u/ColonelAutumn9155

Hello everyone, I am famously long-winded but I'll try to keep this relatively concise.

I am completely new to running FATE. I have been running a multi-year campaign for my friends using various systems, none of which have pleased me because ultimately I want to run a more narrative system, so I stumbled across FATE.

I have read through FATE Condensed and the Book of Hanz. I understand, in theory at least, the principles of the system, and I really think this is the system that best fits what I want and the story that I want to tell. I think this will be a great change for my group once we all get used to it.

However, I'm at a point where we're really late in our own campaign and I'm still an utter neophyte when it comes to running FATE (I haven't run a session of it yet), and I'm worried that my lack of familiarity with the mechanics might detract from how good the climax of the campaign plays out.

Context (You can skip this): Basically, the PCs are part of a team that are working for a nation that has discovered that this world's gods are both A) keeping the mortal races from progressing in order to keep them weak and oppressed, and B) are not quite as invulnerable as they make themselves out to be. This nation, with the help of the PCs, has been working towards preparing for the next "God War" for some time now, and the time has nearly arrived for it to break out. The last big chunk of sessions we have had have focused on the PCs laying the groundwork for this war to be fought, so that the mortal races have a chance of winning against the supremely-powerful beings and their loyalist lackeys. My plan for the PCs is to have them undergo an arcane/superscientific ritual to essentially make them into demigods who, by working together (the power of friendship, yay!) can rival the power of a full-blown god.

So here are my questions: Do you guys have any recommendations on how best to utilize FATE to make fighting against these gods memorable and satisfying? Do you have any suggestions, tips, or ideas for how to run a "fight" against a god? How can I really showcase FATE's unique mechanics and prevent what should be a reality-shaking combat from devolving into just "taking turns punching a really big guy."

In some ways, utilizing an overly-tactical system had advantages when it running a combat against a god - dealing huge amounts of damage, screwing with the PCs' stats, multi-actions, etc... But I want these gods to be more than just giant damage sponges that do 12d10000 damage with each attack. I feel like there's a way I can play around with Aspects to do some really cool stuff with these god fights, but I'm not familiar enough with the system to know how yet.

I guess I'm envisioning something that's a fight, and yet almost plays out kind of a like a puzzle, if that makes sense? Something that FEELS different from a regular fight.

TL;DR How can I best utilize FATE to have some good combats against gods that don't feel like traditional combats?

Any help is appreciated.

My buddy and I decided to start an MP game because I thought the most recent patch was supposed to fix some of the desync issues in MP.

We made it 33 years into the game, everything was going great, and then all of the sudden, boom. Out of Sync. We resync real fast, but then again, BOOM. Out of sync.

My friend keeps getting desynced because of COUNTRY_RESOURCES, and it always happens on the first of every month. I've only played one other MP game in Stellaris, and it was back in 3.14 and there were no desyncs. I have no idea how to deal with this. We tried restarting our games, but no luck.

Can anybody offer me some suggestions on how to fix this issue? We'd love to be able to continue this save.