Hi, I guess I'm new. I've been reading the digests for the past few months and
just stealing everyone else's ideas without making any of my own
contributions. But the FMA skirmish rules have given me plenty to think about:
1) Wounds. There wasn't a clear indication in the rules about what being
wounded meant. It was mentioned that it could just lower the quality die used
by the wounded trooper. This possibility occured to me: The wounded
figure would have to make a quality vs. motivation + 2 (?) to be able to
actually take any action during his activation. He would have to test every
activation. A variation would be to make him take the test each activation and
the first time he fails he's unconcious and can take no more actions (unless
seen to by a medic) for the game.
2) MOS. I was working on something similar for a campaign of Stargrunt we were
going to play. The idea was that certain troops have specialties and when your
SAW gunner goes down, you may or may not have someone else who is trained to
use it. My system worked on the principle that Green got 1
specialization, Regular - 2, Veteran - 3, and Elite - 4. Some actions
were possible without having the specialization, e.g. firing the SAW but with
a 1 die shift down from his quality die, while others were impossible without
the specialization (flying a VTOL). Using basic equipment like an AR with GL
were assumed part of the basic training that everyone had.
I also was toying with idea of making one spec. the primary spec. For that
spec. the figure would get one die shift up from his quality. The elites
wouldn't have a primary spec, they'd be the best at all of their specs.
> In a message dated 7/15/99 1:15:44 PM EST, randyw@csd.uwm.edu writes:
<<
1) Wounds. There wasn't a clear indication in the rules about what being
wounded meant. It was mentioned that it could just lower the quality die used
by the wounded trooper. This possibility occured to me: The wounded
figure would have to make a quality vs. motivation + 2 (?) to be able
to actually take any action during his activation. He would have to test every
activation. A variation would be to make him take the test each activation and
the first time he fails he's unconcious and can take no more actions (unless
seen to by a medic) for the game.
> [quoted text omitted]
A mechanism for lowering morale and determination of the wh9ole unit when
they abandon wounded would be a nice touch - especially abandoning them
to
non-humans. Lot of fear and loathing there, of course. but that's what
makes and breaks morale.
There was a third thing I wanted to mention:
The optional "Unit Rules" mentioned at the beginning of FMA rules. As there
was no further mention of these, I assume those are up for grabs as well. My
thought was that it would be kind of a bridge between the FMA skirmish and
SG2. It would basically be another special "ability" of a leader. The leader
can activate all the troops under her leadership that are within her command
radius, at the same time. Basically this would allow all the troops in a squad
to move together, so you don't have any stragglers. The leader wouldn't be
able to pass other activations or anything that round. I'm not sure how to
deal with combat actions though. Would the individual troops take their fire
actions seperately, or should it go into a more SG2 version where you kind of
average everything out? I kind of like the idea of the troops just all taking
fire actions at the same time, but maybe some restrictions on how many
different targets they can attack as a group? Also the leader should have to
pass some kind of test to see if she can lead the squad in a group like that
(similar to the test for passing actions?)
And another thing: Someone mentioned a bit earlier about some kind of
suppressive fire, like an area effect thing. I would like to see
something like that, where the firepower die is down-shifted to cover
an area instead of just attacking a single target. You're not likely to hit
anyone, but you will be able to suppress more than one enemy at a time. Good
use for a SAW gunner while the rest of his squad advances.
I'll probably keep thinking of more ideas that I've forgotten.