Re: FT - No initiative simultaneous fire

David Griffin wrote:

> The result was a fast moving, fun game that we
> quite enjoyed. It's always seemed artificial to
> me that a ship could wait to see what another ship
> did to a target before deciding to fire on it
> himself. And it always seemed artificial that a
> ship would wait to be destroyed instead of firing
> at the same time it was being fired at. We put
> up with it because it's a game mechanic, but this
> seems easier (as long as you can distinguish
> different people's dice).
> 
> Has anyone done this, and if so, are there any
> drawbacks?

I've played like this before and I don't like it. It lessens the amount
of system checks you roll and it gets rid of battle initiative which I
think is important. We play with the card deck initiative system where
we give each ship a card in a deck and flip them over to see which ships
fires. It make the initiative more random and there's no haggling over
which whip to fire next. 

The reasons I don't like initiativeless systems is that they get rid of
the idea where that some ships will be faster on the draw then others.
It's nice if all the ships can line up and unleash at once but it's not
very realistic. If you're well organised the card drawing system if
pretty fast and hassle free and keeps the feel of better and worse
crews.