> chubbybob wrote:
Hi, Bob, and welcome to the list.
I personally like and use Andy Cowell's Dirtside vehicle generation page. I
save the HTML tables and use them in my vehicle record sheets.
The page is at: http://www.cs.utk.edu/~cowell/min/ds2/gen.html
> BTW I have to say that I am VERY impressed with the level of
If the
> archives are anything to go by I have at last struck paydirt with
Compared to the many other offerings, this e-mail list is quite mature,
and
it usually has a high signal-to-noise ratio. Welcome to GZG!
G'day,
> What would be a reasonable cost add
That would depend on whether or not the fact they were AI had any battlefield
effects. Are you going to tamper with the morale rules or something? If
there's no change, but you feel obliged to pay more for AI
then I'd suggest just buying superior systems.
Cheers
Beth
***
If there's no change, but you feel obliged to pay more for AI then I'd suggest
just buying superior systems.
***
Sensible, of course, but Tuffleyverse seems to use flesh-and-blood
troops, even if in tanks, almost exclusively. I'd think that political reasons
would argue for 'bloodless' battles if AI were capable, even if expensive.
Game balance and fairness argues you can call a tank an AI or crewed as you
wish, of course, but war is just more grim if it's not reruns of Robot Wars(or
whatever that new show is called).
Instead of a point cost, can you think of a different mechanic to make the
tanks FEEL non-human? Some inflexibility of action, or spoofing by novel
situations? Dependency on central control? EMP-vulnerability is a little
oversold, and a relatively good reason for NO AI.
As with aliens, I want more than different weapons and systems. I want a
different species. Given my limited imagination, I hope for rules that force
me to be an alien or robot, not a man.
As always, I'm speaking from the position of an airless, er, vacuum head.
The_Beast
-Douglas J. Evans, curmudgeon
One World, one Web, one Program - Microsoft promotional ad
Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer - Adolf Hitler
> I personally like and use Andy Cowell's Dirtside vehicle generation
I've been pondering the Alarishi army TO&E, and it's occurred to me that we
could use AI tanks for surface actions--no air, no vegetation, never
more than a couple hundred km from a base so no maintenance requirements, and
no
salaries/combat duty pay/benefits etc (the Empire has a labor shortage
so
the payroll expense is always important--but we'd still use human-crewed
armor inside habitats). I'm not thinking about OGREs here, I'm thinking a
swarm of size-1, antigrav, DFFG-armed mini-tanks.
What would be a reasonable cost add or multiplier to account for being a
cybertank?
G'day
> The rules for "Cybertanks", page 19,
Luckily enough I happen to have a DS rulebook on my shelf (sandwiched between
my calculus textbook and an ichthyology text so my supervisor would stop
giving me weird looks every time he walked in and found it on my desk). So now
I'm up to par, I still wouldn't increase the cost of your tanks much at all
anyway. Off the top of my head an extra 50 points or something fairly nominal
would probably suffice given the fact the current morale system rarely if ever
effects tank units (in my experience they usually die well before being
effected by morale). If you use one of the
suggested sets of house rules for morale you might want to up the cost of the
AI as it will have more of an effect. Alternatively you may want to give them
the ability to ignore morale or know everything that all other
tanks on the field know (less LOS issues for instance), but give them a
downside too (say they have a hierarchy and if a node is blown then all the
subordinates either stop dead for a turn/forever, or continue on the
last action regardless, or automatically revert to trying to stop the nearest
enemy unit). My Daleks aren't effected by morale much, so to balance it out I
gave them a suppression under first fire (they're spinning around rather
frantically announcing their intentions to exterminate) and they have an
Emperor (if you find and kill it then they all pretty much go away)...blue
police boxes and men in scarves can often unsettle them too;)
Have fun
Beth
"G'day" quoth Beth:
> >What would be a reasonable cost add
The rules for "Cybertanks", page 19, left column, are hereby attached to my
question.
