Dave Hornung and I played in John Lerchey's DSIII game on Sunday morning. On
the ride back to Buffalo, we had a chance to review and discuss. A couple of
thoughts:
I like the DSIII mechanics and flow in general. Definitely gives faster units
more of a fast feeling. Should give recon units a reason to exist.
I would limit the length of firefights within a turn. This is primarily an
issue of fairness within a game. It seemed to me that it is very possible to
have quite long firefights where few players are involved and everyone else is
sitting on their thumbs. I would limit these to something like 5 rounds of
mutual fire (exact number to be determined). A firefight that doesn't end
within those 5 rounds would be considered "continuing" into the next game turn
(ie everyone in the firefight is stuck there). Anyone coming within sighting
range of an enemy unit in a continuing firefight would have to check to keep
from being dragged into the firefight. Any activated unit could join the
firefight, but any unit that joins a continuing firefight doesn't get to fire
into it until next turn. I think this would certainly help keep the game
flowing, especially in a convention atmosphere. I think it would also help
keep units from moving a long distance in a one sided firefight.
Using unit quality to determine your base firing dice doesn't seem right to
either of us. Should a green unit with high tech sighting systems really be
much worse than an elite unit with iron sights? We felt it would be better to
buy a targeting system for the unit and use the quality of the unit to modify
it. Green down 1 dice, Blue even, Orange up 1 dice.
Just some thoughts.
Grant,
Thanks for posting the comments. I'm only going to respond to one issue, so
I'm cutting out the other parts to save space.:)
> On Thu, 2 Mar 2006, Grant A. Ladue wrote:
> Using unit quality to determine your base firing dice doesn't
This has been discussed at some length by various folks, and various
"resolutions" were looked at. Basically, I see a few ways of doing this:
1) The FCS is the controlling factor, period. (per DSII) 2) The FCS is the
controlling factor, modified by unit quality (per you and Dave) 3) The QD is
the controlling factor, peroid. (ok, that's just stupid) 4) The QD is the
controlling factor, modified by FCS. (current DS3)
Your example above is not really valid.
Green unit with high tech sighting: D6 base, +2 QD brings it to D10.
Elite unit with "iron sights": D10 base, -1 QD shift brings it to D8.
The green unit is better in this case. Iron sights are obsolete in a DS
setting, BTW. Basic sights would have decent optics, floating mounts to
allow tracking during movement, etc.
But I'm just being picky here.:)
My counter-stance is that a green unit is trained, but has NO
experience. Under the stress of battle they still have to THINK about how to
lay the
sights, make sure they get the right ammo loaded, look for the right targets,
etc. None of it is "ingrained". In the short time that it takes to acquire and
lay fire onto a target, even minor delays can be critical.
The elite crew, OTOH, has not only practiced the procedures over and over
again, but they a) don't have to apply conscious effort to performing
basic tasks, b) operate as a well-oiled unit, enabling them to operate
without miscommunication, false expectations of their mates, etc.
While this can be argued either way for vehicle crews, it falls apart when
you look at infantry. For infantry, quality is IT. The GZG-verse
doesn't have smart small arms rounds that track targets and correct mistakes.
You might have somewhat better firepower, or more impact, but getting the fire
where it needs to be is HUGELY impacted by the units quality.
I don't want to see a system where the base firing die is determined one
way for vehicles and another for infantry. That just gets too confusing.
GZG has made a history of mapping the command chit color to dice. I
*like* this aspect of the game systems - it's totally unique to GZG from
what I've seen.
I'm sure that others who are playtesting DS3 will see your posts, so maybe
you'll get some other points of view. The comments are good, and I (at
least - I can't speak for others) appreciate them. Just wanted to point
out that folks have been down that road before...
:)
Thanks
John,
No problem. It is entirely possible that my perception was off because it was
only a single scenario and we didn't see some of the underlying elements. It
seemed to me that my K'hif (sp?) were rolling d6's to hit for the green units
and d10's for the orange. I didn't notice a modifier based on FCS. Was it
built in, or were we doing it wrong? I guess I thought we were using 3) below,
but since it was Sunday morning and all I didn't really give it too much
thought at the time. I quite imagine that I misinterpreted something.
