Comments after a few episodes

[Deriachai]

Since the feedback forum is only viewable to staff, I figured having more comments are good.

 

Hello,

Below are the current comments for our current game after a few episodes.

Separately, what is the plan for further releases? In the COVID announcement it was mentioned that they plan to keep releasing versions every couple of weeks, but nothing has come out for 2 months. Obviously everybody is dealing with changes of plans, but just curious what the plan is.

Deriachai

 

• Class/Race Ability
  • Invisibility Duration for Noxian Pacifist not defined for non-combat situations. How long should it last?
  • Can Word in an Ear be used repeatadly?
  • Diplomatic Expertise says "4rd" as as "Presence"
• Equipment
  • Weapon ranges are unwieldy as is
  • MALP variants should probably be in equipment, vs in feats
  • Grenade variants are mentioned, but not clear
• Feats
  • All Tactical feats require Tactical Flexibility, so technically a soldier cannot choose any of them at first level. This is also true for Scout and Survivability.
  • Cultural Proficiency is ambiguous. Does this give proficiency with all cultural weapons/armor, or is it a requirement for additional proficiency feats?
    • Either this should be much more expensive and give everything
    • Or it should be cheaper/eliminated, and use individual weapon proficiencies
  • Why are soldier feats named tactical feats?
  • Tech Specialist seems to reference no longer existing requisition rules.
  • Are Engineer feats supposed to only apply to a signle person, whereas the other class feats apply to the entire team.
• Other
  • Rulebook doesn't clearly state whether or not MP from the first 5 levels can be spent, or is basically just XP
  • Font used for page number is almost unreadable

 

[1001100x02]

In what way are Weapon ranges unwieldy?

[Deriachai]

As has been discussed previously, basically all of them are absurdly long. Not only are they unrealistic, keeping track of any sort of battle is unwisely as to make use of those ranges requires an absurdly long map.

 

Due to being a online game doubles down on it even, as it is harder to get stuff drawn out, with consistent distances, and if we try to use any sort of battle map software, imagine how far the 1.8 km range of the P90 is? Even the 200m short range is basically longer than any battle ever is, also far far longer than any sort of reasonable "short" range in reality with a P90, which would probably be closer to 20m.

[Bahamut_A6M5]

Ranges aren't absurdly long. The issue here is the fact 5e rules work with just a short/long range variance regarding penalties to attack rolls. The 1,800 m. range for longarms wouldn't be applicable to P90, as it is a submachine gun, not a proper longarm; in fact, 1,800 m. is quite the range for an assault rifle but not for marksman rifles.

As a sidenote, the effective range for a P90 is around 200 meters. At 20 m. you are basically dead if shot with one. Then again, this issue with ranges seem to come from people using "standarized" mats for tactical combat. The "teather of mind" allows for easy engagaments where distance isn't an issue. And the floor (or a big enough table) with some props and a "1 cm. = 1 m." scale work wonders for solving long range combats.

[Deriachai]

You are right, I was incorrect to say 20m, but at the same time, you are basically dead isn't the concern, accuracy is the concern. But you also mentioned the larger issue. a rifle, marksman rifle, and SMG are very different categories of weapons, and using the same numbers for them is problematic.

Rifle marksmanship qualification is only done at 100-500m, not longer, and that is with rifles. 1800m is clearly sniper rifle territory to even have a chance, something like a P90 isn't going to be anywhere close to accurate at that distance, let alone just as accurate as at 201m.

 

While I would agree using theater of the mind does make it easier, which is exactly what we did, the raw numbers then just get in the way.

 

In our game we simplified to more simple melee/short/medium/long range increments based on FATE style scenes. quick and easy to describe, without having to quibble over exact distances. Also splintered out longarm into standard SMG/Rifle/Sniper Rifle to also make it so there isn't P90s sniping at almost 2 km, which is fairly ridiculous, and with the current rules can be a standard occurrence pretty easily.

[1001100x02]

I'd advise the devs to go back to WOTC's own weapons data from d20 modern and draw the values from there, use the 10th range increment as the max range of an unassisted shot and the 2nd increment as place where such unassisted shots attract disadvantage on the attack roll

[Deriachai]

I would agree that something like that could work.

