> On Fri, 24 Sep 1999, Los wrote:
> Actually speaking from experience as a Special Operations
For every measure....
Most of the battle field tactical stuff is pretty broad range. Its hard to
have a wide commo net that isn't DF able somehow.
> DF success assumes the broadcaster is using either omindirectional or
Ahh, but Narrow beam works fine for a point site that isn't bouncing across
the battlefield at 50 mph and maneuvering all over the place. Given the speed
with which DF gear works now, all it takes is sweeping the DF antenna once and
you give the other guy a positive fix. (now days, all it takes is keying a mic
with the antenna side lobes projecting towards a DF unit.)
You mention sat comms. In the case of a SF unit operating on a planet and
transmitting to their buddies in orbit, its not so hard. If the SF guys are
red force and defending the planet, screw any Sat Comms. They are probably
comprimised or most likely a dumb piece of metal and composites
swirling in orbit.
Laser will require line of site. If its a set emplacement, I'd say that buried
fiber would be the thing. But then those can be tapped if they can be found.
The thing about DSII is that it glosses over most Commo/Jamming issues
quite highly. One has to wonder given the general rule that commos are very
directional and hard to jam bears out truely. Perhaps it would overly
complicate the rules too much...
Still it would be fun to have a track that rolls every turn and sees if it can
DF a particular target. If it does, he gets to pass a firemission
to the Med Artillery unit its attached to. Of course that would make it really
advisable to move that HQ track around all the time...Perhaps only units that
would have lots of traffic through them would be vulnerable to DF. Platoon
commanders, and Company commanders on the table, as well as the lead track for
Artillery bty's, and naturally the Btn command track on the table. The Air
defense and Counter Battery Radar units would be asking for a DFed fire
mission.
Of course it would suck to be on the receiving end...But I guess you could
layer bogey targets out there along with jammer teams too.
More layers for fun...
> Ryan M Gill wrote:
> Ahh, but Narrow beam works fine for a point site that isn't bouncing
True. once the battle goes active you need some sort of WAN.
> across the battlefield at 50 mph and maneuvering all over the place.
That depends on the aspect the DF picks up the beam. Actually it would take
more than one DF to track a narrow beam. A DF antennae also has to be able top
pick p that particular freq or light frequency. And a micro thin DF would be
virtually
un-dfable. But you are right in that it doesn't work for moving units.
But if something is moving at 50mph, its already out in the open and masking
emissions is not that big an issue, and it would require a constant
transmission to make the plot something you cold bring down point fire on.
Second there is low power transmission. Your example of DFing from space or
even from high atmosphere is one thing. But I can make my xmissons even today
of such low power that the signal doesn't carry very far at all. Point is for
every action and equal reaction. Don't assume that COMSEC will lag behind
detection capability. It has yet to for any length of time and the guys that
work on that stuff likely won't be any stupider in the future than they are
now.
> You mention sat comms. In the case of a SF unit operating on a planet
Correct.
> Laser will require line of site. If its a set emplacement, I'd say
Good luck.
> The thing about DSII is that it glosses over most Commo/Jamming issues
Passing DF plots to artillery only work well with stationary targets. That's
why the preferred method of call for fire will most likely remain some sort of
visual acquisition from the FO.
> Ryan Gill wrote:
Have a look at my site here:
http://members.xoom.com/AndrewMartin/DSII/
for DSII rules covering Direction Finders and Jammers.
> At 9:01 PM -0400 9/24/99, Ryan M Gill wrote:
a narrowbeam unit could provide motion data (from the stabilization gear) on a
subchannel. I expect this to be de regeur for RPV sensor drones; this would
help a unit to maintain a chain of drones to get sensor data on areas way out
of LOS of the controlling unit.
> You mention sat comms. In the case of a SF unit operating on a planet
I expect it'd take a while to sweep every last tiny commo relay sat out of
orbit, it can be done but it may require a lot of expensive sensor platforms
(minesweepers would probbaly be perfect) to take care of hundreds of small,
cheap satellites. Assuming the defender has time and resources to put a
sizeable network up. I'd consider a cloud of these to be an essential part of
adefense in depth.
It would also be possible to bounce commo beams off of the natural (and much
harder to destroy) satellites if they're in the sky.
> The thing about DSII is that it glosses over most Commo/Jamming issues
but it'd jazz up a campaign engagement to no end, I can see it being
worthwhile
> Still it would be fun to have a track that rolls every turn and sees if
I'd like to see this in DSII terms!
> Michael Carter Llaneza wrote:
Check out my site here:
http://members.xoom.com/AndrewMartin/DSII/
for DF, jammers, and drone rules for DSII.
check!
that's a good site, pretty much a whole DSII supplement in itself.
I like your RPV rules, but I've had in mind more capable RPV systems
and in relatively tiny packages (very sub Size-1). These small,
expendable units would be capable of remote detection and of passing
information back to the controlling unit (and then to its tactical net) and
some of them will be capable of acting as decoys for the controlling unit.
