Thinking about changing the way fire control works

[Naaman]

So...

One of the things that annoys me about D6 is that success is based on the volume of dice you roll. Having a single mechanic to run the entire game is nice and simple, but I'm thinking about changing the way some "bonuses" work so that they add a little more depth to the game.

Fire control, for example. Instead of just adding dice to the skill, I'm thinking that fire control will allow the player to re-roll the number of dice indicated by fire control, so that a fire control rating of 2D will mean that the player rolls the appropriate skill, and may re-roll any of the dice, up to the amount indicated by the fire control. This of course means that fire control cannot be pip based; it can only be whole dice. On the other hand, there could be pips which don't do anything, but bring you that much closer to the next die when modifying your ship's armament, so that it's quicker/cheaper to bring a 2D+2 fire control up to 3D than it is to bring 2D up to 3D.

Here's an example:

Commander Devonae is flying her X-Wing and fires her laser cannons at an enemy ship. Her starship gunnery skill is 6D+1. The fire control is 3D. She rolls 6D+1 rolling 1,2,2,4,5,6 (total of 20), plus 1. She then uses the fire control of the X-wing to re-roll the 1 and the pair of 2s, getting a 1, 3, 5, bringing her total to 24 plus 1.

Another way to handle it would be to add the fire control dice to the roll (as normal), but only total up a number of dice equal to the shooter's actual skill. In this case, Devonae would roll 9D+1, but only count the highest 6D, and add the plus 1.

[Fallon Kell]

You would probably have to add dice to almost all of the fire control systems in the game. Either that or change maneuver to the same system. Otherwise, I think you'd sacrifice too much of the attacker's opportunity to hit.
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Complete Starship Construction System

[Naaman]

I can see Maneuverability working the same way. In fact, the two basically oppose each other, so it makes sense that they would follow the same system.

One of the things that really made this clear for me was that using a bi-pod (might have been in a fan sourcebook) added a fire control bonus for certain weapons. I thought: "a bi-pod doesn't make you a better shooter, or even increase your chance to hit unless you know how to take advantage of the bi-pod." And even then, how you use it will vary somewhat from one application to the next.

[Fallon Kell]

[Yasriia]

Sorry, but I do not really like your idea. Because space combat in my group was always several baddies in fighters vs. all pc's in 1 freighter. Fire control and maneuverability allow more actions per round. The fighters can dodge and shoot. The pilot-pc can dodge, keep the shields running, maybe some astrogation, while the gunner-pcs can shoot multiple times per round. And shooting multiple times gave us allways a more action-feeling.

In all the movies, there was blasterfire everywhere. Green, red, BOOM!


By the way: a standard TIE-fighter-pilot has 4d piloting and gunnery and 2d maneuv+fire-ctrl. So dodge+1shot means he can actually roll with 3 dice while he can reroll every dice except the jokerdice. To top this: a x-wing has 4d+2 gunnery and 3d fire-ctrl. So dogde+1shot=3d+2 if you dont like it, reroll everything, even a 1 on the joker.

[garhkal]

I have played in one Convention game which did this (on both maneuver and fire control).. All it did was make combats get more dragged out.
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[Naaman]

All excellent points.

I'm not particularly concerned with whether a pilot gets to re-roll his entire roll (due to low skill), because more dice will still add up to a higher total, however, I don't understand why combat should take any longer, since fire control and maneuverability essentially cancel each other out.

[Fallon Kell]

[garhkal]

And since you are generally rolling lower numbers/dice there stands a chance for lesser results.
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[Naaman]

Yeah, but both attacker and defender are rolling less dice, so it should be a wash.

[Esoomian]

Perhaps but in the event both are rolling less dice then you could also end up with two ships that fail to hit each other for five minutes until someone gets in really close or something.

You'd have to make sure you alter the to-hit difficulty to account for less dice being rolled and a lower possible top score.
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[Nico_Davout]

[atgxtg]

[Naaman]

[Bren]

For dogfights we typically net out the dice for things like maneuverabilty and firecontrol. So an X-wing with FC 3D vs. a TIE/in MAN 2D gives the pilot a net +1D FC and the TIE pilot +0D MAN. When the TIE is firing at the X-wing, the TIE's FC 2D is matched against the X-wing's MAN 3D and the TIE gets a net +0D FC and the X-wing gets a net +1D MAN.