Frankly, I think a little LED is pretty fricken hazardous already. In the Finnish Defense Forces, we were warned not to turn NODs on until they were firmly placed over your eyes so that not one bit of light would be reflected off your face and be visible to anyone else. In near-pitch black, the tiniest little LED is bad.

An extremely faint IR-light, for use in complete dark only, might be a good idea. The guys in my group only turn their Eye-Light systems on when the enemy already knows where they are or when it doesn't matter if people know where they are.

Aren't eye-lights polarized anyway?

They'll still be reflected all over the place. You can't spot the source of the eyelights very easily, but you can see what they are looking at, unless every surface is a near-perfect mirror. And if there's smoke or fog in the air, the guy with eye-lights is immediately spotted.

I always thought the LED were for near perfect dark other wise you would just use the ambient light, you wouldn't need another light source.

Yes, but unless you are underground or in a room with no windows, perfect darkenss is quite hard to find. Having any source of light on you it's the equivalent of putting on a hawaian shirt with a target painted on in normal light.

And even in perfect darkness it's a lot better if you can get the enemy to turn on their lights first.

[edit]
Actually I think I'd rule that a shot to a light in the darkness would be counted as a called shot to whatever part of the body is holding the light (called shot to the head for eye-lights for example). The shot would incur in a +4 TN (called shot) but no darkness modifiers and possibly a -1/2 for a contrasting target and then apply all the effects of a called shot.
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I didn't make the device, I just saw it in the catalouge. I believe in the first cybertech book they showed a guy with the eye-lights and it looked like he had car head lights in his head, so I never gave them a second look. I just read the new versions and they sound a lot more appealing.

We use the fudge method with expolsives. If you should be a smear on the street you best bet you will be. That is for the kids who use explosives to much and try to loophole their way around somethig.

Copy that, Frag-O.

If you're not prone and a ways away, kiss your ass goodbye.

We had a guy try doing the 2 meter thing. I had to walk through several apartment buildings to find his weapon foci, which I promptly sold to his Oyabon (been a while i can't remember how to spell that word) for a tidy profit. The oyabon didn't like him much either. I kept his titanium watch that I dug out of a homeless dude standing down the street. We are pretty lenient with the explosive thing but sometimes close is just to close. He, well was way to F***ing close.

You shouldn't exaggerate the effects of undirected explosives either, especially not when they are just sitting on open ground. 2kg of C-12 certainly is a big deal -- after all, the rules would have us believe that is the equivalent of 32kg of Commercial Explosives, and being 2 meters away from that might indeed rip you into chunks.

However, standing 2 meters away from 2kg of Commercial Explosives on open ground probably wouldn't -- you'd be mangled and burned for sure (about Deadly, perhaps a bit of overdamage), but you wouldn't be ripped into pieces.

My players just have never used any explosive charge (apart from grenades, rockets and the like) which weighed less than 10kg, and even that is always C-12. So they've never used an explosive charge that has done less than 36D+4. Being 2 meters away from that wouldn't save you even by canon... Anything more than 3 meters would still spare you from all harm.

We usuallly stick to the rules in 99% percent of the cases, but once in a while you had guys who thougth the more chrome you had the longer you will live no matter how dumb you are. This guy was set up in an ambush buy some triads. He was supposed to pick up something. He had a body guard open the trunk but jack ass decide 5 meters was more then enough to be safe, he thought chrome plus adept equals GOD. I don't remeber the amount of explosives used, but it was alot and of the sort meant to knock down builds. I know a little about explosives and I know C4 is really good at certain things, but he wanted some thing with a real bang. I had the GM use a RDX mixture with a nitro starter. The GM asked for advice on it weeks ahead of time one of the players was a demo expert or we were going out hire one for a run, so I didn't give it a thought. My character tagged along because I knew the soon to be flamed character. I knew there was a gang war going on and I didn't want to get caught in the cross fire so I was in the stuffer shack on the corner filling up on some soy, the symbiotes were aching. I usually tagged along because my character hated his but hid it well, but I was not going to miss his demise for nothing, I knew it was a matter of time, I just had to wait it out.

We have had great dragon shot outs. The character I had at the time had an uncanny ability to roll extremely high for finding gear, so I was the go to guy in the group. Our GM goes with the rolls 99% of the time, because a standing quote in our group is "if it is good for the PC it is good for the NPC" and generally vice versa. That usually keeps a cap on the mayhem and ungodly amounts of weapons to a minimum. We figure if we don't use AV rounds neither will the GM, but we keep a few clips around jsut incase we hit a guy that is tough.

