11 minutes ago, ShadoWarrior said:

You've a point.

Maybe even a... Destiny Point

It's possible that the benefits of cover in this system is the actual problem here. 1 Setback (as a starting point) if ok, but not great... so if the PC's put effort into finding really good cover then give them another Setback or in serious fortifications even 3.

With that many Setback then taking a little fire from advancing enemies isn't as frightening. So the PC's hold their turn until the end of the round, presumably keeping the Aim they got last turn. After firing they can then quite possibly use one of the first initiative slots, effectively shooting the enemy twice while only receiving 1 shot.

Also remember that Minions can not voluntarily suffer Strain. They can't perform 2 Manoeuvres and an Action in a single round. So if they need to go from Extreme-Long or Long-Medium then that's all they are doing.

I wouldn't recommend starting encounters with opponents at extreme range either, it inevitably leads to multiple turns of "I move" which is basically a waste of time. When they start at Long it gives more flexibility and value to the person who wins initiative.

Another factor (which we did discuss previously) is that the system assumes that everyone is doing their absolute best all the time, and only the elite can do better through the use of talents. In particular the soldiers Career has the most combat changing talents.

Sniper Shot, True Aim, Blind Spot, Prime Positions, Ambush, Moving Target, Supressing Fire and Seize The Initiative are all in soldier. Many appear elsewhere, but the point is that the action your describing is that of a Soldier, and Skill Ranks only get you part of the way there, talents give the PC's the special sauce.

12 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

I wouldn't recommend starting encounters with opponents at extreme range either, it inevitably leads to multiple turns of "I move" which is basically a waste of time. When they start at Long it gives more flexibility and value to the person who wins initiative.

Maybe encourage use of non-combat skills during that time, to set up improvised cover, shut down the lights, barricade an entry, etc?

Aren't too many indoor places where you can be out of range of an opponent's weapons. Unless it's a knife fight.

Why does everyone assume indoor battles, BTW? With doors and other such choke points? Don't any of you guys ever have open field battles?

23 minutes ago, ShadoWarrior said:

Aren't too many indoor places where you can be out of range of an opponent's weapons. Unless it's a knife fight.

Why does everyone assume indoor battles, BTW? With doors and other such choke points? Don't any of you guys ever have open field battles?

Often, but usually that involves vehicles or Beast Riding or interesting terrain. I don't think I have ever run a solely personal combat in flat open ground. There's always something that will create a dynamic field of battle.

You've never had a GM force you to march for a day across open terrain in desert heat? Had that happen to me on my last mission. My other choice was having the NPC freighter pilots land us too close to the secret Imperial base and blow our surprise attack. So, since we're on foot in the middle of nowhere we get encountered by Imps on (thankfully unarmed) bikes. Advantage to the bad guys. Our sole option? Take what cover we could grab, and try to hit them before they hit us.

4 minutes ago, ShadoWarrior said:

You've never had a GM force you to march for a day across open terrain in desert heat? Had that happen to me on my last mission. My other choice was having the NPC freighter pilots land us too close to the secret Imperial base and blow our surprise attack. So, since we're on foot in the middle of nowhere we get encountered by Imps on (thankfully unarmed) bikes. Advantage to the bad guys. Our sole option? Take what cover we could grab, and try to hit them before they hit us.

Interesting encounters, I would still argue it's not a featureless battle field though, DP's are always the option there for creating something to hide behind, a dune, a creator, a gofer hole, wreckage, a dead tree.

Now where your on foot against mounted foes they should get the first chance to shoot, if they see you first. The encounter has no need to start at or beyond Extreme, the enemy probably needs to spot you first since I assume you where doing your best to hide and your not going to reveal yourself until they are in range.

This is exactly why there are 2 different initiative skills. If your group roll Cool and win then the enemy never saw you until they where within range. If they rolled Vigilance and got the highest initiative then they spotted you early enough to come in hot and get the best shot first.

It was Vigilance on both sides, mutual surprise. Initial distance extreme. You can see beyond weapons range. 3 of 4 PCs had initiative over all of the Imps.

Just now, ShadoWarrior said:

It was Vigilance on both sides, mutual surprise. Initial distance extreme. You can see beyond weapons range. 3 of 4 PCs had initiative over all of the Imps.

Ok, I think your problem is the way the GM ran the encounter, they engineered it so that the NPCS will always have the upper hand on the first round.

I would structure that differently with the intention that anyone can get the upper hand. Visual sighting would have been assumed on the PC's behalf. The noise, dust clouds ect would be a giveaway. The NPC's though are coming in fast and there is nothing to give away the PC's exact position. I would have asked for a Cool check from PC's and Vigilance from the NPC's with the range starting at Long.

Inevitably some PC's will be slow to react and get caught out, but the ones who can plan well and keep calm will get a chance to dive for cover and shoot first.

3 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

Ok, I think your problem is the way the GM ran the encounter, they engineered it so that the NPCS will always have the upper hand on the first round.

How so? Other than what I've said before about having to wait for enemies to come within range and not being able to do a damned thing until after they've shot first despite having the init? Because the GM got around the NPC's limitation of needing two maneuvers to go from extreme to long by having them on vehicles, which changes the dynamic and allows them to move a lot further faster as vehicles work on a different scale? They could close a range band (more than one, actually, on the personal scale) using a single maneuver, freeing that vital action to be used for shooting rather than movement.

