[GZG] DSIII q

> >Then at the end of the game the defender

Hmm, I wondered about that in the game and asked John about it, and he said it
was ok. I suspected we might be doing it wrong and that appears to be the
case. That changes things a bit.

> What all this means is that the "fudge" solution is actually at least

I had K'hiff grav tanks that could move 72" in one mode and 3" (I think) in
combat moves. The defenders didn't have LOS to much of the board, so I moved
 about 30 - 35" before they began firing on me.  After I slipped out of
the
 firefight with two damaged tanks (1/2 move) I could move another 15"
with my
 activation (accounting for the 1/2 move) and I did.  Later on they
fired on me again and that started the rolling firefight. My two damaged tanks
crawled forward, but the undamaged tank could reach an elevated postion
without losing unit integrity that allowed it to see down into the infantry
position that had fired into me and subsequently gone to ground. At that
point, I could keep firing at them doing no damage (it was very unlikely), but
maintaining the firefight while the damaged tanks crawled forward overrunning
my opponent. We had something similiar with infantry and tanks fighting on the
flank, and it also lasted quite a while (with similiar results). It may be
that infantry versus tanks can result in long firefights with few results, and
this is where the length of the firefight should be restricted to keep a con
game moving. I'm thinking that a firefight where one side is firing and the
other is not may not be all *that* hard to create, and the length of that kind
of firefight should be held down.

I should also say that our local group almost always plays with more than one
player per side. It's very very rare for us to play a head to head game. The
social aspect of it is a big deal to most people of my acquaintance. I would
not like to see DSIII end up being optimized for head to head play even
accidentally. I'm thinking that a cap on firefight length and rules for cross
turn "continuing" firefights would be a good option for people who do more
gaming in groups. I think the current system would be fine for smaller groups
and head to head gaming.

Hi All,

Comments below.

> Hm. If the defenders started this firefight, Grant's units could only

Hey, I've been known to make mistakes before!:D Looks like this time
too.  Grants heavy had CLEAR LoS/LoF to the Order command vehicle, but
it was not involved in the firefight. I tend to forget that you can't, as the
attacker, bring in new defense targets just because you have clear LoS.
Definitely my bad.

> I had K'hiff grav tanks that could move 72" in one mode and 3" (I
with my
> activation (accounting for the 1/2 move) and I did. Later on they

> We had something similiar with infantry and tanks fighting on the

The infantry should have taken cover if they were not able to fire back.

I mean, if I was there and being shot at and I couldn't effectively fire

back, I'd take cover...

I didn't force the issue in the game, mostly due to lack of sleep. Yeah,
that's it.:)

> I should also say that our local group almost always plays with more

Sadly, my group is fairly small. We generally have either 2 or 3 players, with
no known prospects to add more. When I go visit Indy we tend to have more. I
would think that if you have a larger group, and larger forces,

if the command elements activate a simultaneous assault on multiple fronts
(e.g., at least 1 unit per player, likely more), then each group could be
resolving their firefights simultaneously.

So,

     Player A    ------->  Enemy A
     Player B    ------->  Enemy B
     Player C    ------->  Enemy C

(which never works out that cleanly, but you get the idea)

As long as there is little crossover between the firefights (player A has no
contact with enemy B, for example), each firefight can be concluded beofre
there is another activation. Things could get trickier if Players A and B
ganged up on Enemy A, and left Enemy B out of it, that kind of thing would
happen in DSII as well.

<shrug>

> Hi All,

> too. Grants heavy had CLEAR LoS/LoF to the Order command vehicle, but

> LoS. Definitely my bad.
No worries, especially on Sunday with a new system. Either way, I was in a
primo position to whack him whenever he activated.

> The infantry should have taken cover if they were not able to fire
Yeah,
> that's it. :)

Yeah, but what kind of cover keeps a blaster from shooting at you from above?
They would have had to break for cover behind a building, and at infantry
movement speed, they'd have been long dead before they reached it.

Perhaps the answer is to have a mechanism for "hopeless" firefights where the
side that can't shoot back can disband its unit and end the firefight before
the other guy can creep up to it. Just a thought off the top of my head.

From: "Grant A. Ladue" <ladue@cse.buffalo.edu>

> Perhaps the answer is to have a mechanism for "hopeless"
firefights where
> the side that can't shoot back can disband its unit and end the

Is there every such a thing as a hopeless firefight? Assuming of course that
smoke is available. Even infantry, far in the future, should be able to call
that stuff in or even produce it on their own.

> On Fri, 3 Mar 2006, Grant A. Ladue wrote:

> Yeah, but what kind of cover keeps a blaster from shooting at you

Well, if you think about it, even entering Close Assault, you're at least 2mu
distant, which is 200 meters. You might be marginally "above" them,

but infantry are really really really good at taking cover in small places
(compared to vehicles). Men can lay down, scrunch up, fold, staple and
mutilate. Oh... wait. That's not quite right.;) But you get the idea. Even
from on the hill where the AA units were initially deployed, those grav tanks
were around a kilometer away from the infantry. No way that they were high
enough to fire down INTO the positions. They weren't flying.:)

> Perhaps the answer is to have a mechanism for "hopeless" firefights

Or just keep piling on the fire to force the infantry to accumulate stress.
They'll break eventually.:)

> On Fri, 3 Mar 2006, Grant A. Ladue wrote:
them,
> but infantry are really really really good at taking cover in small

    Well we definitely did something wrong there then.  :-)  Although I
could argue that power blasters don't really need to see the specific
infantrymen to fire away at them. Entombment is plenty good enough.

> > Perhaps the answer is to have a mechanism for "hopeless"
firefights where
> > the side that can't shoot back can disband its unit and end the

   :-)  Yeah, I get that.  I'm just saying that in a convention setting,
that can be an extended period of time where everyone else isn't doing
anything. Minimizing that is a good thing. I know that a lot of it is that
we're not yet really familiar with the new system and therefore don't know how
to use it to avoid this. Still, my first look at it made me feel like putting
in a few things to help limit one or two firefights being the *entire* game
would be a good thing. I'll happily concede the point if repetitive play in a
similiar setting shows that it doesn't come up often enough to be a concern.
I'm concerned though, because I've been to many a convention and the only
games I didn't enjoy were where the scenario setup or the game rules left me
unable to do *anything* for most of the game. For DSIII I'm a bit concerned
that the "shaken" result which forces unit to go to cover may often force one
player's forces entirely to cover. If a long firefight or firefights occur
after that, you may never reach the end of the turn that allows those units to
get back into action. I'm thinking that some mechanism for keeping things
flowing to turn end points is a good thing, especially in the convention type
games.

Our game at ECC was ~ 3 to 3.5 hours of play, and the entirety of the game was
3 firefights in the first turn. We probably had 2 more to go to the end of the
turn (we had 2 more mbt units to ram home). I didn't get a close look at the
other game, but I thought it was similiar. I like how DSIII plays, but I'm not
sure that one turn convention games are a good idea.

I want to make sure that you understand that I'm not being critical of the
game system or how it's been developed. I'm just thinking out loud about what
might be a flow issue in the game. I rather enjoyed the faster movement speeds
and the morale.

Grant,

I think that your comments are very constructive - especially when they
are mapped to "what works in a convention setting?" I purposely left out most
of the artillery (the base defenders had two mortar teams, but they

were only good against deployed infantry, and I don't think that the K'hiff
ever did deploy them!).

