Summary of Initiative and Attacks Comments Made in 1998

In 1998, it was universally agreed with everybody I talked to that the
combat system, as it appears in the main rule book, was flawed.
A better system was needed to reflect this concern.

The nature of the flaw in the combat system, in a nutshell, were that people
were going into FITS (Frozen in Time Syndrome). Basically, characters
would use up their attacks and then would be helpless as others, with a far
greater number of attacks, were then able to execute several actions without
having anybody able to stop them. For example, they could fire a full clip burst
without anybody able to dodge, or they could tie a couple of grenades to
somebody and run away, etc ...

This was an afront to common sense and the nature of modern warfare. It
seemed more reasonable that attacks should be evenly spread over the attack
round, rather than everybody taking turns; then the people with more attacks
get a bunch of actions at the end of combat. In other words, in modern combat,
I want to act as quickly as I possibly can. I don't want to have to wait until
the end of the round to overwhelm my opponent(s). I am going to shoot at them
as fast as I can, so they will be dead before they can counter-attack.
With this reasoning, Palladium's explanation of their combat system with a
reference to two opponents in a boxing match does not apply (no more of this
I hit him, he hits me, and I hit him a bunch more times). This is because
if my opponent gets a chance to hit me, I could be dead.

To fully explain the combat system(s) that was evently decided upon would
make this summary too long. However, I believe that the system is sufficiently
and accurately described in the last email of the year on that subject.

I believe that the system described there addresses the concerns mentioned
above, and still incorporates the spirit of initiative.