[tetrasodium]

It's good to see this getting discussion again, The ranges as written are capability shattering for battlemats, an absolutely herculean effort for vtts, & needlessly in the way in a manner that thwarts ToTM.  For the sake of clarity, Chessex make mats in these sizes (1inch=2.54cm)

• The Battlemat: 26” x 23½” (66cm x 60cm)
• The Megamat: 34½” x 48” (88cm x 122cm)

Short range on a pistol and primitive bow is roughly double the small one and still  exceeds the long edge of the massive 4 foot (1.219m) long big even for warhammer gamers megamat.  Again, that;'s for short range on bow & pistol.  at 30/150 the sling is still consuming the normal battlemat and coming pretty close to doing the same with the warhammer double table scale megamat.  

 

According to wikipedia, the compact p90 "was designed as a compact but powerful firearm for vehicle crews, operators of crew-served weapons, support personnel, special forces, and counter-terrorist groups" with a total length of 50.5 cm (19.9 in) & a barrel length of 26.4 cm (10.4 in).  Not only is it very much NOT a long anything like the weapons used on this list where it does not even show up.  has a 200/1800m range allowing it to look at the problems short range pistol bow or sling cause with  battlemats and say "hold my beer... watch this". 

 As of this reddit thread roll20 maps have a maximum  grid area of 150x100 squares according to the first reply & in the second one someone reports that big maps put a load on PC computers to the degree that they have had players report issues with maps in the 50x50 range.  While a local VTT pushed out to a second monitor on the GM's computer like arkenforge can handle dramatically larger maps

That says nothing about the fact that even 50x50 is huge for most premade maps and just counting 200 squares for short range any time reinforcements are coming/ambushes are set/etc let alone filling it in on the map places a burden on the GM. that rockets right past unreasonable deep into comical.  

Resizing the battlefield so squares jump from 1m to 10m is completely impossible on a battlemap without redrawing the entire battlefield & replacing any props with a 1:10/10:1 scale version.  Because assets/objects/whatever  are scaled individually to a desired size on a vtt the gm would need to build two different maps & possibly be trying to run two games at once if the scale changes from player/weapon to player/weapon.  I'm not aware of any vtt that allows you to adjust the gridlines of map because zoom in/out keeps them to scale allowing them to display both the immediate fight zoomed in as well as a larger dungeon(or whatever) layout by zooming out.

All of these weapons have short ranges that cause very real playability problems making their "long" range effectively a waste of ink that causes one or more problems regardless of if your game is ToTM, Battlemat, or VTT to the point where melee weapons may as well not even be listed.  It's not the end of the world to use reasonable ranges like d20 modern weapons(5ft squares), rifts, or even shadowrun style weapon based range increments (also 5ft) squares but the game is so different mechanically that it's almost impossible to compare without explaining a very complex combat system using dice pools , opposed rolls, & various skill/equipment/siuational/environment modifiers.

 

You can still have long & short ranges, or fate style vaguely descriptive ranges, you can even have "You are going to spend all day setting up this one shot you still might miss while the rest of the group was playing a completely different game as usual or your absolutely going to miss unless your shooting a uilding...a large one...  with a missile" type ranges like shadowrun's top end ranges... but short ranges with specific values of "you'll probably never need long range" and equally specific long ranges of "not markedly different from controlling a reaper drone from across the planet" just creates problems that outweigh the fun no matter if yoou run ToTM battlemat or VTT games.

[Deriachai]

Since you brought up the bow, Another interesting point.

I do Archery, with a modern bow, and 50m/200m is pretty crazy range.
Now we can assume that somebody who uses a bow for their primary tool would be much better than me, but 50m is already a fairly long range for a bow, 200m is basically entirely outside most bows range, let alone just disadvantage.

 

I would say a more reasonable 40/100 would be plenty.

 

Not as far off as the firearms, but still off.

[1001100x02]

The farthest accurate shot in archery under World Archery conditions is 283.47 m (930.04 ft), achieved by Matt Stutzman (USA) at the TPC Craig Ranch, McKinney, Texas, USA on 9 December 2015.

[1001100x02]

I think this has been hashed over fairly comprehensively on the discord but for those who aren't there.