As to my mistakes with the rules, I must admit the combination of weekly

changes and modifications and too little sleep definitely had a negative

impact on my ability to keep things straight. As OA pointed out to me in a
seprate mailing, the changes that have been made in the last 6 months actualy
contribute to me NOT knowing what I'm doing 'cause I mix up what

is with what used to be.

On that note, I'm gonna try something completely different for ECCX.:)

J

John K. Lerchey Assistant Director for Incident Response Information Security
Office Carnegie Mellon University

> On Fri, 3 Mar 2006, Grant A. Ladue wrote:

> On Fri, 3 Mar 2006, Grant A. Ladue wrote:
them,
> but infantry are really really really good at taking cover in small
firefights where
> the side that can't shoot back can disband its unit and end the
I'm
> concerned though, because I've been to many a convention and the only

> Grant,
:)
> J

   No problems John.  Mistakes in beta-testing are probably beneficial!
:-)

I have to admit that I've very curious as to how the artillery blends into
firefights.

Well, since you asked. I can give you the basics, and will leave out the
myriad of guidance systems and such.

The artillery can be called in as part of an active firefight, or an FO can
start a firefight by calling in artillery. (I'll get some of this a

little wrong as the artillery section is not fully worked out). The FO places
an impact marker, just as per DSII. If the artillery is on
table, it comes in on the following TCR - allowing the targets to
attempt to flee the beaten zone. Note that with correctable munitions, and
with infantry only moving at 0.5mu Combat Move, they won't always get out.:)
If the artillery is off table, it's put into a "zone"; each

zone requiring a full TCR for the rounds to pass through. So, if you have a
battery in zone 3, and place an impact marker on TCR 2, the impact occurs on
TCR 5. Not terribly useful unless you're targeting a position (hill,
revetment, etc.) or have the enemy well pinned and unable to move.

The damage is figured depending on what kind of munitions you used.
Since the artillery is designed as a normal non-energy weapon with a
high elevation weapon mount, and ARTY-FCS, it can fire whatever kinds of

rounds the normal gun does. So MDCs lay in MDC fire. HVCs can fire KE, HEAT,
HE, Shrapnel, etc. The infantry mortars that the Order had in the

game were LVC/0.5s (low velocity cannon).  Pretty much useless against
armor (rolling impact die * 0.5 even against top armor is asking a lot!), and
they only had HE, Shrapnel, and smoke. So their best shot
against your tanks would have gotten them a D6/2 for impact.

Against infantry, however, especially if they can catch them out in the open,
it's a different story.:)

That's the basics. A lot of work (potentially) goes into the design of your
ammo loads, but once you're playing, it's not that hard to resolve.
:)

John

> Grant A. Ladue wrote:

Grant,

I think your ideas of how to make a convention game more interesting for all
players are very good and quite valid in that setting.

I don't think that the rules should be written to "keep folks happy at a
convention". I think that should be up to the GM and the scenario.

I think the rules should simulate combat with weapons and equipment that are
not available to us now but are possible to exist given the laws of physics.
There are situations in every battle where significant portions of the forces
available were not active. This should be part of the game. If the players do
not use all the force available then that is a tactical mistake that should
result in a loss. If the rules do not allow forces to enter the battle but
have a good reason for that (ie firefight ongoing is working inside the normal
game timeline) that is fine by me.

Bob Makowsky

- Note that I am a "simulationist", I would be happy
if the game did not have any players at all (even at a con) if it resulted in
the "most likely historical(future historical) outcome. I play games to see
what could have, should have, or would have happened. Winning and losing
matter not and I have as much fun watching what other players are contributing
to the simulation as I do actually moving and firing myself.

So given that, my comments are to maximize the simulation of the system
(though I understand that if it is not a "fun" game then it will not sell and
I will not have the opportunity to buy it).

> --- "Grant A. Ladue" <ladue@cse.buffalo.edu> wrote:

> >

> :-) Yeah, I get that. I'm just saying that in a

Let me rephrase it then. For me, a "convention" game implies at least 2
players to a side and usually has more. Quite frequently, more than 1 of these
players will be new to the game. Almost all of our local games fall into this
type of category whether they are played at a convention or not. As such, I
would prefer to see the rules be set up such that it minimizes the chances
that one or more of these players spends most of the game doing nothing.

Now, that said, I've got no problem with the rules being configured the way
they currently are if that works well for smaller groups of players. I would
just like to see a "standarized" set of options that would allow groups to run
it in a more "group friendly" way when appropriate. I'm a big fan of optional
rules that help to prevent a large accumulation of "house rules" to achieve
the same effect. Optional rules have the advantage of being accessible to all
and allow for formal answers to questions that arise. I find that flexibility
in a ruleset is highly preferable.

  grant

> Grant,

> convention or not. As such, I would prefer to see the

The usual way to do this is to say "Larry gets the left company with these
three platoons; Moe gets the center company; Curly gets the right company." A
better way to do it might be to say "Larry gets First Platoon of all three
companies; Moe gets Second; Curly gets Third." That way if all the action is
on the left flank, Curly isn't sitting there with nothing to do.

Hi all,

Are there any provisions for "smart" or "brilliant" munitions, loitering
  weapons, and orbital weapons (Thor and the like)?  Given the sci-fi
setting of the game, I'd like to see artillery that was a bit less like
Vietnam era weapons unless the mechanics are just to unwieldy. How about
orbital to ground energy weapons? I would think that with smart artillery
rounds, there wouldn't be an impact point to warn the other guys before
arrival. If they're necessary, are they reasonably maneuverable? Either way,
perhaps the artillery side should be able to place "dummies" that keep the
other side guessing as to where the actual artillery will land?

I imagine you haven't worked a lot of it out yet, so many of the questions may
not have answers yet. I'm just as curious as heck about this part of it.

    Hmm, as I re-read your response below, I'm realizing that you only
meant that the infantry mortars were basically useless against armor. At
least, I
  hope that's what you meant.  :-)

  grant

> Well, since you asked. I can give you the basics, and will leave out

> places an impact marker, just as per DSII. If the artillery is on
each
> zone requiring a full TCR for the rounds to pass through. So, if you

> position (hill, revetment, etc.) or have the enemy well pinned and

> armor (rolling impact die * 0.5 even against top armor is asking a

Grant et al.,

I agree with what you are saying in principle. However, I would caution

that no rules system guarantees full participation. As an example, I would
point out the FT game that you invited me to participate in at the

ECC. As you know, each player was given a small task force as part of a

larger, 2-sided engagement.  Random placement (or displacement, as the
case may have been) altered entry points. Some NSL task forces had thrust of
2. If my group of 2 ships had started in a far corner rather than at

the front of the battle, it's entirely possible that I'd have done nothing
but accel by +2 and move for the entire game.  Not saying that I'd
likely never get in a shot, but it could have happened. If the faster FSE
ships had charged in, then turned and bolted for the far end of the table, I
would NEVER have caught up.

So, rather than addressing this issue as a "rules problem", I would say that
it should have been my job to suggest that you (the players) not each control
full companies, but rather that each player control 1 company command and one
platoon in their own company, and 1 platoon in each other players companies.
That way, when player A's company charges in, players B and C each have a
platoon to play with in the firefight. That at least increases the chance of
fuller participation by each player.:)

Still, it's a valid point that you bring up, especially for convention games.

