[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

To be fair, 'retaining ability to maintain an aim up to the point of pulling the trigger (on an Attack, i.e. without sacrificing situation awareness)' still falls under 'Attack is too easy'.

That's not my point. My point was only that your chronology was reversed. There was no "Tactical Shooting crowd" until tactical shooting existed. Requiring the attack following the Aim to be All-Out was an innovation by Hans, as far as I can tell.

And just to make sure I don't make the wrong impression:
I'm also among the 'Basic Set ranged AoA is very meh compared to ranged Attack' crowd. I just think it would've been better if ranged AoA had a +4 instead of +1, while Accs of weapons were lower. That way, there's still incentive for archers, throwers etc. to AoA instead of Attacking.

All-Out is definitely "meh" compared to other options with only a +1.

With the other point, you're making more game-mechanical arguments. That's not my point either. As I note with my comment just prior, on a game-mechanical basis, I agree with you. Hans didn't give a rip about game-mechanical considerations when he wrote the rules about sighted and aimed fire. He looked at what was happening, and said "what GURPS maneuver maps to the real-world event?" He decided that AoA was the right map.

As for my thoughts on Aim and accuracy, the world will need to wait a bit longer for those, but I can assure you that they are several thousand words long. :-)

(I also feel uncomfortable with breaking the 'Attack, Defence, Damage' paradigm. I.e. the expectation that normally all three stages are relevant; with AoA-only Acc, the incentives become tipped to the other extreme for modest-skill characters.)

I don't understand the relevance here.

Anyway, here are other examples of people ranting about stuff being too effective:
Recent discussion of nerfing Reaction Modifiers. My rant about Interrogation seeming way too effective. A large faction of boxes with 'Harsh Realism' in their headers.

Boxes with optional rules are not rants. You might want to temper your language? "Demand" and "rant" aren't exactly words tuned to provoke polite discussion. They're tuned to start fights.

So yeah, such opinions exist, and they are not necessarily wrong or right. I'm kinda surprised you (McAllister) didn't see them much.

You're generalizing. I said that the chronology of ONE thing - Aim followed by AoA - is not supported by a "tactical shooting crowd" "demanding" a change to a rule. I also did not offer an opinion of the rule itself, only pointed out that your portrayal of how the rule came about does not match what actually happened.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Generally, about half of both buffs and nerfs seem to happen for reasons of trying to get closer to realism. The other roughly half seems to be about balance. I'm not sure why 'this is how things are in real life' can not be a justification for a nerf. It just seems like a different way of phrasing it.

I've merged these two subthreads into one reply. The change to Aim/AoA is indeed a nerf - if you want the benefit to spending a second of Aim, you must take AoA and lose your defenses for the rest of your turn. My sole point was chrological - basically pointing out that your implication that the cause-effect was looking at game mechanics and that led to a rules nerf. Not what happened. Hans made a call about what happens in real life mapping to AoA, not Attack. Any buffs/nerfs (and in this case it did make it a more costly option to aim/shoot) were incidental.

But note that such things can be mitigated with tactics. For one, it suggests that if you're going to use aimed fire, you want friends with you to lay down cover fire to force Fright Checks that have the foes keep their heads down. it also suggests shooting from cover or by surprise. Both of which are exactly the tactics that are used in the real-world, so I'm sure Hans is still sitting there saying Mission Accomplished. But with a German accent.