There will be a lot of electronic noise, but the tightbeam commo will keep it
down, and the noise will make it easier to hide your real units in the
background. The drones would be only
semi-autonomous, only capable of NOE flight, detection and commo
activity, and following waypoints. Tactical direction and decision making
would be dependant on instructions from the controlling unit. I would imagine
a primary difference between medium and heavy tanks would be having a third
crewman to handle the detection and EW chores; two man crews (a la Hammer's
Slammers) would work but the extra brain woudl be an advantage.
In this sort of battlefield environment there would be a great deal of recon
and EW action, making a referee almost a necessity. Indirect fire weapons
would be crucial to take advantage of ridgelines and whatever edge in the
detection game you can manage. Direct fire weapons would come into play with
opportunity fire on targets appearing briefly through passes in the terrain,
popup attacks against targets spotted by drones will also happen.
I don't know about everyone else, but I think it'd be fun.
I've got the USGS survey map of Sonoma County, CA (lots of rolling hills,
watercourses, and open areas; perfect terrain for grav armor) at a scale of
1cm = 1km, or 1mm = 1" in DSII's scale. I'd like to try
an enhanced EW/GMS game on that ! Of course, any suitably interesting
terrain that you're familiar with will also do nicely. I highly recommend USGS
maps. And if I can find a digital version of the map I'll set up a pbem game.
> At 9:28 AM +1200 9/26/99, Andrew Martin wrote:
> Michael Carter Llaneza wrote:
Thanks!
> ...I've had in mind more capable RPV systems and in relatively tiny
I didn't bother with this as they're assumed all ready present on the DSII
battlefield.
Since this hasn't been brought up,
I can build equipment in my basement that is extremely difficult to pick up
let alone trace. (Well, I could if I had a basement, I'd have to do it in my
computer room.)
You might want to look a bit into spread spectrum. Avoidance technology is not
as easy as you'd expect.
On to other matters, why would you think it was difficult for communications
with tight beam lasers from a bouncing vehicle? That's what laser gyros are
for, and I can see them getting much better than they are now. Sure, you may
have occasional loss of LOS, but with the proper use of a digital protocol
communications could still be affective.
Here, try this, laser to nearby tower that mostly cover the planet (kind
of like cell-phone towers.) fibre everywhere else. With the right
equipment tapping the fibre would be extremely hard. If you set an
interference pattern up properly someone moving the fibre could be detected
because of the stretch, much less someone changing the path length by
inserting a tapping device. This one is discussed in crypto circles all the
time as a way of verifiable key exchange.
But wait, the nearby cell-phone towers are toast. You have to have
prepared units on the ground that are withing LOS. They only come on when they
are hit with a comm laser and use lasers to bounce the signal to the nearest
laser towers and then into the fibre.
I do get so tired of everyone coming up with "You can't do that".
This is a sci-fi game, many things are done for balance, even
at that the BS for why it is that way is just as good as the BS for why you
don't want it to work that way.
> Michael Llaneza wrote:
> It would also be possible to bounce commo beams off of the natural
Nifty, put a widget on the moon at a specific location. When you start
communications you hit it with a laser and tell it where you want to talk to,
it fires a commo laser at the other party. You can only detect it if you
happen to be hit by the laser, pretty unlikely, and even if it is detected the
unmanned end on the moon gets toasted. You switch to backup #12 and keep on
trucking.:)
There a number of sources of software that will read USGS DEM files and create
TIFF images that are then read into a 3d graphic. One is TruFlite
(www.truflite.com, I think) and there are a couple from the Corps of
Engineers. Let me know if you want more data.
Michael Brown
[quoted original message omitted]
I've got KPT Bryce and can handle USGS data, but the fantastic detail of the
contour lines on the printed maps would be the most useful for gaming. The
USGS data is just elevation data (unless there's a new series of data I
haven't seen yet).
> At 6:11 PM -0700 9/25/99, Michael Brown wrote:
Any of the commercial or government 3D terrain utilities use a two stage
process. First is the DEMs rendering/projection, the second is
overlaying a bitmap on the 3D model. In Bryce (as with any of the others) you
will be able to assign a bitmap as the surface texture. Voila, the terrain
model you are after!
Mind you, NIMAMUSE, does pretty much the same thing for you anyway.
Owen G
> -----Original Message-----
True, DEM are only elevation. TruFlite gives an example of using
geo-political
maps (like those generated off of TIGER) as a texture to drape over the
relief. Or you could draw your own texture (woods at Ft. Irwin anyone?),
Michael Brown
[quoted original message omitted]
> At 09:25 PM 9/25/99 -0700, Michael Llaneza wrote:
There are SDTS data sets that contain information on water, roads, vegatation
cover, and some other things I can't remember right now. Public
domain viewers are at http://mcmcweb.er.usgs.gov/sdts/public_domain.html
and data is downloadable from
ftp://edcftp.cr.usgs.gov/pub/data/DLG/LARGE_SCALE
<snip>
> -----Original Message-----
of course, a DEMS model is great for visualization. I'm downloading
the data now :-)
http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/doc/edchome/ndcdb/ndcdb.html has the DEMS data
btw.
> At 11:18 PM -0700 9/25/99, Michael Brown wrote: