Re: FT - No initiative simultaneous fire

----- Original Message -----
From: Jaime Tiampo <fugu@spikyfishthing.com>
To: <gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2001 3:56 AM
Subject: 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.
>
> Jaime
>
One way I`ve tried involved simultaineous fire and using innitiative to
decide which side moves first (the loser in initiative), with ships
moving
without writing orders, like battletech. You lose a lot in the chance of
miss orders and guessing where the enemy will move, but it does speed up
the
game immensly. Hell, I`ve even tried a hex based system, with ships able
to
alter there course by 1 hexside facing for a thrust based on their speed
divided by their thrust rating (ie-1 thrust point for a thrust 6 ship to
alter course by 1 hexside at speed upto 6 hex per turn). It ends up as a
totally different game, but was interesting.

BIF
 "yorkshire born,yorkshire bred,
 strong in arms, thick in head"

PS-I said if you dropped the SMR on my LAC, you could increase the speed
to
18, ooopps, I meant 14.