Hey everybody!

We had a meeting today to go over some Combat related things, and we decided we would like to change how we handle Guns going forward, due to the increasingly wide variety of Nerf and Nerf-compatible blasters available. This way you can check what features your new weapon has against what features each skill gives proficiency with.

Once you have bought the first two gun skills, you may buy the rest in any order you choose.

Personal Weapons - 10 CP
What we now call Guns I, holds one shot, single shot, single reload.

Standard Weapons - 20 CP
What we now call Guns II, holds up to 12 shots, single shot, single reload.

High Capacity Weapons - 30 CP
Weapons holding more than 12 shots.

Magazines and Belts - 20 CP
Clip, drum, or belt-fed weaponry.

Automatic Weapons - 20 CP
Battery powered weapons.

Scatter Shot - 20 CP
Weapons that fire more than one dart at a time.

If you have all these skills, you can use any weapon legal at FI.

Balance-wise, this 120 CP total is the same cost as the current Guns 1, 2, and 3, and Heavy Weapons put together.

Feedback welcome!

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-Josh Marcus
Head of Plot, FI 3



Edited 1 times. Last edit at 09/09/18 07:16PM

I'm just going to list some examples to illustrate why this works a little better - I was originally about to say that all magazine-using blasters are battery powered.. but there's at least two (of which I own one, d'oh) which do not conform.

Personal Weapons
Jolt
Micro Shots

Standard Weapons
Strongarm/Disruptor
Triad

Now I'll flip it around because it's more open-ended, assume that Personal/Standard have been purchased as Josh stipulated:

Infinus
High Capacity (unless you use a 6, 10 or 12 mag, but who would..)
Magazines/Belts (you need one to use it, in this case you'd likely use the default drum)
Automatic Weapon (uses batteries)
CP Needed: 100

Raptorstrike
Optional: High Capacity (if you use more than a 12 round mag)
Magazines/Belts (uses magazines)
CP Needed: 50 CP, 80 CP if you have High Capacity

Roughcut 2x4
Scatter Shot (fires 2 shots per pull/slam)
Otherwise, falls within Standard Weapons
CP Needed: 50

And so on. My feedback is as follows: I think that it allows for a high degree of customization. For example, one of my Stryfes would need Personal, Standard, Magazines/Belts and Automatic for a total of 70 CP (as I use my Stryfes as pistols). Some things come as standard based on what the weapon does (the Roughcut for an example) and others can be a little more customized based on playstyle. This also reduces the costs for certain weapons - under the current system, my Infinus would need all 4 skills to use (120 CP), but under FI3 rules if I don't intend to use a shotgun-style weapon like the Roughcut, I don't need to take Scatter Shot and so that falls to 100 CP instead.

That being said - I would make sure to include drums in the description of Magazines and Belts, and I would also ask - are you guys making more work for yourselves with this system?

As far as a list of where each gun fits, I would suspect you'd have to go with a table format for the rulebook from now on in? Like list the gun, which skills you need to use the gun and then add a general caveat that any weapon holding > 12 shots needs High Capacity too.

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Adam Invictus MD, Cybersurgeon
Pioneer Medical Center Research Hospital
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"I need you to believe in me,
Until there's nothin' left of us..."



Edited 1 times. Last edit at 09/09/18 02:11PM

Listing the guns was always an issue because every time something new came to the market, it needed to be individually assessed and added.

Drums are considered a type of clip magazine, Ryan, that is an oversight in my description of what it allows, sorry!

You would just need to have "High Capacity" as well as "Magazines and Belts" to cover Drums with more than 12 Darts in them.

I have updated the description, thanks for pointing that out!

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-Josh Marcus
Head of Plot, FI 3



Edited 1 times. Last edit at 09/09/18 07:17PM

I've never understood the heavy gating of weapons; want to have fun? well here's a giant stack of skills you have to buy to be able to touch that gun. Real world? Any schmuck can pick up a gun and probably be at least marginally effective with it.

Splitting clip/drum and high cap is just more skills tax. 6rd magazines are not worth the buy without high cap, and highcap only is mostly just a few border case weapons, that don't really hold up in an extended firefight once reloads start happening.

Automatic weapons? Do I need to go dig up the weapon RoF research from 5 years ago? They're not more effective; roughcut won, followed by the raider. While the newer ones probably perform better than the old autos, still not something that justifies more skill gates. This notion was killed for a reason 5 years ago.

Scattershot? What benefit does it add to make this a separate skill to gate like 2-4 guns? Plus, how do you count incremental triggers (see barrel break). One full trigger pull fires two shots, but not at the same time and you can squeeze off just a single shot.

Ben L Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I've never understood the heavy gating of weapons;
> want to have fun? well here's a giant stack of
> skills you have to buy to be able to touch that
> gun. Real world? Any schmuck can pick up a gun
> and probably be at least marginally effective with
> it.
>
> Splitting clip/drum and high cap is just more
> skills tax. 6rd magazines are not worth the buy
> without high cap, and highcap only is mostly just
> a few border case weapons, that don't really hold
> up in an extended firefight once reloads start
> happening.
>
> Automatic weapons? Do I need to go dig up the
> weapon RoF research from 5 years ago? They're not
> more effective; roughcut won, followed by the
> raider. While the newer ones probably perform
> better than the old autos, still not something
> that justifies more skill gates. This notion was
> killed for a reason 5 years ago.
>
> Scattershot? What benefit does it add to make
> this a separate skill to gate like 2-4 guns?
> Plus, how do you count incremental triggers (see
> barrel break). One full trigger pull fires two
> shots, but not at the same time and you can
> squeeze off just a single shot.

Yeah, given all the wild and crazy variants of nerf blasters, I'd think simplifying the skills would be better than adding more. Even with the current three levels of guns, I've noticed this is more of a 'well that's how larps do it' tradition than anything that actually makes game-play dynamic.

So many people just want to play with nerf blasters. I could see making the whole system into two skills since many of the divisions are really arbitrary to begin with. You could split the guns into Clip/Belt/Magazine and Not-Clip/Belt/Magazine.

Guns 1: 20 CP - You can use any nerf blaster without a clip/belt/magazine.
Guns 2: 20 CP - You can use any nerf blaster with a clip/belt/magazine.

Or split it into: One-Handed (pistols) and Two-Handed (rifles).
Pistol - 20 CP - You can use any one-handed nerf blaster.
Rifle - 20 CP - You can use any two-handed nerf blaster.

As Ben points out, dump the point tax. Also, trying to keep up with the wild design innovations of a toy company isn't worth the effort.

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Brian Paul!
-Prop Boss, Plot Team, Rules Comm, Other Stuff

Our thinking was that it was an efficient use of cast resources to avoid having to have a "GunsCom" to designate each weapon as it comes out, and just allow people to pick up the skills that allow them to use the weapon they want with its particular features; features that we feel give a real game play advantage that should have a point cost associated with it in some form.

In most cases, as Ryan points out, this significantly reduces your CP cost to become proficient with your particular weapon(s) of choice, while making being universally competent with all Guns the same investiture of CP, not unlike how it takes training to become competent with a wide variety of weaponry in the real world, and can be a point of pride for a Guns-focused individual.

We've also made it less of a problem to pick up these skills as we have them supporting your Combat Theory Level, so they are not a point dump in the same way they have been for non-Gimels. That may not have been clear from this announcement, but is how we envision this working.

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-Josh Marcus
Head of Plot, FI 3

Quote:
Our thinking was that it was an efficient use of cast resources to avoid having to have a "GunsCom" to designate each weapon as it comes out, and just allow people to pick up the skills that allow them to use the weapon they want with its particular features

So simplify your rules to where you don't need it. Adding more complexity does not accomplish this, it adds confusion and it's folly to think that it won't inevitably break with the increasingly creative output of hasbro.

Quote:
features that we feel give a real game play advantage that should have a point cost associated with it in some form.

Or you can accept that for the most part there's not a huge amount of advantage to be gained in this system between guns, there are a few high performance platforms and the rest just aren't. The deciding factor is almost universally other game skills.

Quote:
In most cases, as Ryan points out, this significantly reduces your CP cost to become proficient with your particular weapon(s) of choice, while making being universally competent with all Guns the same investiture of CP, not unlike how it takes training to become competent with a wide variety of weaponry in the real world, and can be a point of pride for a Guns-focused individual.

That seems like an extremely thin case to hang your argument on. You want to know how you demonstrate competence in game with a weapon? Shooting skills. Any schmuck can pick up a gun, aim it down range and pull a trigger. Pretending that being able to operate a gun is equivalent to being competent and effective doing so just doesn't line up.

Quote:
We've also made it less of a problem to pick up these skills as we have them supporting your Combat Theory Level, so they are not a point dump in the same way they have been for non-Gimels.

How so? That you get some combat theory is pretty irrelevant to most people as without the genius/tech/eng to actually use it it's a waste of the paper the skills are printed on. I've had combat theory for most of FI2 and never once used any of it.

My preference is by far BP's suggestion:
Guns 1: 20 CP - You can use any nerf blaster without a clip/belt/magazine.
Guns 2: 20 CP - You can use any nerf blaster with a clip/belt/magazine.

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Stark 999
Chief Engineer
Mimafia Operations Head

When I made my original post, it was more of an "on the face of it" style rather than doing in-depth analysis and offering changes outside of clarifications. Between work, grad school and what little family time I have left over, I don't always have the time or energy to start doing research on the points currently presented. When I tallied up the points cost of those weapons, it was for a simple before/after comparison and a short opinion based on the comparison.

Also as a newer player, I have less experience with the current rules and environment than someone who has played for a year, five years or even ten years and therefore experienced multiple rulesets. My knowledge on how people feel about things is therefore extremely limited without diving through years of forum topics.

I do not disagree with removing what could be seen as a barrier to entry, but I'm not sure regarding a potential compromise at this juncture.



Edited 1 times. Last edit at 09/21/18 08:33AM

I'll also throw myself behind BP's suggestion of two 20cp skills.