Proposal: Alternative Combat Rules
Fails 4-2. Combat needs to not be unwieldy.—DDA Agent Rodlen
Adminned at 23 Feb 2009 15:39:59 UTC
Too tired for flavour text. Let’s just make this combat work nicely.
Replace the first paragraph of Rule 2.1 Skirmishes with the following text:
At any time when there is not currently an active Skirmish, the General may create a Skirmish by posting a story post with [Skirmish] in the title, known as a Skirmish Post. Inside the Skirmish Post the General shall list each of the Enemy Combatants, including their initial Health, Armour and Damage scores. When a Skirmish is created, that Skirmish is active.
Change the text of Rule 2.1.1 Combat to the following:
As a daily action, a Soldier who is a Friendly Combatant of an active Skirmish may combat the Enemy. To do combat, they must select their Weapon (a specific weapon in their holster), then their Number of Shots (an integer between 1 and 6) and their Target (an Enemy Combatant who is not dead). They must then spend their Weapon’s Ammo Rating multiplied by their Number of Shots in Ammo, to fire once as the paragraph below describes.
A Soldier firing rolls XDICEY, where X is their Number of Shots and Y is the Damage Rating of their Weapon. If the roll result is above their Target’s Armour, the Health of the Target is reduced by the roll result.
If the Soldier’s Target is now dead, they may continue firing by reducing their Number of Shots by 1, selecting a new Target (another Enemy Combatant who is not dead), then firing again as the above paragraph describes. Otherwise they complete their combat.
If the Soldier’s Target is not dead after the Soldier has fired at it, the Soldier must roll DICEX, where X is the Damage score of the their Target, and subtract the roll result from their Health. They then complete their combat.
The Soldier completes their combat by posting a comment to the Skirmish post, including their Weapon, Number of Shots, a list of Targets they fired at, the damage (if any) they dealt to each Target, and updated values for the scores (including but not limited to Health), or the dead status, of their Targets, if any.
Example combat completion report (Battle Droids are 5 Health, 3 Armour):
Weapon: MP5SMG
Number of Shots: 4
Targets:
- Battle Droid, dealt 9 damage, Dead
- Battle Droid, dealt 7 damage, Dead
- Battle Droid, dealt 4 damage, 1 health remainingAn Enemy Combatant is dead if its Health is 0 or below. If all Enemy Combatants for a particular Skirmish are dead, then the Skirmish ceases to be active, and is said to have ended.
Checklist: Firing is no longer time-unlimited (it is a daily action). Combat includes an extra choice, Number of Shots, that significantly alters the effectiveness of weapons - oldiers who fire many shots with a high-power weapon can almost guarantee avoiding retaliatory fire, for example, at the cost of enormous ammo. Less individually-commented shots means less comment-spam and less breaking-the-blog. Enemies can have Armour that makes them resistant to low-powered weapons like the Service Revolver (but the revolver remains a handy finishing tool or minion-killing device).
Wakukee: