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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LucasC" data-source="post: 6286775" data-attributes="member: 6762606">So as it turns out we inadvertently tested both an older and newer combat system. For our ship battle we were using the last DEFENSE calculation (AGI*2)+10 and for our personal combat we used the new system (AGI+1)*1.75. For this post let’s talk about them as the HIGH DEFENSE ((AGI*2)+10) and LOW DEFENSE ((AGI+1)*1.75) options.The first question we think you should be considering is, “What do you want out of combat?” What we mean by this is, do you want a system that encourages movement and special maneuvers to successfully score a hit on a person or do you want a system that encourages someone to utilize sound tactics to avoid getting shot at.Consider this encounter:[ATTACH]61175[/ATTACH]The Red Circle is the PC ship. It has five smaller vessels firing at it with various modifiers on the attack rolls. The pilots of those ships had what seem to be ‘normal’ dice pools (6 dice).Using the HIGH DEFENSE option the PC ship has a DEFENSE of 21.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The typical roll for one of those pilots will be 6 x 3.5 = 21 (hit)<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">But the PC pilot chose to do Evasive Maneuvers every round of combat lowering the attack roll of every pilot by 2 dice</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The new typical roll is 4 x 3.5 = 14 (far short of a hit, requires exploders) (miss)<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Those firing through asteroids roll only 2 dice for an average of 7 (miss)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Those firing from behind roll 5 dice for an average of 17 (miss)</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The little attacking vessels had a DEFENSE of 19 and the PCs, without any ranks in GUNNERY and after taking a -2 dice penalty from Evasive Maneuvers, rolled 1 or 2 dice for attacks (miss)</li> </ul>What is described there is pretty much exactly what happened every round of this combat. The PC ship was shot at by numerous durog vessels. The attack rolls came up misses almost every time. When they did hit, it was because of the exploding die. The PCs hit even less often because their rolls were even worse.HIGH DEFENSE incented behavior? Use swarm tactics and positioning to gain benefits on attack rolls to successfully hit the target. Now, consider the same fight using the LOW DEFENSE method.  Using the LOW DEFENSE option the PC ship has a DEFENSE of 12.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The typical roll for one of those pilots will be 6 x 3.5 = 21 (hit)<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">But the PC pilot chose to do Evasive Maneuvers every round of combat lowering the attack roll of every pilot by 2 dice</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The new typical roll is 4 x 3.5 = 14 (hit)<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Those firing through asteroids roll only 2 dice for an average of 7 (miss)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Those firing from behind roll 5 dice for an average of 17 (hit)</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The little attacking vessels now have DEFENSE of 9 and the PCs, without any ranks in GUNNERY and after taking a -2 dice penalty from Evasive Maneuvers, rolled 1 or 2 dice for attacks (miss)</li> </ul>This theoretical fight plays out much differently. First, the durog pilots are hitting with almost every attack. The only way to avoid getting shot is to seek out cover anduse evasive maneuvers.The PCs are still missing regularly but they are far more apt to score the occasional hit when they need to get up to 9 on two dice rolled vs 19 on two dice rolled. The former of course is possible, the latter requires exploding dice. Furthermore, if the PCs can find cover and not use evasive maneuvers they can risk taking a few attacks that might miss (avg roll is 14 v 12 so coming up below that's not a horrible gamble).LOW DEFENSE incented behavior? Use battlefield clutter and combat tactics (covering fire) to gain cover for yourself so you don’t get shot.To further illustrate the activity incented by the LOW DEFENSE behavior let’s look at our second encounter of the night.[ATTACH]61176[/ATTACH]In this fight the PCs approached from the jungle. If you see the green scribbled line towards the bottom of that picture, that line represents where they can be and still have cover. This picture was taken in the middle of combat.Notice that every PC is somewhere with cover. Even those that have advanced have done so cautiously. One moved behind the tree trunk of the tree they cut down to break through the electrical fence (the black box on the board) and the second is hiding behind the satellite dish.There was only one round when a PC broke cover.[ATTACH]61177[/ATTACH]He followed that purple line, running for the house that is very hard to see in this picture. No one provided that PC with covering fire and the durog on the roof of the building using Overwatch shot and killed him (well, knocked him unconscious).If the others had given him covering fire, the attack would have missed. They did provide covering fire from that point forward.So combat seems to come down to this:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If you want people to be unafraid of getting hit and stand around in the open shooting at others but really need to use positional effects such as pin-down and crossfire use HIGH DEFENSE.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If you want people to be afraid of getting hit and consider their environment, work together as a unit and help cover each other use LOW DEFENSE.</li> </ul>OK, with all of that said some more things to consider –<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Under LOW DEFENSE rules we feel like cover should give you better protection. Defense numbers are so low that even with the 2 dice knocked off for cover they were often being hit. A 3-dice cover penalty might be just enough to properly incent finding cover.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A side effect of HIGH DEFENSE is that you cannot use combat tricks much because you really need all your dice for successful attack rolls.</li> </ul>SOAKOnce you have the above figured out, you probably need to spend some time on SOAK. It is very easy for new characters to get 10 SOAK. And for those few poor schlubs that don’t start with it, getting up to 10 is not going to be difficult as the armor is not expensive and can probably be scavenged from downed opponents anyhow. My guess is that within a 3-4 sessions a GM is likely going to be shooting at a team with a minimum of 10 SOAK. It’ll go up and get worse from there.A typical gun seems to do between 2 and 4 dice of damage. That translates to between 7 and 14 damage. Most of the guns we’ve seen in play are at the 2 dice range. These don’t typically do any damage. The larger guns might get a point or two through per hit.That means that most combats consist of a lot of shooting, some hits, and very little damage. Until one of two things happen:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Damage dice explode</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Attacks are made with a damage type that ignores the SOAK</li> </ol></blockquote>

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