[KarlKost]

In this, initiative will only count towards the very start of combat, and only for surprise; at every full reaction-time, the surprised person gets to roll IQ normally to "snap out" of it. So, someone that has V20 and acts once every 0.5 seconds, would get 2 attempts to snap out of surprise per second. Someone with V1000 would get 100! And probably would murder any of the attackers that "surprised" him before they could even pull a trigger (for example, if it took him 20 rolls to recover from surprise, he would still have a good 0.8 seconds left to act - enough to act 80 times lol).

When combat begins, it's like a "mini-surprise": everybody rolls, the lower initiative starts; let us give an example:

Fighter A - 500 ticks; critical success on initiative, acts first
Fighter B - 200 ticks; not so good in the initiative roll

So, the first one to act due to initiative, starts his action IMMEDIATLY; all others can only start acting AFTER a FULL tick account. So:

Tick 0: A starts first action
Tick 200: B starts first action
Tick 400: B finishes first action, starts second
Tick 500: only now A concludes his first action (assuming he wasnt interrupted) and starts his second.

This means that a Speedster much faster than the adversary can "catch up" even if he failed initially to "begin hostilities".

This would be the case of one of us seeing Bruce Lee on the streets and trying to test our luck, out of the blue; even thou we began the action, he probably would hit us before we even managed to conclude our pathetic attempt