Thank you once again, Cochise!
Boy, this is great - lots of smashing things and tearing things apart!
Alright, let's get into it!
QUOTE (Cochise @ May 23 2015, 04:19 AM)
~hmm~ Let's just say that parts of what you wrote in the OP as well as other comments left me with a different impression. And even in the post that I'm now answering to you are making references to "logical consistency" with regards to a (seemingly) more continuous flow of actions vs. sudden bursts of "explosive" action within the modeled time slots of the Combat Sequence. Personally I'm considering such attempts as something that relates to the overall "realism" of the model.
Yeah, no.
I could show my version for realism - it doesn't look like this.
The points you are thinking are about "realism" are about creating a better
feel that action doesn't just stop, but instead flows in a chaotic whirlwind of combat; that you are moving while others are - to remove the "turn" sensation a bit more.
"The point is to make it feel like the slow guys actually have something to do a bit more, and to create a better feeling of the fast characters moving while other slower characters are in motion, rather than feeling like the slow characters are moving at the same speed as the fast characters; just less often."QUOTE
But we're here for your system .. So let's have a look at the "exact" same situation under your system then and try to set it up in accordance to your initial 7 rules.
Rule No.1 establishes 4 Initiative Passes.
Rule No. 2 forces the guard to at least spend a simple action in the fourth Initiative Pass or wait for the resolution of a complex action he started during an earlier IP until this final IP in the current Combat Turn.
Rule No. 3 establishes that the guard must split his action over the IPs.
Rule No. 4 is followed by the scenario itself: The guard uses his action as two simple actions - One for picking up the walkie-talkie and one for making his distress call
Rule No. 5 to 7 do not apply
2 may be dropped - I'm not sure.
5-7 are the hard part.
2 is convention - to force the actions to spread out over the whole turn so as to make it feel more like they are acting at a slower rate of motion than the faster characters, but since sk8bcn brought up the point, I've been thinking of maybe cutting rule 2 out.
5-7 remain a pickle.
QUOTE
Now the possible "choices" for when our guard is picking up his walkie-Talkie (which he must take during IPs 1 to 3 in order to conform to rule No. 3) are:
During IP 1 after the samurai has started his movement and taken out his cigarettes and lighter. Time frame somewhere in the first 0.75 seconds of the whole Combat Turn. The non-boosted guard still performs his pick up action at the same speeds as the samurai. Surprise rules still apply for the second simple action. By the time we reach the final IP we'll have seen another roughly 1.5 to 2 seconds during which the guard was condemned to "inactivity" before making his final words in yet another "blitz" like action and then being gunned down.
During IP 2 after the samurai has started smoking ... Still a burst action within a time window of 0.75 seconds which leaves us with guard inactivity of about 1 second into the turn and another 1+ seconds before his final burst action and death
During IP 3 after our samurai has taken the gun from the guard. Roughly 2 seconds before he does his burst action of grabbing the walkie-talkie and half a second before speaking and then dying.
Now variant 1 certainly doesn't strike me as much of an improvement over the original situation. And while I'd agree that variants 2 and 3 do provide a slightly better flow, the actual gain still doesn't convince me with regards to the associated complexity. And logically or in terms of realism the whole sequential resolution is still "awkward".
I follow what you're saying, but I'm not sure if I follow every detail exactly as you are thinking of them, so just to make sure we're on the same page.
Is this what you are getting at?
https://sites.google.com/site/myjunkfolders...Comparisons.png?
QUOTE
Melee as a complex action by default poses an additional problem when being "split" as described.
Melee, as a whole, poses problems in itself.
Free attacks from defenders, melee represents a series of punches, feints, kicks, etc... unless it doesn't and you are doing a specific maneuver or called shot and then somehow it equals a very specific singular action in the same compressed time...it keeps going. Melee is a giant ball of mess in SR in general.
QUOTE
Let's take a situation where a "slow" but highly competent character engages in melee during the first IP against a "fast" but less proficient character who created a Combat Turn with 3 Initiative Passes but either didn't attack the "slow" character or failed to harm him. Now assume that the "slow" character is actually the one who wins the melee test. As per your rules the resolution - including damage - will not occur before the final IP => The attacked "fast" character will now have at least 2 and up to 4 additional simple action during which he can act as if unharmed with a rather limited "engaged in melee" modifier. Is that really "more logical" or "more coherent"?
<snip> idea of removing complex actions by Stumps</snip>
Well, that certainly is a drastic change. The problems with that additional change once again goes straight into "balance" territory. First of all, you'd certainly have to get rid of any form of complex action to remove the problems created by combinations of 3,5,6 and 7. And while this could certainly be done I'd expect some serious trouble in general power levels when magicians start slinging combat spells twice as often as simple actions or melee combatants double their number of attacks.
I haven't seen a problem with this yet (in play; I have not built an excel simulator to stress-test the numbers properly).
It takes the knuckleballers (I consider magic users in SR like knuckleball throwers in baseball; back-burner, unpredictable, usually only used as a backup plan though some teams figure out a way to make them the lead, and everyone's constantly worrying about their capability)...anyway, it takes the knuckleballers out of the bullpin and slaps them into a higher rate of play and interaction.
The power up is universal, so neither the players nor the npc's are getting a weighted favor, and magic getting a scale up (so far in personal experience) has only helped more in getting everyone involved and not leaving folks sitting around twiddling thumbs - honestly, a lot of headaches went away by just ignoring complex actions (this change was actually made prior to augmenting the initiative system).
At some point I need to take the time to build the simulator and check this over a hundred passes five times for standard and altered versions in comparison and see what the difference in result comes out to in value.
The more I look at your critiques which all fall into rule 5-7 class of issues, the more I keep coming back to this issue of how we don't bother with complex actions in general (and the more I realize what a corner the designers walked themselves into with Initiative, Magic, and Melee).
QUOTE
I might be wrong, but the Options 2 and 4 do seem to violate rule 2, while Option 1 and 3 show no difference for the "medium" character who has been turned into a "slow" one because of the attack done by "fast".
Yes; it was an error from my part in regards to Option 2 and 4 in the first run through the examples. (I went back and made the correction; sorry about that)
Those 8's should be at the back.
The second time around they are fine, as that was to show if we abandon Rule 2.
1 and 3 don't show any difference to [MEDIUM] because it's [SLOW] that changed, and not [MEDIUM].
I showed all variations so that the consideration of who beats who when is visible; so that meant showing changes that weren't just [MEDIUM]'s changes alone.
QUOTE
...which defacto would make it a "different game".
No; it's still SR.
Just yet another SR House Rules ad-hoc.
There's no wrong in tearing up a system and fiddling with its guts.
SR1 is a different game than SR5, but they share the same overall design motif.
Staying to that motif is what counts (imo, some don't even bother trying to keep in form with SR's motifs or base systems logic).
QUOTE
Yet another aspect that you should consider is this: SR3 combat can be very tedious in its normal action sequence. This is mainly caused by the rather slow resolution mechanisms and the potentially high numbers of actions (particularly when everyone is constantly using simple actions and utilizes free actions as much as possible) but one element that is neglected very often is the fact that it's also the time that it takes to shift from one player/NPC to the next that adds to the overall time consumption. Your system introduces additional shifts between players / NPCs. As a result you're likely to see even more prolonged combat times in addition to the time it takes to recalculate altered initiative values and making new decisions on how the new values are distributed over the IPs.
Not a problem for our groups - I'm sure it might be for others; this has always been one of those issues in the SR community: combat vs non-combat.
Some groups slim combat down to the point where it's only a few die rolls and then move past it.
Others explode it into two or three times the complexity (I've seen some builds for combat which involved easily twice the amount of rolls, hit location rolling if you weren't aiming, splitting the damage meter up across the body parts and tallying the damage to each body part, increased details for sniping, various [and imo, futile] attempts at more combat realism - some going really in depth into firearm calibration in SR, etc...).
The groups I tend to be involved with tend to spend most of the evening in combat (easily 75% or more), and the non-combat time is typically skirting on getting into combat at the drop of a hat if a nail hits the floor.
So while I can easily agree that this could, in count of time taken passing around who's turn it is to do something...I'm not at all sorry about that.
To me, that's like saying that it takes longer to not skip over one of four players in UNO three out of every four rounds.
True, but that also kind of sucks for the fourth player.
I'm not trying to make SR the fastest combat gameplay, so if the overall time of combat gameplay increases in exchange for more people being involved more often during that gameplay...I'm fine with that.
On a downside; it did remove our designated Coffee and Snack Maker since there's not enough spare time to walk away.
Cheers,
Stumps