FS3

[Thenomain]

@kitteh said in FS3:

@Thenomain It still comes off preachy. At least being told 'hey if you don't like it, don't play' comes off as unnecessarily extreme.

And yet, I didn't. I said you had two unfortunate choices. I don't like staring reality full in the face either, as I've taken option #1 a whole lot of times. Really, having this kind of unfettered access to a game creator who is willing to have these discussions is rare and should be handled better than "I hate this decision."

But I'm pretty sure we're all enjoying the game and don't need to be reminded we can take our balls home.

Then you're reading a different thread than I am, because I've seen people complain without consideration about who they're complaining about far too many times, especially concerning FS3. It happens.

[faraday]

@Thenomain For the record I have no issues with the suggestions @kitteh has made nor the tone of them. This thread has been refreshingly constructive. But I appreciate the support.

[kitteh]

@faraday I think I've made two suggestions at least, the NPC skill and the messages. You said showing the whole roll would be spamy, but what about changing it so its something like

Target X [Narrowly / - / Easily] Evades based on the differential in rolls? That's effectively only adding 1 word of spam (or none sometimes). 'Narrowly' would suggest a lot more that your rolls were close and you had some chance of hitting vs. Easily showing that you were really outclassed? And obviously there'd still be a pretty large degree of uncertainty. Like, I'm perfectly OK with you wanting mystery to the NPCs, but I think it's also the opposite of realistic to have no idea that a vastly superior opponent is vastly superior.

Re Supress: Oh, I thought people were saying that when you had multiple people firing at at a target it was automatically causing some degree of suppression or whatever, outside of the specific action. I've seen the Raptor ECM thing, although I assumed that was Raptor specific.

@Thenomain
Not really? The alternative you gave me is to recode someone elses game, which I obviously don't have the authority to do? So you basically told me to stop complaining or quit. Sorry, other people are having a discussion, and you're not the arbitrator of it. If at any point @faraday get sick of me, she is more than welcome to say so.

I have no idea what your last paragraph means or how it relates to me. I didn't start this thread and only commented in it because I realized it did relate to my character.

[Seraphim73]

@Thenomain Actually, in the version of FS3 before Ares, there was a -delightful- thing called +combat/log. I loved that thing more than I can say. It showed all of the dice rolls behind +combat. Yes, it's great for debugging, but it's also great for balancing weapon stats, and for nerds like myself (and apparently kitteh) who like to see the -why- of something happened, not just -what- happened.

@faraday Oh! I didn't know that Suppression made targets easier for others to hit too. Dang, I'll probably use it more often now.

@kitteh The Suppress action that Raptor ECM does (or people can do instead of attacking with "regular" weapons) adds lots of suppression to your target (based on your roll and their defense), but from what I recall of the system, every ranged attack adds 1 suppression point to the target.

[Thenomain]

@faraday said in FS3:

@Thenomain For the record I have no issues with the suggestions @kitteh has made nor the tone of them. This thread has been refreshingly constructive. But I appreciate the support.

That's fair, but now @kitteh and I are locked in a "I'm offended by your defending yourself" cycle, that strange artifact of the Internet where people don't care to hear what someone is saying about themselves, because you're focused on yourself.

This is me breaking that discussion. Thanks for giving me the leverage.

[ThatGuyThere]

Totally not pertinent to the conversation at hand since dogfightng is still shown as the main form of fighter combat in fiction, I can't read this thread without the voice of Major General Claire Chennault (commander of the Flying Tigers) in my head commenting dog fighting being romantic nonsense and just like yo don't judge an infantryman by his ability to kill the enemy one on one neither should you use that criteria to judge a fighter pilot.

Edited to clean up the word order of the last sentence.

[kitteh]

@Seraphim73 Being able to get the roll feedback manually (so it didn't spam people in general) would be a perfectly great solution, too. It's not so much that I'm a big nerd for the data, but if I'm missing constantly, it might be worth checking just to see that wow, RNGesus really does hate you today vs. getting legit beat by Awesome McRobotpants.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

@kitteh said in FS3:

Re Supress: Oh, I thought people were saying that when you had multiple people firing at at a target it was automatically causing some degree of suppression or whatever, outside of the specific action. I've seen the Raptor ECM thing, although I assumed that was Raptor specific.

