Move By Wire question, Maybe now i understand the power of Move By Wire... Options

[Stahlseele]

Nah, as i said, nobody but the inhabitants cares about what happens in the barrens . .

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

Last combat I had, it took 5 minutes in game. It's alright that at least 4 minutes of the combat was just people on both sides pinned down taking pot shots while one of the members of the group was cutting through a wall and the security forces were securing the perimeter and waiting for backup.

But to do that, you have to actually leave combat rounds behind for a bit, which is sort of a disappointment - SR combat can't (and never could) depict drawn out fights.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again: A combat round should be 30 seconds long. At least. Perhaps it might be necessary to keep the short rounds for special sequences, akin to bullet time or the like.

[DamienKnight]

But to do that, you have to actually leave combat rounds behind for a bit, which is sort of a disappointment - SR combat can't (and never could) depict drawn out fights.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again: A combat round should be 30 seconds long. At least. Perhaps it might be necessary to keep the short rounds for special sequences, akin to bullet time or the like.

With enhanced aiming abilities and enhanced speed, fights would be alot quicker than modern fights. I imagine fights like the gunfights in the matrix. Imagine the lobby scene... it lasted about 3 minutes in the movie, but was slow mo... so was probably closer to 12 seconds in real time. Two runners fighting a large HRT team would take maybe 4 rounds at the most to dispatch them
(or be dispatched by them), so its spot on.

I think in modern police gunfights, people on both sides:

1. Dont have smartlinks, so miss alot.
2. Dont have 14+ points of ballistic armor, so they take alot of cover
3. Sacrifice accuracy for cover
4. Dont have enhanced reflexes that make them 4x faster

A 40 second gunfight in modern times would be at most 9 or 10 seconds in SR, considering the above factors.

If you want to draw gunfights out, play characters without 4 init passes, who fight low powered opponents without 4 init passes. Then take prodigious amounts of cover and never spend edge on a shooting test. I think you will have fights that are more comparable to real ones.

But whats the fun of that!? Its the sixth world, lets get crazy on Cram, form fitting body armor and Breakdance gunFu moves!

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

But whats the fun of that!? Its the sixth world, lets get crazy on Cram, form fitting body armor and Breakdance gunFu moves!

Well..... Maybe not the Breakdance Gun-Fu Moves... I mean really, Breakdancing? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

[Dreadlord]

Well..... Maybe not the Breakdance Gun-Fu Moves... I mean really, Breakdancing? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

How demoralizing would it be to be shot by a guy doing the Electric Boogaloo? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rollin.gif)

[DamienKnight]

Well..... Maybe not the Breakdance Gun-Fu Moves... I mean really, Breakdancing? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

Mark Whalberg proved this is the best SR gunfighting style in The Big Hit. Also, it validated that hand of God can be used to completely rewrite a death after the fact, which is why the rule appears in SR. And verified that it indeed is good runner etiquette to discuss masturbatory habits. Oh, and all hacking can really be boiled down to who has the most "Busta's" in their Trace Busta device.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Mark Whalberg proved this is the best SR gunfighting style in The Big Hit. Also, it validated that hand of God can be used to completely rewrite a death after the fact, which is why the rule appears in SR. And verified that it indeed is good runner etiquette to discuss masturbatory habits. Oh, and all hacking can really be boiled down to who has the most "Busta's" in their Trace Busta device.

Heh... Okay, You are now the proud owner of an internet cookie... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

With enhanced aiming abilities and enhanced speed, fights would be alot quicker than modern fights. I imagine fights like the gunfights in the matrix. Imagine the lobby scene... it lasted about 3 minutes in the movie, but was slow mo... so was probably closer to 12 seconds in real time. Two runners fighting a large HRT team would take maybe 4 rounds at the most to dispatch them
(or be dispatched by them), so its spot on.

I think in modern police gunfights, people on both sides:

1. Dont have smartlinks, so miss alot.
2. Dont have 14+ points of ballistic armor, so they take alot of cover
3. Sacrifice accuracy for cover
4. Dont have enhanced reflexes that make them 4x faster

A 40 second gunfight in modern times would be at most 9 or 10 seconds in SR, considering the above factors.

True enough - which is why I just want arbitrarily increase the time these fights take. Not because it makes sense, but for dramatic reasons.

And for the record, a real 40 second gunfight that is actually over in 40 seconds is a really brutal affair. Real "normal" gunfights last several minutes, if not hours, because, as you pointed out correctly, people don't tend to take quite as many risks as shadowrunners.

If you want to draw gunfights out, play characters without 4 init passes, who fight low powered opponents without 4 init passes. Then take prodigious amounts of cover and never spend edge on a shooting test. I think you will have fights that are more comparable to real ones.

But whats the fun of that!? Its the sixth world, lets get crazy on Cram, form fitting body armor and Breakdance gunFu moves!

Adding tedium isn't the way to prove that the current way is better.

What I think should be done is this, and I've posted it before, too:

Increase a combat round to 30 seconds.
Divide by IPs as usually.
Increase scale of combat actions while decreasing accuracy - you don't fire one shot when you declare the Shoot-at-someone action, you actually fire several, but you still only roll once. You might simply just add one die per individual attack (shot or burst), or more generously, per round fired. In special occasions, you might still only shoot once, so you just take more time to aim, and get a few dice for aiming. Maybe there can be up- and downsides to both, ideally represented by a simple mechanic.

Increase time necessary for magic so that you still only cast once per complex action.

Non-combat actions still take the same absolute time they used to take - so that you can actually do a lot MORE non-combat actions while being shot at. For instance, you might now actually pick a lock while under fire. The entire point is to skew the system in favour of non-combat actions - movement, complex manipulations, even talking and actually communicating a strategy instead of doing that out of character. You can still kill the same number of people in the same number of rounds - or more, in fact - but while the gunbunnies are shooting, other characters can do some relevant non-combat stuff. Perhaps come up with interesting use of the environment, which they would never manage in a normal SR fight.

[Mardrax]

Increase time necessary for magic so that you still only cast once per complex action.

You mean your mages don't multi-overcast stunbolt by default? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

You mean your mages don't multi-overcast stunbolt by default? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

Not sure what THEY are thinking.... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

[Irion]

Due to the fact that shadowrun is turn based it comes down to:
You shoot me in the face, I shoot you in the face and repeat.
If you do this in the real world, the fight would be over after a few moments with no survivers (if automated weapons were deployed).
(The ricochet alone would take care of that)

As a matte of fact, you may do the "Staying in cover" and "line of sight stuff" in Shadowrun too.
But you would need very good plans of the environment, so you are able to determin where your character is looking at any given moment.

One easy way to do that is streatching the combat rounds. So the test on firearms does not only mean shooting someone but everything to get a good shot at somebody.
But you would need a hole new set of rules...
Only changing the duration does not sound right. You end up with a runner beeing only able to fire his gun twice in half a minute....

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

The whole point of being wired up is to act so fast that the opposition has no time to react. Kind of defeats the purpose if you stretch the combat rounds to 30 seconds... Along with being a bit unrealistic (yeah, I know), since reaction times are already so low in the real world. What the OP seems to be looking for is less effective combats that tend to take longer. Changing the duration of the Combat rounds only benefits non-combat actions, WHICH SHOULD TAKE MUCH LONGER than those combat actions in the first place. I see no real need for that, honestly.

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

The whole point of being wired up is to act so fast that the opposition has no time to react. Kind of defeats the purpose if you stretch the combat rounds to 30 seconds... Along with being a bit unrealistic (yeah, I know), since reaction times are already so low in the real world. What the OP seems to be looking for is less effective combats that tend to take longer. Changing the duration of the Combat rounds only benefits non-combat actions, WHICH SHOULD TAKE MUCH LONGER than those combat actions in the first place. I see no real need for that, honestly.

That's true. I agree that you would need a totally new mechanic for initiative/IP boosters, to retain their awesomeness.

