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

On Mon, 26 May 1997, <Mark Andrew Siefert> 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!"

I've generally used simultaneous fire in the games I run.  I personally
have always hated the 'you shoot one then I shoot one' approach as it
tends to slow things down while one side decides what's the most optimal
to shoot next.	The problem with both concepts is that there is no
chance
for the lucky strike where you disable the enemy before they get the
chance to fire back which happens in real life.  

The third option is some sort of initiative-based system.  This is often
implimented with dice rolls, but again that nasty record keeping troll
raises it's head.  I'm now considering a 'draw-out-of-a-hat' system with
numbered poker chips representing each ship being drawn with that ship
immediately firing and it's choice of targets.	Of course you have the
problem with luck where one sides may get a run of ships firing, or
maybe
one sides gets the big ships off first which the other guy gets only
frigates, but it should speed things up a bit as well as adding that
saving kill element.  If anyone else here uses some sort of intiative
system, I'd like to hear your opinion of it.

A temporally displaced		Bill Nitsche (bnitsche@u.washington.edu)
	hobbit			Oceanography, University of Washington