Re: Re: [FT] Simultaneous Fire

On Mon, 14 May 2001, David Griffin wrote:

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

That's usually the point that gets people to try simultaneous fire. For
me, simultaneous fire takes away some of the fun. It's also implausable
in its own right. Every ship essentially fires at the end of movement,
as though they fired volleys ala musketeers. 

The problem with simultaneous fire is that all ships get to fire their
weapons regardless of the amount of firepower thrown at it. It's the
exact opposite problem than that introduced by the actual rules. Even if
an entire fleet fires at one lone destroyer during the turn, that
destroyer gets to fire this turn, at its full capability.

For me, that's just as implausable as the case you describe, but
simultaneous fire takes away a tactical aspect of the game that I like:
the tough, nailbiting, what-ship-do-I-fire-now,
gosh-I-hope-it-survives-this-volley, combat phase.

Enough people like simultaneous fire, though, that it's probably the
most common house rule. And it does make e-mail games a LOT faster.

I'm not sure what it does to game balance. I suspect that it makes very
small ships with very high initial speeds a much more deadly tactic than
in standard FT. In standard FT, a swarm of high speed frigates and
destroyers with one primary weapon system only get to fire one at a
time. Larger ships, by contrast, can fire up to as many firecons as they
have. There's a limit to the swarm of ships, though, as their opponent
can usually pop a number of them before they get to fire. In contrast,
simultaneous fire still gives the bigger ships their weakness (they can
only target a number of ships equal to their firecons), while the small
ships can all fire unscathed. If they can get their velocities up (and
some players here play with VERY high speeds), I think simultaneous fire
makes small-ship fleets MUCH more attractive.

Of course, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does alter the
play balance. This might be what your player was talking about when he
said it greatly alters the game.

Oh, and simultaneous fire dulls the effects of threshold checks, as the
threshold checks only occur at the end of a turn. I think it would make
certain weapons, such as needle beams, over priced.  

> This sudden asynchronous fire
> feels very wrong to me.

I'll be honest, it took me a little while to get used to it, too. But
the first time I saw a player make a mistake in the order of choosing
his ships to fire, and I was able to capitalize on it (thus out-thinking
him), I was hooked.

> 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). 

I can see both sides of this. I think they should be more open to new
systems and the like. I can also sympathize with them. Balancing the
effect of new weapons is a BIG deal. I've been on the list long enough
to see incredibly unbalanced weapons. This is a big part of what the
playtest list does for new fleet books. It's a lot harder than it
appears. Ask Oerjan. :-)

What you could try is getting them into building custom ships, mixing
and matching weapons from the various races. For the most part, we tried
to balance the point values of the weapons so that they can work in
tandem. A Phalon vapour shroud, for instance, could also be a Traveller
style sandcaster. Maybe they would be more open to that.

Allan Goodall - agoodall@canada.com
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