1 minute ago, ShadoWarrior said:

How so? Other than what I've said before about having to wait for enemies to come within range and not being able to do a damned thing until after they've shot first despite having the init? Because the GM got around the NPC's limitation of needing two maneuvers to go from extreme to long by having them on vehicles, which changes the dynamic and allows them to move a lot further faster as vehicles work on a different scale? They could close a range band (more than one, actually, on the personal scale) using a single maneuver, freeing that vital action to be used for shooting rather than movement.

Correct. The GM put them beyond your range with the ability to get to you and shoot first wether they won initiative or not. Starting them at Long, or even Medium would have been a much more balanced encounter. It still could have been a Vigilance v Vigilance initiative, to maintain the feeling of surprise.

The GM essentially let the NPC's choose the starting range and shoot first. If they had started the encounter with "you suddenly get shot at" I assume the players would have rioted.

So, and not really wanting to reopen the flawed-rules-mechanics debate, isn't this an example of flawed mechanics if the only option the players have in this (admittedly unusual) situation to avoid being screwed over by a clever GM is to burn a DP?

No, this game is not supposed to be an adversarial PCvGM system. The dice should determine the story, not the GM being a d***.

In fairness to the GM, he wasn't trying to be a d***. It all made perfect sense, and was just unfortunate for us. We neglected to bring bikes, hence our being on foot. The Imps weren't so stupid.

Again though the method they used bypassed the first round of initiative. They should have said "You get shot, now roll initiative to see if you can shoot back before they fire again." Then the enemy starts within range and it all makes much more sense.

I just think it was probably a mistake, and perhaps worth discussion at your next session, assuming they don't read this forum. Essentially the method used failed to utilise the benefits of the system, combining multiple different actions into a single initiative check.

It wasn't discussed after the session because he'd previously implemented readied actions as a house rule. The encounter would have played out much differently if he hadn't done so.

Readied actions of course cut both ways. PCs breach a blast door on a ship. The Imps waiting on the other side try to riddle the PCs with blaster bolts. Fair's fair. Possibly painful, but fair.

True, but basically it's an unnecessary house rule to allow people who suck at Cool to still ambush.

In the blowing the door example you just gave I would ask for initiative after the door blew, thereby allowing ultra vigilant PC's to still get the upper hand, and if the Imperials Commander isn't that Cool then they don't benefit from the ambush.

What I'm sensing is a history of D20 based tactical gaming which can make some of the more nuanced elements of this system less obvious. It's not a fault or anything, it's just gaming habits that have crept in.

It's hard to break decades of d20, and the ongoing distraction of CRPGs with pausable realtime combat.

Well to be truthful the overwatch mechanic isn't bad, it's just unnecessary when you rethink the way an encounter runs. It actually benefits the people setting the ambush significantly if you effectively bypass the Cool skill in an ambush, allowing everyone to hit first rather than only as many as are Cool.

Actually, what it really does is to have the players' (or GM's) choices override the dice and set the narrative, rather than the narrative being mostly dictated by the dice. Not necessarily a bad thing, as you just partially conceded, as long as it's not abused. Of course the other way to look at it is that it supports "old style" (pre-Destiny Dice) thinking, rather than encouraging new ways to run encounters, which you also pointed out.

It also devalues the skill Vigilance and any talents tied to it, also the Rapid Reaction talent or the Quick Strike talent. It removes significance from the actual ability of the characters, and reduces their return on investment of xp.

But it's a system you use, so I can't really explain a way out of it without removing the House Rule.

I don't see why it's a big deal. Just let it work like a Readied Action in other systems.

"I ready to shoot anything that comes through that door." Done.

Maybe say the player can't move or do anything else while holding the readied action, and/or limit to pre-combat usage only. You could even do an XCOM style ambush where the enemies can roll Vigilance vs. the player's Cool, and if the enemies beat it, the readied action still goes off, but the enemies can take a maneuver, like going into cover or moving away, and that can affect the readied action.

Mostly its bad if there is a character who has specialised in one form of Initiative; Gunslingers amwith Cool and Sentries with Vigilance are the pinnacle, but many others can. If you nerf that characters speciality then it can feel like a slap in the face.

Now of course if it's part of a campaign from the beginning and no one is an initiative specialist (or has a high Will/Presence) it's probably not a big deal... at least they don't know what they are missing out on!

The initiative system is a big part of the game, to me it feels cheap to change it when raw is so balanced. If it works for your game though then keep it for sure. But the OP was asking for a reason it didn't exist and the reason is it's unnecessary if initiative is used as and when intended

As for the desert being featureless terrain: you have cover in the form of dunes or the picked-clean bones of giant beasts, difficult terrain in the form of quicksand, impassable terrain in the form of sinkholes, and the bright desert sun gives you cumulative setbacks to ranged attacks. There's always *something*.

And the presence of a door was mentioned by thread starter, which is why people are assuming some sort of building as part of the encounter. Indoors or outdoors doesn't matter, just that there is a choke point. That's the situation laid out by the OP.

I try to ensure that there are things going on in the fight location that can add setbacks. That way pcs gain from abilities or equipment that counter them and combat is generally less deadly.

even in your featureless desert you could have a sandstorm cutting visibility, heat hazes confusing visibility over medium range, sun low on horizon impairing one group (and you can use manoeuvres to change which), mid combat attack on both sides by impatient cartoon eaters. Lots of ways to make it more interesting.