Fl1nt, I think you're pretty much right on the money with your first post.  The damage of ANY vehicle-scale weapons are so ridiculous that it's not even worth bothering with the x10 damage, the target is just down.  And that's lame. Obviously being shot by an X-Wing would vaporize you, but it's still lame.
As far as I'm concerned, PCs are immune to direct hits from Vehicle-scale weapons, and turbolasers can't even target individuals.  I think your damage scale works pretty well.

Fl1nt, I think you're pretty much right on the money with your first post.  The damage of ANY vehicle-scale weapons are so ridiculous that it's not even worth bothering with the x10 damage, the target is just down.  And that's lame. Obviously being shot by an X-Wing would vaporize you, but it's still lame.
As far as I'm concerned, PCs are immune to direct hits from Vehicle-scale weapons, and turbolasers can't even target individuals.  I think your damage scale works pretty well.

That's why I make Predict a rolled action, Sentiment, TN 1, and with 2 bonus successes you can choose a second Element to Predict.  This greatly increases the chance that your opponent will trigger the 4 Strife effect, though it can't trigger twice. If you Predict Water and Fire, and your opponent chooses Water, he suffers 4 Strife and is locked out of Water, but he's safe to then take a Fire stance.
Being a rolled action means it also allows you to spend Opportunities. Using Predict in a Fire Stance means you can inflict 2 Strife, whether you succeed or not, and those Bonus Successes from Strife mean you can easily Predict a second Ring. Predicting with Earth allows you to reduce the severity of the next incoming Crit, which could put the kibosh on that Rising Blade. Water can recover Strife, which is handy in a duel, while Air can bank an Opportunity, and also increases the TN to use Predict on you. TN 2 is still pretty easy, but it's a lot harder to lock out that second Ring.

Heh. I mentally filled in every single blank with my favorite card, "Pixelated *AHEM-HEM-HRMM!*"
My favorite moment of any CAH game is when someone yells out, "What the heck is 'Pixelated... Boo-cake?" Laughter ensues, followed by nominating the most awkward possible person to explain the term.  I had to explain it to my mom. She was disappointed in the world.
What were we talking about?

The problem with this is Flowing Water Strike and Crashing Wave Style.  Flowing Water, as long as they hit TN 3, there's nothing you can do to resist.  Crashing Wave, they don't even need to succeed, but you're still faced with a resistance roll.

I've been pondering something similar for a while.  I think a few tweaks to the existing rules make it pretty workable, though it still takes a long time, and the other players can get bored.  It might be good for the climax of a story, but trying to have one every session would get tedious.  Unfortunately, the one-roll duels in the book are... lame. It's very swingy and doesn't take into account anything other than weapon skill.
I posted this about a year ago (holy smokes, time is moving!): 3-Roll Duels
In that thread, Magnus Grendel reminded me of the dueling rules from Edge of the Empire (there's a basic explanation in the thread), which i think might be the key.  Reshuffling things a bit, I think the key is:
Challenge: A roll either to predict your opponent's move or to psyche them out.  Sentiment, Command, something like that.
Focus: An initiative roll as written.
Strike: The duel begins as written.
The key is the Challenge.  In EotE, this phase allows you to save up advantages and such, or apply penalties to your opponent.  If we added the same thing to this game, a first-round Critical Strike (possibly even a Finishing Blow) would be much more likely.  It's a tricky balance, but boosting your initiative and banking Advantage could end things pretty quick.
 

I've been pondering something similar for a while.  I think a few tweaks to the existing rules make it pretty workable, though it still takes a long time, and the other players can get bored.  It might be good for the climax of a story, but trying to have one every session would get tedious.  Unfortunately, the one-roll duels in the book are... lame. It's very swingy and doesn't take into account anything other than weapon skill.
I posted this about a year ago (holy smokes, time is moving!): 3-Roll Duels
In that thread, Magnus Grendel reminded me of the dueling rules from Edge of the Empire (there's a basic explanation in the thread), which i think might be the key.  Reshuffling things a bit, I think the key is:
Challenge: A roll either to predict your opponent's move or to psyche them out.  Sentiment, Command, something like that.
Focus: An initiative roll as written.
Strike: The duel begins as written.
The key is the Challenge.  In EotE, this phase allows you to save up advantages and such, or apply penalties to your opponent.  If we added the same thing to this game, a first-round Critical Strike (possibly even a Finishing Blow) would be much more likely.  It's a tricky balance, but boosting your initiative and banking Advantage could end things pretty quick.
 

