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

On Mon, 26 May 1997, W. Nitsche wrote:

> 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.  

Yeah... when we used to play Centurion, we got pissed off because turns
took 45 minutes to an hour to finish, in a basic 9-vs-9 game. We thought
the movement system was at fault, so we imposed a time limit to finish 
your move.

It didn't work. But we found out that the thing that really took time
was 
pre-plotting all firing commands, as each side explored the optimal 
combinations before committing to a solution.

So we ditched the plotted fire for a simple simultaneous fire system.
The game ran much faster, and the end results were not noticeably 
different...

As far as FT goes, I vote for a simple simultaneous fire. The system
is built for it. All you have to do is mark a little reminder to do your

threshold checks at the end of the turn. Besides, it even speeds up the 
threshold checks as efveryone can roll theirs at the same time.

The only exception are the point defense systems. They should get to
fire 
before fighters & missiles, for obvious reasons.

>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.  

IMHO, the enemy rolling a miss or poor result for the "final shot"
pretty
much covers that. It's only really important when the enemy has a single
shot weapon system, i.e. he doesn't care what happens to him after he 
gets his shot. 

> 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

Other than the logistics side of it (I don't even know where I could get

numbered poker chips over here, playing cards have to shuffled etc.) I 
like the idea. It could be an optional rule.

Also, you may waste a lot of time pulling numbers for units that are out

of position and clearly unable to fire at anything.

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