Change to Traditional Firing Order?

[bakija]

Nope, just giving another viewpoint in response to your question.

I was just asking why someone was doing that. They gave me an answer which was, essentially, "it is an arbitrary house rule". Which I was totally ok with.

  You will specifically note that I never said you were wrong for doing so and even went to far as to say that while I consider it meta-gaming, I do not consider it inherently munchkinish.

I'm not quite sure how it is considered "metagaming" to be following the rules and using them in the way that they are intended to be used. As noted, choosing what order you fire your guns in is, say, no more or less "metagaming" than choosing to use terrain to your advantage.

Unfortunately I am not near my core colelction and only have the TW pdf's, but I am pretty sure that the older editions said that every thing happened simultaneously.

Sure. But the current rules specifically point out that you decide the order that your weapons resolve. So it strikes me as perfectly sensible to do so. I mean, again, if you don't want to do that, that is something you can certainly do (as using an arbitrary order is deciding what order your weapons resolve just as much as using a order based on tactical advantage). But claiming that it is anything other than playing the game as designed is kind of silly.

[bakija]

Unfortunately I am not near my core colelction and only have the TW pdf's, but I am pretty sure that the older editions said that every thing happened simultaneously.

'Cause I was curious, I dug out my old BT Compendium and 3rd Ed Box set rulebook (both Fasa '94), and checked this, and they both say:

"Weapons fire is resolved one unit at a time. Because all combat fire is considered to take place simultaneously, the order in which it is resolved does not matter..."

So under the 3rd Ed rules, everything is considered to be simultaneous, and the designers were under the impression that the order in which it resolved did not matter.

Except that they were wrong. As the order in which weapons fire is resolved *does* matter. It doesn't matter *a lot* most of the time, but it certainly does matter (see: this entire thread).

Thankfully, the designers realized this at some point, and the current rules specifically indicate that the order in which you resolve weapons fire is up to the person firing the weapons. 'Cause it matters. Again, usually not a lot. But some. And as a result, it is worth paying attention to the order in which you fire and resolve your weapons. Most of the time? It probably won't make much difference to the outcome of a given volley. But once and a while, your decision to fire and resolve a PPC before an SRM6 (or vice versa) will make a difference to the outcome. So it is worth paying attention and making a decision.

If folks would rather just resolve weapons in a completely arbitrary order (i.e. the order the weapons randomly show up on the record sheet or a made up order that makes everyone happy or alphabetically or randomly), they can certainly do that as that is allowed by the rules as much as specifically picking an order that you feel is most tactically advantageous to you. But I'd imagine that people who play Battletech as a competitive tactical war game would prefer to pay attention to the order in which weapons resolve, as that is an interesting tactical decision, just like using terrain for the defensive benefits or juggling the defensive benefits of movement vs the offensive penalties of movement are.