Re: [GZG] DSIII

[John K Lerchey <lerchey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Grant!

Comments embedded...

John K. Lerchey
Assistant Director for Incident Response
Information Security Office
Carnegie Mellon University

On Thu, 2 Mar 2006, Grant A. Ladue wrote:

>  John,
>
>    No problem.  It is entirely possible that my perception was off because it
>  was only a single scenario and we didn't see some of the underlying
>  elements.  It seemed to me that my K'hif (sp?) were rolling d6's to hit for
>  the green units and d10's for the orange.  I didn't notice a modifier based
>  on FCS.  Was it built in, or were we doing it wrong?

I had it built in on the vehicle sheets.  You might recall (though given 
that it was Sunday morning, you might not) that at short range, the K'hiff 
vehicles got a +2 QD shift.  That was the +2 for having Superior FCS.  The 
Order's Trinity tanks (with BASIC FCS) got +0 at short, -1 at medium, and 
-2 at long.  Their green units don't do so well at any range.

The basic construct is:

QD +FCS, -0 at Close, -1 at Medium, -2 at Long, +/- any modifiers from the 
fire modifiers chart.

It's easier for me to build the FCS bonus and range non-bonuses into the 
sheet so that you don't have to care once you have it ready for play. :)


>    Your "iron sights being obsolete" comment below also reminds me about
>  another thought.  Iron sights really aren't completely obsolete are they?
>  Pretty much any modern direct fire (non-missile) system can still fire in a
>  degraded manner even when its fcs is down.  It seems to me that the
>  "targeting systems down" result for a damaged unit is a bit too damaging.
>  Perhaps the tsd result should remove the fcs bonus and allow the unit to fire
>  at one (perhaps two) less than it's quality die.

That's not a bad idea.  If it's mostly an electronics issue, then it 
should degrade FCS to "Obsolete" (in DS3 terms, that's about late 
WWII-ish).  I'll bring that up as a possibility.  My gut reaction is that 
it might be *easier* to just leave it as is, but it's certainly a neat 
thought.

>    I apologize in advance if all this has been passed around before (and I
>  imagine it has), and I admit that my inexperience with this may invalidate my
>  opinion.  :-)  In any case, I think the firefight issue is the biggest one
>  in terms of making the game playable, especially at conventions.  I think it
>  is important to minimize issues that can cause a player to be basically
>  uninvolved for most of the duration of the game.

No apologies necessary.  I was only pointing out that there has been a lot 
of thought put into it, which you *could* not have know about if you don't 
get regular updates from the DS3 playtesters/designers. :)

We've (a small subset of playtesters that I regularly correspond with) run 
into the question about the firefight stuff causing uninvolved players to 
take naps before, but haven't come with any decisive answer.  For that 
matter, while it *can* be a problem, it generally doesn't present itself 
unless you have at least 3 players per side.  I'm not 100% certain that it 
is a problem that needs to be fixed, but we are aware of it.  I saw the 
same thing happen in a playtest that Indy did last year at a local (to 
him) hobby shop.  3 players on each side, and the guy in the center didn't 
do much of anything the whole game 'cause the action was on the edges.

Certainly stuff to think about. :)

John
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