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Tactics: A New Old Approach
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 16, 2018 4:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

IIRC a while ago i mentioned a 'spatial awareness' like advanced skill, that took over for rolling perception to determine initiative.. Perhaps your 'advanced' tactics could do the same.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 16, 2018 4:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

garhkal wrote:
IIRC a while ago i mentioned a 'spatial awareness' like advanced skill, that took over for rolling perception to determine initiative.. Perhaps your 'advanced' tactics could do the same.

I did something similar for my Starfighter Combat System, but it was more oriented around getting a free Sensors / Perception check while in combat.

Do you have a link to yours?
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 16, 2018 5:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

CRMcNeill wrote:
As an expansion on the above concept, has anyone ever considered making Tactics an Advanced Skill?

Yes, I have considered it but decided against it. (Which some might find surprising since I have made other normal skills into advanced skills, like Astrogation and Forgery.) I do have (A) Engineering work in a similar way where it is general engineering that includes more mundane things like buildings and bridges, and it's specializations each have their own prerequisites.

I like your simple Tactics rules (anticipate and deceive) without it being an advanced skill. I'm ok with Tactics defaulting to Knowledge and having those options you listed as possible specializations. Since I already moved Intimidation and Willpower to Perception, I really don't want to devalue the base Knowledge attribute any further. The Command/Coordination benefit comes from Perception and the Tactics benefit comes from Knowledge.

garhkal wrote:
IIRC a while ago i mentioned a 'spatial awareness' like advanced skill, that took over for rolling perception to determine initiative.. Perhaps your 'advanced' tactics could do the same.

I have "Initiative" as a derived stat with a die code and a rank, and it includes the Tactics skill in the calculation. Check it out here.
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 17, 2018 3:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

CRMcNeill wrote:

Do you have a link to yours?


I am not seeing it on a search.. Maybe it was on the holonet... let me go look
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 17, 2018 3:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Actually it was tactical awareness (not spatial)..

http://holonet.swrpgnetwork.com/showthread.php?4761-New-skills&highlight=awareness
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 17, 2018 9:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

garhkal wrote:
Actually it was tactical awareness (not spatial)..

http://holonet.swrpgnetwork.com/showthread.php?4761-New-skills&highlight=awareness

Quoted from the Holonet for brevity's sake...
Quote:
Tactical awareness; This is treated likean advance skill, it costs 20CP to initially learn, and double CP to increase, but has no prerequisite skills. Once learnt, it can be used to roll for the player’s initiative instead of perception.
There are 3 subsets of this, which must be learnt separately. Space tactical awareness, Atmospheric tactical awareness and Ground tactical awareness. Where each is used is self- explanatory.
Specialties, NONE.

Interesting. Why separate space and atmosphere? Both are essentially 3D environments. I'd go more with Flying, Ground Vehicles and Characters.

And just make it an Advanced skill, with Sensors as the Prereq for the first two and Search for the character-scale one. The specific ability for the (A) Skill itself would be to make an Awareness roll as a free action every round, adding in any passive sensor dice from a ship or vehicle, or from a helmet-mounted sensor array (or something to that effect) for a character.
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 17, 2018 10:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The way I picture it, characters would primarily get to use Perception or Search passively only if they made no other normal actions that round. If they make any action that counts towards MAPs, they must also declare a continuing Perception/Search roll, which also counts towards MAPs.

In the case of an (A) Awareness skill, the Awareness dice would stack with the Search dice in the above, or be rolled on its own if the character doesn't declare an Active Search. It wouldn't have much of an effect at 1D or 2D, but like everything else, it gets more useful as skill level increases.
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 17, 2018 4:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

CRMcNeill wrote:
Interesting. Why separate space and atmosphere? Both are essentially 3D environments. I'd go more with Flying, Ground Vehicles and Characters.


Initially it was looked at the 2 having different aspects (such as in atomsphere, one has not just the other ships, but the sun in your face, clouds etc) to worry about, while in space, generally you don't..

CRMcNeill wrote:

And just make it an Advanced skill, with Sensors as the Prereq for the first two and Search for the character-scale one. The specific ability for the (A) Skill itself would be to make an Awareness roll as a free action every round, adding in any passive sensor dice from a ship or vehicle, or from a helmet-mounted sensor array (or something to that effect) for a character.


Well, as i posted it way back when, it was still in it's infancy of thought/development, i have never completed it.
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 17, 2018 4:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

garhkal wrote:
Initially it was looked at the 2 having different aspects (such as in atomsphere, one has not just the other ships, but the sun in your face, clouds etc) to worry about, while in space, generally you don't..