Your "iron sights being obsolete" comment below also reminds me about another
thought. Iron sights really aren't completely obsolete are they?
Pretty much any modern direct fire (non-missile) system can still fire
in a degraded manner even when its fcs is down. It seems to me that the
"targeting systems down" result for a damaged unit is a bit too damaging.
Perhaps the tsd result should remove the fcs bonus and allow the unit to fire
at one (perhaps two) less than it's quality die.
I apologize in advance if all this has been passed around before (and I
imagine it has), and I admit that my inexperience with this may invalidate my
opinion. :-) In any case, I think the firefight issue is the biggest
one in terms of making the game playable, especially at conventions. I think
it is important to minimize issues that can cause a player to be basically
uninvolved for most of the duration of the game.
grant
> Grant,
> without miscommunication, false expectations of their mates, etc.
You
> might have somewhat better firepower, or more impact, but getting the
Hi Grant!
Comments embedded...
John K. Lerchey Assistant Director for Incident Response Information Security
Office Carnegie Mellon University
> On Thu, 2 Mar 2006, Grant A. Ladue wrote:
> John,
I had it built in on the vehicle sheets. You might recall (though given
that it was Sunday morning, you might not) that at short range, the K'hiff
vehicles got a +2 QD shift. That was the +2 for having Superior FCS.
The
Order's Trinity tanks (with BASIC FCS) got +0 at short, -1 at medium,
and
-2 at long. Their green units don't do so well at any range.
The basic construct is:
QD +FCS, -0 at Close, -1 at Medium, -2 at Long, +/- any modifiers from
the fire modifiers chart.
It's easier for me to build the FCS bonus and range non-bonuses into the
sheet so that you don't have to care once you have it ready for play.:)
> Your "iron sights being obsolete" comment below also reminds me
That's not a bad idea. If it's mostly an electronics issue, then it should
degrade FCS to "Obsolete" (in DS3 terms, that's about late
WWII-ish). I'll bring that up as a possibility. My gut reaction is
that it might be *easier* to just leave it as is, but it's certainly a neat
thought.
> I apologize in advance if all this has been passed around before
No apologies necessary. I was only pointing out that there has been a lot of
thought put into it, which you *could* not have know about if you don't
get regular updates from the DS3 playtesters/designers. :)
We've (a small subset of playtesters that I regularly correspond with) run
into the question about the firefight stuff causing uninvolved players to take
naps before, but haven't come with any decisive answer. For that matter, while
it *can* be a problem, it generally doesn't present itself
unless you have at least 3 players per side. I'm not 100% certain that it is a
problem that needs to be fixed, but we are aware of it. I saw the same thing
happen in a playtest that Indy did last year at a local (to him) hobby shop. 3
players on each side, and the guy in the center didn't do much of anything the
whole game 'cause the action was on the edges.
Certainly stuff to think about.:)
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Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lGrant,
> On 3/2/06, Grant A. Ladue <ladue@cse.buffalo.edu> wrote:
Don't apologize for passing around something that might have been already. You
may not have been privy to or seen any discussions from earlier (and on the
main list here, there really haven't been any; kinda been tucked off in a
corner of the playtest list, and sometimes not even there). As John said
above, the feedback, even if it is a repeat of what we have seen or tried
before, is appreciated. It lets us know that someone else is *thinking* about
things, and even if the thoughts might go down a path that has already
been explored, said path hasn't necessarily been mapped publicly. ;-)
Mk
> On Thu, 2 Mar 2006, Grant A. Ladue wrote:
> > elements. It seemed to me that my K'hif (sp?) were rolling d6's to
The
> Order's Trinity tanks (with BASIC FCS) got +0 at short, -1 at medium,
:)
> [quoted text omitted]
Yeah, I think that is why I didn't consciously notice it. Probably aggravated
by the relatively short range bands of the K'hiff weapons, so it *appeared*
like I was rolling the same dice as my opponent. In such a case, I can see
that it works fine.