 

Leaving aside the issue of inaccurate ranges for the moment because that is where we agree -- a problem that objectively exists and is easily solved -- I think the logic behind the idea of modern ranged weapons  presenting playability issues due to their functioning as intended is based on the flawed assumptions

(a) that a miniatures skirmish map has to encompass the extent of those ranges,

(b) that the probability shooters are going to have line of sight out to anything near that distance is in any way high

(c) that (ranged) combat under 5e is meant to have anything like the granularity of 3.x mechanics.

 

At the distances a skirmish takes place at, a shooter lining up a straight shot shouldn't have to worry about automatically incurring disadvantage purely due to distance unless they're using a particularly underpowered  weapon. It's things like cover or the environment or physical stress that are going to affect the attack roll.

You don't have to put a huge area into your battle map because of range capability of weapons. That's precisely what theatre of the mind is for.

And, to be brutally honest, the GM.

If the party are going to snipe jaffa from well outside ma'tok range, then the GM just has to gird their loins and use a note pad because, ultimately, the exact location of the enemy minis doesn't matter a hill of beans until the party ARE in ma'tok range.

Logically, the boundary of the skirmish should be the range at which both sides can reasonably hit each other. If the GM feels that the P90 users should suffer disadvantage until ma'tok range is achieved or even closer to the party's location that's on them alone and frankly isn't something that should by default be forced on all players just because the GM has a problem with the way 5e decided to make combat work.

Your attempt to make range a parallel to Shadowrun's realworld combat vs matrix combat problem falls somewhat flat too because range isn't competing systems as currently presented

Moving between combat locations on the fly or moving between mass and single combat may present logistical problems but I can't comment on that because I'm a VTT noob and there aren't as yet rules presented for such a thing. But the former isn't a problem for real world games or those that don't rely on something like roll20

 

Edited July 25, 2020 by 1001100x02

[tetrasodium]

1 hour ago, 1001100x02 said:

I think this has been hashed over fairly comprehensively on the discord but for those who aren't there.

 

Leaving aside the issue of inaccurate ranges for the moment because that is where we agree -- a problem that objectively exists and is easily solved -- I think the logic behind the idea of modern ranged weapons  presenting playability issues due to their functioning as intended is based on the flawed assumptions

(a) that a miniatures skirmish map has to encompass the extent of those ranges,

(b) that the probability shooters are going to have line of sight out to anything near that distance is in any way high

(c) that (ranged) combat under 5e is meant to have anything like the granularity of 3.x mechanics.

 

At the distances a skirmish takes place at, a shooter lining up a straight shot shouldn't have to worry about automatically incurring disadvantage purely due to distance unless they're using a particularly underpowered  weapon. It's things like cover or the environment or physical stress that are going to affect the attack roll.

You don't have to put a huge area into your battle map because of range capability of weapons. That's precisely what theatre of the mind is for.

And, to be brutally honest, the GM.

If the party are going to snipe jaffa from well outside ma'tok range, then the GM just has to gird their loins and use a note pad because, ultimately, the exact location of the enemy minis doesn't matter a hill of beans until the party ARE in ma'tok range.

Logically, the boundary of the skirmish should be the range at which both sides can reasonably hit each other. If the GM feels that the P90 users should suffer disadvantage until ma'tok range is achieved or even closer to the party's location that's on them alone and frankly isn't something that should by default be forced on all players just because the GM has a problem with the way 5e decided to make combat work.

Your attempt to make range a parallel to Shadowrun's realworld combat vs matrix combat problem falls somewhat flat too because range isn't competing systems as currently presented

Moving between combat locations on the fly or moving between mass and single combat may present logistical problems but I can't comment on that because I'm a VTT noob and there aren't as yet rules presented for such a thing. But the former isn't a problem for real world games or those that don't rely on something like roll20

 

Your entire post is ridiculous & can be summarized as "The fact that the rules as written are mechanically incapable of being supported by a battlemat & cause severe problems with both a vtt as well as ToTM is a nonissue because those ways of playing are badwrongfun & should not be used and  good gm will invent new rules  to fix the system level problem everyone seems to agree is a bad thing."  Your game of calvinball must be a blast

[tetrasodium]

2 hours ago, Deriachai said:

Since you brought up the bow, Another interesting point.

