DarkLightHitomi:
{trimmed: previous quoted material from praguepride - horus.}
Sometimes you need think sideways.
For example, instead of having cover act like hp (a defense that breaks down over time), go with something entirely different mechanically.
I would treat cover as a powerful defense, but turn the game into a maneuvering game. A player can lay down suppression fire, to keep the enemy from leaving cover, and have abilities like grenades that can affect players around corners or otherwise through cover, thus avoiding such means needing to chance the suppression fire, or fire blindly to try to hit whoever is laying down the suppression fire, to gain an opening to move. Stuff like this makes cover central to the tactics, but the cover itself is not overpowered as it is more like terrain than an ability.
It might also be useful to make a distinction between concealment (which obscures your position and makes it more difficult to target you but does not protect you much), light cover (which may only cover you for small arms fire, possibly), medium cover (that which can withstand larger caliber weapons), and heavy cover (which might withstand medium bore field pieces, light rockets, mortars, etc. Relating these by a "doubling scale" generally works well (such that any cover also provides concealment, medium cover is twice as effective as light, heavy twice as effective as medium).
All this depends, of course, on how complex you want to go in your rules. As mentioned before, simpler is generally more playable and faster paced, so cover and concealment may be the way to go if you want the action to be quick.
quote:
Let me give a quick draft,
Lay suppression fire. Suppression fire is intended to make an area hazardous to cross by continuously filling that area with danger. Different weapon/attacks have different areas that are affected (i.e. a rifle has a long line while burning hands has a short broad cone)There are two options for suppression, direct and blind. Both types are full actions that last till the beginning of your next turn or when interupted. Taking damage ends the suppression effect.<quote>
Are you saying that if the unit delivering suppressive fire takes damage, its ability to continue becomes null, or that a unit exposed to such fire taking damage ends the suppressive effect?
<quote>
Direct suppression has a 75% chance of damaging any target crossing a suppressed space. However, direct suppression requires looking out to aim. While laying suppresive fire, a character can be targeted by a called shot to the head, arms, or hands. A target that gets stopped in a suppressed space gives the suppressing character a free attack. A character can make a full attack action each round against any target that ends their turn in a suppressed space in addition to the suppression effect.
Blind suppression has only a 25% chance of damaging any target crossing a space. Blind suppression is firing around a corner without looking, which only exposes the hand/s, and therefore a called shot to the hands or weapon is the only possible direct attack. A target that gets stopped in the suppressed space has a 50% chance of taking damage. If a character spdnds a round in a supressed space, they have a 75% chance of taking damage.
Just as an example of tryinb somethjng different when your first idea falls flat.
Just as you say. Now, expressing this description in a rules set might be a different matter. The trick is to make the rules clear, concise, and still cover edge cases that are going to come up in some rational way.
I would tend to gravitate to some sort of Task System, in which combat is a special case of opposing task rolls, with attacker and defender rolling tasks which are modified by their weapon in use, level of proficiency, terrain (cover/concealment), and other factors.
As long as the system is easy to understand and use, and makes sense in the greater majority of cases, players will accept a rational ruling for any edge cases that do come up in play.