> > Your "iron sights being obsolete" comment below also reminds me
> thought.
I think that at the very least, it would be a good optional rule for non
convention games where speed of play is less of an issue.
> > I apologize in advance if all this has been passed around before
Never doubted it. I'd be mighty happy if I could get onto a playtest list.
:-)
> We've (a small subset of playtesters that I regularly correspond with)
run
> into the question about the firefight stuff causing uninvolved players
> matter, while it *can* be a problem, it generally doesn't present
> him) hobby shop. 3 players on each side, and the guy in the center
I think it might be a bit more common with the type of troops we had on
Sunday. Those green troops get shaken pretty easy and have to go hide in
cover. Any long firefights after that leave them effectively out of the game.
Our game sunday had one guy not doing anything for at least 2+ hours,
and my tanks were really were involved in most of the action for our side.
Similiarly an air unit or something similiar which has limited time over the
battlefield could spend hours after it's initial pass not being used while a
long firefight goes on. This may be another issue where it's less important
for local groups who meet regularly, but for a convention type game some
mechanic that limits one firefight from being the entire game may be
necessary. The existing firefight rules are probably *accurate*, but they may
be less *fun* in certain situations.
grant
> Certainly stuff to think about. :)
I had a couple of thoughts on Dirtside III as well. Mine were more of the
"things you don't want to do in Dirtside III because of the game mechanics".
1) Remember that a Dirtside III game rarely goes past 3 turns. The Friday
night game was two turns and the Sunday morning game was one turn. As a result
you need to be very careful about what order you activate units. In the Sunday
morning game I had my commander activate
about 2/3 of our force in one action (a big plus in DSIII) since we had
three players and were eager to get started we all started moving our units
onto the board at once. WRONG. Huge mistake.
I was expecting to get another turn or two, so I moved my 2/3 of our APC
force onto the board just to have them sit in the rear, expecting to use
them to follow up in the next turn. Had I waited to see what all the tank
units did I could have used that force to follow up on our sweeping
right flank move during the end of turn one. As it was I only had one company
I could have moved before we called the game for time (did I mention that we
still had 3 activations left?). So only move one unit onto the board at a time
in turn one and be very careful the order you use them in.
2) If you're the defender, don't shoot at a superior force that has stopped
after a firefight is over. It only gives them a reason to reactivate and
continue their move. In my opinion, this is a problem with the rules. Grant's
heavy tank force moved onto the board, got involved in a firefight, moved out
of LOS and the firefight ended. They moved around a large outcropping (using
ALL of their major move) and began another firefight at closer range.The
firefight ended because the defender went under cover. Then at the end of the
game the defender activated a unit that had LOS on the stopped Tank unit. The
resulting firefight gave Grant all the excuse he needed to roll into the base
and wipe out the defenders command unit. This create a bit of a cascading
stress situation, which seems to be the way most DSIII games end, which is
fine by me. I don't think any unit should be able to move beyond their major
move capability, firefight or not. The major move is the maximum move you can
move during the time a turn takes if you were unopposed. Firefights should not
extend this ability.
3) Having enough color coded dice and perhaps color coding the vehicle charts
would definately speed things up. Next time I'm bringing some color coded
dice.
4) As I was the commander I felt engaged the whole battle, which is more
than I can say for some. Grant did most of the heavy lifting, but I did
have a lot of fun with my "not-Death Gliders". And the K'Hiff did get a
nice meal out of the whole engagement. So there's that.
Some comments, as I've been playing a good bit of DS3 lately.:)
> Mark Kinsey wrote:
> about 2/3 of our force in one action (a big plus in DSIII) since we
This isn't always a mistake, but often is. If you use a few units as
individual activations (as opposed to using Command Points to activate
multiple units simultaneously) and perform recon (whoo hoo! recon!) it can
help you to determine when and where to make that big push with a pile of
combat units. On the downside in the ECC game I ran, the K'hiff don't really
have recon units.:)
> I was expecting to get another turn or two, so I moved my 2/3 of our
> use them in.
But again, be prepared to launch a pile of stuff when the time is right.
