The Conflict Environment

The conflict environment is a way to spice up combat and other conflicts, and allow players who don’t have strong skills in that conflict area to be of use! Giving more options and meaningful choices is the idea here.

Conflict works exactly as described in the Fate Rules. Using the conflict environment is totally up to the players and GM and can be ignored by both sides.

The conflict environment gives every zone a few properties that provide an advantage bonus after they have been “won”.

The conflict environment can also be used outside of conflict, as a way to set up or prepare for conflict, or just to confer advantages to their teammates.

Properties

Each round you pick what property you want to use that round. If you've won no properties, or you pick one you or your team hasn't won yet, you can still get the advantage if your team wins it. Everyone reveals their chosen property at the same time. If you're in melee you cannot pick it and instead pick you melee advantage.

In combat this would be:

Cover:

Cover are solid objects or things that can block, limit, impede or confound attackers and attacks. Being in / behind cover gives you defensive bonus. If others give cover to their team they’re helping them get to advantageous positions by laying down suppressive fire or distracting the opponents (or even preparing cover, by kicking over tables and such).

Cover negates Advantage. Cover gets negated by Stealth. Effect: Advantage bonus (+2) to the defense roll, unless your opponent has the stealth advantage. Cover also gives a bonus to Deceive, Burglary and Stealth.

Advantage:

Advantage is a position that offers superior observation, reach, higher ground, etc,... Advantage provides a way to negate Stealth as well as giving an attacking bonus.

Advantage negates stealth, advantage gets negated by cover.

Effect: Advantage gives an advantage bonus to ranged attacks to other zones, unless your opponent has the cover advantage, as well as a bonus to Notice and Investigate.

Stealth:

Stealth is using the environment to get the drop on your opponent by trying to cloak your movements and positions. If others give stealth they distract or use environmental factors (like steam vents, flashbangs, smoke,...) to confuse their opponents as to the whereabouts of their members.

Stealth negates cover, gets negate by Advantage.

Effect: Stealth gives an Advantage bonus to melee and ranged attacks in the same zone. Or it can be used to move into another zone without using an action (this lowers the level permanently by one for the rest of their team in that zone). It can also be used as a bonus to deceive or burglary.

Other environments:

The same basics can be used in other conflict situations by other names. The basic setup is:

Advantage beats Subterfuge beats Defence beats Advantage.

Where Advantage would mean anything that would improve the odds of getting an “attack” in, Subterfuge would mean anything that made it harder to defend against the attack (because it was hidden / unknown) and Defence anything that could be used to give a bonus to “defence”.

Examples would be(by no means exhaustive or the “only right way”) :

Jetfighters: Sensor (Advantage), Stealth (Subterfuge) and Evasion (Defence). Courtroom legal battle: Evidence (Advantage), Oratory (Subterfuge), Jury (Defence).

Using Properties

You can use properties by using “create advantage” of a skill that could logically be used to give your team such an advantage. Preferably non-combat skills (though not necessarily only those). For instance using Mechanics to rig a steam-pipe to create fog in an area to increase Stealth. Or Rapport or investigate to set up your team in superior cover. Heck in certain situations you could even use “Drive” to give cover by placing your car in such a way in the zone that your team starts out with superior cover (the GM might even improve the Cover property of the zone after this). Be creative!

If two opposing teams are trying to create advantage for the same property, and opposed check is in order, where the winner wins the advantage, a tie means the status quo stays the same.

For Jetfighters you could use Electronics or Notice to increase Sensor, Fly or Knowledge (geography would help) to increase Stealth, and Fly or even Mechanics (if it was setup beforehand) to increase Evasion.

In a Courtroom Legal Battle you’d use Requisition or Investigate to gain Evidence, Deceive for Oratory, to convince the court and Rapport for getting the jury on your side.

Adding properties to zones

Not every zone needs all properties, or even “a” property. Try and base it on logical features of the zone (a watchtower, cameras, portholes, crates,...) If a warehouse is stacked with crates its logical that cover (and even stealth) can be given. In an open area the opposite is true of course. It’s even possible for weather and other outside factors to change the property of a zone, even characters and NPCs could change them permanently (after they blow up the building the amount of cover is seriously reduced), or pouring oil all over a concrete floor might give an Advantage bonus.