I've gotten familiar with how Matrix combat works, and have done a tiny bit with Astral combat, but so far, the game just grinds to a halt when we do. There are a couple of "bore-creating" problems with Matrix combat:
1) Limited options of what to do. You can attack (with one of only three programs), and then you defend. You can summon a sprite or agent, which have those same 2 options. Unlike meatspace combat, you can't seek cover, going full defense seems to be a complete waste of time, you can't decide between grenades and guns and melee... just three options, which are all essentially the same.
2) Bland descriptions. I suppose if we got into detailing each user's Reality Filter it could make this a little more interesting, but that seems like more trouble than it's worth.
3) Limited participation. Only one or two players are part of Matrix combat, with the rest just sitting there watching. I suppose this one's unavoidable, but still.
4) Repetition. The dice pools for every Cybercombat action tend to be nearly the same for all characters that would use them (rarely less than 10, pretty much never over 14), for both attack and defense. So we roll a huge amount of misses and ties, and combat just drags on and on. Coupled with the lack of varieties of attacks and tactics, this means I and the player involved just repeatedly throw the same dice at each other. 15 Initiative Passes into the last fight I ran, we got sick of it and rolled our dice pools until we didn't tie and called that one the winner.
I haven't run a full-on Astral combat yet, but I have a feeling it's going to turn out about the same way. Are there any techniques I can use to make things more interesting? Or have I missed some details that make cybercombat fun?
