutely[/u] disagree with you that Speed can in any way be tied to rate of fire and I've fully laid out the argument as to why you are wrong. You're making a choice to interpret the text that way and you're drawing parallels that don't exist. On that score you are the cause of your own frustration and, frankly, you're welcome to it!

I don't believe I called you a hypocrite. I said that your statement was hypocritical. Had I said your statement was racist, or idiotic, it wouldn't mean I was calling [i]you[/i] a racist, or an idiot. I'm saying it's hypocritical because you can't have it both ways. You can't declare the combat mechanics as abstract to justify a physics discrepancy like weapons that increase in firing speed when held by fast characters, then claim that we shouldn't balance the speed mechanic because that's not how physics works. If the game is abstract, then balancing speed mechanics is completely justified, and one can simply say that the balanced mechanic is an abstraction of a fast character. If the game mechanics are concrete, then being able to fire the same gun at different speeds because you have a faster CNS makes no sense in accordance with physics. It's one or the other, not both. Personally, I'm fine with keeping speed mechanics the way they are. I think they are grossly imbalanced, but no more than fork armies, multi-armed goliaths, or morphs with more armor than god are. Balancing everything out in the game has the potential for taking out what's beautiful about it. However, I still think that the mechanics for full-auto should cater to the fact that a person's weapon does not necessarily fire faster because the person holding it moves faster.

—

Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Wed, 2011-03-09 21:27

#19

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Re: Eliminating Speed in combat

Decivre wrote:
I said it was exactly equivalent to more turns within the context of standard tabletop games. A speed bonus would be very similar to going multiple times in chess or monopoly

Thanks for clearing that up. I understand now that you're insisting on viewing EP as a chess like strategy game with an extremely inflexible rules set and relatively limited number of moves you can make. I guess it can be like chess except you can add players to the board and the bishop has a high Rep score, and the Knight is an uplift who can fly.

Decivre wrote:
A character with speed 4 takes 1/4th the damage per chance he gets to act compared to someone at speed 1. Fire coordination continues to work so long as all involved have speed bonuses (with the added caveat that it works better, in so much as anyone moving at a multiple of speed should). The only limitation you may have provided was ammo capacity and range, the latter of which really isn't a limitation considering that it influences all players equally (if you are out of range of them, they are out of range for you.

Why are you comparing 1 character with an obvious advantage, +Speed, to 1 character without that advantage? YES. If you have [X] Complex Actions it makes you almost [u]but not quite[/u] as capable as [X] characters with a speed of 1. Why do you have an issue with that? You don't need Speed bonuses to do fire coordination with a team mate. Two Speed 1 character's can deploy weapons with different ranges, it gives them tactical flexibility that a single character doesn't have. Also, you keep ignoring the point that, Action-for-Action, multiple Speed 1 characters soak lot's more damage than a single character who can act in multiple action phases. I'm just trying to understand why you're so hung up on this. Is it because a GM has to bring in more of the opponents resources to beat a high powered team? Is it because you don't think that Transhumans in the EP setting ought to have the individual capabilities that they have? Is it because there are multiple ways to gain this advantage and multiple ways to apply it? Or is it because the larger fraction of the Sample characters don't have +Speed? (If it's the latter then you're going to have to accept that the larger fraction of sample characters are not combat characters.)

Quote:
They were actually standard bioconservatives, which are very much against genetic, prosthetic, and cognitive enhancement. I don't know where you pulled the idea of the "average Jovian", considering we don't have much info on the Jovians themselves. What we do know is that the Jovians are a feared military force, but that doesn't translate well into the game's mechanics

I pull my idea of the average Jovian from the Average of the Jovian sample characters which have an average of Speed 2. One of those Samples is the [average] Jovian Soldier who is pretty bad ass with multiple actions and power armor.

Decivre wrote:
You can't declare the combat mechanics as abstract to justify a physics discrepancy like weapons that increase in firing speed when held by fast characters... However, I still think that the mechanics for full-auto should cater to the fact that a person's weapon does not necessarily fire faster because the person holding it moves faster.