:)

John

John K. Lerchey Assistant Director for Incident Response Information Security
Office Carnegie Mellon University

> On Mon, 6 Mar 2006, Grant A. Ladue wrote:

> Let me rephrase it then. For me, a "convention" game implies at
I would
> just like to see a "standarized" set of options that would allow

Laserlight,

Well said.:)

J

John K. Lerchey Assistant Director for Incident Response Information Security
Office Carnegie Mellon University

> On Mon, 6 Mar 2006, laserlight wrote:

> convention or not. As such, I would prefer to see the

Grant,

We've been discussing the "impact marker" issue. As OA has pointed out to me
again and again, there shouldn't BE an impact marker that the enemy can see.
Sadly, because it's a game, and there has to be some way to track such things,
we have to put something down. There are ways to move the marker once it's
played. If it's being painted by an FO (guy with a laser or whatever), that
player can move it around on his TCR within certain limits (that I don't want
to go look up right now!). Some munitions are

self correcting and will look for signatures within an area and fire off

at them.

I hadn't considered things like orbital lasers, but don't see any reason

that such could not be used if your setting allowed for it. I'll defer that to
OA.

There is currently a TON of stuff in the artillery section, which is part of
why I have been ignoring it until I'm much more comfortable with the main
rules.:) The infantry mortars would have been useless against vehicles and
useful against infantry or other soft targets.:)

John

John K. Lerchey Assistant Director for Incident Response Information Security
Office Carnegie Mellon University

> On Mon, 6 Mar 2006, Grant A. Ladue wrote:

> Hi all,
each
> zone requiring a full TCR for the rounds to pass through. So, if you

Grant, I don't think the problem is the rule set per se, but the tactics that
most players employ. Most will follow the general theory of having a "main"
body where most of the action occurs and then maintain a "reserve" set.
Usually players who sit around are either by choice or by team decision part
of that "reserve" i.e. your units are guarding the flank (but no opposing
forces attack the flank so your units don't see any action).

Scenario design helps alleviate this. First, each player should be given
sufficient forces that they can hold back a reserve if they choose. This
usually means 3 or more units per player.

Second, the terrain should be roughly equivalent across the battlefield,
natural channels formed by hills, forests or rivers cause players to either
avoid movement through them or to sit back and try to reduce the
opposition through long-range fire.  By allowing all the players on a
side to have roughly the same terrain coverage in their sector, there is less
incentive to crowd into "favorable" terrain or wait and fight a war of
attrition.

Third, manage the time and set time limits - many players wait and wait
and wait looking for a small advantage in position and such. Also the
first 3-4 turns are just spent jockeying for position with very little
firing and for some people in set positions, very little action. You can
pre-empt this by simply allowing people to either set-up closer or
utilize a "rapid move" system where after each side sets up, they can
alternate sides and re-arrange the placement of their units that are not
in line of sight with the opponent to another location that is not in line of
sight (each unit may only be shifted once). Also set a time or turn limit on
games to encourage people to move.

Alternatively, I have shifted most of my games to Players vs. NPC's in a
campaign background.  In those games I have 3-4 players on the same side
fighting against hordes of NPC opponents. This means every player fights a lot
as I can balance the scenario to the number of players by simply allocating an
number of NPC units per player. Also, I have new players play the role of the
NPC's as this allows them to learn the rules without worrying too much about
losing their troops. Either or both sides can achieve "victory" as I set
varying objectives for each
player and team. Examples -  the player's side objective  may be to take
Hill 641, while the NPC objective may be to inflict 30% losses on the players,
while player A has an additional objective of clearing mines, while player B
must set up the communication post. Or the NPC's are a forlorn hope and need
to hold a pass for 8 or more turns while the players objective is to just get
through the pass with individual players earning points for who gets through
first.

--Binhan

[quoted original message omitted]

Hi guys,

I agree, careful scenario design is always important to making sure that all
the players have a good time. My "first blush" impression of the DSIII rules
though left me concerned that the possibility of long firefights can throw the
best planned scenario out the window. A few shaken results can throw the bulk
of one (or more) player's forces under cover (which is a mechanism that I like
by the way). If it normally takes a turn end to get those forces moving again,
a long firefight in the current turn can leave that player (or players)
effectively out of the game for long periods of time. As such, I'm thinking
that an optional rule to limit firefight length would be usefull in the
appropriate settings (like a convention). I know it may seem to be overstating
things, but we did see this happen in the game we played. One of of the
players on our side did a bit in the 1st half an hour and then had nothing to
do for the next 2 hours. He fell asleep in his chair! It wasn't John's
scenario that was the problem, it was just how the rules pushed things. I'm
just saying that that is something to avoid if at all possible.

   grant

> > convention or not. As such, I would prefer to see the

Yup, except that if he had had elements in either of the the otehr two
platoons, he would have been involved.

Rather than write "convention rules" into DSIII, I would prefer that the

GM for the game work out what special limits they throw in for convention
play. I've done this for DSII games without having seen anything in the

DSII rules to tell me how to do it.:)

J

John K. Lerchey Assistant Director for Incident Response Information Security
Office Carnegie Mellon University

> On Mon, 6 Mar 2006, Grant A. Ladue wrote:

> Hi guys,

> Grant,

> limits (that I don't want to go look up right now!). Some munitions
I'm guessing that you need a marker to indicate that artillery has been called
in at all right? I'm just thinking off the cuff here, but I'd consider 3
cases:

        1)  Dumb artillery rounds  --  In this case, I'd lay the impact
marker because it represents the predictability of such weapon systems.

        2)  Reasonably steerable rounds  --  I'd consider allowing
multiple dummy markers to be placed to conceal the actual target. With the
actual marker

being moveable in a limited way, the final target point would be very
unpredictable. You could also allow multiple actual target points and not
require an entire battery to shoot the same way.

        3)  Brilliant rounds  --  No impact marker at all.  Targets are
determined by FO at arrival time, or the rounds roll for acquistion on their
own. Would work for drone launched munitions too. Mark offboard that artillery
has been fired and when (and from where) it arrives. I would think all orbital
to ground artillery would work this way.

I suppose it wouldn't be unreasonable to allow orbital observers to direct
  fire as well, but boy should that be expensive.  :-)
It would be interesting to allow "fake" impact markers to bluff units into
moving. Perhaps it represents artillery firing fake rounds to simulate an
attack and draw defensive and counterbattery fire. You could even have cheap
light artillery systems that do little besides simulate the big boys.

> I hadn't considered things like orbital lasers, but don't see any
Yeah, I was just thinking that low orbit to ground is not hugely farther than
normal laser ranges.

> There is currently a TON of stuff in the artillery section, which is

   :-)  Thanks for all the info.  Very interesting.

> Yup, except that if he had had elements in either of the the otehr two

> platoons, he would have been involved.

Yes, except if it was his elements that became shaken each time. Now, I
 know what most people are thinking -- "what are the odds?", but what
are the odds that all three elements of a platoon get shaken quickly either?
Any three squads can go to ground at almost any point. An extensive firefight
after that point will leave that player out of it.

I should probably let this go, but I sort of pay attention to another rule set
called Picquet that has a similiar problem in convention settings.