But seriously, even games without wired combatants usually have combat rounds which are just WAY too short. I mean, why does a medieval fantasy game need 3 second combat rounds, or a high fantasy game 6 second rounds? Seriously? But that's off topic, so...

From personal experience, though, I'll tell you an anecdote which backs up my view:

[ Spoiler ]

When our current group was quite new, we had lots of people with IP boosters, and one without them. And often in situations where the boosted guys were still shooting he would suddenly start saying stuff like : I start looting the bodies. Or: I go back to the car and get X. And he was getting WAY too much time for the fact that each individual action going on was actually taking less than a second.
Now while that may have been a case of serious mis-communication (and in any case, that guy dropped out, later), it's a fact that non-combat characters have no fun during combat, especially in big fights against many opponents - and unfortunately it seems most roleplaying rulesets don't handle fights well against one or a few powerful opponents rather than many weak/intermediate. On the other hand, most systems take WAY too long to resolve such fights, which produces a good deal of GM frustration.

[Irion]

Because you limit the everything on very simple actions!
One shot, one attack, one parade etc.

If you had lets say 30 sec combat turns, you would need to describe in one action how your character acted. Is he just spraying bullets in the direction of the enemey?
Is he waiting for them to reload to get a shot etc.
Etc.


@Brainpiercing7.62mm

and unfortunately it seems most roleplaying rulesets don't handle fights well against one or a few powerful opponents rather than many weak/intermediate.

Sorry, but thats just plain wrong. Fewer oppponents/fewer people shooting is always easyer to handle. The problem is, that most GM have a problem building them up, because the tend to make them to weak or to though. Of course it is much easyer to just send another wave.
But yes of course those fights will be over quite quick. Thats the system working. It is supposed to resolve a situation in few rolls.

If you want them to last longer, the players and the GM have to act acordingly. TAKE FREAKING COVER. Skip a turn in cover. Etc. etc.
I mean what should happen if two guy stand in front of each other and start shooting?

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

Because you limit the everything on very simple actions!
One shot, one attack, one parade etc.

If you had lets say 30 sec combat turns, you would need to describe in one action how your character acted. Is he just spraying bullets in the direction of the enemey?
Is he waiting for them to reload to get a shot etc.
Etc.

Which is perfectly feasable. And I already said you can do more combat actions in a longer turn, just with only one or at least few effects, and generally one roll.

@Brainpiercing7.62mm

Sorry, but thats just plain wrong. Fewer oppponents/fewer people shooting is always easyer to handle. The problem is, that most GM have a problem building them up, because the tend to make them to weak or to though. Of course it is much easyer to just send another wave.
But yes of course those fights will be over quite quick. Thats the system working. It is supposed to resolve a situation in few rolls.

If you want them to last longer, the players and the GM have to act acordingly. TAKE FREAKING COVER. Skip a turn in cover. Etc. etc.
I mean what should happen if two guy stand in front of each other and start shooting?

I've had it so often that GMs build that ONE super-badguy, and they put a lot of effort into it, and then the players knock him out in one turn (or die). And then they come crying for house-rules, because even piss weak characters can nova in fights like that, and suddenly a GM wants to nerf the Warmage. Well, duh.

It's easier to handle, but that's about it. It's not dramatic, it's not fun (both for players or the GM, because there is no diverse tactical challenge, no necessity for various ability usage, etc.), it's just 4-5 guys beating down one guy very quickly, OR that one guy being untouchable. And GMs around me just keep making that mistake. And that's what I mean by "handling such fights poorly". They don't work in D&D, they don't work in SR, nor in any other system I know. Admittedly SR4 is better at this than SR3, because the damage system is less binary. However, you are already forced to make that one big guy either a mage or a vehicle, drone, or spirit. And the lattermost two suffer from the binary issue again: If you get through their immunities, then you have already done so much damage that they can't resist it anymore. An F7 spirit can resist whopping 14P attacks, but almost instantly dies from a 15P attack, because it can only soak 4-5P on average. (Or I might be wrong, and it has 21 dice to soak, but even so...)