Aaaaargh! Ok 1 more try. LOL Fuck Dude, you're making me crazy here! [b]You can't claim that +Speed increases the cyclic rate of a weapon any more than you can claim that declaring suppressive fire changes the cylic rate of the weapon[/b] It's you who's asking to have it both ways. I agree that if (in Real Life) two people hold down the trigger of a full auto weapon for the exact same unit of time something like the same number of bullets will be fired. I understand that to be called the Cyclic rate of a weapon. I understand that the Cyclic rate of different fully automatic weapons (in Real Life) is usually somewhere between 200 rounds per minute and 1200 rounds per minute. Although it is [u]not a rule[/u], for the purpose of argument I'll assume that a Combat Turn is 3 seconds. So, there would be 20 Combat turns in 1 minute of game time. Although it is [u]not my interpretation[/u] and also not a rule, for the purposes of argument I'll even assume that "10 shots" means 10 bullets. Given those [i]assumptions[/i] If a Character with Speed 4 used his 4 Complex Actions to fire a fully automatic weapon 4 times in a combat round then he would have fired 40 shots. This would yield an average cyclic rate for his weapon of 800 rounds per minute. [u]NOTE that physics has not broken.[/u] Why do you have a problem with it? Since we're making assumptions lets assume that all full auto weapons In EP have the same cyclic rate of 800 rounds per minute. Why, then, does a person with speed 1 only fire 10 shots per Combat turn on full auto? Does that mean the cyclic rate of his weapon is 200 rounds per minute? Or does it mean that he's not holding the trigger for 3 whole seconds? Why, then does The Same person with speed 1 fire 20 shots per combat turn on suppressive fire? Does it mean that some how the cyclic rate of his weapon magically changed to 400 rounds per minute? Or does it mean that during his action he held the trigger down for twice as long as he would have in the previous example? You're insisting that if a Speed 4 guy picks up the Speed 1 guy's weapon the cyclic rate changes instead of just accepting that [b]The Full Auto mechanics are [i]not intended[/i] to represent mashing the fucking trigger for a full fucking combat turn.[/b] And you continue to insist after I explained it several times and supplied a simple fix for the full auto rules that the way to fix this physics wrecking "problem" was to modify the whole initiative system. And YOU'RE the one who's "Baffled"??? So congratulations :D you got me to swear in bold. And now I am done with this thread.

—

Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Wed, 2011-03-09 22:33

#20

Decivre

Re: Eliminating Speed in combat

OneTrikPony wrote:
Thanks for clearing that up. I understand now that you're insisting on viewing EP as a chess like strategy game with an extremely inflexible rules set and relatively limited number of moves you can make. I guess it can be like chess except you can add players to the board and the bishop has a high Rep score, and the Knight is an uplift who can fly.

Ah, yes. The old "our game mechanics are different because roleplay" argument. Just because a game involves roleplaying doesn't mean it has to have poorly thought-out rules. One does not preclude the other.

OneTrikPony wrote:
Why are you comparing 1 character with an obvious advantage, +Speed, to 1 character without that advantage? YES. If you have [X] Complex Actions it makes you almost [u]but not quite[/u] as capable as [X] characters with a speed of 1. Why do you have an issue with that? You don't need Speed bonuses to do fire coordination with a team mate. Two Speed 1 character's can deploy weapons with different ranges, it gives them tactical flexibility that a single character doesn't have. Also, you keep ignoring the point that, Action-for-Action, multiple Speed 1 characters soak lot's more damage than a single character who can act in multiple action phases.

So what was the point of all this? That games of Eclipse Phase should sum to a few high speed characters having cheesy action fights against ultra-slow armies of cannon fodder? What about the characters with slower speed? How do we make the game balanced in a way that the fast characters feel like they are having a challenge, while the slower characters feel like they are still contributing? Do you have a logical answer more interesting than "you should be fast"?

OneTrikPony wrote:
I'm just trying to understand why you're so hung up on this. Is it because a GM has to bring in more of the opponents resources to beat a high powered team? Is it because you don't think that Transhumans in the EP setting ought to have the individual capabilities that they have? Is it because there are multiple ways to gain this advantage and multiple ways to apply it? Or is it because the larger fraction of the Sample characters don't have +Speed? (If it's the latter then you're going to have to accept that the larger fraction of sample characters are not combat characters.)

If your logic is correct and most combat characters should have speeds of 3-4, then none of the characters in the core book are combat characters. Even the mercenary only has a speed of 2. The only character with a speed of 3 is supposedly a journalist. But that still doesn't make sense in the context of the game mechanics. Faster speed improves [i]almost every action in the game[/i]. Hackers get huge benefits from higher speeds, but the hacker in the book has no speed bonus. Asyncs get great benefits from having high speeds, but only one of the asyncs in the book has a speed enhancement. The pilots in the book don't get speed boosts either, and they get definite benefits as well. The only characters they gave speed boosts to were a couple of the combat characters and other miscellaneous characters... and yet they only provided a minor speed boost despite the extreme advantage it provides. My problem with the speed mechanic is the vast disparity that exists between those that have speed enhancements and those that don't, the ludicrous methods that must be taken in order to make the game a challenge for characters with high speed, and this odd assumption that speed boosts are mandatory for combat characters to be useful. It's a circle of pointless logic: "high speeds are necessary to be effective because you're going against crazy odds" "the only way to challenge a high speed character is to put them against crazy odds". If one justifies the other, then neither has a justification; there shouldn't be a need for Sentinels to be placed in a 300 scenario every combat encounter, and there shouldn't be a need to have crazy high speeds to be of any use.

OneTrikPony wrote:
I pull my idea of the average Jovian from the Average of the Jovian sample characters which have an average of Speed 2. One of those Samples is the [average] Jovian Soldier who is pretty bad ass with multiple actions and power armor.

Can you really call that an average Jovian? The sample character present in the core book is intended to be an [i]exceptional[/i] Jovian (at least exceptional enough to be considered for a position amongst the rank of Firewall sentinels), and even he doesn't have reflex boosters. One NPC writeup in an NPC selection book for GM shortcuts does not constitute a population census for the entire Jovian Republic. It constitutes a premade fodder character for when the GM doesn't want to do writeups for generic people the players run across in their travels.

OneTrikPony wrote:
Aaaaargh! Ok 1 more try. LOL Fuck Dude, you're making me crazy here! [b]You can't claim that +Speed increases the cyclic rate of a weapon any more than you can claim that declaring suppressive fire changes the cylic rate of the weapon[/b] It's you who's asking to have it both ways.

Incorrect. I'm asking that the game mechanics have it one way... a fixed rate of fire for fully automatic weapons that is not adjusted because your character happens to move faster. When the Flash picks up a machine gun, it doesn't fire rounds at light speed. I don't see why characters in Eclipse Phase are missing this basic law of physics that even comic books don't mess up (considering how they screw up every other law of physics). Either the speed mechanics or the rules regarding full auto need to be adjusted for this. I want it one way where guns have an rpm they are built with; you want magic machine guns that can sense when their users have reflex boosts in their system, and go fast afterwards.

OneTrikPony wrote:
I agree that if (in Real Life) two people hold down the trigger of a full auto weapon for the exact same unit of time something like the same number of bullets will be fired. I understand that to be called the Cyclic rate of a weapon. I understand that the Cyclic rate of different fully automatic weapons (in Real Life) is usually somewhere between 200 rounds per minute and 1200 rounds per minute. Although it is [u]not a rule[/u], for the purpose of argument I'll assume that a Combat Turn is 3 seconds. So, there would be 20 Combat turns in 1 minute of game time. Although it is [u]not my interpretation[/u] and also not a rule, for the purposes of argument I'll even assume that "10 shots" means 10 bullets. Given those [i]assumptions[/i] If a Character with Speed 4 used his 4 Complex Actions to fire a fully automatic weapon 4 times in a combat round then he would have fired 40 shots. This would yield an average cyclic rate for his weapon of 800 rounds per minute. [u]NOTE that physics has not broken.[/u] Why do you have a problem with it?

