Another POINTless Argument (was Re: Scatterguns and SMPs... and

... or, if you read the HG list, you'd hear how quite a few of us have
problems with the HG point system, because, depending on role, the numbers may
be completely meaningless.

For instance, if the situation calls for an Iguana to be calling
laser-designated fire in from the Black Mamba 15hexes behind cover,
the point system doesn't cover the difference in effectiveness if the Iggy's
not present. Likewise, in campeign games, the Misc Value of a Gear (including
`Easy to Modify' which vastly changes
maintainance/repair costs of the vehicle) may be far more important
than the size of its bang-bang; the fact that my Jager/Hunter can be
repaired with $.50 of baling wire and entirely free spit can make a
difference.

Yes, adding more derived stats of one kind or another can give you more
numbers to throw around the table and more stuff to compare. Taking it to the
logical extreme (in a classic reducido ad absurdiam argument), you end up with
the stats used to describe the unit in game terms as descriptors (because
they're the only really meaningful numbers) and you're right back to doing
what I'm doing anyway, eyeballing the forces with an eye to their actual use
and balancing by situation, not numerics.

I'm not saying that adding some kind of numeric `ranking' is utterly useless;
it provides an extremely sketchy, hazy outline of the `value'
of that force.  My problem is that it does very little /more/ than
that.