1) Adrian, well said. But one thing wrong: Mr.T's van was not indestructable.
It was regenerating. I know I saw it break after serveral jump landings, but
next frame it was driving. Fast regeneration.;)
2) DS2 should be one-off battle points balansive. Not campaign or
economic. Why? Both of these are intimately tied to your world view and PSB.
In some world views, grav is expensive (complex). In other views, a simple
effective system but only manufacturable by high tech, etc. In some worlds,
grav is improved GEV (no ground pressure) and in others, more like VTOL (big
campaign game difference). So both campaign costs and economic costs are
assumption dependent.
This issue is meat for an ENTIRE extra suppliment, and Jon isn't the
kind of guy who likes to hard-pin his GZG universe to anything. So I
don't forsee him wanting to go this route with some sort of "official"
rules. Rather, he might eventually release a DS2 campaign/economic
suppliment that was generic and said things like "with this assumption, you
get these effects on cost" and let people mix and match to make up their own
universe.
3) In the context of things like open-top, how much does it affect
survivability is a _weapons_generation_dependant_ quantity. When all we
had was molotovs, hand grenades, rifles and an MG or two, then the open top
was a bit of a risk versus close in infantry, but that's about its only risk.
OTOH, if we have every gruntie with an airburst GL and any
GMS has autoselect top-attack, then suddenly it is LETHALLY BAD to have
an open-top. So again we're into "assumptionland". Or in this case "tech
level land".
4) I don't want car wars. Love the game, love building cars. Not many people
do, so I don't get to play it. Let's NOT go that route for DS2. Adrian just
about hit it on the head. I like a system that let's me match my minis (yay
stargrunt, mostly!). If my tank has 3 main guns on the mini, let me buy three
main guns and damn the size class or
whatever. If I want them to be HEL/5s, who cares? As long as my opponent
won't throttle me, and the point system makes me pay through the nose, then
who cares if I argue miniaturization or the TARDIS like ability to cram stuff
in? Assumptions about miniaturization, tech level, etc go away when you stop
talking about "capacity" and rather just deal in terms of "capability". I have
a weapon that shoots like an HVC (range
bands/damage) of class X. Is it an HVC? Whooooo caaaaares! If I want it
to be, yes! If not, it could be a crappy low-tech laser. Or it could be
a first-gen burst flux capacitor engagement system.... does it matter?
What matters is game effects.
I want to be able to look at any miniature and say "This tank has tracks, a
long barrelled big gun, a coax small gun, and some sort of
cluster missile rack on the roof, and it is a fair size" --- so, we call
it tracked mobility (and buy X" of movement... fast/slow classes of
mobility suck!), we buy it a weapon that performs like an MDC of size Y, we
buy it a coaxial weapon that performs like an RFAC of size Z, and we buy it a
small SLAM system. And since it is big, we rate it as signature D10 or
something. End of story.
Differentiation of two tanks that look the same does not NEED to be factored
into choices about how big an engine is, how heavy armour is, etc. If you want
that, seek out Striker II. Their construction will let you do all that and
more more more. Or BTRC's Vehicle Design Guide. But DS2 is not really a game
about building vehicles IMO. It is about representing minis (what Jon wants to
sell) and letting you build a vehicle with as few assumptions about how you
want to game it as are
feasible. If you want to differentiate a T-90 and an M-1, then you do it
by armour, by speed, by how the weapons behave and how many there are, by ECM
signature, etc. The differentiation should (to let the majority of people do
what THEY want) be up to the player and the equalization should all come from
the points system.
Instead of trying to balance points per capacity, capacity per effect, points
per effect.... all togther, simplify the equation: Balance points per effect
period. Do away with capacity. Let people build things as stupidly overarmed
as they want, just have them pay pay pay for the priveledge. Right now, if we
get a points costing wrong, it can be wrong by capacity or wrong by effect or
wrong by capacity per effect. Ow ow ow! Let's simplify, while yet making the
game more generic and opening up more options for the players and designers.
To add a new system then
only involves points balance versus other systems, not a mass/capacity
balance and a points balance.
> From: "Tomb" <tomb@dreammechanics.com>
> 2) DS2 should be one-off battle points balansive. Not campaign or
*SNIP*
If my tank has 3 main guns on
> the mini, let me buy three main guns and damn the size class or
*SNIP*
> Instead of trying to balance points per capacity, capacity per effect,
*CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP*
Thank you for expressing better than I could EXACTLY what I'm trying to get
at! The only place for "capacity" in such a system would be for cargo
carrying, and even THAT is a matter of "X cargo capacity costs Z points."
3B^2
OK, but...
I want some visual clue as to how powerful a vehicle is when I see it across
the table.
"Oh. Here comes a little jeep with what looks like a machine gun, but over
there are 5 Ogre Mk. IIIs. I will concentrate my fire on the Ogres. Boy! Those
Ogres popped quickly. OK your turn... What do you mean that machine gun fires
nuclear shells at a range of 60"?!?!?! OK <grumble> page
47..."
Yes, pure munchkinism, but in a system without limits possible.
When you mix miniature ranges, and each player bringing his predefined forces,
you can face a lot of this type of situation (although not usually as extreme
as above), where a smaller, less menacing model (GHQ Abrams) is more powerful
than a larger one (Ral Partha Battletech PPC Carrier).
I am not complety arguing against you. You should be able to match the model
to its capabilities. But 2 people looking at the same model might see widely
varying capabilities (is that a PDS or GMS?).
> At 1:57 PM -0500 4/4/02, Bell, Brian K (Contractor) wrote:
Boy!
> Those Ogres popped quickly. OK your turn... What do you mean that
Units had better look like what they are. My biggest pet peeve in FT is
someone who is using tiny figs for BBs and SDNs. No, I don't think so.
If someone's scale is that out of whack, I pack my figures up. They
can go play cheese-fest at the War Hammer tables over there.
> When you mix miniature ranges, and each player bringing his predefined
is
> more powerful than a larger one (Ral Partha Battletech PPC Carrier).
I run both actually. The Ral Partha stuff gets classed as Size 4 and above.
The GHQ Abrams is a size 3. The Ral Partha Schrek PPC carrier with 3 tubes is
part of my Artillery force for Med Artillery and a larger ammo load. The
multiple tubes work out as Multiple smaller
tubes that allow for greater dispersion on a given fire-mission than
is possible with fewer tubes in the same sized battery.
> I am not complety arguing against you. You should be able to match the
PDS and GMS gets pretty tiny when you get down to it. PDS could be a conformal
system of charges like the Soviet Arena system. GMS could be conformal tubes
mounted on the back deck, in a turret or in a bin on the side of the turret. I
even saw a design drawing for the
replacement of the Saladin (before the CVR(T/W) concepts) that used a
turretless main gun arrangement and had swingfire missles fired at a 45 degree
angle from the very front of the vehicle.
On Thu, Apr 04, 2002 at 01:57:51PM -0500, Bell, Brian K (Contractor)
wrote:
> Yes, pure munchkinism, but in a system without limits possible.
Limits are NOT the domain of the descriptive construction system.
They're an attribute of a /setting/. If you're seeing uber-Jeeps on
the table, find out why. Maybe that setting has micro-energy
shielding and spacerime disruption bombards... who can say? You've
just been out-teched. What you're complaining about is akin to
someone playing in a multiversal environ complaining that his Roman Legion
went up against Terminators from 2035 and were shocked they were robots under
their fake skins.
Its like legislating morality, that never works.
What should govern the issue is that the uber-Jeep costs what your
entire force runs you, and the law of averages will eventually bite
him in the butt. Because, paying for actual /effect/, he is going to
be racking up quite the bill. The Roman Century shouldn't be up against more
than a squad of Terminators, by the same notion.
> --- Alexander Williams <thantos@telocity.com> wrote:
> Limits are NOT the domain of the descriptive
So tell me, in a pick-up game how do yo pick the tech
level? If I'm designing for the GZG default setting, and you're designing for
a setting with jeeps mounted
with HKP/5s, what's the point?
> Its like legislating morality, that never works.
The hell it doesn't. The DSII construction system is a damn sight more
flexible than any other one I've seen. But it does make certain assumptions,
and one of them is that you're not trying to play a force with so much
"character" that they are driving Mk VIII tanks and armed with Springfield '03
rifles while going up against my Grav tanks.
> be racking up quite the bill. The Roman Century
However, as the Terminators are effectively impossible to kill with javelins
and short swords, is it balanced?
My point was not to proscribe munchkinism with the construction system. It was
to have the construction system push a means of identifying which opposing
units may be the most dangerous. A pure points system does not do this as the
opponent can field both large, ineffective units and small, extreemly
effective ones in the same force. It would force me to use maximum force on
each target rather than dividing my attacks with what I think will be
sufficient force. Without some visual clue, I might as well be using
'A',
'B', and 'C' counters for the vehicles. A pure points system will provide a
relative balance for the forces, but without a visual clue, you cannot apply
the force in the best manner.