Iirc you can suppress with any weapon. In a Viper or with a gun, you'd be adding 'covering' fire probably most ICly (not necessarily trying to hit the thing, but distract it/fire in its general area). Or however you want to pose it. One of the things I like about FS3 is that it's fairly simple in terms of feedback and I can pose what I'm doing with a degree of freedom. If you're expecting it to tell you (or the GM) exactly what to pose, I suspect we just want VERY different things out of our dicerolls.

ETA: Can the GM not grab a +combat/log anymore? That was useful as hell. I'm a fan! It should continue to be a thing!

[Ominous]

@Thenomain said in FS3:

(Last shotgun post, I swear.)

@Ominous said in FS3:

I have issue with the 18 year old world champion, who is also a renowned surgeon, has been admitted to the US Supreme Court bar, is a Colonel in the US Army, and has a starring role in two summer blockbusters, which is also when their fourth album will be released.

I will channel the long lost @HelloRaptor for this:

"Yeah, because you never see anything like that on TV, or in movies or in books."

Back in my own voice: Yeah, I get it and agree with it, but a lot of people like it. That's the thing about the wish fulfillment that is the entertainment industry.

And that's fine. You can have servers with that. There is no reason why every server has to be that way, though. Some of us want a grittier theme.

[Sparks]

@Ominous said in FS3:

@TimmyZ said in FS3:

I think the young prodigy argument is overrated though.

I use age-based expertise arguments all the time as my go-to reason for why I dislike almost all XP systems and prefer it to be age based. My issue isn't young prodigies. If you want to play an 18 year old Olympic world champion, go ahead. I have issue with the 18 year old world champion, who is also a renowned surgeon, has been admitted to the US Supreme Court bar, is a Colonel in the US Army, and has a starring role in two summer blockbusters, which is also when their fourth album will be released.

An 18 yo can be amazingly good at something. A 40 yo can be good at about a dozen things.

This is actually the thing I like best about classic Traveller's chargen system: aside from the fact that you can legitimately die in character generation, it is very tied to age.

The simplified form of how Traveller character generation works is that you make your baseline character, start them at about age 16 or so, and then go (for instance) "I want to be a survey scout exploring uncharted star systems". And you flip to that career in the sourcebook, and make some rolls. Depending on the results of those rolls, you might do really well as a scout (get promoted, find new resources you can use) or you might do only okay, or you might completely wash out and get fired and need to find a new career path. (Or you might die, and start chargen over with a new concept.) Then you advance your age, get some new points to add, and choose your next thing to do for two years. You get skills/resources/hooks as you advance in age, but you also have more and more chances to die along the way.

When you decide "Okay, I'm done, no more career rolls" that's the age -- and backstory -- of your character all nicely set up for you.

Someone who is 22 will not have nearly the skills, resources, or life experience of someone who is 40. But someone who is 40 may also have a lot more enemies than the 22-year-old, or may have been seriously injured along the way and have a replacement limb, or whatever else.

I've always sort of wanted to see a MU* coded to do something like that for character creation. It would almost certainly be wildly unpopular, but I'd love to see how it worked out.

[faraday]

@Three-Eyed-Crow combat/log is still available for everyone. It wasn't in the first version @Seraphim73 graciously field-tested for me, but it's been added since at his recommendation.

@kitteh I can look into adding different evade messages, sure.

I think it's also worth clarifying that there's never really a situation where the PCs are seriously outclassed in random combats. The basic NPC levels are 4/6/8. Even Rookie chars like Callie and Cap are 8's, putting them on par with the toughest NPCs and meaning they hit about half the time.

Now I get that missing half the time can still be frustrating, but I think it's important to keep it in perspective that far more often it's the badguys who are seriously outclassed even against low-powered characters. When PCs miss, it's usually just bad luck. There's no accounting for dice.

@Ominous - Personally I tend to prefer capping younger chars in app review ("yes you can be an olympic gynmast, no you cannot also be an expert at medicine and marksmanship too") rather than giving older characters a carte blanche point bonus, but I understand that everyone has different preferences on that score.

