I am glad it was helpful;. I was always a rather verbose reviewer when I looked over materials Ann shared with me with a Great tendency (or is it Terrible) to stretch an author's ideas so out-of-shape as I allowed my thoughts to be triggered that one might wonder what book I had been reading.  I must have worded something wrong in my earlier post; I meant that I had abandoned my effort to response with my first set of comments and certainly did not mean that I thought your delivery/damage/defense subsystem should be abandoned. 

Taking your words as encouragement, I will attempt to complete my comments on Damage and Defense in this next week.  As I mentioned in the first paragraph of the Delivery comments, I think this is a valuable way to look at weapons (and defense) across all ages of combat and so my examination has been wandering a bit wider than the more concise setting for which you designed your supplement.  My aforementioned "second response" was actually an "inspired derivative" article I called "Measure for Countermeasure" which was more a reinterpretation of what your article started brewing in my mind than a critique of what you actually wrote.   Overall, the biggest difference in what you wrote and my meanderings is that you were able to produce a set of practical RPG (Fudge) procedures to put your supplement into action and I merely started thinking about weapons and countermeasures to them as a contest defined by delivery and damage subsystems.  I do not have your active role-playing and GM skills; I am more of a fascinated theorist.  If my theories and speculations can enter at the top of your practical procedure producing meat grinder to add any spice, it would be an added pleasure to contribute what has already been a lot of fun (for me) to have rattling around in my head and coming out of my fingers for my eyes to see.

I would absolutely love to see that. Very little of the material I produce is ever actually seen, let alone actually used, so any inspiration that I provide is a huge success. Furthermore, I'm liking this system, its been working quite well, and an expansion of it is much appreciated. Measure for Countermeasuresounds interesting, and that Fudge Files area is looking pretty empty anyways.

Well,

I hope to use some of this weapon effects and styles in the Blood In Space RPG.

The more I write, the further I am getting away from the direct point of your original "A New Dimension to Gunfire".  I am really not providing useful feedback to improve your streamlined FUDGE mechanics for resolving the competition between weapon's and countermeasure's capabilities in the two dimensions of Delivery and Damage.  Your article has triggered an analysis (using these dimensions) of this competition in my mind that is generating more detail and primary building blocks but has not yet lead me to the synthesis of all these bits-n-pieces into a RPG system for action resolution (such as your article provides) nor any suggestions for the tinkering with yours. 

While I suspect that many more talented and expert players, GMs, and game designers have undertaken a similar analysis of the components of combat, I think, at this point, I would rather compliment you for the Delivery/Damage framework, feed it into my own mental gristmill, and switch back to my second effort (Measure for Countermeasure) with an attribution to your article as inspiration rather than the target of editorial comments and suggestions.  While I have quibbles (or misunderstandings) with some of your terms or categorizations, as you mentioned, this is a playtested and workable system for accomplishing your goal of adding a two-step view of attack-defense opposed actions with the potential to avoid/defeat/minimize either the Delivery and/or the Damage subsystems of the attacking weapon.   Much of what I do not understand in your article arises from my own decades-long hiatus from gathering around a tabletop to enjoy a RPG adventure and probably the lack of the improvisional skills that a GM such as yourself possesses.

Sounds good Vermonster. I'd love to see Measure for Countermeasure, as inspiring other work was the original intent of this article. I wasn't expecting to get to use the mechanics at all, but lucked into being able to start a game with a tabletop group that had been somewhat difficult to get a regular time for prior.

Jonathan, the same thing applies to Blood In Space.

Knaight wrote:

The key point of misunderstanding is that this is being interpreted as a complete system. What it is intended to do is take damage and expand it, without replacing anything else. If there are mechanics for range, they stay, if there are mechanics for varying rates of fire, they stay, etc.

That was a helpful clarification. When I first read the rules, I was considering them in the context of a complete combat model (yes, even though you stated it was incomplete!). It also raises and interesting question, which is what component rule can be separate and which must be tied to the basic weapon/armor system. Aim is one that seems to me to be easily separate.  Whatever rule(s) you want to use, if any, for a bonus to hit is time is taken to aim your weapon. You can have simple or complex rules that include negative modifiers based on your motion, visibility conditions and so on. Weapons can add to Aim through Optical scopes or sites and so on. However, I can see no direct dependencies where rules for Aim in any way need to be connected to rule to weapons and armor.  Same for rules for Cover (with the exception that some cover may be ineffective against some weapons).

Range rule though seem to me to be related to any basic rules for how your create, classify, and resolve damage from weapons and armor. But perhaps they could be crafted to be "plug-and-play". Not sure?

Vermonster wrote:

  * So, what advantages would each of the "Stream", "Pulse", and "Swung" relationships between the charge and the launcher convey such that you would employ that method of delivery for a damage subsystem (embodied in the charge)? I basically react to "Swung" as the most primitive, then "Pulse", and finally "Stream" as the most modern, so I will analyze them in reverse of the presented order in the article.

It could be easily argued that when the rate of fire of any "pulsed" weapon reaches a certain point it is effectively a "stream" for all practical purposes. Even in the case for a "stream" where you cite that you could "pour it on" with a stream, upping the delivered damage by by the stream. With an appropriately high-tech machine gun that can change bullet types on the fly, you can have the same effect. I am firing with kinetic bullets only at first. As the target shows resistance, I switch on the fly to low-yield explosive bullets, and then as it starts charging, to high-yield rounds, all the while the "stream" (say 1000 rounds a minute) of "pulses" (bullets) continues to fly out from my weapon.

From a game mechanics perspective, does there need to be some rule to address high-rate of fire "pulse" weapons OR does it just make sense to say that any weapon with an automatic fire options behaves as a stream when doing so. Nothing says that your M16 can's function as a "pulse" weapon (when firing single round or 3-round bursts), a "stream" weapon (when on full auto-fire), and, heck, even a "swung" weapon when you run out of ammo and the fighting gets up close and personal!

paul wrote:

It could be easily argued that when the rate of fire of any "pulsed" weapon reaches a certain point it is effectively a "stream" for all practical purposes. Even in the case for a "stream" where you cite that you could "pour it on" with a stream, upping the delivered damage by by the stream. With an appropriately high-tech machine gun that can change bullet types on the fly, you can have the same effect. I am firing with kinetic bullets only at first. As the target shows resistance, I switch on the fly to low-yield explosive bullets, and then as it starts charging, to high-yield rounds, all the while the "stream" (say 1000 rounds a minute) of "pulses" (bullets) continues to fly out from my weapon.

From a game mechanics perspective, does there need to be some rule to address high-rate of fire "pulse" weapons OR does it just make sense to say that any weapon with an automatic fire options behaves as a stream when doing so. Nothing says that your M16 can's function as a "pulse" weapon (when firing single round or 3-round bursts), a "stream" weapon (when on full auto-fire), and, heck, even a "swung" weapon when you run out of ammo and the fighting gets up close and personal!

On a first point, sorry I took so long to respond for this. This conversation is probably dead, but who knows, new life can probably be breathed into it (though that particular task would be rendered far easier were Measure for Countermeasure to come out. I can't claim to know much of its status.), and this seems as good a place as any.

The potential blur between pulse and stream seems entirely dependent on how one views the weapons described by each term in their head. Even for autofire situations I see pulse and stream as largely different (particularly as it seems stream weapons would behave very differently once recoil is considered), but that is only one view. As such, the easiest way to handle it is to use any autofire rules already in place, as this entire article really only elaborates upon damage and damage prevention through the introduction of delivery. Well, that and showcasing a handful of weapons, including some rather nice ones by Jonathan S.

Well, first Measure for Countermeasure has fallen victim to distractions in the real world as much as other fudgerpg.com topics soaking up my free time on GTSC, HT-28645b, and EP-based learning.  I am much better at starting projects than satisfying myself with a finished product good enough for public airing.  That is probably related to my abnormally long emails and forum posis.

Specifically related to the "stream" versus "rapid-fire pulse" discussion, I think we might need to keep in mind that similar damage effects might be inflicted by different delivery systems.  The question may be whether the countermeasure to a weapon that requires connectivity between launcher and charge (stream) would different from multiple independently launched (and thereafter unmodifiable but perhaps variably launched) charges.  There is no reason why a stream weapon might not also have multiple charges that use the same stream (such as a TAG tracer-homing mechanism for explosive grenade(s) which "connect" to it), but once the connection is broken (grenade destroys tracer along with the target) the further delivery ends until another activation of the delivery system.  But a pulse weapon sets its "instructions" (trajectory, charge type/quantity) at the time of release.  The "following the same path" of a rapid-fire pulse weapon is not an inherent part of the weapon's launcher, but more the user taking advantage of a situation (visual feedback for example) created by an earlier use.  It is more like a cannon crew finding the range with the first few shots and then setting the weapon to repeat the trajectory for subsequent shots.  A defense against the next "pulse" volley is to move the target between the setting of the launcher' instructions and the delivery of the charge.  But presumably that defense would not work against a "stream" delivery of a guided projectile that could follow the movement post-launch initialization.  Reciprocally, a defense against a stream weapon that requires clear sight between launcher and target (laser-directed missile) to provide steering instructions to its charge would be to obscure sight (smoke screen) which might not be as effective against a rapid-fire pulse weapon that can be economically fire a spray blindly into the smoke to "find" whatever target(s) it contacts.   It is perhaps the economics of charge (or undesired "expense" of collateral damage from misses) that might drive a design from rapid-fire/multi-launched pulsing charges to a more reactive streaming-controlled charge weapon.  One does not rapid-fire megaton charges, but can afford to deliiver 1000 "inexpensive" rounds per minute (allowing the user to step up the expense (and impact) of the charges when delivery is believed to be more assured).

Regarding Measure for Countermeasure, I must say that it is a shame it was canceled. I can certainly sympathize, the seeds of an idea are far easier to generate than anything worth sharing - I personally have maybe 0.5% of the stuff I've written released to the public, though there are several that I am seriously contemplating releasing; I would never expect others to release everything tangentially measured.

Regarding pulse and stream differentiation, remember that New Dimension was designed around the notion of shield/armor defenses. As such the easiest way to determine pulse and stream would be to base it on shields. Any power source is essentially quantum, whether its electricity that is set to 50, 60, or 100 Hz or nuclear power that emerges from lots of individual beta particles. As such, one could view a pulse weapon as any non solid weapon in which the individual "projectiles" are to breach the shield, as the rate at which the shield recovers is greater than the rate at which the weapon fires. A stream weapon would then be one in which the cumulative effect of the "projectiles" are to breach the shield.

Ver, what you are discussing is essentially another dynamic, relating to variation in active defenses that would be needed to avoid different types of attacks -for the time being the term guided and unguided will be used-. While it is certainly an interesting topic -perhaps even one that could appear in an expanded version of New Dimension*- it is not particularly irrelevant to the current work, which is focused around defining weapons based upon passive defenses.

*I make no promises regarding the future existence of this.