Speeding up Combat in ME

["Scott" <becubed@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>    (1) The damage rules: WAY too cumbersome (too many calculations to go 

>through) in the present form, slows things down too much;

As much as I like the damage system I have to agree that it is too slow if it's
used as described in the book. The thing is alot of the time is spent doing
the same thing over and over for each hit, given that most of the calculations
remain constant they shouldn't need to be redone.

Here is a recap of some ideas I posted in 99

There are a few ways that ME combat can be considerably speed up.
If you use the rules as written in the book then a given DD of a particular
damage type always produces the same effect.
There are only 13 outcomes so you can calculate them beforehand. You usually
know what type of armour etc the PC's have so take it into account.
Example:
John has a Mass Factor of 0.9 and gets around in shorts and a T shirt : 
9mm P Ball has a DD of 17.
Location Hit                  Result
1     Head         TL:24  Imp:49  Stun:-90  Bleed:3  Shocked, Broken, Eventually
Fatal
2     Face/Neck    Dead
3,6   Shoulders    TL:15  Imp:35  Stun:40   Bleed:13 Broken
4,7   Torso        TL:21  Imp:46  Stun:20   Bleed:1  Shocked, Broken, Eventually
Fatal
5,8   Vitals       TL:24  Imp:49  Stun:5    Bleed:1  Shocked, Broken, Eventually
Fatal
9,11  Hips         TL:15  Imp:35  Stun:45   Bleed:16 Broken
10    Groin        TL:18  Imp:41  Stun:25   Bleed:5  Eventually Fatal
12,14 Upper Arms   TL:12  Imp:29  Stun:60   Bleed:12 Broken
13,15 Forearms     TL:12  Imp:29  Stun:70   Bleed:8  Broken
16,19 Thighs       TL:12  Imp:29  Stun:70   Bleed:25
17,20 Knees        TL:15  Imp:35  Stun:60   Bleed:1  Broken
18,21 Calves       TL:12  Imp:29  Stun:75   Bleed:12 Broken
22-25 Hands/Feet   TL:9   Imp:23  Stun:n/a  Bleed:20 Broken
Now if everyone who may shoot John is armed with something in 9mm it doen't
get much faster than that.

If, like me, you prefer to have variable damage then there are still a few things
you can do to get it going faster.
1. Pre calculate the DD required to produce a give TL for a character. I've
just put the charater sheet that I use up on my site. Its an Excel sheet that
lets you enter the Mass Factor of the character and it then fills a table with
the DD needed to produce any given TL. Print it out and fill in your character
and the TL is just read of by crossindexing the location with the damage done.


2. Download and use the manual damage calculator I put up on my site. It's a
bit of effort to make but it really does make it faster to get the damage effects.


>    (2) The autofire rules, as others have mentioned;
I'm currently working on a template similar to the shotgun ones I've produced.
Basically it would require just two rolls. One against Longarm/smallarm for
the accuracy of the first round and one against autofire for the success in
controlling the burst. I should have it finished by this weekend. I'll post
when I put it up.

Get the shotgun templates, they give shotguns a whole new feel.
(I think I'll combine all the template generators into a single file but I'll
leave the existing ones there)

The final thing to help speed up the game is for multiple hits to a location.

Rob T. suggested the following for multiple pellets and it sounds like a good
fix to me.
"Here is the problem. At 10m you are likely to have two or more pellets striking
the same location. If the location is armored, no problems. If it is not armored,
instant splat. From underpowered to overkill. A playable, though not completely
realistic solution is use full DD for the first pellet, and divide by two for
each successive pellet to the same location (minimum DD2) and resolve as one
hit. Thus one pellet to an unarmored location is DD16, two pellets is DD24 (16+8),
and all nine (called a "rat hole", for what the entrance wound looks like) is
DD40 (16+8+4+(2x6)). Multiple hits still tend to be messy, but not as bad as
if you did pellets individually." 

I would say that this is also a valid way to handle multipe hits from autofire
and I think it would also be a better way of handling subsequent hits to an
already wounded location than the current way in the book. Just a straight addition
of TL's always seems to excessive to me.


Scott