But perhaps social engineering is a better way to approach the problem.
<shrug>
[quoted original message omitted]
> On Thu, Apr 04, 2002 at 04:33:38PM -0800, John Atkinson wrote:
If you can't negotiate basic gamesmanship, John, you probably shouldn't pick
up random gamers in stores. I always thought the point of playing with diverse
forces was to see a diversity of combat tactics and to challenge both sides to
think on their feet in extreme circumstances.
As others have noted, in most running-on-a-frequent-basis game
situations, there's agreement as to the setting, like "Star Wars GROPOS" or
"Ogre;" if you're playing in an environment without groundrules, you're just
going to have to suck it up, princess, and deal with the fact you might face
all matter of bizarre opponant designs. Nature of the beast. That's why the
underlying mechanical
representation needs to be based on actual /effect/ and leave the rest
to discussion of setting and gamesmanship.
> The hell it doesn't. The DSII construction system is
You don't get out much, do you, John? The DS2 design system is nice, but the
extreme granularity and lack of a weapon design system makes
its flexibility a /lot/ less than found in the /majority/ of competing
generic SF games. Pretty much by definition. Even Stargrunt II has an
inherently more /flexible/ design system, though, unfortunately, it
doesn't have a point system to go with it.
And there's nowhere in the rules that assumption's made, for the record. I
could be riding on top of massive chelatinous insects, firing bolts of energy
from my fists, and just describing it as a
slow-tracked high-armour vehicle with a HEL/3 and exposed crew. The
system /does not care/. What I, and apparently others, maintain is
that innate flexibility should be generalized to make the system more open and
flexible. This can in no wise be seen as a bad thing.
> However, as the Terminators are effectively impossible
John, I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but DS2 is a game. You know, the
kind with dice? As such there's actually a pretty good
chance that a force armed with low-tech weapons can actually damage
and defeat a much higher-tech force through the weight of sheer
numbers. That's why there's dice in there at all and we don't play chess
instead.
I could have argued that even from an in-character PoV, sufficient
pilum and gladius could probably seriously damage a Terminator by striking
vulnerable parts like sensors and actuators, but frankly none
of that /really/ matters. And the argument would be largely wasted.
What's important is the recognition that DS2 is a game with a generic SF aim.
That's how its sold. Impedimentia that keep it from that goal should be
examined, and if possible, discarded.
I'm sorry if the upshot is that you might actually have to speak with
your opponant before a pick-up game; while this is a crippling strike
against it, nevertheless, I think you'll find for the majority of game
players, it simply reflects what they do already.
> On Thu, Apr 04, 2002 at 07:47:53PM -0500, Brian Bell wrote:
NO point system can adequately do what you're requesting here, unless it
prohibits doing anything to reduce the effective signature of a piece. If you
allow that, you allow varying interpretation of how its
done. Maybe my techs really /did/ have an incredible breakthrough in
miniaturization.
This is wholly outside the purview of any kind of mechanical system. Worse,
however, is the fact that its really not that big a deal, certainly not as big
a deal as its being played up to be. The only
time it'll be an issue is if you regularly engage in blind pick-up
games which don't involve showing off the designs before the game, or on
challenge during. Maybe you think the Jeeps are ignorable
... until the first MKP/5 falls on you, then you say "Hey, let me see
that design."
bwaaahaaahaahaahaaahaaahaahaa
ummm, very well put Alex....
this is gonna be funny...
I can't wait for John to check his email!
> Alexander Williams wrote:
> If you can't negotiate basic gamesmanship, John, you probably
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> John Atkinson wrote:
> So tell me, in a pick-up game how do yo pick the tech
If the vehicles are priced according to the effect they have on-table,
what's the problem? The over-gunned jeeps are hard-hitting and hard to
kill due to low signature, but they'll be seriously outnumbered by your more
conventional units.
> >Its like legislating morality, that never works.
As Alex said, in that case you don't seem to have seen very many other vehicle
design systems...