Eventually several house rule variants to get around it became so prevalent
that they became effectively back written into the rules as options. In this
case, I'd rather the option just be there from the start.

Of course, it's entirely possible that it is just really really rare. I'd like
to see the people trying it out on their own to pay attention to all the units
and see if long inactive times are common or not. Consider what would have
happened if all of those forces were commanded by one person.

> it's a game, and there has to be some way to track such

Place the marker with a note: "Offset from this marker 4" north, 7 west" or
"Along the line from Red Marker to Blue Marker, 3" from Red" or even "ignore
marker, splash point is road junction at Hill 641".

You still know that arty has been called, but it could be designated for
anywhere on the table.

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lOn 3/6/06, Grant A.
> Ladue <ladue@cse.buffalo.edu> wrote:
Now,
> I
Any
> three squads can go to ground at almost any point. An extensive

I think in *this* case it's not a matter of "what are the odds" but rather
"sometimes shit happens".  :-/   If the player in question controlled a
squad from each platoon, well, what more can you do for them? Other than let
that person run everything, then no one else gets any action.

But then what if all the squads from all the platoons become shaken? That
would leave everyone on that side of the table, whatever they controlled,
pretty much out of it ('course it would likely end the game, too ;-) ).

At some point you have to say it's no longer feasible to divide things up just
to keep a player in the game for a turn.

Mk

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lEven splitting the
sector/company/platoon commands you encounter the
same issue of people sitting around - units at the front can be shaken
more quickly than units to the rear, but units to the rear don't really see
more action. Both shaken and rear units will suffer some form of inaction at
some point. Only a small section of active units will be in
play on any given turn.  By dividing commands, you have only re-arranged
the problem, not really solved it and insert more issues (i.e. who is in
actual command of the company? What kind of obligation do other commanders
have in following the orders of the company commander?) And you will probably
find that people will be constantly asking if they can transfer commands. (You
may find that people are more willing to run a whole company that sits, but is
completely under their control rather than have to share or compromise their
command structure.)

--Binhan

________________________________

From: gzg-l-bounces@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
[mailto:gzg-l-bounces@lists.csua.berkeley.edu] On Behalf Of Indy
Sent: Monday, March 06, 2006 2:00 PM
To: gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
Subject: Re: [GZG] DSIII q

> On 3/6/06, Grant A. Ladue <ladue@cse.buffalo.edu> wrote:

> Yup, except that if he had had elements in either of the the otehr two

Yes, except if it was his elements that became shaken each time. Now, I
know what most people are thinking -- "what are the odds?", but what are
the odds that all three elements of a platoon get shaken quickly either? Any
three squads can go to ground at almost any point. An extensive firefight
after that point will leave that player out of it.

I think in *this* case it's not a matter of "what are the odds" but
rather "sometimes shit happens".  :-/   If the player in question
controlled a squad from each platoon, well, what more can you do for them?
Other than let that person run everything, then no one else gets any action.

But then what if all the squads from all the platoons become shaken? That
would leave everyone on that side of the table, whatever they controlled,
pretty much out of it ('course it would likely end the game,
too ;-) ).

At some point you have to say it's no longer feasible to divide things up just
to keep a player in the game for a turn.

Mk

Is it necessary to place the targeting marker more than 1 turn out? You could
simply have a marker or card that says "Artillery Incoming". Each turn add to
the pile, when the appropriate number of counters is collected, the player
then places a marker on the table where it will land next turn. This assumes
the fact that the artillery rounds are
sub-sonic and the whistling sound of the rounds alert units in the
target zone about the incoming. Hypersonic or beam weapons should arrive on
the same turn as the marker.

Is it fair that the artillery observer can move the target marker to
essentially follow a target over multiple turns? In short, yes. Unless
the rounds are completely dumb, there should be some type of mid-air
course correction possible with smart or brilliant rounds. With smart or
brilliant rounds you may be able to do a "terminal" adjustment and just before
they fall, adjust the targeting marker an X distance ( X is greater for
brilliant rounds than for smart ones).

OTOH there maybe battlefield radar/lidar units that can track incoming
rounds and notify ground units that there is incoming artillery fire and
give a predicted fall zone, thus providing units with 2-3 turns of
notice before the shots land.

--Binhan

[quoted original message omitted]

> Grant A. Ladue wrote:

> Yup, except that if he had had elements in either of the the otehr two

> platoons, he would have been involved.
Now, I
> know what most people are thinking -- "what are the odds?", but what
Any
> three squads can go to ground at almost any point. An extensive

> Eventually several house rule variants to get around it became so
In this
> case, I'd rather the option just be there from the start.
Grant,

You're making a very good point, but let's try looking at this another way. I
was in both DSIII games that weekend. In the first game I had two

units. A rocket tank unit guarding the main objective and another tank unit in
the rear. My rocket tank unit was pretty much taken out of the game early on
after only firing a couple times before being wiped out (it only damaged a
single K'vrak tank before this happened), my other unit tried to enter the
firefight and failed. It's morale dropped to shaken as a result. Then it was
fired upon and lost 1 of it's 4 units. As a result it went from shaken to
broken. It *never* fired a single shot.

On Sunday's game since I was commander I took the smaller of the three forces.
Again, only two of my units saw any action. My "not death gliders" saw action
early on, destroying an AA unit and a tank before exiting the battlefield. My
light tank unit attacked on the left flank only to fail their morale check and
have to withdraw without firing a shot.

That was everything my units did in 6 hours of play time, described in a

handful of sentances. Yet, I did not fall asleep. In fact I had more fun

than I've had in a long time. Now there are those who would say I was starved
for entertainment and they'd be right, but I did have a good time. I was
engaged in the game even when I was not the one doing the moving and firing.
Plus, it's a convention, if I really was bored with the game because my units
were not in the battle I might ask if could look around the convention floor
at other games or see if someone would let me move their unit. If you fall
asleep at the table you're saying you'd rather be sleeping than be at a Con.

I think a lot of it has to do with the attitude you bring to the game. Of
course I wanted to see our side win and I wanted the forces I commanded to do
well, but I was just as interested in how the battle worked out overall.

Grant,

I agree most heartily and like to see simple and flexible with optional rules
for genre.

Games that deal easily with a larger number of players are also a good thing.
In our club in NJ we are
always playing 4-6 players with occasional 8 player
games. It is much more fun to have a set of rules that keeps everyone
occupied.

So for the record I agree with you on playability. I just would not want to
see simulation take too much of a back seat to it.

Bob Makowsky

> --- "Grant A. Ladue" <ladue@cse.Buffalo.EDU> wrote:

> Let me rephrase it then. For me, a "convention"

I think I need to step back here and clarify what concerns me.

I'm not arguing for a mechanism that keeps everyone involved all the time. I
think I'm actually arguing the inverse. I'm concerned that the firefight
mechanism (which is pretty cool) is *very* unpredictable. A single firefight
can be very quick or possibly very long. A very long firefight could easily
end up involving only a small section of one (or both) side's forces. In this
case, I'm concerned that a subset of the players can be effectively out of the
game for extended periods of time, possibly *most* of the time.