Bleeding.  Jack up your enemy's best ring, and get him bleeding.  If you get him Severely Wounded in that ring, he ain't succeeding at jack squat without taking a bunch of fatigue.  He can, of course, switch rings, but his entire combat style has to change.  Generally, characters I create aren't very strong in opposed elements.  If his primary ring is Earth, his secondary will probably be Water or Fire, not Air.  This works well thematically and mechanically, because oppositional elements have a similar role.  Air and Earth are both defensive, but in different ways, while Fire and Water are both pretty offensive.  So if you Severely Wound my Fire bushi, he's probably going to switch to Air or Earth.  He can still fight, but his attack options are a little more limited.
I'd actually pretty much dropped my initial argument after pondering for a few days, but the thread had gone dormant and I didn't really want to do necromancy on it.  I still have qualms, but I think I'll just tinker with what's already in place.  And also tell my players to bring some bigger weapons if they're looking for trouble.
It's fun to imagine it like that old SNES game, Super Ghouls and Ghosts, where whenever you got hit, your armor would shatter and you'd be running around in boxers with little hearts on them (I might be remembering that with greater detail than that game was able to render).  However, I try not to think of the armor as completely destroyed.  It's just damaged enough that it's causing you discomfort or throwing you off balance.  Maybe a chestplate is dented in and is hitting your ribs, or a shoulder strap ripped and the whole thing is trying to come loose.  In any case, I would allow a character to make a Smithing check with Earth (or maybe Water with a higher TN) in the field to take it from "Destroyed" to "Damaged (Makeshift)." This would involve knocking dents out, replacing straps and so on.  It's gonna look pretty lousy until he gets back to a proper workshop, but it will do the trick.
 
Savage Worlds for the win!  Right? Anyone?

I'm much more okay with a bunch of Sil 0 Autofired objects.  If you're triggering all those Advantages, you're probably not getting a ton of successes. So you're looking at 6-7 damage per hit, each of which is reduced by Soak. Any kind of tough enemy should have at least Soak 4, so even 4 hits of 7 damage comes out to only 12 damage.  Compared to a single hit with a Sil 3 object.  31 damage, right out the gate.
I really think some of the biggest goofs in this game are anywhere you have a "x 10 damage." 

I'm much more okay with a bunch of Sil 0 Autofired objects.  If you're triggering all those Advantages, you're probably not getting a ton of successes. So you're looking at 6-7 damage per hit, each of which is reduced by Soak. Any kind of tough enemy should have at least Soak 4, so even 4 hits of 7 damage comes out to only 12 damage.  Compared to a single hit with a Sil 3 object.  31 damage, right out the gate.
I really think some of the biggest goofs in this game are anywhere you have a "x 10 damage." 

Steps:
The Face-Off Each character does one of the following Size Up: Perception/Streetwise* versus Cool**. Success boosts your initiative check on 'the draw'. Intimidate: Deception/Coercion*** versus Discipline**. Success penalises your opponent's initiative check for 'the draw'. Advantage**** results from this check are 'stored' and can be spent during 'the draw'. Initiative roll A pretty much standard initiative check, using the Cool** skill rather than the Vigilance***** skill. The Draw The winner acts first. Their first action has to be to draw their weapon, obviously, but gets to spend success and advantage from this check plus advantage from 'the face-off', using a unique table of options which only apply to the first round of a show-down. The loser acts second, but also gets the same extra options These extra options are pretty brutal, from free draw****** and aim******* actions up to and including "if the attack inflicts damage on a rival******** NPC target, it kills the target immediately." Combat continues If no-one goes down in the draw, combat reverts to the default rules, using the initiative order just established.  
 
* Essentially Scrutinize approach in air stance
** Essentially Focus
*** Essentially Inflame approach in fire stance
**** Essentially
***** Shockingly, essentially Vigilance
****** Essentially prepare
******* Essentially self-assistance or a temporary advantage to use
******** Edge of the Empire includes three tiers of NPCs instead of two. Minions, Rivals and Nemesis. Basically, this means Adversary NPC who's not the campaign's main villain.

I'm much more okay with a bunch of Sil 0 Autofired objects.  If you're triggering all those Advantages, you're probably not getting a ton of successes. So you're looking at 6-7 damage per hit, each of which is reduced by Soak. Any kind of tough enemy should have at least Soak 4, so even 4 hits of 7 damage comes out to only 12 damage.  Compared to a single hit with a Sil 3 object.  31 damage, right out the gate.
I really think some of the biggest goofs in this game are anywhere you have a "x 10 damage." 