> >be racking up quite the bill. The Roman Century shouldn't be up
Sounds like something similar to this:
1 Terminator = 1500 pts (or whatever extreme amount you care to name) 1 Roman
legionary = 1 pt
On an open field, the Romans are mowed down. Close the terrain down however,
and don't force the Romans to stick in formation but allow them to use their
ingenuity and tech skills... how much do Terminators like being crushed under
rock slides etc? (Shades of RotJ Ewoks here <G>)
This is what "paying for effect" is all about. If you have an extremely
powerful unit, it should cost an extreme amount of points.
Regards,
> Tomb wrote:
*BIG SNIP*
> Instead of trying to balance points per capacity, capacity per effect,
Well said, Tom - all the things I've been thinking but much better put
;-)
> --- Oerjan Ohlson <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com> wrote:
> >The hell it doesn't. The DSII construction system
The main ones mentioned have been Striker/Striker II
(which doesn't pretend to have a balanced point system) and Heavy Gear's
system. Which is designed
for anime-style silliness with walkers and which
doesn't react well to trying to simulate modern military equipment either. The
main problem I have comes with the exponential cost of "perks", where a
military vehicle with the features I expect in a tank (you know, NBC system,
etc) become astronomically expensive. In fact, the primary Southern MBT is not
NBC sealed and doesn't have a machine gun (although there is a feature to
mount one in a pintle mount). Still costs 1.5 mil, BTW.
Oh, and it hits your pet peeve by pretending that it's simulating the economic
cost of the vehicles rather than the battlefield effects.
> On an open field, the Romans are mowed down. Close
Hrm... So what you're saying is that any pretence at point balance is
inherently flawed and depends on scenario design and usage?
> At 12:45 PM -0800 4/5/02, John Atkinson wrote:
> Hrm. . . So what you're saying is that any pretence at
BINGBINGBING
a 3000 pt force with zero ADS vs a 500 pt force of ground and 2500 VTOLS and
Aerospace will get wiped from the table.
Some points costs are exceedingly relative.
ECM doesn't do you a damn bit of good if your opponent doesn't use GMS's. ADS
doesn't do much good either. Especially if there isn't any aircraft ont he
table either.
The scenario is everything. Again, the best games I've either played or refed
were those that points didn't even enter into my calculations. No battles in
real life have calculations.
Thank God someone said that. I have been deleting before reading these threads
but just peeked in on this post. Scenarios are one way to deal with games.
Points (or Cap in DS2 which I mostly play) has value but I can create a
'munchkin force' or to have it negated by an equally warped scenario designed
to defeat that force.
Yeah DS2 is less then optimal in the design system - ALL design systems
are variably adequate as long as you don't go outside the envelope the
point/cap/whatever the game designer intended. Period.
Some of us are just perverse enough to do so on purpose for a game -
more then occasionally!
Gracias,
Glenn/Triphibious@juno.com
This is my Science Fiction Alter Ego E-mail address.
Historical - Warbeads@juno.com
Fantasy and 6mm - dwarf_warrior@juno.com
On Fri, 5 Apr 2002 18:40:21 -0500 Ryan Gill <rmgill@mindspring.com>
writes:
> At 12:45 PM -0800 4/5/02, John Atkinson wrote:
From: Ryan Gill <rmgill@mindspring.com>
> BINGBINGBING
If you have no idea what the other guy is bringing to the table, then
of course you can build a one-shot wondercheese. I make sure my
opponent sees my general TO--not what this particular platoon has on
the table, but what the company or battalion assets are. If you know you're up
against an IF infantry battalion, you know you don't have to worry about grav
tanks but you do have to worry about lots of
> On Fri, Apr 05, 2002 at 12:45:04PM -0800, John Atkinson wrote:
[takes away John's crack-pipe] You really ought to cut back on this
stuff, it'll kill you. And its a thermal tag for target shooting.
Heavy Gear has, very likely, the most /coherent/ system for the scale
of modern military equipment at its complexity level, even compared to
custom-designed systems meant to cover the medium. Put your hand over
the Gear section for 5min, and notice that the rest /is/ a modern
military equipment game. Gears barely verge into that territory in a real
sense. The problem with HG is its complexity; it works much
better as a squad-level game than something more, in my opinion,
simply due to the highly detailed nature of the underlying representation.
> comes with the exponential cost of "perks", where a
Yes, John, we know you're the final arbitor of everything a design system
should be. Do sit down now.
(You, of course, neglect to mention what it /is/ armed with, and why
that its expected to be operating in the field with a /large/ number
of cheap support infantry, thus somewhat reducing the need.)