Now, I agree that in most club settings where you're gaming with the same
people you game with all the time, this may not be much of a problem. On the
other hand, you could be in a convention setting or any public forum where you
may be trying to introduce new players and give people a taste for the game. I
think that a new player that never gets to do anything because of the rules is
not likely to be interested in the rules again. We've mentioned that "careful"
scenario design is important, but the very mechanism of the firefight rules
seem to me to work strongly against predictable design. An excellent game
mechanic that potentially alienates the people playing it is not a good thing.
I would simply suggest that a few simple mechanics be worked out for

putting an upper limit on the number of rounds that a firefight can go within
a turn. I would offer these as an optional rule that can be used or not
depending on the situation and the group. I would expect that a good number of
gaming groups (our own included) are likely to develop such a "house rule" on
their own if it isn't offered straight away. I would prefer to see such a rule
be formally tested and offered to help keep it consistent. Under no
circumstances am I arguing that this should be the default way of playing.
This would just allow for a game to keep "moving along" in the situations
where I think that is a good thing to do.

Just one man's crazed opinion.

  grant

> I think in *this* case it's not a matter of "what are the odds" but
That
> would leave everyone on that side of the table, whatever they
).
> At some point you have to say it's no longer feasible to divide things

Grant,

I agree with your concerns, if not with your solution (to put some kind of
artificial (sic) limit on firefights).

That said, one other option would be to always present DS3 games at cons

with 2 players.;)

Seriously though, the same problem does exist in *most* game systems to some
degree or another. I think that as we develop examples of turns and add finer
tuning to the scenarios (and maybe even a 1 page "Tactical Considerations"
guide!), things will work out.

:D

J

John K. Lerchey Assistant Director for Incident Response Information Security
Office Carnegie Mellon University

> On Wed, 8 Mar 2006, Grant A. Ladue wrote:

> I think I need to step back here and clarify what concerns me.
 In
> this case, I'm concerned that a subset of the players can be
 On the
> other hand, you could be in a convention setting or any public forum
Under no
> circumstances am I arguing that this should be the default way of
That
> would leave everyone on that side of the table, whatever they
).
> At some point you have to say it's no longer feasible to divide

-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: John K Lerchey <lerchey@andrew.cmu.edu>

> Seriously though, the same problem does exist in *most* game systems

This problem *especially* exists in Crossfire. Crossfire is pretty much
designed to be played with 2 players. With my regular group we normally
have 6-8 players.

To get around this I simply turned the Crossfire game into a team
exercise-- each player on a side has their company of infantry or
platoon of tanks (or whatever) but they as a side determine who will activate
next.

It makes for a very hectic game at times. Especially when Mr.Damo introduces
the Chess Clock.

> To get around this I simply turned the Crossfire game into a team

I don't think you've quite hit what Grant is concerned with. It doesn't

matter how you divvy up forces or decision-making between players--if
most of the evening is one firefight between Red's 1st Platoon and Blue's 3rd

Platoon, then everyone else is going to be out of the action for most of the
evening.

I think, however, that as people get experience with the game, they'll realize
which side of the firefight is likely to be the losing side, and

they'll go ahead and pop smoke, or take cover, pretty quickly. Not
always--I
saw a couple of units in the Friday night game which shouldn't have gotten
involved in a slugfest--but they died pretty quickly too.

> On 09/03/2006, at 10:10 AM, Laserlight wrote:

> To get around this I simply turned the Crossfire game into a team

Not having played or seen DS3 (although I am looking forward to it), I don't
know if I can contribute much; however has anyone considered permitting
firefights to be suspended after a number of rounds and allow them to be
resumed instead of an activation later in the same turn. This might permit
other players to participate, while permitting the firefight to run its course
within the turn.

> On Mar 8, 2006, at 7:10 PM, Laserlight wrote:

I played in one of Indy and John's playtest games a few months ago and I made
that same comment then. Perhaps a firefight should only be continued if you
succeed in doing something with the shot (in other words if you miss your
firefight is over)?

> I think, however, that as people get experience with the game,

But then you always have those types who will want to throw dice regardless of
their (minimal) chances of doing anything.

Damo

> But then you always have those types who will want to throw dice

At which point the other players explain, gently, that it's time to be getting
on with things...

At a convention, where folks may not be familiar with the rules and the
ramifications of a continued firefight, this might be a good place for the
referee to step in and "strongly suggest" that one side seek cover.

This might be enough to address Grants' concerns. It certainly helps that it
is being brought up and so will make it easier to identify if and when it
happens.

Bob Makowsky

> --- Laserlight <laserlight@verizon.net> wrote:

> > To get around this I simply turned the Crossfire

Back from last week's business trip, I'm slowly working my way through this
thread...

To summarize:

************************
Grant's concerns about "down time" in games with multiple players per side are
quite valid; but like I wrote a couple weeks ago we haven't been able
to work out any "sure-fire" solution for them. For the reasons I posted
back then I don't think that limiting FireFights to X rounds will help much
(it is much too easy to circumvent such a limitation if you want to); but like
Bob suggested firm guidance from a GM or equivalent should handle most of the
problems. We'll keep working on this issue.

************************
Yes, the artillery rules allow for "smart" or "brilliant" munitions -
though note that such munitions aren't quite as intelligent as some people
believe; they still need to be told both what kind of targets to look for and
roughly where to look for them... and if their targetting criteria are
badly chosen, their performance can be extremely erratic :-/

The main problem with the DS3 artillery rules is not that we haven't had

time to think about how to model various fancy tech gadgets, but that we

are modelling too *many* of them. At their peak the artillery rules were

over 20 pages long (more than a quarter of the total DS3 rules corpus at

the time), and that's *way* too much to be playable - so we're working
on simplifying them enough to be usable. The trick is to simplify them enough
*without* losing a lot of detail :-/

Writing notes specifying how each Impact Marker is to be interpreted works OK
as long as there are only a few Impact Markers, but it gets quite messy when
there are many artillery elements involved (eg. when each infantry platoon has
its own light mortar).

************************
In spite of the name, DS3 isn't very much like DS2. In many respects (turn
sequence and movement rates in particular) the two games are very different
indeed, and getting them mixed up often makes it difficult to make relevant
suggestions :-( For example, some of Binhan Lin's suggestions look very
much as if they're based on DS*2* experience rather han on DS3:

- Setting up the opposing forces closer to each and/or allow one-off
pre-battle "rapid redeployment" moves make good sense in DS2 where even
"fast" units like grav tanks only move a little over a foot per game turn, but
these suggestions have virtually no effect on how likely DS*3* units

are to get into action simply because DS3 movement rates are so much higher.
Even a slow tracked tank can move several feet across the table in a single
game turn if it needs to; and IIRC the fastest grav vehicles in

John Lerchey's games at the ECC could move up to 390 inches (ie. almost 11
*yards*) in a single DS3 move (*in addition* to any combat moves they
might've made that game turn before, during and/or after their own
activation...!).

- Similarly DS*2* players might spend the first 3-4 turns jockeying for
position (or simply moving into weapons range of the enemy!), but so far

most DS3 games played have been fought to a conclusion in 3 game turns or
less. The 2nd DS3 game at the recent ECC was finished in less than *1* full
game turn - the defenders' morale collapsed before all the attacking
units had had a chance to activate even once...

Later,

> The 2nd DS3 game at the recent ECC was finished in less than *1* full

Which seems a bit odd.  I'd rather have a game which usually goes 4-6
turns, I think, and perhaps shorter turns, although I confess I don't know how
I'd do that.

