Just something I thought up while reading this thread. Figured I'd post it for suggestions. Some people aren't happy with the way initiative is handled in combat. Here's my ideas on an simple alternative. Of course, if you're happy with the current system, feel free to ignore this thread.

You can find more of my alternate rule ideas over at my blog.

YACS (Yet Another Combat System)
Change initiative rolls to a standard Reaction (+ Init dice) success test vs. TN4. The result goes into the character's Action pool.
Cap max successes to 12.

Each 3 second turn is broken into 1 second rounds. When and how often you get to act depends on your Action pool:
- Round 1: 5-8 (lightning quick)
- Round 2: 1-4 (mundane)
- Round 3: 9-12 (inhuman)
- If you rolled no successes, you're SOL. Prepare to soak.
All actions in the same round take place simultaneously.

Every possible action takes 1 or more Action Points (AP). Free actions have an AP of 1 (speaking 3 words, changing ammo via smartlink). Most simple actions have an AP of 2 (firing a weapon, certain melee attacks). Complex actions have an AP of 4 (spellcasting, summoning, melee 'powerup' attacks) or greater (autofire, perhaps?).

Your initiative successes count as your AP pool. You can spend no more than 5 AP in any one round. Any unspent AP carry over to the next round, but are lost at the end of the turn.

At the end of the turn, any remaining combatants can buy initiative successes for the next turn at 2 AP each. This increases the likelyhood that they'll be able to act in the first round of the next turn (but doesn't guarantee it).

Surprise/ambush: If one of the parties is undetected at the beginning of combat (i.e, hidden or invisible), the unsuspecting party rolls a perception test. If the test fails, the ambushed party cannot take action against the ambushers in the 1st round. The ambushed party can still take action in the 1st round against any party that didn't surprise them (provided they had a high enough AP).

It seems to make regular initiative enhancers almost useless, unless you count initiative dice as more than one die for the test, but probably not a full 6 for each. If you don't mind the extra rolling, this might work with rolling the initiative dice, then rolling a number of dice equal to your regular style initiative score. I think it will make it far too easy to max out initiative (when healthy) and make injuries even more limiting in combat, but let us know how the testing works out.

Actually I think he meant it to go lime this.
In the first round the inhumanly fast and the lightning quick characters act.
In the second round all characters act.
In the third round only the inhumanly fast characters act. (if thay haven’t spent all there action points yet.

I don’t see it as being any better than the old system.

One question. Why did you limit successes to 12? I would not have set a limit on successes, you can practically only spend 15 action (limit 5 per round in each of 3 rounds) and you may or may not want to allow any extras to role over (at 2 action points for 1 dice) into the next action.

You ether need to make initiative dice worth more than points of reaction or rewrite all the values for initiative improving cyber wear I would start with each initiative dice granting 3 dice to your modified initiative roll and work from thare. (if you don’t do this compare boosted reflexes 3, wired reflexes 1 and 3 levels of reaction enhancers, each gives the exact same improvement)

Another affect will be the effect of wounds on initiative. Under the old system -2 to initiative was significant but not groundbreaking, under your system -2 to the target number for the initiative roll will drop your final initiative to 1/3 of what it would have been (eg a super fast individual with 18 dice would normally expect 12 successes at target 4, say he takes a light wound now he is only expecting 6 successes, add a light stun and it is only 3 successes. Even the fastest characters if reduced to 2 serious wounds will not likely get actions enough to walk around. You also need to decide what if any other modifiers apply to the target number for initiative.

This may be subtle for your game but it dos greatly increase the danger of small wounds (and the usefulness of pain resistance), but you should defiantly consider these implications before using the rule.

Edward

As an alternate option instead of initiative dice just being more dice to roll, what happens if initiative dice count as beneficial modifiers to the initiative test? This would mean that most characters would have a TN of 2 when healthy, and the different degrees of excessive initiative boost would mostly matter when injuries start happening. That way, wired adds a few dice and reduces the TN a little, synaptic just reduces the TN, and MBW does everything with the top two providing an extra time to act at the end if any AP are left.
Also, throw in a minimum number of action points unless your wound modifier outnumbers your reaction dice. This will keep characters acting when they should be able to according to SR3 rules (or almost) but will still retain the catastrophic injury effects from this setup.

Street Sams get no respect I tell you! No respect!