Date: Sun, 19 Nov 1995 14:07:50 -0600 (CST)
From: mikeb@elmhcx9.elmhurst.edu (Michael Bishop)
Subject: Re: Blasters and Rules
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My group was working on some rules for repeating (or burst firing) blasters
and spread or covering fire. Here's the basics of what we came up with:

First you figure out the group of people you're going to shoot at. To
determine the range difficulty, you use the range of the farthest person
away from you. And then you figure out how wide in meters (round up) is 
the fire arc at that range. By adding those to numbers (Range Diff +
Arc Width) you get the base difficulty. The player than rolls his skill
to beat it. If the player fails the roll, none of the shots hit. If the
player beats the roll, randomly determine how many shots have hit targets.
(ex. for a 3-shot burst: 1D/2 rounded up shots would hit). Then, starting
from the closest target, allocate one hit to each target until you run out
of hits. If you have more hits than targets, continue allocating hits in
the same way until you run out of hits. This way the closest targets would
take the most hits. To figure out damage, modify the weapon damage by 
adding combined action bonuses.  Dodges and cover modifiers are treated
normally.

This system is based off the assumption that each pull of a weapon's trigger
is an action, no matter how many shots fly out of it.  We've done some
play testing of this and we've found it works well in the short and medium
ranges but is almost impossible at long ranges.  It also works the best
with weapons capable of firing 10-shot bursts.

What do you think?

*pulls out a thermal shield to help deflect the flames* :)

Mike
mikeb@elmhcx9.elmhurst.edu