Probably because I don't think it should be magically impossible for characters with a speed of 1 to do the same thing. What's your justification, Mr. Abstract? Are the computerized triggers prevented from allowing you to hold them down until you get reflex enhancements? Have all guns been replaced with intelligent organisms that can only fire as fast as their holders can think?

OneTrikPony wrote:
Since we're making assumptions lets assume that all full auto weapons In EP have the same cyclic rate of 800 rounds per minute. Why, then, does a person with speed 1 only fire 10 shots per Combat turn on full auto? Does that mean the cyclic rate of his weapon is 200 rounds per minute? Or does it mean that he's not holding the trigger for 3 whole seconds?

Which again begs the question "why is he not capable of holding the trigger for 3 whole seconds?"

OneTrikPony wrote:
Why, then does The Same person with speed 1 fire 20 shots per combat turn on suppressive fire? Does it mean that some how the cyclic rate of his weapon magically changed to 400 rounds per minute? Or does it mean that during his action he held the trigger down for twice as long as he would have in the previous example?

Apparently, it's because having reflex boosts makes you mentally incapable of managing ammunition as easily as someone moving at half the speed. That or we can go back to your magic machine guns. I can't think of any other justification that makes sense.

OneTrikPony wrote:
You're insisting that if a Speed 4 guy picks up the Speed 1 guy's weapon the cyclic rate changes instead of just accepting that [b]The Full Auto mechanics are [i]not intended[/i] to represent mashing the fucking trigger for a full fucking combat turn.[/b] And you continue to insist after I explained it several times and supplied a simple fix for the full auto rules that the way to fix this physics wrecking "problem" was to modify the whole initiative system. And YOU'RE the one who's "Baffled"???

Really? Last time I checked, my original proposal was to simply limit full-auto fire to "once a turn", and perhaps to limit burst fire to "three times a turn" in order to put a hard cap on how fast a gun can fire in a single round. Maybe even increasing the damage output for both modes to compensate for the fact that they cannot be used as often as a super-fast character firing in semi-auto, potentially balancing out the game for characters with low speeds by giving them a high-damage option that cannot be used over multiple action phases. My other recommendation (much later, when you started to discuss how perfect and infallible the speed mechanic is) was to give fast characters multiple complex actions rather than separate phases, while restricting what they could use them for (for instance, not allowing them to use four actions to magically enhance their weapons). Hell, I never even mentioned the initiative system.

OneTrikPony wrote:
So congratulations :D you got me to swear in bold. And now I am done with this thread.

Your inability to restrain yourself is not my problem.

—

Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Wed, 2011-03-09 23:26

#21

CodeBreaker CodeBreaker's picture

Re: Eliminating Speed in combat

God damn, this is not that difficult. On the iPad, so this answer will be shorter and perhaps terser than I would like. He is not arguing that characters with high speed can magically make guns shoot faster. You insinuating that the way the rules are written at the moment point towards that is retarded as fuck. It is clear as day that, RAW, when firing a weapon FA the bulk of your time is not spent pointing the barrel at the enemy and spraying till the cows come home. If it was, you would be firing a lot more than 10 rounds. It is also clear that, like the entire ruleset, combat is intended to be a fairly narrative affair (if you want to argue that EP is a simulationist game then combat is the least of your worries). It is times like this that I find it helpful to remember that the game was written by at least fairly intelligent people. So from that, and what we know of the system, what can we derive? The majority of the time spent while firing your weapon is done lining up shots, following targets, reacting to whatever it is your target is doing, ect. All a high speed character is capable of doing is spending less time doing all that and more time putting bullets down range. And really, a suggested fix of limiting all weapons to a cyclic rate of fire of 180 or so shots a minute? We can uplift octoposuses to sentience, fly into the Sun and terraform entire planets, but we struggle to make fully automatic weapon capable of reaching a rof greater than a quarter of a modern assault rifle? Now, I will agree that one thing needs to be looked at, and that is suppressive fire. Having it only last a single action phase is silly. (p.s, where in the good gods are all you guys characters getting the resources to have these super combat beasts anyway? My character tends to be lucky to get a morph with a functioning liver, never mind ones with multiple speed boosting implants.)

