 December 7, 2015 - 12:25am | Oh BROTHER did I get an earful from my prospective players. Neither one overly fond of the extremely abstract damage rules. Three hour debate over whether or not lasers were over-powered or under-powered and why would anyone want to carry one? One of the two is a physics and firearms afficianado and took umbrage at some of the range issues...and things went on from there. Long story short, after much research (including finding the 1000 joules = 1 SEU number online), projectile weapons get a big boost in some areas in terms of capability. I re-worked all the range increments to be somewhat closer to "real life" standards, which drastically cut some weapons down and gave others a nice range boost. Hopefully this will make them happier. Looks like it also will help with the "takes too long to kill someone" issue. We'll see how the playtest goes. |
 December 7, 2015 - 5:47am | Good luck on the reworking the ranges & damage.  Combat debates oh yes they can happen. "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
December 7, 2015 - 9:22am | Actually, I have most of the work done (I think). Being a little OCD, I even worked up extra types of weapons (semi-auto, bolt action, revolvers, etc). I just hope it works. |
 December 7, 2015 - 10:19am | I'm still working on the weapons cards... :( It can me hard work. |
December 7, 2015 - 11:22am | I'll just post the results so you can see what I did, then we can discuss reasoning. Watch the spacing on the chart in case it doesn't column up just right:
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 December 7, 2015 - 4:22pm | Short answer: it's a game. Put into perspective, when playing Monopoly how realistic is it that you can buy the best parcel of land in town for $400? That was pretty far fetched even back when the game was created. |
December 7, 2015 - 5:39pm | True, but when you have players who are big on "getting it right", you either adapt or lose your players. I would have been fine running SF "out of the box" if it were just me. |
December 8, 2015 - 1:00am | As long as they don't whine that the new laser rifles with 100 mile ranges causing 10d10 damage per SEU are going to be the same rifles the bad guys are using to shoot back at them. And if push comes to shove, have them roll up some lv-1 characters in D&D and tackle the meat grinder known as B2's Caves of Chaos. They'll be begging for the far-less-lethal SF game in no time.  |
December 8, 2015 - 1:04am | Heh...true. Actually, I didn't wind up increasing laser damage. I DID slightly increase projectile damage and re-figure the ranges, as you can see above. Mind you, they don't represent the maxiumum distance a propellant charge can throw a round, but rather accurate or relatively accurate shooting ability. Which is what range mods are for anyways, so that worked out nicely... :) |
December 8, 2015 - 1:12am | I made my game more lethal, although it ended up being too lethal at first so I scaled it back a bit. I also added a hit location table with modified damages depending on where the shot(s) land which, if utlizied along with the careful aim modifier, allows for reasonable lethal odds with most ranged weapons. As such my players tended to load up on back-up defensive measures for when their suits/screens were depleted. |
December 8, 2015 - 1:43am | I ran a game where players only had 60 hit points max. Changed all the weapons from d10 to d6. They also engaged mulitple targets. Example: 3 on 1 player has 3 shot. Enemy has 9 shots. Needless to say they learned how to use cover and concealment rather rapidly. And Like shadow Shack, I allowed players aimly bonuses and called shots. |
 December 13, 2015 - 6:32am | I actually kind of streamlined the dice rolls. Instead of rolling multipule dice I tell them to roll 1 and multiply that by the number they were supposed to roll. It works better with games like Rifts where 6d6 is really a random roll. But for the big guns, rather than rolling 10 dice for machine gun fire. Just roll 1 and multiply the result by 10. Damage accumulates quickly then. In every age, in every place, the deeds of men remain the same. |
 December 14, 2015 - 1:08pm | It sounds as if they were arguing about the rules set without having actually played the game first...? In all our years of playing SF, none of us have had many issues with combat. Zeb's Guide threw in a few question marks (i.e. damage of the Ke-5000 per SEU) but at the end of the day we took the system for what it was - and had fun. And still do Yes, we occasionally scratch our heads over some things WRT combat but it doesn't get in the way of our enjoyment.The thing is, if you want a game to be couched in realism you probably shouldn't be playing Star Frontiers. That or you can either thank your lucky stars that you're not playing Aftermath or Living Steel (in which combat is a trial), or instead try the GDW version of 2300AD (in which combat is pretty lethal). |
December 14, 2015 - 4:03pm | Top Secret combat resolution is pretty realistic. Aside from the fact that it takes almost as much time to resolve as 3-5e DnD combat. You can have quick & easy or realistic & drawn out, but you can only pick one set.  |
December 14, 2015 - 4:44pm | One of my prospective players had played the existing rules before. The other is the physics whiz and has actually done his own rules where things like caliber of round actually do affect damage. Neither was happy with the game as is, and since I need players to have a game I had to at least try. Both seem pleased with the above or at least consider it playable, so I count that as a "win" for me. :) |
December 14, 2015 - 5:29pm | You can have quick & easy or realistic & drawn out, but you can only pick one set. Well, maybe not. 1E Twilight:2000's combat system is fast and works well. If anything, it makes players very wary of resorting to combat as it's pretty lethal and gets lethal fast. The only slow point is the vehicle hit location/damage side of things, until you get used to it. But that's lethal too. |
 December 17, 2015 - 3:45pm | You can have quick & easy or realistic & drawn out, but you can only pick one set. Well, maybe not. 1E Twilight:2000's combat system is fast and works well. If anything, it makes players very wary of resorting to combat as it's pretty lethal and gets lethal fast. The only slow point is the vehicle hit location/damage side of things, until you get used to it. But that's lethal too. Amen. v2's pretty hard on the body as well. Wear armor! I didn't find vehicle combat to be that slow, though. |