A body 4 drone can resist 12P attacks, but is then probably heavily damaged by the 13P attack, because it can soak 5-6P on average.

So you go bigger, and the F8 spirit or the 16 body/16 armour light tank wipes the floor with the PCs. Well... duh.


The problems are always the same:
Balancing
Drama
Speed of resolution (as in, mostly too quickly)
Lack of tactical challenge (Is it my turn? Uh... I shoot the guy. Next.)

Most of these CAN be avoided, I admit I've used some gross over-simplifications, but that requires a lot of insight and possibly preparation - and even that is no guarantee.

As to voluntarily drawing out the fight? Well... you can do that, but that quite often doesn't improve things. In game terms, you need a reason to take cover, because for mechanical reasons it's probably much smarter to knock the enemy out quicker. So, for instance, you might take cover to select a different weapon, change your ammunition, or get a piece of equipment from a container, but during that time, mostly the others are still fighting, and making sure that your use of time might end up inefficient. Unless it's absolutely critical that you have that time of cover, you just wasted it. In reality, not getting killed is a pretty good reason to take cover. In a game, if it's already that binary, then hiding for a bit won't save you, because you haven't done anything to improve your tactical situation.

I firmly believe that for an interesting fight you need several different opponents, who make use of the environment to create an interesting tactical challenge, while not creating huge balance issues. And fights like this just take LONG. And during that time, the 1IP character (who was duly informed before he made his char) sits around for 30 minutes every turn while the others take their actions. And even though he said he was fine with that, he then went and did stupid things because he was bored.

And that's the real issue: You can't make a MEMORABLE boss fight without being either REALLY good at doing that, or making it a long drawn out affair.

But big fights have their own problems, mainly resulting from the tedium of slogging it out with multiple, individually insignifcant opponents. And the middle ground is very narrow - basically few, but indivdually fairly powerful opponents. And you are now stuck in a bad game world.

But with rules that gave these 1IP or otherwise non-combat characters stuff to do while the others fight, things might be better. That's my whole idea.

[Irion]

Ah, I think I understand what it is about now.

The thing is, fight against one single opponent in a game where offance is superior to defance are over quite fast.
There is no way around it.
So yes, if you are looking for a fight lasting according to the rules you need several bad guys. Simply because one side will need to take losses. (Since offence is superior.)

To get the fight team against evil overloard, you need to stay out of combat time and resolve it by dice assisted narration.

[Glyph]

I don't really consider that a weakness of the system. If you want end-of-level boss fights, play a video game. One single opponent usually should get pulverized if he takes on an entire crew of runners by himself.

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

I don't really consider that a weakness of the system. If you want end-of-level boss fights, play a video game. One single opponent usually should get pulverized if he takes on an entire crew of runners by himself.

That's not it, I want manageable memorable fights that don't take forever. Which is something the system doesn't excel at.

[Irion]

@Brainpiercing7.62mm
Those take a lot of skill on part of the GM in any kind of game, because you need to predict what your players are going to do, you need to scale the opposition according to the players and make them hit near death without killing them. That is kind of a stun to pull, if you are not cheating. (Adjusting rolls or values while playing)

[Glyph]

That's not it, I want manageable memorable fights that don't take forever. Which is something the system doesn't excel at.

The problem is, the game tends to create what Dumpshock calls "glass cannons", so combat tends to be quick, lethal, and, if the players are smart enough, very tactically-oriented.

That's another thing about challenge levels - the game expects, and rewards, lateral thinking. In D&D, you kill the guard beast, because that's how you get experience points. In Shadowrun, finding another, less-used entrance that lets you bypass the guard beast altogether is just as good, or better.

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

@Brainpiercing7.62mm
Those take a lot of skill on part of the GM in any kind of game, because you need to predict what your players are going to do, you need to scale the opposition according to the players and make them hit near death without killing them. That is kind of a stun to pull, if you are not cheating. (Adjusting rolls or values while playing)

One would think that it should be possible to use some probabilities...