I've ranted about Move a few times.  Rather than fill this page with more, here's my Reddit rant.  One of them, anyway.
Hope this works right
EDIT: Okay, there's one paragraph i need to post in here regarding the "inbuilt balance" of consequences that people love to point out.
A lot of people jump through a lot of hoops to "balance" the power, but they're really not solutions. "It will cause Conflict!" These guys should be taking Conflict every session. "It will attract the attention of Inquisitors!" People get hit by landspeeders all the time. Sometimes by buses and dump trucks. People standing around saying, "How did that car suddenly slide like that?" is going to attract a lot less attention than some dude shooting lightning out of his hands, or shooting a missile tube around. "The same trick can be used against the PCs," "There isn't always a car around," so on and so forth, but none of these address the actual problem. The answer to unbalanced baloney is NOT more baloney! If my players ask, "Is there a dump truck around?" I want to say "Heck yeah there is!" because I want to see where this is going. I don't want to roll my eyes and say, "No, because I know you're just going to try and smash the Inquisitor for 30 damage."

I've ranted about Move a few times.  Rather than fill this page with more, here's my Reddit rant.  One of them, anyway.
Hope this works right
EDIT: Okay, there's one paragraph i need to post in here regarding the "inbuilt balance" of consequences that people love to point out.
A lot of people jump through a lot of hoops to "balance" the power, but they're really not solutions. "It will cause Conflict!" These guys should be taking Conflict every session. "It will attract the attention of Inquisitors!" People get hit by landspeeders all the time. Sometimes by buses and dump trucks. People standing around saying, "How did that car suddenly slide like that?" is going to attract a lot less attention than some dude shooting lightning out of his hands, or shooting a missile tube around. "The same trick can be used against the PCs," "There isn't always a car around," so on and so forth, but none of these address the actual problem. The answer to unbalanced baloney is NOT more baloney! If my players ask, "Is there a dump truck around?" I want to say "Heck yeah there is!" because I want to see where this is going. I don't want to roll my eyes and say, "No, because I know you're just going to try and smash the Inquisitor for 30 damage."

I've ranted about Move a few times.  Rather than fill this page with more, here's my Reddit rant.  One of them, anyway.
Hope this works right
EDIT: Okay, there's one paragraph i need to post in here regarding the "inbuilt balance" of consequences that people love to point out.
A lot of people jump through a lot of hoops to "balance" the power, but they're really not solutions. "It will cause Conflict!" These guys should be taking Conflict every session. "It will attract the attention of Inquisitors!" People get hit by landspeeders all the time. Sometimes by buses and dump trucks. People standing around saying, "How did that car suddenly slide like that?" is going to attract a lot less attention than some dude shooting lightning out of his hands, or shooting a missile tube around. "The same trick can be used against the PCs," "There isn't always a car around," so on and so forth, but none of these address the actual problem. The answer to unbalanced baloney is NOT more baloney! If my players ask, "Is there a dump truck around?" I want to say "Heck yeah there is!" because I want to see where this is going. I don't want to roll my eyes and say, "No, because I know you're just going to try and smash the Inquisitor for 30 damage."

Yeah, I never got around to actually running anything with it. I also really dug the House Creation stuff. 
I also appreciated that you could start with various level of experience through tradeoffs, so you could have a very learned maester or skilled swordsman at the outset, but their fate was less... flexible.  

That, and I liked the outline of their mass combat system; the leadership actions and the veterancy model. 

I've ranted about Move a few times.  Rather than fill this page with more, here's my Reddit rant.  One of them, anyway.
Hope this works right
EDIT: Okay, there's one paragraph i need to post in here regarding the "inbuilt balance" of consequences that people love to point out.
A lot of people jump through a lot of hoops to "balance" the power, but they're really not solutions. "It will cause Conflict!" These guys should be taking Conflict every session. "It will attract the attention of Inquisitors!" People get hit by landspeeders all the time. Sometimes by buses and dump trucks. People standing around saying, "How did that car suddenly slide like that?" is going to attract a lot less attention than some dude shooting lightning out of his hands, or shooting a missile tube around. "The same trick can be used against the PCs," "There isn't always a car around," so on and so forth, but none of these address the actual problem. The answer to unbalanced baloney is NOT more baloney! If my players ask, "Is there a dump truck around?" I want to say "Heck yeah there is!" because I want to see where this is going. I don't want to roll my eyes and say, "No, because I know you're just going to try and smash the Inquisitor for 30 damage."