> Hrm. . . So what you're saying is that any pretence at
In truth? Yes. But damn if its not a handy guideline to go by until you get
enough experience under your belt with a system to get to that level of
understanding.
The Silhouette system is pretty flexible. They do WW2 to Universal Century0083
(Gundams), in fact Gear Krieg is fourth on my list of 15mm projects. Within
its boundaries (remmeber, the envelope always pushes back) it's pretty fast
playing and very much of a "design for effect" game. This last does cause some
realism glithces in that you can work with breakpoints and that it's a
relative value system. But if a King Tiger has the best armor in the game and
very few weapons can kill it, then it works well enough.
But units from another Silhouette system game can be mixed 'realistically'
into Gear Krieg because they all share the same absolute scale. An exo from
Lightning Strike (a very nice game system) is rated on the same scale that a
Panzer Mk III is.
DSII is also a design for effect system, but it uses a relative scale. It
works for WW2 for the same reasons that Gear Krieg works.But keep in mind that
DS2 has a much smaller range of values than Silhouette does. DS2 can do WW2 or
it can do grav tanks but it can't mix both. It works for almost any set of
technological assumptions provided all sides share
those same assumptions.
What would be Really Neat in DS3 is a set of rules for designing a set of
technological assumption for different genres. To let units from different
genres mix you'd have to have to have an absolute scale. But that way lies
Striker. [1]. Actually, DS2 reminds me a lot of Striker and especially the
Command Decision games. It has a lot of flavor of
Striker-with-simpler-mechanics. By the time Striker 2 came out, much of
its target audience, sci-fi microarmor, was already a GZG customer.
And Striker was much more of a sim than a game. Rating all the Zhodani and
Imperial units in the game for DS2 would take an afternoon, and play
much faster.Mind you, Striker 2 looks like everyone who played it was a WW2 or
Moderns player, because I can think of a LOT of interesting things to do with
grav tanks that the rules don't even hint at [2].
[1] Or GURPS Vehicles, which is even worse since they have mixed genres
as a primary design goal.
[2] For starters, orbital weapons fire is highly abstract. But Zhodani
MBTs have lasers that can engage the smaller starships with direct fire..
> Alexander Williams wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 05, 2002 at 12:45:04PM -0800, John Atkinson wrote:
> --- Ryan Gill <rmgill@mindspring.com> wrote:
In that case, why are we spending so much bandwidth discussing it?
And more to the point, why does the litany go like this?
"I want the design system to be 100% effects based (on a varying scale, either
additive, multiplicative, exponential, or logarithmic), able to handle
everything from the Roman Legions to TL15 Norris Grav Tanks with fire support
from the USS Enterprise, along with John Ringo's GalTech and Dune's Sandworms,
and Heavy Gears, and OGREs, and, and, Klingons, and David Drake's Hammer's
Slammers, and Star Wars Stormtroopers, and dogfighting space fighters from
Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, and Battlestar Galactica, in the same
airspace over the battle... and I want it all to be as simple as Full Thrust's
design system!!!"
The only reason for a points system in the first place is running pickup
games... but that's been slammed as well since you should "negotiate basic
gamesmanship" before a pickup game...
So exactally what's the argument?
> a 3000 pt force with zero ADS vs a 500 pt force of
All points costs are relative.
Hell, in the right circumstances, a light infantry company which costs just
over 1,000 points can stop cold a short armored batallion of roughly 5,000
points. Things just happen.
> John Atkinson wrote:
> >>The hell it doesn't. The DSII construction system is
In other words, the HG system also doesn't even pretend to be balanced. Do you
have experience with any design systems which *do* pretend to be balanced...?
> >On an open field, the Romans are mowed down. Close the terrain down
Put it like this: if a Roman cohort or legion was facing a single enemy,
would they form up for a set-piece battle against him, or would they
spread out?
The (combat) points value of the terminator relative to the Romans is:
Average over the expected range of situations (open field, ambush, etc.) of
[Square root of ((Avg # of Romans killed by 1 Terminator in 1 turn)/(Avg
#
of Terminators killed by 1 Roman in 1 turn))]
The ratio of average kills will of course be astronomically in the
Terminator's favour, making the Terminator outrageously expensive compared to
the Romans
The "expected range of situations" is where the scenario design and usage
comes into play.
No, the points system can never be absolutely perfect. All it can be is a more
or less good starting point for the game balance... but a good starting point
is, at least IMO, vastly better than no starting point at
all - and a bad starting point is, frankly, *worse* than none at all.
Regards,