The sun is still there in space (every space battle in the series has taken place near a planet, which necessitates a nearby star), as are other factors (debris fields, other ships, etc). This would be more appropriately handled by Difficulty modifiers than separate skills. After all, a starfighter pilot with 5D Awareness (Flight) isn't going to suddenly lose all those skills and instincts just because he flew into an atmosphere; it's just going to be a bit more difficult.

CRMcNeill wrote:
And just make it an Advanced skill, with Sensors as the Prereq for the first two and Search for the character-scale one. The specific ability for the (A) Skill itself would be to make an Awareness roll as a free action every round, adding in any passive sensor dice from a ship or vehicle, or from a helmet-mounted sensor array (or something to that effect) for a character.

I just double-checked, and this is exactly what I did for the Advanced Starfighter Combat system. Making similar skills for the surface vehicle and personal level would mostly be a matter of changing the vocabulary.
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 21, 2019 11:17 am    Post subject: Re: Tactics: A New Old Approach Reply with quote

CRMcNeill wrote:
The bare bones version of what I'm thinking is this:
    -To use the Tactics skill, roll your skill level against either a flat Difficulty or against the opposing commander's Tactics roll.

    -On a success, refer to the following table:
      1-10 = Your unit / party receives a +1D bonus to Initiative.

      11-20 = Your unit receives a +1D bonus to Initiative, and may ignore 1D of MAP

      21+ = Your unit receives a +1D bonus to Initiative, may ignore 1D of MAP, and may redeclare its actions for that round after the enemy has declared theirs.

    Any bonuses last until either commander decides to change tactics, at which point the Tactics skill is re-rolled to generate a new result, which takes effect at the beginning of the following round.

I'm partial to open ended systems, so I've been thinking of an alternate version of this, where the "21+" result becomes "21-30", and the "31+" result would be "Your unit receives an additional +1D which may be applied to Initiative or as a Counter-MAP, plus another +1D for every additional 10 points of success."
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PostPosted: Sat May 23, 2020 5:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A thought on this...

I’m considering tying an Initiative re-roll in a combat scene to a successful Tactics roll by any member of the characters’ team. Basically, rather than re-rolling every round, the side that “won” the opening Initiative roll would retain it until the opposing side came up with a successful tactic to retake the initiative, both literally and figuratively.
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Naaman
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PostPosted: Thu May 28, 2020 6:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The ultimate effect would be getting two turns in a row, basically?

Or, are you using the rules that require the lower initiative characters to declare their actions before the higher initiative characters? If so, "winning" initiative becomes much more useful.
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PostPosted: Thu May 28, 2020 6:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Naaman wrote:
The ultimate effect would be getting two turns in a row, basically?

Or, are you using the rules that require the lower initiative characters to declare their actions before the higher initiative characters? If so, "winning" initiative becomes much more useful.

Not sure yet. Mostly just putting it out there as a way to both make Initiative a little less fickle and to make the Tactics skill more useful. I haven't quite nailed down how I'd like to rule it, but I like where it's going.
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Naaman
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PostPosted: Thu May 28, 2020 9:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

You would have to decide what "having the initiative" really means.

I know of a system wherein you take a turn on your initiative count, and on half of your initiative count, and on half of that count, etc. So if you roll an initiative of 10, you get to act on count 10, on count 5, and count 2 (or something... I'm not sure what the lower limit on initiative is... I think the system is Exalted, if I remember correctly. I'll see if I can look it up and find out.

Used in D6, it COULD mean that you take your first declared action on your initiative count (for example, 17), your second declared action on count 8.5 (before the first action of those who rolled an 8 and before the second or third actions of those who rolled a 16 or 24, but after the first actions of those who rolled a 9 or the second action of those who rolled 18, etc.)

Now that I think of it, I think the round ends when the lowest initiative takes his first turn. So having a huge gap in initiative really means "having the initiative."

In such a case, using tactics to boost initiative would add significant value to the skill. It would allow low Perception characters to still "keep up with" and sometimes surpass high Perception characters.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Thu May 28, 2020 10:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

For the purposes of this discussion, it would mean that whoever won initiative at the start of the battle would keep initiative until the losing side made a successful Tactics roll (most likely an opposed roll against the team lead of the winning side), at which point they would re-roll initiative (factoring in any bonuses from the Tactics roll, as described above). Initiative would be treated as in the RAW in all other respects. Any variant initiative forms would require the rule to be adjusted as needed to fit their specific rule form.
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