How should ranged combat in Rifts/Chaos Earth work?
Posted: Fri Oct 15, 2021 9:21 pm
Okay, this is a pretty basic question, but I seem to be having problems wrapping my head around it.
On page 339 of RUE you get the basic breakdown of a melee round, which is fine if everyone is running around with fists and melee weapons looking to beat the stew out of each other. Opponents square off, roll for initiative, and the the high roll in each "paring" gets the first blow, then the foe gets to parry/dodge, then the attacker gets to roll for damage, and then the melee goes to the other guy who gets to strike back. The whole thing goes back and forth until someone goes down or bails out. Easy enough and rather fun if you have some men-at-arms bashing goblins in Fantasy. Oh, and I think that folks with *long-range* attacks get the initiative and get to shoot first.
However to me this whole thing goes to pot when I have a squad of NEMA peacekeepers run into a group of bandits hiding in a building and a firefight breaks out. By the rules as written (raw) the *long-range* attacks would go off first, so the hiding bandits get their shots off first. Then what after that? From what the rules say I would assume that I have to break them down into *melee* type pairings, roll for initiative, and then the high roll in that pairing shoots and goes through the attack routine, and then the low roller in that pairing shoots back, and so on? Is that what the rules intend?
Honestly I've been doing things like this- roll for initiative for everyone (granted that is a real bother for the GM to roll initiative for 5 tangos...), then go in initiative order starting with the high roll and working my way down the list. Once everyone gets an action I go back to the top guy again and go through the process, again and again... until finally everyone has burned off all of their actions.
Am I on the right track here? Or am I missing something?
On page 339 of RUE you get the basic breakdown of a melee round, which is fine if everyone is running around with fists and melee weapons looking to beat the stew out of each other. Opponents square off, roll for initiative, and the the high roll in each "paring" gets the first blow, then the foe gets to parry/dodge, then the attacker gets to roll for damage, and then the melee goes to the other guy who gets to strike back. The whole thing goes back and forth until someone goes down or bails out. Easy enough and rather fun if you have some men-at-arms bashing goblins in Fantasy. Oh, and I think that folks with *long-range* attacks get the initiative and get to shoot first.
However to me this whole thing goes to pot when I have a squad of NEMA peacekeepers run into a group of bandits hiding in a building and a firefight breaks out. By the rules as written (raw) the *long-range* attacks would go off first, so the hiding bandits get their shots off first. Then what after that? From what the rules say I would assume that I have to break them down into *melee* type pairings, roll for initiative, and then the high roll in that pairing shoots and goes through the attack routine, and then the low roller in that pairing shoots back, and so on? Is that what the rules intend?
Honestly I've been doing things like this- roll for initiative for everyone (granted that is a real bother for the GM to roll initiative for 5 tangos...), then go in initiative order starting with the high roll and working my way down the list. Once everyone gets an action I go back to the top guy again and go through the process, again and again... until finally everyone has burned off all of their actions.
Am I on the right track here? Or am I missing something?