This is equivalent to the German WWII "Shwerpunkt" (which I guarantee
that I misspelled!) - finding the right point in the enemy line to
concentrate your forces into to perform a breakthrough. But yes, overall, Mark
makes a very good point.
> 2) If you're the defender, don't shoot at a superior force that has
They
> moved around a large outcropping (using ALL of their major move) and
I agree. Firefights should not extend total BMF in a given turn. I should have
watched that more carefully while running the game and not
allowed Grants heavies to advance. They should have had two options -
go to cover or fire.
> 3) Having enough color coded dice and perhaps color coding the vehicle
> charts would definately speed things up. Next time I'm bringing some
I put out 12 of each color die in the middle of the table. I told every player
to use them. No one took me up on it.:( It truly does make things easier.
Color coding the sheets is harder to do because you don't know the units
command color before the battle, and since each sheet is "per vehicle type",
and not "per unit" and each unit could have
different colors based on command chits, it further complicates things.
> 4) As I was the commander I felt engaged the whole battle, which is
I hope that with that said, you enjoyed it.:)
> -Mark
To date I've been using Chessex boxes - the 80 figure ones. Each
compartment (foam) generally carries 2-4 vehicles, depending size. At
least for my Order troops (almost all vehicles are from the GZG Future Wars
line). For my K'hiff grav tanks (Grav vehicles from GZGs DS line),
I fit one per slot in the chessex box, sitting on their sides. That seems to
work pretty well.
I just bought a handful of cheap pistol cases at a new sporting store, just
before the show. They have... toothed? foam. Each side has points like
pyramids that press into the gun (assuming you have a gun). I turned the foam
upside down to present a smooth surface, and since the foam doesn't *quite*
make contact from each side of the box, I'm going to get a third layer of thin
foam and cut holes for my infantry bases. Each pistol box (total of like $6.00
each) will carry one or two
companies of infantry. I may put the APCs in there as well if there's room.
For the show, I packed the infantry into VHS tape boxes lined with foam.
They feel a bit too flimsy to me, and I worry that they'll pop open. Thus, the
pistol cases.
> For the show, I packed the infantry into VHS tape boxes lined with
The pistol cases makes excellent storage for 15mm or 25 mm figures also,
but there are some issues with them. A few years ago we had two Lancaster
Police officers come to the convention and walk around. They were pleasant and
patient, but we think that someone saw all the pistols
cases and had the Poilce come over to check us out.
:-)
It sure beats having the woman evangelist or the homeless guy come through.
Jon Davis wrote on 03/03/2006 03:27:11 AM:
> > For the show, I packed the infantry into VHS tape boxes
Have you looked into school pencil cases? Some have latches a bit better than
VHS boxes, and are enough bigger to make a difference. However, STILL not as
good as pistol boxes. I'm afraid the one big advantage to Evil Empire(tm)
cases is the chance SOMEBODY will recognize the logo.
For bigger bucks, Crystal Caste has hard cases that look far more like
salesman sample cases. Personally, I always wanted to try converting a makeup
case, with appropriate MAJOR revisions to the look of the exterior.
;->=
As you can find them in thrift shops for $1-2US, and easily fill with
foam, they would definitely be cost effective.
> The pistol cases makes excellent storage for 15mm or 25 mm
At least you didn't get Beth's 'she's not a terrorist, she's a geek' reaction.
Also, did you try to get them interested? We've a few local officers that have
become quite interested in the hobby, though, given our shop, it's been mostly
EE(tm).
> It sure beats having the woman evangelist or the homeless
I'd give you an 'amen, bruddah', that plays into one of the problem
folk...
;->=
The_Beast
> Jon Davis wrote on 03/03/2006 03:27:11 AM:
Another useful one is kiddies' cheap plastic lunchboxes - peel off
the (usually) lurid coloured sticker on the front featuring whatever big movie
is currently popular, and you're left with a fairly sturdy
small but deep plastic case with a handle - foam-line it and it works
very nicely for (say) 2-4 25mm vehicles....
