RE: FMA DSII+

HI Roger!

I just recieved your request today. I have sent you an individual reply,

but I will also post it here.

As for the dice system...
To put it mildly the vehicle to vehicle combat in SG2 stinks.
1) All weapons have the same range. 
2) Base Die Roll x Size gives too wide a range of results.
3) If you use the xDice added method, you have to have at least 5 
   sets of the dice for each player.
4) Either multiplying or adding slows down the game and looses the
   wonderful aspect of FMA where what you see on the dice is your
   result. This was the main complaint against chits, that they 
   slowed down the game (the 2nd was what happened when you lost 
   chits).
5) The infantry fire against vehicles is too powerful.

I left the to-hit method the same as in Dirtside II. I only changed
the damage resolution (chit draw).

I needed to represent the power of the weapon and the variable
effectiveness over the given ranges. I prefered to do it on 2 dice
without modifying the result shown on the dice (add or multiply).
DS2 already had 5 sizes for the the weapons, so it was a no brainer
to assign die types to them. The chit validity was a little harder
There are 7 color combinations (All x2, All, Red & Yellow, All /2,
Red, Yellow, or Green) Of these, 2 (Yellow and Green) had the exact
same count and mix of chits, so I combined them. So I was down to 
6 and needed to reduce it to 5. After consideration, I decided that
All/2 was roughly equivilent to Red & Yellow. So now I had the 2 
dice for the attacker. Armor is already divided into 5, so the same
die types that were assigned to weapon size were assigned to the
Armor values.

The result is as quick as any system that I have seen.

---
Brian Bell
bbell1@insight.rr.com
ICQ: 12848051
AIM: Rlyehable
YIM: Rlyehable
The Full Thrust Ship Registry:
http://www.ftsr.org
---


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-gzg-l@lists.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
[mailto:owner-gzg-l@lists.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU]On Behalf Of Roger Books
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2001 17:09
To: gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu
Subject: Re: FMA DSII+

On 24-Sep-01 at 16:59, -MWS- (mshurtleff1@qwest.net) wrote:
> At 04:46 PM 9/24/2001 -0400, Roger Books wrote:
> >Yes, I know, DS is already FMA.  I'm talking about dropping
> >chits and going to a SG style of fire resolution.  Here
> >are the initial ideas, probably paraphrased out of SG with
> >minor mods.
> [snip]
> 
> Brian Bell has already the conversion - here's the URL:
> 
>	   http://www.ftsr.org/ds2/techlib/ds2fma.asp
> 
> I posted a request about a week ago for playtesting feedback on his
set and
>  got no response.  As soon as I get less busy, Lonnie & I are going to
run
> a  few games using Brian's mods and try them out ourselves.

I looked through his mods and, while they look like they will work,
have a different feel than the SG system.  He is attempting to
duplicate the chit draw with dice.  I don't feel that is any more
realistic, and certainly more complicated that the SG method.

It looks to me that with a little effort DS can be given much
of the same "look and feel" of SG without damaging the system.
Brians mods are DS with Dice.  I'm looking for SG in another
scale, much as the playtest of FMA felt like SG in a bit different
scale.

Roger (Never Happy)

-----Original Message-----
From: books@jumpspace.net [mailto:books@jumpspace.net]
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2001 14:30
To: bbell1@insight.rr.com
Subject: FTSR

First, a couple of quick (minor) problems.

On the DSII Vehicle Registry you can't get to the page
with the size 4 vehicles.

The link to Andy Cowells Vehicle Generator is broken.

The thumbnail for FTW-12 doesn't link to a pic on the
DS pics page.

Now, on to the real question.  Why did you try to stick
with the chit->dice roll mechanic instead of using the
SGII mechanics for damage?  It looks to me like the
simplicity of the SGII mechanic far outweighs the
benefits you get from the "realistic" chit draw system.
If you want to differentiate weapons have some roll d10s
instead of d12's for damage as was once discussed on the