I bought the MT disk, while worth it, I would say it should be rescanned, that's my rant.
What it needs is a retypeset version with all of the errata worked in.
Oh, if only there was someone working on such a marvelous thing.
There is, but the question is, "Will MWM put it on the revised disks if he offers it to MWM?"
Me, I have been really tempted to do such a thing, myself... even have a chunk of the PH done. But it's a lot of work correcting all those OCR errors. Let alone all the errata.
The rules got in the way of play.
The only problem is the task system lead to people thinking there had to be a certain task for a certain situation so they would look it up in the examples given in the book, and/or build up a standard task library from published sources.
This is just as bad as the original CT system of look up each skill so you know how to apply it.
The concept is great - make stuff up on the spot to keep the game moving - but in practice it was a cumbersome, book flicking nightmare unless you had a ref willing to just make it up.
I never saw that as a problem myself. Like Aramis, I didn't have any problems accessing the fixed tasks for the various dedicated subsystems (combat, healing, trade etc.)The concept is great - make stuff up on the spot to keep the game moving - but in practice it was a cumbersome, book flicking nightmare unless you had a ref willing to just make it up.
That doesn't help. At all. Players do the same when range is in meters, as I've witnessed in my short-lived 2300AD campaign.The Combat system isn't bad. It works remarkably well, in fact. So long as you don't let players argue over a single square. If playing out o a map, use a ruler, don't count squares.
There is one little problem: My players know the ranges of the various weapons. And they know how to take advantage of situations.And ranges get checked only once - at shooting time.
I have no particular problem with the interrupt system.It's convoluted, but the interrupt system is in fact brilliant.
That doesn't help. At all. Players do the same when range is in meters, as I've witnessed in my short-lived 2300AD campaign.
The problem is not with squares or hexes or whatever measurement you use for range: It is with the extremely steep difficulty ladder. Steps of 4 points each are inviting some very forced and unrealistic behaviour.
In 2300AD this was comparably easy to fix. The range increments were in meters, which one could simply divide by 4 to get DM-1 steps.
MT is more complex, because the difficulty levels are assigned to the range bands and because penetration is also affected.
An example:
A gyrostabilized Fusion Gun is fired by a character (777777, Energy Weapons-1) at a Battle Dress wearer with the same characteristics.
At 40 meters range, the chance to hit is 83%, and one hit is guaranteed to incapacitate, if not kill, the target.
At 60 meters range, the chance to hit is 27%, and it's impossible to incapacitate, let alone kill, the target.
Does that seem right to you? It really, really doesn't to me.
There is one little problem: My players know the ranges of the various weapons. And they know how to take advantage of situations.
As a referee, I don't punish my players for using the rules to their advantage. And I certainly don't force them to behave idiotically just because the rules fail to simulate what they are supposed to simulate.The problem is twofold - players who are munchkin about it, and a GM letting them get away with it.
Like I said, if you stated to assemble a task library or look up each task in each source it was a book flicking nightmare.
There is one little problem: My players know the ranges of the various weapons. And they know how to take advantage of situations.
Apparently it didn't become quite clear what the problem is: It's not that players do what they can to gain a tactical advantage. It's that doing so creates highly unrealistic behaviour for the characters. That breaks immersion for me and my players, and that is bad.(Yes, something of a task library. But make sure you mix it up: if a situation has something that makes it different from last time, make sure you change the Diff or another factor - keeps the players on their toes, reminds them the "rules" are only guidelines, and let's them know _you_ are thinking and not just operating by rote. And let the "interested" players write the "rules" into the book - again freeing the ref from housekeeping!!)