Which reminds me, on Friday night at ECC we had a unit in Company B break, and
the morale penalty was applied to the whole force (ie company A and the HQ
platoon). Is that the way we should have done it, or should it only have
applied to Co B units?

> On Mon, 13 Mar 2006 laserlight@verizon.net wrote:

> The 2nd DS3 game at the recent ECC was finished in less than *1* full

Well, there *could* have been more turns if folks hadn't just jumped into
combat.;) Recon can take a few turns if it's done at all. One
additional issue is that hidden units/sighting rules have not been
fleshed out, so recon is still not a necessity. Assuming that in order to get
a better feel for where to do a push, you sent in recon units and needed
multiple activations for each of them, you could quickly eat up a

turn or two before sending in one or more companies to hammer the foe. That
said, I find that in many cases recon becomes an activation or two,

if it's done at all.;)

> Which reminds me, on Friday night at ECC we had a unit in Company B

I'll let OA be definitive on this one, but my guess is that I screwed up. How
I intereperet this now is that you had:

HQ Company A Company B Company C (or something like that)

If a unit in Company B breaks, it should immediately cause stress for all of
Company B, but unless Company B breaks, the other Companies and HQ should not
be impacted.

> Well, there *could* have been more turns if folks hadn't just jumped

Gonna need some really good hidden movement rules to make recon more
important, then.

> Which reminds me, on Friday night at ECC we had a unit in Company B

> I'll let OA be definitive on this one, but my guess is that I screwed

I said "we" because I've read the rules too, and I think it may be a phrasing
issue. Don't have a copy with me but IIRC it's something like "when a unit
breaks, stress is applied to the other units in the same command", and "same
command" got interpreted as "battalion" instead of "company" by you, me, Indy,
and anyone else there who'd read the rules.

> On Mon, 13 Mar 2006 laserlight@verizon.net wrote:
I have to admit, I would like to see more turns as well. Right now, I'm hoping
that more experience with the system helps move this along, but I'm not sure
yet that that is the case. I still think that the idea of a "continuing"
firefight has merit. I would allow other units to join in, and allow forces in
the firefight to roll to "force" other units into the firefight. Then resolve
the firefight in the next turn. This would allow the game to keep moving, but
still keep the move and firefight concepts. Perhaps only newly started
firefights would be

allowed to continue (ie you finsh them in the next turn). Perhaps you can
define a "combat zone" around units already in the firefight, and anyone that
enters that zone gets sucked in. That would allow units to screen each other
and make choke points important (since the first unit stopped at the point
would suck everyone else in).

> Well, there *could* have been more turns if folks hadn't just jumped

> That said, I find that in many cases recon becomes an activation or

How would recon work with a firefight? Should the other guy shooting at your
recon elements force them into combat? In retrospect, one of the odd things to
me from the game on Sunday morning was that my grav tanks were so fast in one
mode and *so* slow in the other mode. My unit was flashing past a gap, but
were forced to come virtually to a stop when fired upon. I know there is some
justification for that, but I'm wondering if there shouldn't be a way to
"shoot the gaps" as it were. I'm thinking that a recon unit would not
necessarily stop and fire back, but would be more likely to maintain speed to
cover. Not sure about that though.

Say, how do very large units like Ogres work with firefights? Does shooting at
one element on a big vehicle allow everything to shoot back?

G'day,

> - Similarly DS*2* players might spend the first 3-4 turns jockeying

Obviously we don't know for sure yet what future warfare will be like, but
based on current trends is this a fair reflection of how long a future tank
battle would last (short sharp 15 minutes rather than slogging for days)?

Just curious

> On Mon, 13 Mar 2006, Grant A. Ladue wrote:

> On Mon, 13 Mar 2006 laserlight@verizon.net wrote:
I would
> allow other units to join in, and allow forces in the firefight to

I'm not sure how zone of control (which is kind of what you're saying feels
like to me) would work in a system where weapons have ranges of 60mu. Granted,
there is LoS to consider, and on a relatively terrain dense table, you might
see ranges limited to under 24mu, but on open terrain with a laser, all bets
are off!:)

> How would recon work with a firefight? Should the other guy

One example, which would have worked this way on the Friday Night game if I
hadn't, once again, screwed up...

A unit of light tanks (scouts, if you will) moves around a hill and is spotted
by and enemy force. Being that a) the enemy force is not on overwatch and b)
that the light tanks are Active, they get the first FireFight round and
(wisely) elect to pop smoke. Now, they haven't been

fired upon, and they have effectively stopped the FireFight before it really
began by making it impossible for the enemy to do any real reaction (the enemy
unit could make a Combat Move, but won't be able to get to, let alone through
the smoke, so there really isn't much point), and the
FireFight ends.  Since the smoke-poppin'  unit is in good morale, they
may continue with their major move (say that they were moving across the gap

beteween two hills), so they move around the second hill (around the back in
relationship to the force that wanted to attack them) and find another platoon
in the edge of woods watching for them. This time the enemy is on overwatch,
so they fire at the light tanks before the smoke can be popped. They manage to
kill one, and being that the light tanks are overmatched,

the light tanks take (and pass) their Stress Test, and pop smoke again. Still
in good morale, if they have any Major movement left, they can continue, and
whether they do or not, they can do their SECOND major action, which could to
dig in, make another move (maybe back and onto one of the hills?), etc. In
both cases a firefight ended with the light tanks in good morale, and
resulting in a recon unit having spotted two enemy platoons.

:)

> In retrospect, one of the odd

That's because the full TURN is 15 minutes but each Tactical Combat Round is a
meer fraction of that. You're literally changing TIME SCALES when you move
from activation to firefight.

Yes, it feels very wierd. Think of it as playing this way. You do what

someone (sorry, don't remember who) suggested to do "big moves" to get into
combat. Once in, you are doing small tactical adjustments in the firefight, in
compressed time. For most vehicles, the Combat Move is in

the 2-4mu category.  For those grav tanks, well, they's fast
don'tchaknow, and some of them have Combat Moves of around 12mu...:)

> Say, how do very large units like Ogres work with firefights? Does

Haven't worked that out yet, but will likely soon. In fact, once my group gets
back to DS (a few more weeks) I plan to test just that.:)

Beth said:
> but based on current trends is this a fair reflection of how long a

Perhaps -- but if so, perhaps turns should represent 2-3 minutes instead
of 15

> > enters that zone gets sucked in. That would allow units to screen

More of a "zone of attention" than a traditional zoc. The idea would be that
while you're in a firefight, you're focused on the people you're shooting at
and are shooting at you. Between that focus and the smoke and dust of combat,
you're much less likely to start firing on someone else moving behind what
you're firing at, unless they come close enough to the existing unit. I would
allow units to try to force other units into the combat, with better tech and
better units increasing the chance.