Mr. Tuffley wrote on 03/03/2006 07:21:39 AM:
***snip***
> Another useful one is kiddies' cheap plastic lunchboxes
Nah, leave 'em on. '1st troop, Scooby Do Brigade...'
The_Beast
> The pistol cases makes excellent storage for 15mm or 25 mm
Finding broken glass, rather than "pistol" cases, on the front seat of your
car. Happened to an acquaintance of mine a few years ago.
_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lAnother option for
a 'big bucks' case are astronomy eye piece cases. I
picked up a few a couple years ago from Smart Astronomy - some for my
eye pieces, some for my 15mm vehicles. Complete with partially cut mini blocks
in the foam so you could form-fit whatever you wanted to store within. I
didn't get too many because they were a bit expensive ($40-50, but one
can
spend easily that much or more on an Army Transport Case w/foam, too).
These don't do too well, though, for 6mm scale figs.
Mk
From: Jon Davis <davisje@nycap.rr.com>
> It sure beats having the woman evangelist or the homeless guy come
I'm waiting for the Amish myself...
If you don't mind doing your own foam filling:
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=36870
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=36871
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=35900
> On Friday 03 March 2006 08:52 am, Indy wrote:
I
> didn't get too many because they were a bit expensive ($40-50, but one
Heh. Yeah. I actually do have one Evil Empire figure case that I use to
tote around my OGREs (not the drooling ones with clubs - the cybernetic
ones with hellbores). It's big, holds all of my OGREs, and looks to be fairly
indestructable.:)
J
John K. Lerchey Assistant Director for Incident Response Information Security
Office Carnegie Mellon University
> On Fri, 3 Mar 2006, Doug Evans wrote:
> Jon Davis wrote on 03/03/2006 03:27:11 AM:
For travel, they'll be in the covered rear hatch, or will go into a bag or
something to hide them. I had thought about how they'll look and what trouble
that might cause.
Good call.
J
John K. Lerchey Assistant Director for Incident Response Information Security
Office Carnegie Mellon University
> On Fri, 3 Mar 2006, laserlight wrote:
> The pistol cases makes excellent storage for 15mm or 25 mm
> Another option for a 'big bucks' case are astronomy eye piece cases. I
I
> didn't get too many because they were a bit expensive ($40-50, but one
Thes=
> e
I've got a Sabol "Motor Pool" transport case, and I'm very happy with it. I
brought something like 100 Full Thrust ships with stands, about 30 fighter
groups, and a dozen Ogres to the con with it and it wasn't close to being
full. The deeper foam trays are also the best way I could figure to handle the
ackward larger UNSC ships. Once I buy a few more of the smallest trays, I
should be able to bring all of my ships and all of my Ogre mini's in the case
at the same time.
> Grant Ladue wrote:
> I would limit the length of firefights within a turn. This is
[...]
> I would limit these to something like 5 rounds of mutual fire (exact
[...]
> I think this would certainly help keep the game flowing, especially
The main reason for the thumb-sitting issue is that DS3 is designed
primarily as a two-player game, rather than as a
multiple-player-per-side
participation game. The "opposing sides alternate activating one unit (or
group of units) each" mechanic works very well when there's only one player
per side... but if there are larger multiple-player teams on each side
the waiting can be very long indeed for inactive players, particularly if the
team (or team leader) chooses to activate most or all of one team player's
units before going on to the next team player's units. From Mark K.'s post I
get the impression that this was a factor at least in the Sunday morning DS3
game.
So yeah, we're aware of it; but so far our best-working solution has
been to rely on the team leaders to distribute activations "fairly"... and
that solution relies on having team leaders that are fairly experienced with
the
game, making it impractical for real-world use :-(
I'm not sure limiting FireFight lengths to X rounds would help much though,
for two reasons:
* Exept when waiting for off-table artillery barrages to arrive over the
battlefield (not sure if the ECC battles featured off-table artillery
though), I've so far seen very few FireFights that lasted longer than 5
rounds. Yes, it is *possible* to get them, but in my experience
one-sided
"direct-fire" FireFights usually end after 1-2 rounds as the losing side
pops smoke/goes into cover as quickly as possible; and since units that
are already involved in a FireFight can't force new units to join in, a
FireFight ends automatically once one side has withdrawn all units from it. If
the fight is more even it can last longer, but usually not much.