A limited tactical approach is still beneficial -- the concepts still apply, if the exact mechanics don't translate well.

PCs and NPCs should dive for cover at the sound of gunfire, but there are plenty of people who stand around and look for the noise. The long-lived tend to have learned that lesson early.

-Siege

Let's keep in mind that IRL, today, a 40mm HE grenade launched from an M203 or M79 has a kill radius of 5 meters. Those handy little buggers have about 0.033 kg of C-4 in them, and the only metal is the casing of the round. Scale that to C-12 and then multiply the effect by 66 to simulate your 2 kg of C-12.

Welllllll, not exactly. Explosions, like any wave, follow the path of least resistance. In this case, with the ground as an obstacle, straight up and out. Makes a decent size hole and a real big boom, falsh and burn. Yeah, the rules suck for safe distance calculation. 'Nuff said. However, the real question is the destruction of the crane. Since the explosion was not directed by tamping, or shaping, I would be really surpised that it took down a structurally sound crane.

Demolition charges are always directed. Even then, we look for weaknesses in the structure and use physics and gravity to be able to carry enough charge to do the job. For said crane, supported on probably 3 or 4 I-beam, or cylindrical legs, I estimate that it would take about 12 kg (12 pakages) of C-4 or RDX specifically placed and tamped with, at least, wooden backstopping to cut those legs would be necessary.

Apply the conversion from C-4 to C-12 to get the reduction in weight, but one still needs to account for specifically placing the charges. It would take at least a 250 lb (120 kg) bomb, with a close to direct hit to take down that crane with undirected explosives.

There are knockdown rules someplace in the combat section of the main book. Not sure what they say about explosions though.

If you want any of this explosive power stuff to be remotely realistic the rule needs to follow the inverse square law as well. Damage should drop with the square of distance in a fairly open space. That will greatly alleviate the problems of the power being too low nearby or too high far away no matter what reduction per meter you choose with a linear model.

(aside:TIE pilots - either you are very good or you are dead)

Also aside: hehehe... yes...

Anyways ... Maybe I can improve my previous advice ... in less words.

If they don't know you're there, you won't need to fight [yet].

If they can't see you, chances are they can't hit you [easily]. Use cover, smoke, etc. (Try seeing through the smoke in Raven Shield and you'll see what I mean. )

If they can't hit you, you don't have to dodge. [at least, my GM is nice enough to tell us when the shot is an obvious miss ] Modifiers, Modifiers, Modifiers. If your modifiers are less than theirs, chances are you live longer.

IMO: Not getting hit is [usually] better than making the shot. Combat pool is for dodging. Unless you have mad cover *lol*. Or unless you ARE the cover.

-- damn, that probably wasn't any better. Sorry! hehe...

As an aside ... I'd be interested in seeing a game-mechanic, test-scenario supported analysis of whether it's tactically smarter to concentrate fire (reduce the number of attackers sooner) or to spread out the wound penalties to everyone you can? I suspect that overall, concentrating fire is better -- a dead guard can't lob a grenade or call for backup, or such... however, if the enemies are not "elite" (have a low professional rating), they could retreat after getting some wounds.

[ASIDE]Z-95s are the best. I still remember that time I was playing a Z-95 X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter and out-scored the other players who were flying A-Wings and the like. Why? Z-95s are actually good! No, Really! Drop the shield recharge, you're like a TIE interceptor with more armor.[/ASIDE]

On tactics: Those Small unit tactics docs are great... Thanks! I doubt corp guards would be given high explosive grenades and mines for use in the building but I could see NeuroStun grenades being effective as a booby trap. You don't get the first guy but the rest are possibly unconcious, on stun modifiers, or separated.

What do you mean that part of the discussion ended a last year? Fneh.

I wonder: Are there equivalent tactics you could apply to astral combat? (not just astral melee, things like spirit powers and spells too)

See, by the time you take the time to assess the shooter's body language, you've already gambled he's not a good shooter.

And let's face it, even a shooter with a skill of two or three might get lucky.

Although he's only going to score a 9M which body armor can shrug off easily...(I'm still voting for the variable power weapons.)

-Siege

Those were just examples of how you can explain why you can dodge after the guy makes his skill roll.

The dodge test is simply a means of avoiding being hit, a game mechanic if you will. A success on pistol/SMG/etc roll may be a fluke(karma pool), a indication of how much he wants you dead(combat pool), and skill. Dodging simply indicates how much you do not want to be hit, a please-god-make-it-miss roll.