Beth said:
> If there's no change, but you feel obliged to pay more for AI then
Beast said:
> Instead of a point cost, can you think of a different mechanic to
I don't want to tinker with DS2 to any great extent--I have enough of
a challenge to calculate the results of tinkering in FT. But I'd say the
freedom from morale effects would be something. Aside from
that--a) they'll be run by a (more-or-less) human player; and b) I'd
claim the AI is created on neural nets and designed by humans, so it'll behave
in a reasonably human way.
"G'day", quoth Beth again:
> >The rules for "Cybertanks", page 19,
I keeping FT on my desk, along with a Bible, a textbook on medieval
literature and a few more directly sales-related books. My boss has
never asked about it--I guess he assumes it goes along with being
eddicat...edykayt...well-read.
> So now I'm up to par, I still wouldn't increase the cost of your
I hear 50 from the lady, any other bids? Fifty going once....
> give them the ability to ignore morale or know everything that all
I suppose the last would work, I don't see the "stop/repeat" as being
viable failure modes and I doubt a military contractor in 200 years would be
able to get by with it.
My Daleks aren't effected by morale much, so to balance it out
> I gave them a suppression under first fire (they're spinning around
<g> "Hello, can you help me? I'm a spy"
> On Sun, 26 Nov 2000 devans@uneb.edu wrote:
> ***
I seem to recall a system by which automated machinery is given a flowchart
'program' to follow depending on its function. This would severely restrict
the actions available to an 'automated' tank. But it
would make for silly situations - a 'feature' of your flowchart causes
it to fire at an enemy that is out of range, whilst a 2 man team pops the top
with an anti-tank weapon. :)
If I remember correctly it actually got printed in a 'White Dwarf' some time
ago.
***
I seem to recall a system by which automated machinery is given a flowchart
'program' to follow depending on its function. This would severely restrict
the actions available to an 'automated' tank. But it
would make for silly situations - a 'feature' of your flowchart causes
it to fire at an enemy that is out of range, whilst a 2 man team pops the top
with an anti-tank weapon. :)
If I remember correctly it actually got printed in a 'White Dwarf' some time
ago.
***
A chit-based flowcharting system for their robots; the commands were
relatively flexible, but simple, and the robot had to return to the adeptus
to be 'reprogrammed'. This in a system that had remote-controlled guns.
*shrug*
Games on my old Atari 800 had better AI.
Alas, it made a weird sense for the gothic space/sci-fi, where ritual
and runes made more difference than rational science. If you like that sort of
thing, and I did, it's sadly missing from the current GW materials, and
definitely out of place with Jon's generic systems.
The rule structure I would suggest not do away with squad coherence and
morale, but have them different for different beings. Unfortunately, I only
have a vague sense of how they'd be so different.
Thanks for reminding me of that old system, though.
The_Beast
-Douglas J. Evans, curmudgeon
One World, one Web, one Program - Microsoft promotional ad
Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer - Adolf Hitler
> From: Colin P <colin@imhotep.org.uk>
Yes, that was about 8 years ago. Lots of fun. It was used for their robots and
basically gave a broad description of what the robot would do. For a
"programming language" it was really interesting. Being a hard core programmer
myself, I found it a lot of fun to play with. It even resolved
easily - however you non-computer expert or non-puzzle enjoying gamer
would really dislike having to BUILD new systems.
I created one for patrolling that worked reasonably well.
I remember that system. Very interesting.
However, another "robot" system comes to mind. The old Metagaming's "Rivets"
had a simple system.
For those who don't know, it was a "basic wargame" (ie: odds combat system,
ect),
with a handfull of unit types on each side. Each type of unit was "programmed"
to attack a single unit type on the enemy side. To change programming,
required a ll
units of that type to return to the player's control base. The object was to
distroy
the other player's control/manufacturing base.
Very odd, and interesting.
Donald Hosford
> Colin P wrote:
> On Sun, 26 Nov 2000 devans@uneb.edu wrote:
(snippage)
> I seem to recall a system by which automated machinery is given a
some
> time ago.