* It would be fairly easy for the inactive side to circumvent such a FireFight
length limit by leaving the FireFight "at the last moment" and
almost immediately start a new FireFight as the active units continue their
activation. (If OTOH the *active* units try this, they lose the rest of their
activation.)
> Using unit quality to determine your base firing dice doesn't seem
As John pointed out your example is a bit exaggerated, but aside from that:
all tankers with actual combat experience that I've talked or listened to
agree that crew quality and training is far more important than the fire
control equipment used. The biggest problem for Green crews isn't to
*hit*
a target they've already detected (though that's a factor too), but rather to
*detect* that target in time to shoot at it; here the more experienced units
have a huge advantage.
BTW John, "iron sights" could be rated as either "Primitive" or "Obsolete" in
DS3 depending on what type of gun mount it uses. Unstabilized guns would
definitely be Primitive; those with at least some form of stabilization would
be Obsolete.
In case of a Systems Down hit the FCS would most likely damage the gun
stabilization too and thus degrade all the way down to Primitive, ie. a
-2
die shift if moving and -1 if stationary. Thanks for the idea, Grant -
I'll
definitely put that in as an optional rule! :-)
> We felt it would be better to buy a targeting system for the unit and
<g> You have just described how the DS3 to-hit die types were originally
derived - if you apply the die shifts you suggest to the DS2 to-hit dice
table, you get exactly the same to-hit dice for the various combinations
of
range, FCS quality and unit Quality as you get in DS3 :-)
The main reasons for changing the background logic from "FCS die shifted by
unit Quality" to "Quality Die shifted by FCS type" was that DS3 already uses
the QD for most other tests already, and that the QD was already well defined
elsewhere in the rules so we could get rid of DS2's FCS die
table...
Later,
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Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-l
> On Mar 3, 2006, at 6:08 AM, Flak Magnet wrote:
> If you don't mind doing your own foam filling:
The Army Transport foam trays cut in half fit perfectly in this case.
Evyn infojunky@ceecom.net
A map is a surrogate of space.
-Robinson, A.
> Mark Kinsey?) wrote:
> 1) Remember that a Dirtside III game rarely goes past 3 turns. The
Very much so. This is something veteran DS2 players often have trouble with at
first; it takes game or three to adjust to just how far a DS3 unit can move
and how much it can do during a single activation.
> 2) If you're the defender, don't shoot at a superior force that has
Also, if you're the defender and you're losing a FireFight, don't hang on
until your units are destroyed or forced to hide because they're Shaken.
IME it is usually better to pop smoke/go to ground while your units are
still in reasonably good shape, so you can counter-attack in your own
activation - preferrably after bringing up some reinforcements, treating
casualties (yeah, I know Indy forgot to give the NSL any ambulances...), etc.
[...]
> Then at the end of the game the defender
Hm. If the defenders started this firefight, Grant's units could only have
fired at the defenders' Command Unit if the Command Unit had first fired at
them - ie., either it was the Command Unit that started this final
FireFight or it voluntarily joined the FireFight in the second or later TCR.
The only way for Grant to engage the defenders' Command Unit against the
defenders' will is if *he* started a FireFight against *it*, but that doesn't
seem to have been the case here.
(DS3's Target Priority rule basically says that a unit can *start* a FireFight
against any enemy within range and sight, but once *in* the FireFight it can
only shoot at enemies which have already joined the same
FireFight. It is a kind of "tunnel vision" effect - enemies which are
actively shooting back are percieved to be far more dangerous than those
who are not, and thus get all the attention. Because of this units not yet
involved in the FireFight can join it voluntarily after it has started, but
they can't be *forced* to join in by units who are already involved in
it.)
> This create a bit of a cascading
Not really - both of the *ECC* DS3 games ended this way, but this type
of complete cascading morale collapse has been quite rare during previous
playtests. There have been some cascade effects, but not nearly as severe as
in the two ECC games.
