Re: FTIII: A Plea to End "Me Too" Firing.

At 06:36 PM 5/26/97 -0500, you wrote:
>	While reading the posts regarding what some of us would like to 
>see in the upcoming Third Edtion of FT, I remembered that there was one

>thing I wanted to see changed.  I have always liked the idea of 
>simultaneouus fire rather than the current system.  The current system 
>leads to"me too" firing which is rather annoying when you think about 
>it.  IMHO all fire from offensive weapons must recorded and executed 
>like movement orders.	It will make the players "think" rather than 
>"react" and plan their tactics instead of just working along the lines
of 
>"Oh, he shot at me, now I can shoot back!"

Well, actually I don't like pre-planned firing. I don't like the idea
that
an unexpected maneuvre renders my ship completely impotent simply
because
the opponent did something unexpected. Conventional systems can track
more
than one target; I don't expect this to change in the far future. In
fact,
the one problem I have with most SF combat stories involving starships
is
that they underestimate the use of high-speed computers so that the
ships
act more like WWII battleships than even Aegis cruisers. I don't want to
lose the chance to fire my ship at all because it can only plot against
one
target. I suppose you could allow targetting of one pre-plotted ship per
fire control, but then you're going to slow the game to a crawl with
pre-plotting. 

I think if your combat is simply "Oh, he shot at me, now I can shoot
back!"
then someone is doing something wrong. I pre-plan, in my head, my combat
for
the turn, modifying it by circumstances. I LIKE the current order of
fire
system because it forces you to THINK. The order that you fire can be
critical. I've won close games because my opponent fired his ships in no
particular order, while I optimized my order of fire. I've had ships one
hull box away from a threshold check firing first with all weapons, and
then
lose all its weapons due to threshold checks when the other guy fired.
And
this was due to the other guy being careless with his choice of firing.
This
can give you a critical edge in a game.

I DO agree that you can't have just plain, old simultaneous fire. That,
IMHO, "dumbs down" the game. At that point, it doesn't matter who fires
first, or at what target. 
Still, I don't like pre-plotted firing, for reasons already mentioned
and
because pre-plotting usually slows the game (I usually hate written
orders
games on sheer principle, but I can live with FT since it isn't that
much of
a burden). Pre-plotted firing could work realistically if there was an
opportunity fire rule that allowed me to fire at the ship at any point
in
the ship's movement. The only way THIS would work is if you went to an
impulse based movement. <Shudder> Now that's a scary thought, unless you
like watching paint dry while you play the game.

Allan Goodall:	agoodall@sympatico.ca 
"You'll want to hear about my new obsession.
 I'm riding high upon a deep depression. 
 I'm only happy when it rains."    - Garbage