Other random comments to various peoples' points:

• Yes, you can suppress with any weapon. Even melee weapons. There it just represents feints and distractions.
• All ranged attacks add to the target's combat stress, but the specific 'suppress' action adds much more.
• I misspoke earlier. Suppression/stress doesn't make it easier to hit the target. But maybe it should. Will ponder.

[kitteh]

@faraday Ah, I had no idea about that either. When you first mentioned it, it sounded like it might have been intended that people were missing that often vs. those higher skilled ones. If best Cylons = the worst pilots, most of what I've been talking about is pretty much pointless/redundant.

[faraday]

@kitteh I don't think it's pointless. I mean, frustrated is frustrated, regardless of what the numbers say. And there may be situations where the PCs are facing a true Big Bad (the scene on 100 MUSH against Sonja at the dropship battle comes to mind), so those types of situations can come up.

At the end of the day, combat is a balancing act. Too easy and it's not fun. Too hard and it's not fun. Finding the right balance is tricky. It doesn't always work out as intended.

[kitteh]

@faraday Sure. I just mean that a lot of what I was suggesting was off the assumption that it was 'oh, you're fighting something with 4+ more dice than you and you should really know better (except, we can't)', which is quite a bit more different than, 'uh, yeah you can beat up most of them even if you're a rookie and at worst you're evenly matched, so don't stress it too much'

[Seraphim73]

@faraday said in FS3:

@Three-Eyed-Crow combat/log is still available for everyone. It wasn't in the first version @Seraphim73 graciously field-tested for me, but it's been added since at his recommendation.

WOO! I can nerd it up to my heart's content! (I actually love it mostly for exactly the reason @kitteh was getting at earlier, to know if I'm rolling crappily, my opponent is rolling well, or who is outclassed if anyone is).

I misspoke earlier. Suppression/stress doesn't make it easier to hit the target. But maybe it should. Will ponder.

It might complicate matters, but it would be nice to be able to make enemies easier for others to hit. Whether this would be an integral part of suppression (maybe Suppression but not Stress, so only with the Suppress action?) or another action altogether doesn't much matter to me -- I suppose I have a slight preference to it being a separate action, because that allows more options in combat, but it -would- be nice for ECOs be able to help their pilots hit their targets more easily (since that seemed to be the main purpose of Raptors in the miniseries at least -- guiding Vipers to their targets).

[ThatGuyThere]

Not a coder so no idea how hard it would be to implement but I would include a separate action rather then adding making the enemy easier to hit with suppress.
My reason for this is not really a game thing but a brain thing, suppression fire is not done with the intent on harm but rather to keep the enemy's head down usually to facilitate movement or prevent the other guy form moving. Not sure if it is already in use but maybe call the action a feint to make the other guy easier to hit since the purpose of a feint is to set up the later attack.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

@ThatGuyThere
That's how it works now, iirc. ECM suppression (and other kinds of suppression) fucks with the enemy's ability to hit things (I actually don't feel like the Raptors in series acted as spotters for the Vipers shots, but more as sonar/radar because they had more advanced detection systems and could sense things from farther away - once the target was THERE it was up to Lee and Starbuck to hit it - but this is getting into the weeds).

The GM can already add a positive modifier to someone's roll if they're doing something that seems to warrant it (or if something in general is going on that seems to warrant it), and you can take a round to aim (which also adds to your roll). Idk. There's a lot the +combat system is capable of right now, and it's up to the players involved to work cooperatively with the GM to utilize it (and for the GM to be on top of what's going on in action scenes and make appropriate limitations). It doesn't always get used. I'm somebody who usually likes to keep things simple, so I don't fuss to much with it, but the capability of fussing is there.

I also think if someone is doing something dumb-ass IC, they should become easier to hit, just like the enemies should. But I'm mean.

[faraday]

@ThatGuyThere Yeah after mulling it over I'm inclined to agree that stress shouldn't make you easier to hit too.