I do Archery, with a modern bow, and 50m/200m is pretty crazy range.
Now we can assume that somebody who uses a bow for their primary tool would be much better than me, but 50m is already a fairly long range for a bow, 200m is basically entirely outside most bows range, let alone just disadvantage.

 

I would say a more reasonable 40/100 would be plenty.

 

Not as far off as the firearms, but still off.

While true that the ranges are absurd even by the standards of their real world equivalents, the problem is more that the ranges are so absurdly far beyond their real world counterparts that they explode past the limitations of a tabletop rpg in ways that are capable of causing significant problems.  I think most of us would prefer to pay for a ruleset that is designed to work without obvious "see it from space" problems. 

 

 

[Deriachai]

12 hours ago, 1001100x02 said:

The farthest accurate shot in archery under World Archery conditions is 283.47 m (930.04 ft), achieved by Matt Stutzman (USA) at the TPC Craig Ranch, McKinney, Texas, USA on 9 December 2015.

Because a single record shot, from a stationary position, with a compound foot bow, is any way comparable, to shooting a primitive bow on the run. Should literally a character who is just barely proficient, really be able to almost match that shot, with just disadvantage, while running and being shot at? Does that not sound ridiculous to you?

 

In case you are unaware, a foot bow like that (ignoring the compound part right now) has a significantly longer draw length, which therefore has significantly more power (exponential growth)

[1001100x02]

4 minutes ago, Deriachai said:

Because a single record shot, from a stationary position, with a compound foot bow, is any way comparable, to shooting a primitive bow on the run. Should literally a character who is just barely proficient, really be able to almost match that shot, with just disadvantage, while running and being shot at? Does that not sound ridiculous to you?

 

In case you are unaware, a foot bow like that (ignoring the compound part right now) has a significantly longer draw length, which therefore has significantly more power (exponential growth)

Oh I'm totally aware. Something like that is the same erroneous information that leads to the p90 having such a ridiculous max range because FN reported that in a statistical outlier under the most favourable conditions their 5.7mm round managed to make it some ridiculous distance

From Stutzman's own site: On Thursday (10 December), the day before Stutzman’s 33rd birthday, Stutzman upped his game and gave fans even more to cheer for, shattering his own world record with an even farther shot, at 310 yards, almost six times the distance Stutzman shoots from in Paralympic events (50m, approximately 55 yards).

The game engine has a baked-in tendency to look at what's possible over what's likely because the expectation is that the GM will modify down to suite themselves.

[Deriachai]

So you are agreeing that the numbers are ridiculous? Why have you been arguing they aren't?

 

It is all well and good to say that the GM should modify to suit themselves, and that is exactly what I did, but what about new GMs, or just non-confident ones? Intentionally putting in poor quality stats with the intention of the GM modifying them is a poor way to go about it.

 

Why not do something like use reasonable ranges for standard, and disadvantage range, then have some further penalized max range. Or some more creative solution.

[tetrasodium]

5 hours ago, Deriachai said:

Because a single record shot, from a stationary position, with a compound foot bow, is any way comparable, to shooting a primitive bow on the run. Should literally a character who is just barely proficient, really be able to almost match that shot, with just disadvantage, while running and being shot at? Does that not sound ridiculous to you?

 

In case you are unaware, a foot bow like that (ignoring the compound part right now) has a significantly longer draw length, which therefore has significantly more power (exponential growth)

Good catch, thanks for pointing out how unique that was!

That is not "guy with a bow", it's he legendary armless windstrike archer of the local tribe on P9x-35r3543 who has made a reputation of killing the local system lord's jaffa one each day with impunity & vanishing without a trace before the search expands out that far...  Interestingly enough, he' has the ancient gene and is using an ancient crafted bow named "heartpiercer" that helps direct the arrow at the electrical impulses of the target's heart using long distance force field based adjustments.   Of course, bob over there just picked up a bow for the first time & is almost as good & his caretaker/student "õ¤«°" just picked up the first p90 he ever saw in his life & is shooting 200/1800 after an afternoon if that,  When the baseline is so far beyond legendary nobody is legendary.