I can see non-dark coercion. Obi-Wan with saber drawn telling you that your troops are in disarray and you're beaten and you need to surrender before more lives are lost for no reason. Explaining how utterly eff'ed you are without actually threatening directly. Appealing to reason, or at least self preservation.
Gets close to other social skills, though.

I own everything 4e and 5e hardcopy, even the hard-to-find 4e stuff like Atlas, Strongholds etc.
If this is the end of the L5R RPG era, and I were to pick one edition to run as GM (or player ,really), I would actually pick 5e over all the others, even though there is much more 4e material (and the quality is good).
For all the criticism 5e gets (and I am ignoring Avatar11 here), and the bad sales, I think its the best system L5R ever got when it comes to actual gameplay.  The ONLY area in which 4e is better, IMO, is magic/shugenja, for sheer variety and creativity. 
The problem is that the RPG genre has a lot more players today, and overall the market is larger but more diverse, with tons of players getting parts of the cake - outside of DnD 5 and possibly one specific german-language juggernaut, the time of dominant RPG brands seems to be over for now. 
Due to the large number of competitors, quality and expectations have skyrocketed, and I will freely admit, FFG has not put out good RPG products when compared to a company like Modiphius, who are the new modern face of RPG business, and simply play on a different level design-wise. (Conan 2D20 is an incredibly good, fast, flexible system that does virtually anything that L5R does better, for example).
In that market, and seeing how they struggle in their board games department as well, I believe FFG is a dinosaur who doesnt want to evolve, and L5R fell victim to that. This is a RPG in the style of the 2010 era indeed.

@The Grand FalloonoFFaFalloonoonoFFa for Discord, there's a really good dice bot with the L5R dice. I'm not currently able to post the directions for setting it up on your server, but ask on the big L5R Discord, they'll help.
Edit: sorry. Seems the mobile interface LOVES your name and keeps inserting it over and over.

I've used a dice bot on Discord that lets you give a !keep command after showing you your results and might even have !reroll on it as well.  It's some months since I used it, and that server no longer exists, so I can't go back and check, but I'd ask around (on Fan & Sword perhaps?) to see which one does that.

This probably drives a lot of it, honestly.  I'll admit I don't make it down to the game store as often as I'd like, but I can only think of two other game lines being printed in this large hardback format with all these full-color glossy pages.  Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder.  RPGs have very low profit margins even when they do well, So big sexy books are risky.  Legend of the Five Rings has always been a small niche inside of a niche hobby, so this one is going to be tricky.
Another difficulty is playing online.  More and more people are turning to Roll20, Fantasy Grounds and Discord in order to run their games.  I've played D&D in Roll20, and it's fine, but when I've tried to set anything up as a GM, it was a nightmare.  Star Wars and L5R needed some sort of special API and a premium account just to roll the dice (and I don't know what an API is, it was just another acronym in my way.  I think I'm old, guys).  Discord has worked okay for my Force and Destiny game, but it's been only me and 2-3 other players, and I hand-wave a heck of a lot.  I'm joining a Discord L5R game soon, and keeping track of all the die rolls seems a bit more daunting, since things don't just cancel out, and I don't have physical dice on the table to move around or discard when they're dropped.  The game is geared very much toward physical dice, and while I love the dice mechanics, I don't see it translating well to a text-based format online.  Compare that to the surge in Powered by the Apocalypse games, which I think can credit much of their popularity to their simplicity to play in a strictly audio format.  I know The Adventure Zone lost a lot of listeners when they went from D&D to Monster of the Week, but it seemed to me that the narrative flowed much more easily.

It looks as though further development falls to the community. Prepare your foulest mutant houserules, ladies and gentlemen, for our hour approaches!

It looks as though further development falls to the community. Prepare your foulest mutant houserules, ladies and gentlemen, for our hour approaches!

I've been toying with converting the system from ASOIAF RPG green ronin put out years ago. It's fantasy-medieval based, but it accounts for leadership, formation, tactics and unit veterancy quite nicely.  I imagine it could also be adapted to fit modern & sci-fi combat as well.  As I recall, it also had a decent mechanism for zooming in on the battle to focus on a specific PC's actions/heroics/leadership and then zoom out to the unit level.