As Cory notes in his post, this is once foes have met already.
I have a bunch of house rules we had to figure out for just such oddities of switching to the system, but you’re correct that Attack Counts(including slowness or speed of a weapon) would start the exact second a “meeting of foes” occurred. This gave free attacks to one another using a roll-off based on Qu and the usual Init modifiers for Longer Reach/Shield/2-handed Weapon, etc.
Most times the quicker party still attacked ‘first’ unless someone was set to receive a charge from a previous Init count declaration. However close to fully attacking was based on one’s Attack Count, ie. that was the amount of OB one could apply to a Meeting Attack. As well, we would allow simultaneous results if they occurred within 1 second of one another except where “instant death” crit results occurred, saving oneself from so called slack-backs.
Example:
-Dagger(5 secs.) vs Battleaxe(10 secs.) Attackers meet on Init Count 4 of a starting battle.
-Dagger uses 80%(4/5ths) of OB while BattleAxe uses 40%(4/10ths=2/5ths)
-After resulting crits are processed by both parties, Attack Counts are re-declared or changed to other Movement/Maneuver reactions to a hit, and new next actions were added to the Init Count.
As above, on Init Count 9(Meeting @ 4+5 seconds later for Dagger user) the smaller blade would strike again, while Battleaxer would still be winding up their attack occurring on Init Count 14, where again another Dagger attack would be inbound and unavoidable!
RoCo VI Second by Second combat system.
Have a speedy guy with a dagger vs a slowpoke with a battleaxe? You might get two to three chances to hit someone before they even swing once!
That's a little weird if it means the person with the short weapon can always safely run in on the person with a longer weapon and hit them before they can strike.