Edited July 25, 2020 by tetrasodium
typo

[1001100x02]

10 hours ago, Deriachai said:

So you are agreeing that the numbers are ridiculous? Why have you been arguing they aren't?

I've been doing no such thing, I've agreed since the beginning that the range data is flawed. What I've been arguing is that ranges exceeding the space representable by existing RP aides like battlemats and the computational limitations of VTTs are not inherently bad nor the existential crises some people are making them out to be.

Quote

Why not do something like use reasonable ranges for standard, and disadvantage range, then have some further penalized max range. Or some more creative solution.

Because that's not how 5e works. This game uses 5e; it can't change those baked-in parameters -- weapons have a short range then automatic disadvantage to their max range -- otherwise it defeats the whole point of using 5e. You can situationally decrease what the short range is, but that's it

 

 

 

Edited July 26, 2020 by 1001100x02

[tetrasodium]

40 minutes ago, 1001100x02 said:

I've been doing no such thing, I've agreed since the beginning that the range data is flawed. What I've been arguing is that ranges exceeding the space representable by existing RP aides like battlemats and the computational limitations of VTTs are not inherently bad nor the existential crises some people are making them out to be.

Because that's not how 5e works. This game uses 5e; it can't change those baked-in parameters -- weapons have a short range then automatic disadvantage to their max range -- otherwise it defeats the whole point of using 5e. You can situationally decrease what the short range is, but that's it

 

 

 

This game builds on 5e but is not shackled to 5e unless you can cite wotc book & page number for tension dice, moxie & it's various uses in things like social encounters, mission points, 5 level classes, pointbuy feats, & so many other interesting improvements present in sgp.  The folks at Wyvern can absolutely change the insane range parameters they themselvescurrently have set.  Not only can they change them, they can do just like all those other things you can't cite wotc book & page number on & do something better.  It's time for you to drop this preaching from on high defense of an obviously unworkable  set of ranges and either espouse the virtues of it or admit that it's so unworkable even the lone defender can't actually defend it using any of the merits those ranges have.The insane ranges aren't set by wotc & here is proof so stop acting otherwise and either defend the ranges on whatever merits you seem to think they might have or allow others to provide constructive feedback  & discussion without the needless disruption you are contributing.

 

There are any number of ways to correct this self inflicted wound in the ruleset for SGP, but one critical thing is that the fix has to  simply be capable of functioning (changing the size of gridines does not meet that very low bar so a different solution is required).   Your "nothing can be done must remain broken" wardrum is unhelpful and actively prevents people from fleshing out a functional solution that might provide a baseline wyvern could use as inspiration or even a guidepost to avoid wasting time developing/testing a solution that fails at the very low bar of simply being possible like the idea of changing the size of squares on the fly from 1:1 to 1:10 from player to player.

It the excessively long  yet needlessly concrete ranges cause problems for tables that do not use a battlemat or vtt as well as both Deriachai & myself have pointed out in this thread.  Since you admit that the rules are problematic for games that use either a battlemat or vtt & those same rules are inadequate for a theater of the mind game as well... exactly what fourth style of game are you saying the ranges are designed to fit well with.  Given that you appear to be the only person excited to finally have a system designed to fit that unknown style of tabletop rpg, can you provide statistics showing its popularity in relation to ToTM battlemats & VTT usage. 

Ranges that "exceed the space representable by existing RP aides like battlemats and the computational limitations of [the most popular well known VTT roll20] are not inherently bad" they are failing at one of the most basic hurdles a tabletop RPG can be expected to clear with ease making the current ranges the rpg equivalent of this car.  There are VTTs capable of handling the ranges provided, one of the developers of arkenforge said "millions is probably where you will start hitting floating point issues" in regards to how many squares  large a map could theoretically be... Except the ranges still crash face first just as spectacularly into two different critical hurdles where the current rules massively fail on.  Specifically:

