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For some reference, 1e and 2e use a 30 second round broken into 6 phases.

1e figures CUF as function of combat experience which itself is a function of rolled attributes; the more your attributes total, the younger and less experienced you are. Low CUF is good as CUF is the number of phases you must idle, not doing anything.

2e figures the analog, Initiative with a simple d6. +1 is added for "cool guys" (airborne, ranger, SF, etc.) and the roll is halved for reservists (round up) and conscripts (round down). High is good as that is the number f phases you can act in. Combat experience is "limited" to the four years of the Twilight War you have experienced, even if your military career extends far enough you might be a veteran of Grenada or Panama or Iraq or the Falklands or Afghanistan or.... (Or even Viet Nam, in one deliberate example.)

But CUF in this version isn't these things. It is the ability to keep your wits when the world is blowing up around you. As, like 2e, you are a veteran of three years of high intensity fighting in the Twilight War, there is an assumption that all PCs should have reasonable CUF, otherwise they would be dead by now. So how do we figure it decoupled from rank?

The salient points are how much fighting the character has experienced. And that's really luck of the draw. I'm not opposed to a d6 roll as a final character creation step, with a kicker for SOF. To normalize the roll, I'd simply propose 1: D, 2-3: C, 4-5: B, and 6: A, with SOF (and maybe assassins and paramilitary) adding 1 to the roll.

Some interesting points. I feel CUF should be tied to experience and not necessarily automatically to rank (perhaps the base game is implying that promotion = combat experience = CUF, but I think that's a stretch). My opinion is not based on any actual personal experience in ranged combat but is based on lots of experience in full force armed combat. People can be very well trained BUT because combat is messy and no exactly like the drills or training then the key advantage I've experienced from fighting is the instinctive reaction when something happens (combination muscle memory + the ability to work out what is actually going on in the moment) and basically not freezing and having to use your thinking / logical brain to work out "what to do next". It's more than just not panicking - it's having the instinct and confidence to do something / anything at all vs freezing. That's what I think CUF is modelling here BUT I don't think it should be tied to rank.

I guess in character generation there's no proxy for "combat experience" - e.g. police or bouncers might have "combat experience" - most soldiers would have more than civilians simply because they have had some form of exposure in basic training, special forces we can assume get deployed more and get involved more and hence have higher CUF.

Here's another thought / issue I have with CUF and I'd like to know your thoughts. The issue I have is that it's too granular (d6, 8, 10, 12) - what about if CUF was 2 dice e.g. d6 d6 or d8 d6 etc (now I'm not sure if I would count one dice up and then the other or alternate up in ranks). This might give more scope for granular advancement and also granular character generation (because now there's 8 steps and not 4) - what do you think? Starting Rads could be equal to the highest CUF dice (rather than d6).

CUF rolls are already two dice. You get to use the best Command skill of your side, provided:

"If you have line of sight to any non-incapacitated friendly fighter, also roll a base die for the current unit morale score of your unit."

Regarding giving CUF bonuses to SOF... that has it backwards. Yeah, I guess you might see some gains there. But in actual fact the selection process for those guys is in large part specifically to weed out who doesn't have it.

That suggests another system where chargen could start with CUF determination (super abitrarily, I'll say: 1-3: D, 4-5: C, 6: B). And now you can use CUF as a requirement for determining careers, which makes my half-assed house rule on allowing characters to lose CUF (rather than attributes) over lifepath have a lot more teeth and feel much more viable. It should be possible for it to go both up and down in the course of chargen, imo.

As welsh went into, I also don't think combat experience = better CUF. It can have quite the opposite effect. But, for gaming purposes... maybe it's best that it's only a benefit, as a default. Unless earning traumas or wounds as part of chargen became a thing.

Mmm - ok - and that is a good rule - so yes, it does throw a spanner in the works with respect to my proposal!

CUF rolls are already two dice. You get to use the best Command skill of your side, provided:

"If you have line of sight to any non-incapacitated friendly fighter, also roll a base die for the current unit morale score of your unit."

Unless earning traumas or wounds as part of chargen became a thing.

Wait ... maybe there could be a survival roll for each term, so you could even die during chargen!

I was waiting for that

Unless earning traumas or wounds as part of chargen became a thing.

Wait ... maybe there could be a survival roll for each term, so you could even die during chargen!

Please, no. It was so lame in Traveller that post-CT editions moved it to optional, with short term & out swapped from the optional position in CT2E (noted by post 1980 print dates from the US; Games Workshop UK may or may not have made the switch) to the default in MT, TNE, and T4.

Death in CGen is a simulationist time-waster, especially if the game uses template-type NPCs as the default.

Death in CGen is a simulationist time-waster, especially if the game uses template-type NPCs as the default.

You missed my smiley face, it seems.

Anyway, the point served by death in chargen, i.e. limiting the ability to collect a zillion skills, is balanced in this case by (a) a limited skill set and (b) the breakout of war. And the limited skill set is quite valuable here, because at some point if war fails to break out, you find yourself feeling that continuing to collect skills and rank is pointless anyway.

As to CUF, it seems the biggest problem with proposing how to make the lifepath affect CUF is that nobody can agree what it means or where it comes from, but everyone agrees it shouldn't simply rise with military rank. The problem here is, every system for doing it seems to be bad in some way.

Life Path Character Generation is not meant to create a balanced character. If you want a balanced character you use the Archetype Character Creation instead.

But, sure, if you are to "unlucky", you may have to restart the Life Path Character Generation or perhaps create a character using the Archetype Character Creation instead.

IMHO, there is a significant difference between “not meant to creat a balanced character” and something that is way out in terms of suspension of disbelief. And as far as I can tell, it’s not something that really has to continue to be this way. These are the kind of problems that ALPHA testing is supposed to suss out. Something like the aging crisis is easy enough to fix, and it could easily be done with house rules, but that’s not something that GMs should have to do to fix such a problem. Again, this is my own opinion as a GM of over 40 years.