Someone asked about what we thought of close combat rules recently.
They are one of the areas I'm not all that comfortable with. It isn't
that I think close combat is too strong or too weak, but I just don't
like the way it feels, rolling a single die. I'm not crazy about having
close assaults separate from firefights, either. Or how two detachments
that want to assault each other won't do it simultaneously, but one will
a chance to assault the other first. It's really a pile of minor
complaints on an area I'm just not very satisfied with. I wonder how
doing close combat and firefights together would work out.
The other area is blast markers. I have a minor nit, in that I still
don't like the variation in removing 1d6-1 blast markers (and I've
suggested rolling 2d6 and removing number equal to lower die). But I
think it would be great if we could come up with a different way for
blast markers to affect fire. For example, using regular firepower so
that AT shots won't be reduced at all. I wish I could see an easy way
for blast markers to affect everything. Similarly for range issues. In
the current system, it is weird that you could get more efficient
shooting your longer range weapons at a further detachment when a enemy
detachment shows up in the range of your shorter range weapons. For
example, you've got 8 fp at 45 cm, 6 at 30, and have 4 blast markers.
Shooting at a detachment 38 cm away gives you 8-4=4 fp. But if enemies
magically show up 22 cm away, you can hit the guys far away with 8 fp
and the near guys at 2. Even if you split the blast markers evenly
(seems reasonable), you'd get 6 fp at the far target and 4 at the near.
If we didn't have the rule that you can only count in-range firepower in
"soaking up" blast markers, we'd have the problem that adding short
range firepower improves the firepower (when under fire) of long range
guys.
Similarly for SHW, I think some of the situations where a titan can use
weapons according to what's in range/fire arc of other weapons.
I'd like to see some sort of proportional affect, and I think it could
improve all/most of these situations. But I can't think of anything
that doesn't make too big a change and/or slow things down.
Sorry, no great solutions. But I think it is interesting rules chat,
anyway.
:-)
andy
--
Andy Skinner
askinner_at_...
Received on Mon Mar 16 1998 - 19:52:04 UTC