—

Thu, 2011-03-10 01:32

#22

Decivre

Re: Eliminating Speed in combat

CodeBreaker wrote:
God damn, this is not that difficult. On the iPad, so this answer will be shorter and perhaps terser than I would like. He is not arguing that characters with high speed can magically make guns shoot faster. You insinuating that the way the rules are written at the moment point towards that is retarded as fuck. It is clear as day that, RAW, when firing a weapon FA the bulk of your time is not spent pointing the barrel at the enemy and spraying till the cows come home. If it was, you would be firing a lot more than 10 rounds. It is also clear that, like the entire ruleset, combat is intended to be a fairly narrative affair (if you want to argue that EP is a simulationist game then combat is the least of your worries). It is times like this that I find it helpful to remember that the game was written by at least fairly intelligent people. So from that, and what we know of the system, what can we derive? The majority of the time spent while firing your weapon is done lining up shots, following targets, reacting to whatever it is your target is doing, ect. All a high speed character is capable of doing is spending less time doing all that and more time putting bullets down range.

Which again is the problem; what is it in enhanced reflexes that allows the character to do all those things? Does enhanced reflexes make you super-strong, and thus capable of withstanding the effects of recoil (the primary reason someone would need to let go of the trigger)? And even if we [i]were to assume this[/i], why would it limit the use of full auto fire in such cases when someone has the desire for sustained fire, like anti-vehicular volleys (an anti-vehicle machine gun is mounted, so recoil is not an issue; and you don't let go of the trigger until its destroyed or too far out of your firing angle), or extremely close ranges where recoil is a nonfactor for accuracy (because you can't really miss something at point blank, even when counting recoil). Even if we were to drop the idea that these are magic guns, we still have the bizarre discrepancy that normal people can't keep their guns firing. That's still not right to me.

CodeBreaker wrote:
And really, a suggested fix of limiting all weapons to a cyclic rate of fire of 180 or so shots a minute? We can uplift octoposuses to sentience, fly into the Sun and terraform entire planets, but we struggle to make fully automatic weapon capable of reaching a rof greater than a quarter of a modern assault rifle?

I figured it was a concession of simplicity. I'm willing to suck up the idea that every gun fires 10 rounds in full auto, if it means that we don't have to have separate rules for every gun regarding how much extra damage they do in FA (after all, a gun with a higher rate of fire is damn near guaranteed to do more damage in FA than a slower counterpart). I'm up for changing that, but if we did we'd probably have to come up with some system for discerning the damage bonus based on the rounds fired (kinda like how Shadowrun does 1 recoil penalty, 1 extra damage per bullet, or 1 dodge penalty per bullet... that was a simple system).

CodeBreaker wrote:
Now, I will agree that one thing needs to be looked at, and that is suppressive fire. Having it only last a single action phase is silly.

It's only silly that faster characters tend to be worse at it, wasting more ammo and requiring more actions to get it done.

CodeBreaker wrote:
(p.s, where in the good gods are all you guys characters getting the resources to have these super combat beasts anyway? My character tends to be lucky to get a morph with a functioning liver, never mind ones with multiple speed boosting implants.)

I run three different games (used to be four), and our game shop has a tendency for attracting the occasional power gamer. In my case, I've attracted about 5 of them, and they have coalesced around my "action campaign" (think A-Team done Eclipse Phase style... they operate when discretion is an unlikely option, but political issues prevent the erasure squads from going nukes hot; the social engineers portray them as a terrorist cell). Since the majority of that game is filled with people who like to create munchkin characters anyways, I've somewhat started using them as playtesters, allowing them to use and abuse the system to no ends in order to see how well it handles the stress. Most of my other games don't end up nearly that bad, but it definitely gives me a look at the bad and the good, as well as the chance to test out houserule ideas.

—

Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]