• the pressure it places on the gm to make larger and larger maps causing the prep needed for a game to expand beyond any reasonable amount of time.
• "can I shoot them with my weapon from here"  "um... one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty twenty one twenty two twenty three twenty four twenty five twenty six twenty seven twenty eight twenty nine thirty thirtyone thirtytwo thirtythree thirtyfour thirtyfive thirtysix thirty seven thirty eight thirtynine forty fortyone fortytwo forty three forty four forty five forty six forty seven forty eight forty nine fifty fifty one fifty two fifty three fifty four fifty five fifty six fifty seven fifty eight fifty nine sixty sixty one sixty two sixty three sixty four sixty five sixty six sixty seven sixty eight sixty nine seventy seventy one seventy two seventy three seventy four seventy five...." "hold on GM, there are a lot of really cool improvements on 5e in this game but this is monumentally stupid, lets play something else." 

[Bahamut_A6M5]

And again, we come to the simple issue of converting the P90 into a submachine gun rather than a longarm and thus we don't have P90 users sniping targets at 1,800 m. ranges. A thing such as having Proficiency with Longarms feat covering SMGs, assault rifles, hunting rifles, shotguns and marksman rifles shouldn't mean all those types should be encompassed in a single, catchall category (meaning a shotgun could potentially be fired at 1,800 meters). The feat could allow for the character to be profient with all those weapon types, then have each weapon type broken down into subcategories: SMG, assault rifle, etc. with each one having specific traits (SMGs could be autofire with short range, assault rifles could be autofire with longer range, marksman rifles could be the 1,800 m. nightmarish range "owners" and so on).

Lastly, forcing down a "nerf" into weapon ranges just because "my mat doesn't have enough tiles to catch the maximum range of a pistol" seems to me like a stupid reasoning. Also, "The laser rifle is 20/60 squares not the sgp pistol's 50/100 squares" is a poor comparison: laser beams lose coherency when fired through an atmosphere (things such as small water drops floating in the air refracting or difracting the beam), which greatly limit their range effectiveness; nothing to do with the air resistance a small projectile suffers when fired.

Edited July 31, 2020 by Bahamut_A6M5

[Iesha Dover]

As we discovered in esp2 there needs to be an official way to deals with team disagreements on social rolling situations.  I personally thing moral debate makes to more interesting role play but still the game does need to move on.  The simple disadvantage method seem  was ok on the fly but would not work in all situations.  for example there was a clear majority in our group so disadvantage was plied to the majority but the minority didn't get to roll. This seem fair enough except what happen in a more 50/50 split in opinion?  And it didn't really give any weight to the person being influence own natural leaning.  So say the split is 40/60 but the npc is leaning in the 40% favor shouldn't this taken into account as well?

Plus because of the way the system works there does seem to be an almost endless amount of time characters can use to influence the NPC so even with disadvantage I believe you would find the majority party would always win, just take up a ton a game time doing so.  

[tyleonhayes]

I agree that rules (or at least a sidebar laying out options) on how to handle intra-party conflict in this kind of encounter would be beneficial - Stargate is often features moral questions and difference of opinion is to be expected and encouraged.

The natural inclination of the npc should be factored into their threshold for the encounter.  From a 'dissenting' player perspective, I guess it would be most rewarding to have their arguments 'deduct' successes effectively raising the threshold, but pacing could definitely become an issue there if it just kept going one way then the other. There is a mechanical limit to the length it can go on though - with the DP cost going up to participate in each round, sooner or later the participants are going to not have enough points to wager, even if they succeed all their checks, a player with a max DP of 4 can't participate in round 5. 

[tetrasodium]

On 7/31/2020 at 2:27 PM, Bahamut_A6M5 said:

And again, we come to the simple issue of converting the P90 into a submachine gun rather than a longarm and thus we don't have P90 users sniping targets at 1,800 m. ranges. A thing such as having Proficiency with Longarms feat covering SMGs, assault rifles, hunting rifles, shotguns and marksman rifles shouldn't mean all those types should be encompassed in a single, catchall category (meaning a shotgun could potentially be fired at 1,800 meters). The feat could allow for the character to be profient with all those weapon types, then have each weapon type broken down into subcategories: SMG, assault rifle, etc. with each one having specific traits (SMGs could be autofire with short range, assault rifles could be autofire with longer range, marksman rifles could be the 1,800 m. nightmarish range "owners" and so on).