> I don't think any unit should be able to move beyond
I thought so too when we first started to work on DS3.
Unfortunately, in practise it quickly proved to be an utter pain to track how
far each unit (active as well as inactive) has moved during the game
turn, particularly for units including elements with different Basic Movement
Factors (eg. both infantry and APCs); and we also got some outright surreal
situations where units suddenly became immobilized in the middle of a
FireFight because they had used up all their Movement Points
while their opponents were still able to manoeuvre because they hadn't yet
activated this turn. In the end we decided that it was easier (and faster,
game-flow-wise) to fudge it, and assume that most units' movement rates
have a bit of extra "give" in them to cover Combat Moves after a unit has
spent its entire BMF on Major Moves instead of tracking how many MP each
unit had spent.
There's also another aspect of DS3 movement which affects this, and that is
Travel Mode. (I'm not sure if Indy and John mentioned this at the ECC, since
neither of the playtest scenarios needed it what with one side in each battle
having to defend a fixed position and the other being equipped with highly
mobile Grav Tanks.) The standard movement rates in DS3 assume that elements
are both maintaining a sharp watch for enemies and making use of available
cover while they are moving, and therefore aren't moving anywhere near as fast
as they could do; in Travel Mode OTOH they concentrate on moving, and
therefore get to move at up to twice as far as normal for each Movement Point
spent but suffer fairly serious penalties if they get involved in FireFights.
Even the Travel Mode movement rate however isn't the *true* maximum speed
of the element - instead it too includes a bit of leeway, since it is
extremely rare for elements to move at their *absolute* top speeds for an
entire DS3 turn (15 minutes). To use my own car - a Hyundai Atos,
essentially a tiny motorized shopping basket - as a marginally relevant
example, I'd give it the DS3 mobility rating LMW/90 ("Low-Mobility
Wheeled, BMF 90"). Using Travel Mode movement on roads (the normal mode of
operation
for most civilian cars <g>) this rating gives it an in-game maximum
Major
Move of 270 mu per game turn, corresponding to a real-world highway
cruising speed of just under 70 mph (110 km/h; if I drive faster than
that the car starts vibrating as if it were trying to tear itself apart); but
its *real* maximum speed is somewhere over 90 mph... and if someone starts
shooting at me I would most likely drive that fast trying to get away,
too! <g>
What all this means is that the "fudge" solution is actually at least as
realistic as the "track all MPs" one (but of course neither is *perfectly*
realistic!), and that the "maximum" movement rates in DS3 aren't nearly as
absolute as they might seem at first glance. IOW, unless Grant's tanks used
Travel Mode movement (highly unlikely under the circumstances) the movement
you described as "ALL of their major move" was in fact only about half as
far as they *could* have moved in a game single turn in that terrain -
and even if they had made their entire Major Move in Travel Mode they would
*still* have had enough of a margin to make several Combat Moves before their
total movement during the game turn started approaching really unbelievable
levels.
(FWIW, in both DS2 and DS3 the conversion rate between on-table movement
rates and real-world speed is 4 mu/turn = 1 mph. In old DirtSide 2, a
Grav
Tank can move up to a maximum of 30 mu/turn (7.5 mph) if it doesn't want
to shoot at anything whatsoever; if it does want to shoot but accepts a
to-hit
penalty it can move up to 15 mu/turn (3.8 mph), and if it wants to avoid
any to-hit penalties it can move up to 7.5 mu/turn (1.9 mph). As a
comparison I can *walk* at a sustained speed of ~4 mph, and the fastest
World War *1* tracked tanks could move at ~5 mph cross-country...)
Later,
> Not really - both of the *ECC* DS3 games ended this way, but this type
> playtests. There have been some cascade effects, but not nearly as
I wasn't convinced by the RoKah mechanics in the Friday night game. Making
infantry move into the open might be okay, but it's pretty devastating to make
tanks charge into close assault, and that led directly to the KV shattering..
G'day,
> At least you didn't get Beth's 'she's not a terrorist,
You wouldn't believe how relieved I was to get that response at that
point!!!!!