Not terribly serious about the idea of a dungeons but just referencing to having multiple consecutive encounters such as infiltrating an enemy base, fighting your way through a city, or navigating a battlefield. Partially as a nod to the "let it ride" from burning wheel but my thoughts are what about allowing initiative to "ride." By this i am talking about keeping the rolls for those initiative slots for the remainder of the "dungeon." If there is an ambush just have the bad guys roll cool as normal. Kind of hybriding static and dynamic initiatives. It was just a thought but seems like it would allow combat to flow the smoothest and most cinematic without calling for initiative rolls every 20 feet.

On a side note the core rulebook is not entirely clear on how ambushing people is done. The rulebook says in there to roll vigilance if you are being ambushed and cool if your party are the ones setting it up. So its just using 2 different initiative stats? There has to be an advantage to ambushing besides getting to use cool for initiative. First hit maybe? Boost dice? Getting a free attack round? or did i miss something?

This comes up a lot, here's a good recent thread:

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/102137-initiative-is-it-me-or-this-rule-sucks/

Despite the thread title, I like the way initiative works, you just have to make sure you understand what the designers intended. After that...you may not agree but at least you'll understand where they were coming from.

At first glance it seemed like that thread was just saying flexible slots were crap. Sorry i wasnt saying that. It was mostly about letting the players keep their initiative slots they rolled for without rerolling it for each bad guy they come across. It happens at a few tables i come across and i was just thinking it might be a good way to handle a large number of consecutive encounters

First part sounds right, use cool to join ongoing combat.

The ambush thing has come up before, and here's my take:

Yes, vigilance is used by the ambushed, cool used by the ambusher (and there's an argument for discipline as well). No you don't get an "extra" mechanical bonus for ambushing, because you don't actually need one. See here's how it works:

Ambusher makes a stealth check to set up their ambush. If they fail, they cant find a good spot, or set up in the wrong place, or any other reasonable result the gm wants it to be.

When the ambush starts, both sides roll their init skill. Now...if the ambusher wins, he gets to go first, but here's the thing, if the stealth check netted even one success, the ambushee won't know where the ambushers are. All he knows is something feels off. He can make a perception check to try and find the ambush (burning his action), or maybe just cautiously more to cover. If he wants I suppose he could also fire blindly into the bushes and try out the impossible check mechanic, but the bottom line is the ambushers options are very limited because he doesn't even know he's in combat until the ambushers start shooting.

And that's the difference, other systems that provide a special bonus to ambushers assume that by rolling init the characters know they are in combat and where all ambush participants are. EotE assumes you'll stick to the narrative and hidden enemies will stay hidden until they do something to stop being hidden.

If they are hidden when they shoot like a sniper can probably give them 1 or 2 boost for that. Up until now ive been handling ambushes as kind of dont roll initiative until they have a reason to. Like someone who is hidden pulls the trigger and that initiative to let them react to it.

And bonuses/penalties for cover, concealment, and other nifty things.