Large encounters lock up when loading to combat tracker

[discgolferusa]

I tried running a Torg Eternity campaign on classic for the first time yesterday and ran into a problem with the very first encounter. It consisted of 2 different npcs types, but a total of 41 enemies. It gray screened my gaming laptop for 6 minutes trying to push that encounter into the ct. Is that normal??? Again I'm running the torgeternitymc extension on more core.

Is there a better way to handle large encounters? Should I break them up into multiple encounters? Just not sure what to do.

[damned]

Can you show a screenshot of the NPCs showing all rolls?

[discgolferusa]

Can you show a screenshot of the NPCs showing all rolls?

I'm not totally sure what you're looking for, but here's a pic of the whole encounter. Sorry, still really new to FGC so may need handholding if there's more info missing than what I'm showing you here.

https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=19Eud0PFWER4xW7lKsTnUii7fp8jYHNGG

[damned]

Ive never used that system or the extension however...

When you add an NPC to the Combat Tracker all of those Attacks and all of those Rolls are being parsed and added to the Combat Tracker.
In the screenshot above thats about 1100 actions being parsed. Should it take 6mins? Probably not but maybe there are other ways to approach this?
Maybe you could split the Encounter into 4 Encounters North, East, South, West or 4 Waves etc. That might help. It would probably make things a lot easier for you - working thru 10-20 NPCs rather than 40.

[damned]

If they are almost rooms then you might have 10 or even more encounters.
You only load the Encounters that the PCs actually encounter into the CT.
The others will get their turn in time.

[discgolferusa]

Ive never used that system or the extension however...

When you add an NPC to the Combat Tracker all of those Attacks and all of those Rolls are being parsed and added to the Combat Tracker.
In the screenshot above thats about 1100 actions being parsed. Should it take 6mins? Probably not but maybe there are other ways to approach this?
Maybe you could split the Encounter into 4 Encounters North, East, South, West or 4 Waves etc. That might help. It would probably make things a lot easier for you - working thru 10-20 NPCs rather than 40.


Oh, crud! Ok, again, lack of knowledge of the FGC. I may need to structure where my rolls for non combat or encounter related abilities of an NPC resides. If i can figure out a good way to organize those rolls it may help overall performance by a lot.

I figured it had to be some sort of learning curve issue, but since this is an extension there's not a whole lot of info on how everything should be set up.

Thanks!

[discgolferusa]

If they are almost rooms then you might have 10 or even more encounters.
You only load the Encounters that the PCs actually encounter into the CT.
The others will get their turn in time.

Is the layout of the NPC character sheet driven by Morecore or can the extension make functional changes to how it operates? The reason I ask, is it may be cool to be able to flag an individual roll as being CT vs having a whole section being CT. That way I can keep skills all grouped together, but know that combat specific ones will show in the CT.

Just a thought.

[damned]

I think - guess here - is that the main issue is the 40 NPCs.
Is this one big fight scene or would it be a series of encounters?
If its the latter then you should configure each zone/room as a separate encounter and add them into the CT only when they happen
They will add to enemies already in the CT

[discgolferusa]

I think - guess here - is that the main issue is the 40 NPCs.
Is this one big fight scene or would it be a series of encounters?
If its the latter then you should configure each zone/room as a separate encounter and add them into the CT only when they happen
They will add to enemies already in the CT

It's more they're trying to sneak into a heavily fortified base. I had just loaded them into the encounter because I wanted them at specific locations for if they sneaked into that area that a conflict may happen without me having to track all those locations outside of FG.

In another campaign I've created there is one encounter where there's a ton of NPC's again, and there's not a good way to split that up either. The problem I'm running into, is there are too many skills or attribute modifiers and not enough grouping spots on the NPC sheet for me to lay it out in a comprehensible way.

It would be great to have like 2 more sections that I can lay things out in, because then I would put truly CT only skills in the CT skills section but not have to mix other roll types and attributes, or roll types and modifiers together where they're not going to make sense.

[LordEntrails]

One thing you can do is create multiple encounters, and then pin those encounters to each room/area. You can even move those pins as play progresses and then only add that group to the CT when appropriate. That way you have both a visual indicator of the groups that you can move around, plus you keep the number of combatants on the CT to a smaller number.

[damned]

I dont know but Im guessing that fortress is at least 100m per side maybe far bigger.
You mentioned this is your first dip into GMing on FG.
In FG you can prep all your encounters and NOT add them into the CT until they are needed.
By needed - I mean until you need to start shooting.

each of these circles is probably a separate encounter.
when you add an encounter to the CT it ADDs it to the CT - they might be prepped separately but you can easily have reinforcements from an adjacent area be alerted (add them to the CT) and then reveal them.
some other VTTs have everything on the map at the start
in FG you PIN the encounter to the map and you add it to the CT only when the players arrive to that location.

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=36371

36371