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Just reading through the snapfire discussion so I thought I'd toss in my two cents.
I think warhead's comment here is an excellent question:
"Ok, so Snap Fire brings Tactical firing at moving units to the table but as I stated before on the original discussion, at what cost to the rest of the game?"
Now, me, since I'm pretty new to the netepic forum, I should give a little background about what informs my point here; that I'm for snapfire. I've played 6mm games for a while. Microarmor since back in 84 or 85 and epic since it came out as SM. In all those games there've always been opportunity fire. In all that time I've never seen anyone successfully argue against opportunity fire as not being important. As such, I'd stick with SF because it's proven itself to work as what it was designed to be, the weapons fire that takes place outside of normally resolved combat, because an opportunity to kill units belonging to the opponent has presented itself for a fleeting moment.
Why use it? Because it simply makes sense. There are times when the enemy does something that makes it vulnerable for a short window of opportunity during the turn. The penalties applied are because the units that can capitalize on it have to react quickly while that window exists.
This tactical fire opportunity exists for a unit for a short period, and then it's gone, but it has the potential to be a game changer. Thus snap fire serves important purposes on the battlefield (unit goes from cover to open to cover, you're gonna shoot them when they're in the open)
Now, if you consider whether you can do away with snap fire, you have to ask yourself, can pure probabilities and dice rolls reflect these lost game changing opportunities. I say that no it cannot. Opportunities that can be tactically decisive on a battlefield have larger impacts on the outcome than simple probability adjustments (if you take snap fire away) can quantify.
Let's take the example of the Thunderhawk. Snapfire by ground units has the possibility of decisively preventing a powerful assault before it can get to the ground and begin it. And sure, while it might be fun (if you play imperial) to be able to pull it off uncontested, it's neither fair NOR realistic. But more importantly you lose the realistic chance of whiping out the transport and the troops on it. Take this to the big thunderhawk transport that can move 6 rhinos and troops and it gets even bigger. Troops with weapons that are potentially effective WOULD fire on such an incoming assault and do everything they could to destroy the thunderhawk because it and its cargo of troops are a very real threat, and at the same time are vulnerable.
To deny the opportunity to counter such a threat is frankly ridiculous from a rules or realism standpoint, and no amount of abstracted rules can reflect the lost opportunity that should exist.
Me, I say that Snap fire has been around for a LONG time, and in many systems, and it has proven its value. It blunts close combat assaults like in the chaos example, it gives opportunity to knock out aerial assaults, and a hundred more tactical situations big and small, so I say it's serving its role. It's there and it offers a counters to situations without an otherwise effective counter in the rules, so it attempts to keep balance in play. Isn't that what a good set of rules is supposed to do?
Now, if there's something concrete that you can show is definitely wrong with it, then perhaps the mechanics of the rule might need a rework. But I've not seen anything that makes it unfair or unbalancing.
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