And then, predicting ability use isn't appropriate, you shouldn't have to think about HOW your players will win, just take into account abilities they have and specifically taylor the numbers.

However, with few bad guys, this is hard to balance, and with many bad guys it will take forever. (And it can also end up with bad guys who are overall too weak, because the strength in numbers card only really happens at about 4:1, with 1 or 2 IP enemies.)

In the last big fight with my group, I put them up against a prime runner team which I decided I wouldn't play quite to their fullest, and a corporate double-cross including one big meanie, the J's bodyguard, and several grunts. Actually it was a three-way, because the corpsec guys were going to always target the winning side.

However, I had underestimated our tech guys's explosives capabilities (detonating a detpack with detcord and a taser for pinpoint and instant targetting), and hence, he basically blew up the other runners in one blast. And the rest was just magicrun, becasue now our mage had no magical opposition left. And while the fight took two whole evenings (about 3 hours each), it wasn't nearly as memorable (from my perspective) as I had hoped - I only managed to seriously injure one of the PCs. I think the players still liked it, but it just overall took too long.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

One would think that it should be possible to use some probabilities...

And then, predicting ability use isn't appropriate, you shouldn't have to think about HOW your players will win, just take into account abilities they have and specifically taylor the numbers.

However, with few bad guys, this is hard to balance, and with many bad guys it will take forever. (And it can also end up with bad guys who are overall too weak, because the strength in numbers card only really happens at about 4:1, with 1 or 2 IP enemies.)

In the last big fight with my group, I put them up against a prime runner team which I decided I wouldn't play quite to their fullest, and a corporate double-cross including one big meanie, the J's bodyguard, and several grunts. Actually it was a three-way, because the corpsec guys were going to always target the winning side.

However, I had underestimated our tech guys's explosives capabilities (detonating a detpack with detcord and a taser for pinpoint and instant targetting), and hence, he basically blew up the other runners in one blast. And the rest was just magicrun, becasue now our mage had no magical opposition left. And while the fight took two whole evenings (about 3 hours each), it wasn't nearly as memorable (from my perspective) as I had hoped - I only managed to seriously injure one of the PCs. I think the players still liked it, but it just overall took too long.

Why are your combats between 12-18(? You mentioned three teams.) People taking 6 hours to complete? For a single encounter? Seems pretty excessive to me. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

Individually every one of us could have saved some time for each IP. Well...

The first evening had some preparations, initial considerations, tactics, etc., and the second evening actually finished off rather early, but still. YES, excessive, but it should be possible to do stuff like that.

[Falanin]

I've found that some force 2-4 possession/inhabitation spirits (bugs, shedim, etc.) backed by a single force 4-7 makes for an interesting "boss fight" Especially since you can tailor the tankiness of the opposition by saying that some of them were posessed corpsec and have armor, or every third one is an orc or a troll.

You can also "cheat" pretty easily to tailor the situation for maximum drama by adjusting the force or the equipment of individual targets (only before they're engaged by the pcs!) based on PC performance vs. the previous targets.

I found that the stacking of armor (even generic armored clothing) and low-moderate ItNW let me get away with using far fewer opponents than I normally would, without going all glass-cannon on the PC's.

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

I've found that some force 2-4 possession/inhabitation spirits (bugs, shedim, etc.) backed by a single force 4-7 makes for an interesting "boss fight" Especially since you can tailor the tankiness of the opposition by saying that some of them were posessed corpsec and have armor, or every third one is an orc or a troll.

You can also "cheat" pretty easily to tailor the situation for maximum drama by adjusting the force or the equipment of individual targets (only before they're engaged by the pcs!) based on PC performance vs. the previous targets.

I found that the stacking of armor (even generic armored clothing) and low-moderate ItNW let me get away with using far fewer opponents than I normally would, without going all glass-cannon on the PC's.

But ovbviously there has to be a point to this. You can't just get insect spirits out of nowhere for every campaign. I would agree that generally it's better to improve defenses rather than putting a glass cannon on the field. And what you are mentioning is already 8 bad guys, which is pretty much the scale we were on.