V3 First Impressions

[SableWyvern]

I haven't had much more than a skim through yet, but the following things have stood out to me so far:

- Alterations to Survival rolls (specifically, 8+ being reduced to 7+) are excellent.

- Starship combat looks like it might present a genuinely workable system for keeping all the players involved and interested. Whether this is the case remains to be seen, and I've looked at systems that seemed promising but ended up being let-downs before. In any case, I'm happy that the attempt has at least been made, and I believe a good crew system for combat is one of the hardest things to do in a sci-fi game that doesn't rely on massive levels of abstraction.

- I do have a gripe about change to assault weapon optimum range. When they excelled at medium, they sat in an important niche. Pistols and SMGs for close quarters battle, assault weapons for short-medium range engagements and rifles/autorifles for long range engagements. It's an easy enough houserule for me to add on my own, but I think you should give serious consideration to shifting things back officially. As it stands, the range system, while I won't call it "realistic", does focus on an aspect of fire combat rarely covered in other systems. Assault weapons optimum at medium range plays to the strength of this innovative design decision.

Edit: I see assault weapons haven't changed, it's the rifle that's been improved. My point still stands in principle, I'll just adjust it to state that most (not necessarily all) rifles should be left with an optimum band of Long only, not Medium/Long. While good logical arguments can be made for M/L for rifles, I think equally good gameability arguments trump those.

 

[SableWyvern]

Hmm ... on the acutal weapon lists, ranges remain the same. It's only the generic table that has changed. Not sure what's going on there...

On to the ship combat system.

I see that sand and screen operation requires very little actual input from players occupying those positions. Per my earlier comments about keeping everyone involved, I'd rather see successful sand and screen use to require a skill roll. Rolling 1d6 to find the damage reduction for launching sand is a lot less involving then requiring a skil check, which in turn may modify the efficacy of the defence.

I realise this adds complexity that may not be wanted, but it does at least make defensive operations more interesting for players that don't have other important functions to fulfill during combat.