RE: [FT] Simultaneous Fire

> In the case of simultaneous fire, both rules are
> abstractions and both have their advocates. I'm
> not implying that either is less realistic. I
> am saying that I find simultaneous fire more
> plausible.

In my mind, I picture the ships firing throughout the turn, some earlier
and
some later, while others fire constantly.
I don't see them all moving through space without firing, then stopping
dead
in their tracks and then firing everything they have all at once.  I
like
the initiative based fire rules as a quick way of representing the
liquid
flow of battle and position without adding the extra time and complexity
of
phased movement and firing.

> I don't know how your email game worked, so I can't
> comment. To me it's pretty broken for someone to
> be able to wait to see if his battleship destroys
> the enemy cruiser before he decides whether to fire
> any of his other ships at it.

But in the flow of battle wouldn't that happen?  Since some ships will
be in
a better position first, I'd hope they would fire when at optimum range
and
then the ships following would fire at their optimum range, a bit later.
Thus if their original target was gone, I'd hope they could move on to a
secondary target.

In PBeM games I have run with simultaneous fire, I've seen a DD with 10
damage points destroyed with 42 points of overkill damage.

> Part of the fun is
> not allocating enough to destroy that cruiser or
> inadvertently allocating massive overkill.

I do understand this, I just personally find the decisions in initiative
based firing more interesting and tactically complex than calculating
average damage per weapon and then allocating it to target ships.
The decision to fire the torpedo DD nose to nose with the CA or the BB
off
to the side when you have to weigh a bunch of possibilities like the DD
might get destroyed if you wait to fire, but it probably won't kill the
CA
while the BB probably would kill the CA and save you any damage the CA
would
dish out but then the DD won't have a decent target and if the DD does
hurt
the CA then the BB can split fire at another target, etc, etc.

> Pretty good, but as I said, just because reality
> is a slippery concept in space combat games doesn't
> mean that some rules don't "feel" more right or more
> likely. This is of course a highly subjective
> concept. Most space games I've played have
> simultaneous fire (tank games too) and I guess I've
> gotten used to it. This sudden asynchronous fire
> feels very wrong to me.

True, but look back on how those systems do movement.  Most that I can
think
of off hand have phased movement and fire or have initiative based
movement.
FT is different in that initiate is in the fire phase instead of
movement.

> FT's second greatest strength is adaptability I think.
> Unfortunately I have yet to experience that since my
> group is, as I said, quite conservative about the
> rules. No-one has introduced a new weapon or new
> defense. I have suggested a few, but I get accused
> of trying to change the game (our group's greatest
> cardinal sin).

My suggestion is to introduce some thing new (possibly something you
found
on the net that has been tested instead of a homebrew item at first) but
let
the other players get to play the new stuff against you using vanilla FT
ships.	If they see you aren't wanting the new gizmos to make you win
but
rather to enrich the game and you are willing to let others field the
flashy
new items, they might come around.

Dean Gundberg

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