Right, and it makes a certain amount of sense that you would have to decide how much you want to not be hit before you find out whether or not you would have been hit had you not expended the effort.
I personally am going to keep it the way we've been doing it, dodge test declared after attack roll, but I may play a game or two the other way. Makes things more deadly and reduces the out-of-game CP calculation.

~J

Since the entire point is a slight increase in realism, reassessing one's attack options after the declaration of a dodge wouldn't be allowed. It would be more along the lines of a simultaneous declaration. However, within reason, I see no reason that a character should get to know they're being shot at before they decide to dodge. Someone's pointing a gun in my general direction, I've got a few friends with me, I'm going to start dodging before I figure out whether they're aiming at me or Bob over there.

~J

This would I think put a lot on emphasis on acting first, hence initiative and reaction.

Fastest guy to GM: Have the NPCs declare their dodge so that I can shoot the stingiest. And so that my friend who is going next can blow the crap outta them since they have no combat pool left.

As someone who became extremely good at surviving dodgeball in school I can say it works both ways.

However, the one way I could best avoid being hit was to wait until the opponent pulls back, and just starts their forward motion. From that, I could see roughly where they were aiming and quickly make myself "not there." A similar argument could be made for the post-roll dodging... you're waiting long enough to see where the barrel is swinging towards, then moving before the trigger is actually pulled.

One way to make everyone commit to thier actions early without knowledge of what others will do would be to have everyone allocate thier pool dice first thing in a new round. Then whatever dice they have allocated to dodging, melee, damage resist, and ranged attack will be used each time they make such a test. So if you allocate two dice to dodge and get shot at four times you would roll those two dice four times. If nobody shot at you you would never roll the dodge dice. Quite possibly this would not work well without rebalancing a lot of other stuff.

Actually, Rev, that would probably work wonders. It would add a bit more stuff to an already slow combat system, but it would solve many of the problems associated with the SR ranged attack/dodging system. If you wish, you might even make those commitments secret, so you cannot use even that metagaming data in game.

I always have everyone declare wether or not they are dodgeing at the beginning of init. everyone rolls the dice and writes down the results.. anytime they are shot at, you compare vs. the already rolled dodge to see results.

I always figured, that was sort of how it would play out in a real gunbattle, you dodge or not, and how many CP you use to do it was how important dodgeing was to you, once youv'e decided to dodge a particualr way in gun combat, it becomes rather impossible to change your whole body direction in response to the barrels of potentailly many guns...

-Mike R.

Z-95s are supposed to be old-tech fighters, outclassed by TIEs and X-wings.

Granted, I always thought they were kinda slick, but you can kick major drek in anything you can pilot well.

-Siege

One of the problems I have with applying tactics in game is that deciding how 'smart' the opposition should be is going to be a problem. Since most people have not been in that many firefights, or been trained in what to do that deeply 'knowing' what to do and being able to do the right thing in the 1.2 seconds you'll have available to do them in are a bit different. That's why the basic combat training is to get to cover, while it may not be the 'best' option available at the time, it will tend to make you live longer, which will mean that you have more time for though.
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As a sample:

A local gang has gotten too big for its britches, the team is hired to blast them out of existence. Most of the gang is at a party. Three team members armed with carbines or CAWs kick in the front door, and use some simple room clearing tactics (and several grenades). With the speed and coordination of the team, 30 seconds later they are comming out the back door, to be picked up by the getaway vehicle.

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As the GM, what to you expect the gang members to do (except for mostly scream and die?). Very few games seem to convey the 'shock' and 'mental initiative' that can really dominate small, short engagements like that.

With the firepower and coordination available to a good team, a lot of the opposition can be taken out before it's 'tactical brain' can even being to figure out what is going on. Sure, in a longer engagement, the team will be in trouble, but how many fights last that long? (Answer: unsually not more than 1)

That's why gangs are so easy to decimate.

Unfortunately, if you don't kill all the members, they may invest in some forensic mages to find out who was responsible for hitting their brothers and look for some payback.

Not to mention, other gangs may take offense.

Which means they are relatively easy kills initially, but the ramifications are worth considering.

And some of the more aggressive gangs might even figure out things like setting watches or if they have low-end magical suport, watchers or even spirits. If you really want to mess with your players, low-end drone riggers with cobbled bits of drones, but enough to sound the alarm.

Unfortunately, the stray gunshot isn't nearly as dangerous as it might be in SR mechanics.

-Siege

In our last game, one of the PCs offed a Fire Elemental by firing a LAW at a wall when it was moving materialized next to it. On the other side of the concrete building, another PC was slightly rattled by the blast blowing up a 1-meter radius hole in the wall right next to him...

Don't do 180 degree crossfire. It's not fun.