I also have some qualms about the Combat mechanics. Space Madness does not appear to be a game about fighting, be it mechanically or thematically. Fighting features, but it's not the core guts of the gameplay. The Space Ranger oath promises to explore, to police and to learn. The wand is a weapon, but it's also a tool. This says to me that a fight should start with the Space Rangers kicking in a door and end with a perp fleeing out a back door, OR start with the team getting ambushed and either turning the tables or running with their tails tucked between their legs. People want to duck behind cover, and that cover wants to explode when shot with a strong enough wand. You want the Space Rangers to yell "Drop your weapon!" before blasting people, and for doing so not to be a waste of AP.
This implies a laundry list of minor changes:
- Please Hold Me: Hold should be better than it is. In particular, Shoot should let you start a hold if you want, and maintaining a Hold should only cost 3 AP (Escape should still cost 4 AP). Also a human sized character Held by two other characters should generally be unable to attack - that way the party can actually restrain people. You might also consider rules for restraints.
- Cover Rules, Please. They don't need to be complicated - cover can just be a +1 or +2 modifier to the Combatives difficulty - but it does need to exist for genre emulation reasons. The cover bonus applies if you declare that you're moving into cover at all that turn - don't worry about if someone can get there 'in time' or not. For extra brownie points, some sort of guideline about destroying cover.
- Predictions and Distractions. Predict is a bad mechanic. It incentivizes you to spend an action and make and opposed roll to get a bonus every single round. Instead, it should be a 1AP action which lets you subtract your Computing hits from dicepools opposing you. There should also be a version called Distract which does the same thing [/i]for another character's[/i] opposed checks as a Deception roll.
- Rework Using Words. At a bare minimum, each character should get a free use of Talk immediately prior to each Combat Round, if they care to say something. Further, if you're Holding someone or in Melee with someone, you should be able to say whatever you want to them for free. For extra brownie points, there should be some reason - beyond cool factor - to want to spend actions to say things in a fight. Even a one die bonus on your next turn would be nice.