Autofire Issues in v3.2

[sablewyvern]

No, and if you read my entire post, rather than just the two sentences you quoted, I think you'll see I'm not saying that. As I think I've made pretty clear, I like the basic concept of the resolution mechanic, and I've found it a relatively simple task to modify to the point where I like it. I think it's a great concept with a less than ideal implementation. The rest of the book appears to vary between excellent and promising.

[Supplement Four]

Your comments here and on the MGT forum indicate (and the general tone of your posts) that you're a strong supporter of MGT no matter what flaws are pointed out.

[sablewyvern]

Given that I have yet to be shown flaws I consider significant, or which I can't work around, and that it seems unlikely that at this late date anyone will point out anything both new and serious, yes, I'd say that's probably close to accurate in a literal sense.

As to the spirit of your post, if you feel that you can predict my reaction to any hypothetical, unspecified flaw yet to be discovered ... go ahead, I guess. The only way I could prove otherwise would be to cease supporting the game, so I'm not about to try and prove you wrong on principle or something.

[sablewyvern]

So, quite a few times, people have suggested fixing the Timing/Effect dice based on colour or somesuch. (So, red is always Timing, white always Effect or what-have-you).

Personally, I think that's defeats a large part of the benefit of T/E (which is giving players meaningful decisions to make), and it doesn't do anything to fix tbeard's fundamental problems with T/E.

However, in the case of autofire (and, multiple tasks generally), using this system would eliminate the core of the problem tbeard has raised specifically with respect to autofire.

It doesn't address the fundamental problems tbeard has with T/E, but it does remove the problem whereby a Timing die fixed to the lowest or highest die is increasingly guaranteed to provide a 1 (or a six) as the die-pool increases.

Yep, tbeard, I realise that in your estimation, it's just another tweak to prop up a crippled system. For those of us who see value in T/E, it is a potential fix for this specific issue, however.

[tbeard1999]

Originally Posted by sablewyvern

Yep, tbeard, I realise that in your estimation, it's just another tweak to prop up a crippled system. For those of us who see value in T/E, it is a potential fix for this specific issue, however.

Interestingly enough, I agree that you lose a lot of whatever benefit the system provides when you deprive the player of choosing which die is which.

However, you may have actually found a fix for autofire that doesn't suck.

On an autofire 4 roll, here are the stats:

-2 modifier: 72% chance of missing; .37 average hits (83%/0.17 single shot); Avg Timing Roll 5.3
-1 modifier: 54% chance of missing; .72 average hits (72%/0.28 single); Avg Timing Roll 4.9
0 modifier: 34% chance of missing; 1.26 average hits (58%/0.42 single); Avg Timing Roll 4.5
+1 modifier: 14% chance of missing; 1.88 average hits (42%/0.58 single); Avg Timing Roll 3.7
+2 modifier: 3% chance of missing; 2.36 average hits (28%/0.72 single); Avg Timing Roll 3.6
+3 modifier: <1% chance of missing; 2.67 average hits (17%/0.83 single); Avg Timing Roll 3.5

Seems a bit coarse, but I can't see a fatal flaw in it. You would deprive the player of having any say in how many segments the shot takes. Also, the incredibly annoying timing artifact emerges -- the worse you are, the faster you do it...

Note that this approach will not fix the base system however. It would still skew wildly to the extremes.