03-28-2013, 11:26 AM | #11 |
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Southeast NC
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Re: [Ultra Tech] Shortening Range
And carrying a gun is a different beast from being a good firing platform.
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RyanW - Actually one normal sized guy in three tiny trenchcoats. |
03-28-2013, 12:08 PM | #12 |
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Cambridge, MA
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Re: [Ultra Tech] Shortening Range
One way to make a game closer range (without changing world assumptions too much) is to impose social or legal restrictions, giving long-range weaponry low LC, or organizing people into small communities surrounded by force fields (if you can talk or sneak your way in, you're at close range...if you can't, there's no way to shoot through their shields).
Social solutions always make the most sense to me. For example, in Star Wars the plot always just happens to put the characters in situations where they need to get close, even though warfare looks more or less the way it should at TL 10/11, with massive space battles, planet-destroying death rays, etc. |
03-28-2013, 12:09 PM | #13 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: [Ultra Tech] Shortening Range
Quote:
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03-28-2013, 12:15 PM | #14 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: [Ultra Tech] Shortening Range
No, but it does bring up a valid point: ranged combat is limited by length of sightlines. If you're fighting indoors, you won't have firefights at distances exceeding the length of a hallway, and if you aren't in a hallway you'll be fighting at the length of a room. Even outdoors, range tends to be not more than a city block.
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03-28-2013, 12:44 PM | #15 | |
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Cambridge, MA
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Re: [Ultra Tech] Shortening Range
Quote:
Another nice plot hook for this is weather. Star Trek teletransportation only seems to work when it's plot convenient; otherwise there's "too much interference." I don't remember if Star Wars ever explains why the Empire doesn't just blow up the rebel base on Hoth from space; perhaps their sensors couldn't penetrate the snow...? |
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03-28-2013, 12:56 PM | #16 | |
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Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: [Ultra Tech] Shortening Range
Quote:
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03-28-2013, 12:57 PM | #17 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: [Ultra Tech] Shortening Range
1. Have methods of messing with remote targeting.
2. Keep AI that can do the job of a human more expensive than the replacement cost of a human...if only by lowering the replacement cost of humans. 3. Don't have your hero be battlefield troops in the first place. In Star Trek, the characters aren't combat infantry. They're tourists with sidearms and strict limits on their rules of engagement. |
03-28-2013, 02:33 PM | #18 | |
Join Date: Apr 2006
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Re: [Ultra Tech] Shortening Range
Quote:
This won't be "believable" per se - as you've pointed out, ultratech shouldn't work that way - but it will adhere to the genre convention that you're consciously adopting. It may aid convention enforcement if you set a hard cap on effective attack ranges and/or increase distance penalties by some multiplier. Eliminating bonuses from laser pointers, shoulder-mounted radar and the like is probably a good idea too; heck, ban them from the game. Space opera characters never use that stuff. Also, as someone said above, if combat takes place in areas with limited visibility - broken terrain, forests, indoors - then ranges will necessarily be short. |
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03-28-2013, 02:43 PM | #19 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: [Ultra Tech] Shortening Range
To be honest, 95% of infantry combat should take place in situations of limited visibility, open-field combat is not a strength of infantry and hasn't been since at least TL 6.
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03-28-2013, 03:26 PM | #20 |
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: [Ultra Tech] Shortening Range
Run mysteries.
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space opera, ultra tech, ultra-tech |
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