> >
   Ah, that's what playtesting is for...   :-)

> A unit of light tanks (scouts, if you will) moves around a hill and is

> spotted by and enemy force. Being that a) the enemy force is not on

> platoons.
    Hmm, I like the way you describe it, *but* (there's always a but :-)
) what about forces like ours that had no smoke? How about backgrounds where
smoke is immaterial (like OGRE or I would think Hammer's Slammers)? I imagine
that I don't have the best grasp of modern combat, but is smoke really the
only way that recon units break contact? If they are, I will henceforth keep
  quiet on the subject.  :-)

> > In retrospect, one of the odd
I know
> > there is some justification for that, but I'm wondering if there

> into combat. Once in, you are doing small tactical adjustments in the

> firefight, in compressed time. For most vehicles, the Combat Move is
Yeah, I think get that. How fast are those grav tanks moving in their "big
move" though? The gap they were crossing was about 6 or 7 inches wide. Some
piece of me feels like they should have been able to blow across it without
being forced into an extended combat. I don't know. I'm not sure that I've
seen enough to justify my "feeling" for it. I am starting to wonder though if
the "time change" is too drastic.
  It's like there should be an intermediate phase between "non-combat"
and "all out firefight". Not sure about that though. Hmmm....

> > Say, how do very large units like Ogres work with firefights?
Does shooting
> > at one element on a big vehicle allow everything to shoot back?

Cool. It would be a real shame if oversized vehicles aren't well integrated
into the new rules. Off the top of my head, I am thinking that massive
firepower (like an Ogre) would tend to short circuit a firefight. Of course,
that may be
right...  :-)

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lOn 3/14/06, Grant
> A. Ladue <ladue@cse.buffalo.edu> wrote:

> > A unit of light tanks (scouts, if you will) moves around a hill and

Consider "smoke" to be a generic term. It can be "real" smoke, or it can be
something else that for all intents and purposes PSBs as smoke in that
situation. Your homework is to supply your own PSB for smokeless smoke.
:-)

Mk

> On Tue, 14 Mar 2006, Grant A. Ladue wrote:

> enters that zone gets sucked in. That would allow units to screen
... (my crap deleted)
> More of a "zone of attention" than a traditional zoc. The idea

Ah. Ok, that's actually in there to some exent. It's not clearly spelled out
enough yet, however.

So, let's say Unit A is attacking Enemy A. They start slugging it out, and
after a few TCRs (that's Tactical Combat Rounds boys, it's a technical term!)
Unit A can now see (has LoS to) Enemy B. Unless Enemy B JOINS the firefight,
Unit A cannot initiate fire against them. They are focussed on units involved
in the firefight. Now, that said, I've found it very hard to make that make
sense in play in certain situations. For example, if Enemy A is withdrawing
and passes through Enemy B, and Enemy B is something like APCs, and Unit A is
tanks, it seems unlikely to me that Unit A should not be able to light up the
APCs while chasing Enemy A.

It needs work, but I certainly agree with you in concept.:)

> How would recon work with a firefight? Should the other guy
... (another of my long-winded rants deleted)

> Hmm, I like the way you describe it, *but* (there's always a but

Well, IMHO, units like the K'hiff and K'V would... not deign to use such a
thing as smoke.;) There are other ways to break contact. There is movement
behind a Major Terrain Feature (e.g., a large object on the
table) and there are Cover Tests (taking cover behind minor terrain -
those folds in the ground that don't get shown on the table 'cause we live in
"flat land" to some degree).

As far as smoke is concerned, I don't think that there is likely to be a

time when smoke or something smoke-like will not be available.  If you
have IR equipment as "standard", then you're going to devlop smoke with either
a large heat signature or some kind of thermal dampening effect to block the
IR. In OGRE, the scale is off so far that smoke doesn't quite

make sense. OGRE is what, multiple kilometers per hex? Those things are
lobbing micronukes all over creation.:) So, in any case, smoke or it's

high-tech PSB'd equivalent will be available unless you design your
units to not have it (like I did!).

> [quoted text omitted]
... (hah! some of Grant's long wind deleted!)... (ok and from me too)

> Yeah, I think get that. How fast are those grav tanks moving in

Part of it is speed (without using Travel or Road  bonuses - so over
open fields, a unit travelling at 100mu is only going at about 40kmh. Granted
it's over much rougher terrain than most non-Pennsylvania highways, but
it's not *that* fast) and part of it is distance. A 7mu gap is 700 meters.
Think of it as 7 football fields. If you have a decent LOS I think you could
engage medium speed aircraft over that much distance...

> I don't know. I'm not sure that I've seen enough to justify my
and "all
> out firefight". Not sure about that though. Hmmm....

I'm not sure what an intermediate phase would be for.

The current explanation is along these lines for how the game turn is broken
down.

First, the designers kept the 15 minute Game Turn. Ground scale and figure
scale were also retained from DSII.

Looking at the speeds of units in DSII two things bubble up.

1) Vehicles are SLOW. Flat out most can't achieve 15mph. 2) Combat drags. I've
heard people at the ECC say, "What?! You *finished* a DSII game!?" From
playing, I found that you spend a shitload of time dragging your armored
snails across the table, and that once you've fired in that FIFTEEN MINUTE
period, you're done. You might achieve 1:1 kill ratios in FIFTEEN MINUTES.
(yes, of course I know that it's a game and that the 15 minute turn is largely
arbitrary, but if you're going to define it, it should mean something in the
game other than, "Shit, that don't make sense!")

Because of the way movement was handled (1 unit activates at a time and
it moves s-l-o-w-l-y across the table), tactics were pretty much, "Do I
fire now or save the unit and fire later?" There was no way to do things
like out-flank the enemy, or suprise them with anything.  Everything was

seen moving (again) slowly into action, allowing for the enemy to ALWAYS

react however they deemed fit. This isn't even reasonable for WWII combat.

So with a problem defined, there were a number of things that were viewed as
"fixes".

1) Increase speed. Tanks NOW can move at 60mph on roads. Let's see them able
to do it in the game.

2) Cohesion. No one (except maybe the French in WWII) sends in one platoon at
a time. Even in WWII the commander would gather his forces at a "Jumping Off
Point" and then launch them into an attack. Sending out a platoon at a time at
3.5mph is not *quite* a launch. Thus, it is imperative that players be able to
send in attacks with multiple platoons simultaneously.

3) When the actual combat does occur, *that* is where you want to spend your
time and attention. Also, you want to have some mechanism to allow a platoon
to kill or be killed at a greater than 1:1 ratio inside of a 15 minute window.
OA can speak much more coherently about this than I can,

but it does make sense. Rates of fire (including laying in the target) are
generally a *bit* higher than 1 target in 15 minutes.:) This lead to the
firefight concept.

The flow is,

Activate one or more units.
Move a long, long way fast to find/engage the enemy.
Blow the crap out of each other. Other guy gets to activate. Repeat til
everyone is dead or broken.
:)

I've seen other games (Empires 3 Napoleonic Rules by Scotty Bowden come to
mind) that tried to do this in a less flexible manner (in E3 when contact
as made you rolled and got from 2-5 tactical combat rounds, but nothing
outside of the tactical fight could join under ANY circumstances), but I've
never been impressed with the overall effect. In E3 the tactical combat was
usually pretty indecisive. I once hit a brigade of austrians

with a whole division of french and watched the austrians stop the french
divion in it's tracks by forcing them to deal with one freakin' battalion at a
time. In reality, the individual battalions would have been ground

into dust. In DS3, from the dozen or so games I've played in the last year, it
usually both works and feels right. There are quirks that come

up, but I've also seen it do some really neat things.

