I picked up FFE005 this weekend at the FLGS (awesome, well worth the wait -- a couple of the plates are dark, but legible enough for me) and was inspired to resume my long on-hiatus (since 1999) reworking of Traveller's combat system, and have a couple of questions (I may have more later).
1) In AHL there's a rule that exploding rounds (HE, HEAP, fusion & plasma guns) bump damage up 1 step (Light Wounds become Serious Wounds and Serious Wounds become death). Striker has the same rule but adds lasers to the list of 'explosive round' weapons. Obviously, this greatly affects the effectiveness of laser weapons, and I'm wondering how others treat this discrepancy: should lasers get this damage bonus or not?
2) In trying to come up with a task (MT-system) for throwing hand grenades, I came up with the crackpot notion of using "Dex, Forward Obs (Unskilled OK)." This has a couple of benefits: 1) it differentiates throwing grenades from just plain "throwing objects for distance," and 2) it allows a situation where Forward Observer skill might actually be useful in a game. My question is: is this justifiable? What sort of expertise does 'Forward Observer skill' actually provide? Any ex-military types able to provide any insight?
3) (not a question, but an observation) I noticed once again while doing this (as I had previously with char-gen, tasks, and experience/improvement) that content-wise MegaTraveller is actually very close to what I am trying to accomplish (consistent integration of AHL and Striker with Traveller's skills/tasks systems) but that the execution is a disaster, and only after comparing the MT rules side-by-side with their CT source-material am I finally able to make sense of them and see what the MT designers/editors actually had in mind.
Particularly juicy example: MT has an extended section on 'Visibility and Spotting' which consists of several paragraphs lifted almost word-for-word from Striker about when spotting is necessary and how to represent unspotted units on the playing surface, but then inexplicably cuts off before giving the tasks that actually tell HOW to spot a concealed unit*! That section always greatly confused me and I felt like I must be missing something, and now I know: I WAS! (Luckily, with Striker as a guideline and my familiarity with the MT task system, I was able come up with a task on my own -- any frustrated MTers who want to see my Spotting tasks, just let me know...).
*technically, there IS a Spotting task under Recon in the skills chapter, but it's a very poorly-designed task: it's Difficult and requires Hunting skill (which almost no characters will have), meaning that 90% or so of the time spotting an enemy unit would be a Formidable task -- and no adjustments at all for targets' distance, size, movement, or activity!
1) In AHL there's a rule that exploding rounds (HE, HEAP, fusion & plasma guns) bump damage up 1 step (Light Wounds become Serious Wounds and Serious Wounds become death). Striker has the same rule but adds lasers to the list of 'explosive round' weapons. Obviously, this greatly affects the effectiveness of laser weapons, and I'm wondering how others treat this discrepancy: should lasers get this damage bonus or not?
2) In trying to come up with a task (MT-system) for throwing hand grenades, I came up with the crackpot notion of using "Dex, Forward Obs (Unskilled OK)." This has a couple of benefits: 1) it differentiates throwing grenades from just plain "throwing objects for distance," and 2) it allows a situation where Forward Observer skill might actually be useful in a game. My question is: is this justifiable? What sort of expertise does 'Forward Observer skill' actually provide? Any ex-military types able to provide any insight?
3) (not a question, but an observation) I noticed once again while doing this (as I had previously with char-gen, tasks, and experience/improvement) that content-wise MegaTraveller is actually very close to what I am trying to accomplish (consistent integration of AHL and Striker with Traveller's skills/tasks systems) but that the execution is a disaster, and only after comparing the MT rules side-by-side with their CT source-material am I finally able to make sense of them and see what the MT designers/editors actually had in mind.
Particularly juicy example: MT has an extended section on 'Visibility and Spotting' which consists of several paragraphs lifted almost word-for-word from Striker about when spotting is necessary and how to represent unspotted units on the playing surface, but then inexplicably cuts off before giving the tasks that actually tell HOW to spot a concealed unit*! That section always greatly confused me and I felt like I must be missing something, and now I know: I WAS! (Luckily, with Striker as a guideline and my familiarity with the MT task system, I was able come up with a task on my own -- any frustrated MTers who want to see my Spotting tasks, just let me know...).
*technically, there IS a Spotting task under Recon in the skills chapter, but it's a very poorly-designed task: it's Difficult and requires Hunting skill (which almost no characters will have), meaning that 90% or so of the time spotting an enemy unit would be a Formidable task -- and no adjustments at all for targets' distance, size, movement, or activity!