I can go back and add @Seraphim73's original suggestion of having a combat/assist command that lets you sacrifice your action to help someone else. It's not a big deal to add, I just hadn't done so because I figured it wouldn't come up very often. And here's why...

Warning: Grand sweeping generalizations ahead. When I say "nobody" I'm speaking in hyperbole based on observations across hundreds of combats. I'm well aware that there are exceptions. If you're an exception, I'm not talking about you.

People play MU*s for the escapism, and that applies to combat as much as everything. Everyone wants to be the hero. Everyone wants to be the top ace. The system already has lots of mechanical advantages for teamwork, but people hardly ever take advantage of them.

• Nobody uses the suppress action, even though it's far better for your team to suppress three badguys than to shoot one.

• Nobody is willing to sacrifice their chance to shoot to treat or be treated, even though having your wound modifiers cut in half makes you tremendously more effective.

• Nobody is willing to concentrate fire on targets to bring them down quickly, even though that is the fastest way to reduce the amount of damage your team takes.

• Nobody waits for someone else to use treat/rally to get them back into the fight after being knocked out, even though their combat/hero luck point could be put to better use.

• Nobody tries to use fancy tactics or anything to give them an advantage, even though the system has ways to apply modifiers for creative solutions. (as @Three-Eyed-Crow said)

• Nobody uses the 'teams' feature to break themselves up into sub-groups for organization.

I could go on with more examples, but the bottom line is ... I don't believe teamwork is a problem that can be solved mechanically. People have to want to work as a team. When they do, the system supports them.

And hey, there's nothing wrong (ICly or OOCly) with not working as a team either. It's hard to coordinate actions when you've got a dozen people in a swirling combat. I totally get the thrill/satisfaction in solo-ing a badguy - I felt the temptation to chase kill marks on 100 as much as anyone. I'm not blaming anybody for taking the easy road of "see Cylon shoot Cylon"

I'm just honestly not sure what else I can add to the system to encourage teamwork, when so many of the teamwork tools it has are already under-utilized.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

I don't put all the lack of utilization of FS3's features on the want to just be the one to one-shot kill things (though I agree that impulse is sure as hell there). FS3 combat is very easy if you're just doing the basic shoot-until-baddies-fall-down, and it's easy to get into a groove where you're just riding the simplicity (both for efficiency and because - on my part, at least - laziness). Also, I know when I GM'd regularly I could've made more use of negative/positive modifiers to enhance what people were posing. Sometimes I did, a lot of times I didn't, because of the simplicity/laziness. I definitely didn't do enough to nudge players about the options they had.

There was a battle recently on BSU where, because of the sheer size of it, the PCs used the 'teams' to represent different sections, and I liked it a lot. It felt like it made things more organized ICly as well as OOCly, and gave me a better handle on which Viper pilots I should be posing to/how to balance suppressing with my ECO (who was an NPC at that time) and weapon targeting. Was fun! Made me wanna do more stuff like that.

ETA: I think it is on the players to let the GM know if they want to do something extraordinary and call for a Piloting roll or something. Two way street! You're in control of a lot of your own fun. Also, don't whine if you fuck it or don't actually succeed at your awesome thing in a way that would much make difference.

[kitteh]

@faraday I'll resist the 'not me' reply Though as more of a 'not us' version of it, didn't we break up into teams in the last fight on BSGU, assign wingmen, etc?

I think the assist is good. It handles the issue I mentioned where even if you want to 'help' your teammate, you're effectively stealing kills from them (or at least, nulling them out so neither of you can get any). This way there's definite value, as an Ace, to taking some rookie under your wing and having them as your wingman, expecting (or even, gasp, ordering!) them to help you out The noob won't get kills but they're not going to (get many) anyway, statistically.

Re: the 2nd to last thing on your list, I think people do communicate and pose tactics in combat but... there's too many people, too little time, etc, for you to skim through all of that and translate it into bonuses? I mean if you actively do this and we just don't see it, I stand pre-emptively corrected. That aside, the one thing I've rarely seen is a tactical briefing or even an in-flight but pre-combat 'huddle' where there's a specific chance FOR the PCs to come up with tactics. This item doesn't seem one solved by code, so much as GMing/player culture.