Lastly, forcing down a "nerf" into weapon ranges just because "my mat doesn't have enough tiles to catch the maximum range of a pistol" seems to me like a stupid reasoning. Also, "The laser rifle is 20/60 squares not the sgp pistol's 50/100 squares" is a poor comparison: laser beams lose coherency when fired through an atmosphere (things such as small water drops floating in the air refracting or difracting the beam), which greatly limit their range effectiveness; nothing to do with the air resistance a small projectile suffers when fired.

Turn that bolded bit around on it's head, you have it the wrong way around.  You are saying that very real & tangible problems caused by the current ranges aren't a good reason for why those ranges should be reduced rather than actually defending those ranges or bringing up any merits of those ranges.  Some of the things you raise are relevant to the context they were raised, while others narrow the scope of the problem in order to setup a strawman capable of being trivially attacked

• "my mat doesn't have enough tiles to catch the maximum range of a pistol" seems to me like a stupid reasoning.  First off, No commercially available battlemat does & many VTTs like like roll20 run into similar trouble or worse.  Second,  if you have a VTT or even a custom football field sized battlemat you run into a second set of problems that  are potentially even worse.  The fact that it happens with pistol's short range highlights just how problematic it is for even longer ranged weapons to a critical degree.  Defend why the current ranges are better for the game than the very real problems are a negative for it
• Also, "The laser rifle is 20/60 squares not the sgp pistol's 50/100 squares" is a poor comparison: laser beams lose coherency when fired through an atmosphere (things such as small water drops floating in the air refracting or difracting the beam), which greatly limit their range effectiveness; nothing to do with the air resistance a small projectile suffers when fired. This misses why bringing up the laser rifle was relevant & it wasn't because of physics. There has been a strong undercurrent of "The ranges are what they are & can't be changed" in what little defense people have made for the current ranges & those dmg firearms ranges are relevant because it shows they are not set by wotc.  Combine that with the fact that current ranges are absurd by the standards of reality you have ranges that are not imposed by wotc, objectively problematic in multiple ways for playing a tabletop rpg, & in no way reflective of even a generous accounting of reality. 

If you want to defend the ranges have at it, but you need to do things like highlight up the merits they bring to the game because reality, 5e itself,  & the needs of a tabletop rpg provide no support with nobody even attempting to suggest any.

Edited August 4, 2020 by tetrasodium

[Algernon Pike]

Battlemat size should not come into this discussion. I understand that this is a TTRPG, but the weapon systems are the weapon systems. A trained soldier firing an M16 can consistently hit a target over 500m away. That's just true. At 200m they're even more dangerous. You would have to come in via cover or stealth on a position with a squad of marines ready with M16s or you're going to take massive casualties. The Tau'ri weapons create what's called a "force multiplier" when compared to the weapon systems of the Jaffa. Yes, the Jaffa could win and did win engagements, but they did so with bodies. Against an even number of Jaffa outside of an ambush, the Tau'ri win every time and that's just what it is.

I understand wanting to make the game more equitable for the enemies of SGPC, but in the end, it just isn't in canon so it doesn't have to be in game.

[Deriachai]

51 minutes ago, Algernon Pike said:

Battlemat size should not come into this discussion. I understand that this is a TTRPG, but the weapon systems are the weapon systems. A trained soldier firing an M16 can consistently hit a target over 500m away. That's just true. At 200m they're even more dangerous. You would have to come in via cover or stealth on a position with a squad of marines ready with M16s or you're going to take massive casualties. The Tau'ri weapons create what's called a "force multiplier" when compared to the weapon systems of the Jaffa. Yes, the Jaffa could win and did win engagements, but they did so with bodies. Against an even number of Jaffa outside of an ambush, the Tau'ri win every time and that's just what it is.

I understand wanting to make the game more equitable for the enemies of SGPC, but in the end, it just isn't in canon so it doesn't have to be in game.

You mention "A trained soldier firing an M16 can consistently hit a target over 500m away."

Recall, that in a system like this, all attacks are being done with effectively no aiming time, while running and being shot at, not at a target range.

Within 6 seconds a character can move 6m, and shoot, while being shot at, or having other effects.