On Fri, 3 Mar 2006, Grant A. Ladue wrote:
Yeah, but what kind of cover keeps a blaster from shooting at you from
above? They would have had to break for cover behind a building, and at
infantry movement speed, they'd have been long dead before they reached it.
Well, if you think about it, even entering Close Assault, you're at least
2mu distant, which is 200 meters. You might be marginally "above" them,
but infantry are really really really good at taking cover in small places
(compared to vehicles). Men can lay down, scrunch up, fold, staple and
mutilate. Oh... wait. That's not quite right. ;) But you get the idea.
Even from on the hill where the AA units were initially deployed, those
grav tanks were around a kilometer away from the infantry. No way that
they were high enough to fire down INTO the positions. They weren't
flying. :)
Well we definitely did something wrong there then. :-) Although I could
argue that power blasters don't really need to see the specific infantrymen
to fire away at them. Entombment is plenty good enough.
Perhaps the answer is to have a mechanism for "hopeless" firefights where
the side that can't shoot back can disband its unit and end the firefight
before the other guy can creep up to it. Just a thought off the top of my
head.
Or just keep piling on the fire to force the infantry to accumulate
stress. They'll break eventually. :)
John
:-) Yeah, I get that. I'm just saying that in a convention setting, that
can be an extended period of time where everyone else isn't doing anything.
Minimizing that is a good thing. I know that a lot of it is that we're not
yet really familiar with the new system and therefore don't know how to use it
to avoid this. Still, my first look at it made me feel like putting in a few
things to help limit one or two firefights being the *entire* game would be a
good thing. I'll happily concede the point if repetitive play in a similiar
setting shows that it doesn't come up often enough to be a concern. I'm
concerned though, because I've been to many a convention and the only games
I didn't enjoy were where the scenario setup or the game rules left me unable
to do *anything* for most of the game. For DSIII I'm a bit concerned that the
"shaken" result which forces unit to go to cover may often force one player's
forces entirely to cover. If a long firefight or firefights occur after that,
you may never reach the end of the turn that allows those units to get back
into action. I'm thinking that some mechanism for keeping things flowing to
turn end points is a good thing, especially in the convention type games.
Our game at ECC was ~ 3 to 3.5 hours of play, and the entirety of the game
was 3 firefights in the first turn. We probably had 2 more to go to the end
of the turn (we had 2 more mbt units to ram home). I didn't get a close look
at the other game, but I thought it was similiar. I like how DSIII plays, but
I'm not sure that one turn convention games are a good idea.
I want to make sure that you understand that I'm not being critical of the
game system or how it's been developed. I'm just thinking out loud about
what might be a flow issue in the game. I rather enjoyed the faster movement
speeds and the morale.
grant
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