December 17, 2015 - 10:38pm | I'm not familiar with Twilight 2000 although I was intrigued by the ads back in the day. Lethality can be increased or decreased without slowing the game down, re: you can say a single round does 4d10 damage and a burst does 10d10 divided by up to five targets and it does nothing to slow the system down compared to the canon SF 2d10/5d10 rule. But saying Rifle A does X damage with M range and accuracy adjustment of D with Initiative adjustment of U, Rifle B does Y damage with N range and accuracy adjustment of E with Initiative adjustment of V, and Rifle C does Z damage with O range and accuracy adjustment of F with Initiative adjustment of W is what slows it down, more so with increased combatants...ten guys with ten different guns can take forever to resolve with that system. But hey, at least it's more realistic (aside from the hour+ time it will take to resolve a five second event) That was what I was referring to with my comment of "you can only pick one". And again, I have no idea how that translates to the Twilight 2000 system, but I can't imagine a stat-heavy-per-item modifier system could ever be efficient. My guess is T2K is not such a system. |
December 18, 2015 - 9:26am | Actually, under Top Secret, all guns did the same amount of damage-- you rolled d100 for hit location and d10 for severity, and damage was fixed on a small table for the d10. It was determining the mods for who shot first and whether or not you hit that dragged things down. I ran a pair of TS games last winter, and yeah, it seemed a lot clunkier to my eyes, 30+ years later. On the other hand, there wasn't much after all the hit results were compiled, someon'e usually down and out. T2k v1 was a lot simpler: to hit was entirely character skill, computed at chargen for to-hit % numbers, then halved or doubled for whatever, and that was it. Damage was a common formula, based on range and bullet size, both in the gun's stats. Even those were pretty common across a lot of calibers: most assault rifles were very similar, most pistols similar, and so on. |
December 18, 2015 - 1:16pm | Actually, under Top Secret, all bullets did the same amount of damage
Fixed that for ya. While the bullets all inflicted the same damage, the number you could fire varied from gun to gun so not all guns inflicted the same damage. Some inflicted far more than others despite what reality would suggest. That a .45 Thompson was the "most lethal" in this case (5 shots per round) compared to an M16 or AKM at 2-3 per round is pretty far off. Yes the cyclic rate may be faster on the Tommy gun, but a pistol round can never replace the lethality of a rifle round. Re: how a .22 pistol and a high powered bolt action rifle --- both one shot per round --- inflict the same damage. Despite a clunky and lengthy resolution system, it still failed at realism in that regard. Still, TS combat was quite lethal and smart players learned to avoid it as such. But I can't pin the lethal factor on the extensive clunkiness at attempted realism, it's lethal because of the balance of damage dealt versus damage that can be absorbed...something that is just easily remedied in SF by increasing the damage that weapons can cause versus what is written (re: the average STA:45 character with no armor has a fair chance at surviving a point blank burst from a tripod mounted machine gun). In that regard, the TS system certainly had a lot of room for abreviation while still being able to maintain the same lethal results. But they wanted to aim for realism and as such it complicated everything, so much so that in the end it still managed to lose that realism they so desperately wanted. SF weights heavily on the damage absorbed factor and too light on damage dealt, and to me that is the only factor that makes the SF system unrealistic. T2K sounds to me like the more lethal SF system I propose that simply extends weapon damage while changing nothing else. That a SF laser weapon should "realistically be accurate to at least the planetary horizon" or whatever extreme range is mandated is completely lost to me, as there just isn't a situation where that will ever be necessary in a game that relies on table maps and counters. ;) |
December 18, 2015 - 1:19pm | duplicate post removed |
December 18, 2015 - 2:40pm | Well, you have to consider that it isn't just the max range, but the relative range catagories you have to consider. Not only do lasers have a far longer max range, but each catagory is increased as well. Lasers act almost as if they were "sighted" simply by that factor. |
December 18, 2015 - 3:08pm | Realistically a laser shouldn't even have range categories...their discharge is not affected by weather conditions let aone gravity. The beam is concentrated light and until it reaches a point where that light begins to difuse, it is effective. Even so I would argue that a laser simply causes less damage at such range, rather than saying it is less accurate. |
 December 18, 2015 - 6:36pm | What about range representing the difficulty of holding the weapon aim on target? This gets very hard even though a laser doesn't have kick like projectile weapons. When we setup lasers on an optics bench we trigger them remotely to avoid bumping them and that is at what would be short and medium ranges. Hand holding long and extreme ranges would compound that. -iggy |
December 19, 2015 - 2:32am | Are those bench mounted lasers being aimed at a precise target the size of a dime or the vague center of mass of a six foot target? I would submit that sight limitations would have more affect on hitting the latter target than actual range modifiers. In other words, the right scope would pretty much nullify said modifiers. Think Barrett .50 grade scope that doesn't need to be resistant to excessive kick with no need for compensation of distance or crosswinds...if it works for the Barret at ranges measured in miles it will work even better on a laser. As a result any modifiers for range would be minimal. Shooting the same extreme distances with iron sites, modifiers ramp up accordingly. |