In one game, the defender was badly outnumbered (tends to be a theme in my
games!), but had units dug in and hidden. Single platoons of tanks were

able to tie up companies of enemy tanks due to firing from hidden positions
(suprise!) and being in GOOD positions. The attacker needed those 3:1 odds to
beat them. It felt like doctrine in action.:)

Sorry for rambling... I had the need to explain stuff.;)

> Cool. It would be a real shame if oversized vehicles aren't well

Yeah. I'm thinking (not having tried it yet) that OGREs are gonna rock, or be
totally lame. The biggest problem is that a game like OGRE just dosn't
translate well into a different frame of reference. In OGRE, the

OGREs can usually move farther in 1 move than max weapons range of the enemy
(give or take). Time slices are done in standard "turns". Ganging up (adding
attackers to improve attack odds) counts (in DS, other than
counting on BOOM chits, it really doesn't matter how many RFAC/1s you
have, you aren't getting through 7 points of armor). The OGREs treads are a
real threat and they take tons of damage. The list goes on.

In DS, the OGREs, and other units, can't move through weapons ranges (for
large weapons) without someone getting to shoot (assuming LoS, etc.). IMHO
it's too much trouble to track 45 or 60 individual tread hits. Finally, when
the OGREs guns are destroyed, it becomes a mostly ineffective fighting unit.

So, what are my expectations for when I try this out?

First, I'm going to armor the crap out of the OGREs. In DS3 terms, the lowest
armor is likely to be around 8, and could easily go as high as 12. I'm also
likely to bump the OGREs armor die up to a D10. OGREs will have either 2 or 4
tread units, and kills will seriously degrade performance.

:)

Now, the scary part is that the OGRE is going to be able to fire everything it
has during each TCR. Just like a tank platoon on huge
steriods.  A Mk III will have a DFFG/7 (or 8, I don't remember what I
put
on it), 4 MDC/5s, 2 missiles and a pile of Light (class/0 anti-soft
target) weapons, and superior fire control, and will be either an Orange

or Red unit. If the OGRE is swarmed (hit by a company) it could suffer badly.
OTOH, if it gets to initiate, it's going to pick out an enemy platoon and
vaporize it.

I really have no idea of how well (or badly) this will work, but my next

DS3 game is likely to be a sigle Mk III going after a command post defended by
crunchies and squishies (normal tanks and infantry). I'm betting that it'll be
ugly, but fun ugly.

:)

Hmm, I better shrink this down some. I'll just respond to the "zone of
attention" (which sounds more and more like a Maxwell Smart line) concept in
this post.

> On Tue, 14 Mar 2006, Grant A. Ladue wrote:

> Unit A should not be able to light up the APCs while chasing Enemy A.

Actually I agree. If either side performs an action that would bring another
unit into "combat attention" range of the other side, that would automatically
bring the new unit into the firefight. If that tank you're shooting at breaks
and runs right through a new group of tanks, you're going start shooting at
them, not say "well they weren't in this firefight, let them go". Of course,
if the new unit has cover, then perhaps you won't notice them either. Roll to
add them in.

This is part of why my first inclination was to add ongoing firefights. You
may think you've covered your flank over that, but once you're slugging it out
with the first unit into the gap you're far less likely to notice the unit
moving behind them and around behind you. I dunno, maybe it is just that the
firefight concept gets a bit broken when
  one and/or both sides don't have "smoke" to shut off the firefight.
It's entirely possible that we saw an extreme case that can cause very long

firefights. I'd like to see how several playtests without smoke go.

> Laserlight wrote:

> >The 2nd DS3 game at the recent ECC was finished in less than *1* full

> game turn - the >defenders' morale collapsed before all the attacking

to which TomB added:

> I'm with Laserlight on this one. At the pace of modern armour

As John already posted, the actual shooting parts of a DS3 battle are resolved
in tactical combat rounds of 20 seconds each (including movement).
The 15-minute turns handle movement outside actual combat as well as
more
time-consuming actions (eg. reorganizing or rallying units, preparing
demolitions, picking up casualties, minor repairs to vehicles etc).

A game turn of 2-3 minutes is (obviously) shorter than a 15-minute turn,

but it is still much too long for resolving combat without subdivisions
-
even the 20-second tactical combat rounds is stretching it for tank
combat, but we had to compromize a bit to make infantry work too. At the same
time
a 2-3 minute game turn is too short to allow the more time-consuming
actions to be resolved within a single turn.

***
Laserlight again:

> Which reminds me, on Friday night at ECC we had a unit in Company B

> the HQ platoon). Is that the way we should have done it, or should it

It should only have applied to Co B units.

***
Back to TomB:

> The other nice thing about contemplating a 2 minute turn is this: 5-7

An SG2 turn is nominally 5 minutes, so with a 2.5-minute DS3 turn you'd
get
2:1 crossover games instead of the current 1:3 cross-overs... and Full
Thrust game turns can represent anything from a little over a minute to
upwards of 20 minutes depending on who you ask :-/ (FWIW the FT time and

distance scales I prefer are 1 turn = 100 seconds, 1 mu = 100 km, 1 thrust
= 10 m/s^2)...

Later,

> Beth wrote:

> >- Similarly DS*2* players might spend the first 3-4 turns jockeying

Once the opposing units are within LoS and start shooting, 15 minutes is an
eternity. Most "day-long slogs" in the past have consisted of a number
of
separate encounters between individual sub-units as they manoeuvred
against one another (*) rather than the entire force spending the entire day
actively shooting at the enemy. While the means by which units locate, move
towards and shoot at the enemy will inevitably change in the future, I
doubt if the ratio between time spent locating/moving and time spent
actually shooting will change very much.

(*) "Manoeuvre" is quite often a euphemism for ""grope around trying to find
the enemy so you can shoot at him"...

Later,

> Grant Ladue wrote:

> I imagine that

There are two ways to break contact (for any unit, not just recon):

1) Kill or chase off all enemies in sight, or

2) Move out of sight of all enemies, preferrably by moving behind some
LoS-blocking terrain feature. If there is no such terrain feature close
enough to let you get behind it quickly, deploy a smoke screen to buy the
extra seconds you need to get out of sight.

For light recon units option 1) is rarely practical, so they usually have
to resort to option 2) instead :-/

> >Think of it as playing this way. You do what

A Combat Move of 12 mu equals a speed of 135 mph (216 km/h). If the gap
is
only 6-7 mu wide a grav tank moving that fast can easily avoid
*extended* combat by simply using its first Combat Move in the FireFight to
move out
of the gap, but it can't escape *all* enemy fire - enemy units on
Overwatch will get one shot at it before it can move away.

> >>Say, how do very large units like Ogres work with firefights? Does

As long as all parts of the big vehicle have LoS to the enemy shooting at
it, yes :-/

Later,

[quoted original message omitted]

> John Tailby wrote:

> An SG2 turn is nominally 5 minutes, so with a 2.5-minute DS3 turn

Sure. Race cars can be serviced in less than 15 seconds during pit stops, and
there's no real reason why space fighters couldn't be rearmed about as
quickly - which leaves 4+ minutes for docking and re-launching out of
those 300 seconds. Whether or not that's realistic depends entirely on your
assumptions about docking tractors, launch catapults etc.

Later,

John Lerchey replied to Grant Ladue:

> Ah. Ok, that's actually in there to some exent. It's not clearly

term!)
> Unit A can now see (has LoS to) Enemy B. Unless Enemy B JOINS the

Agreed; this situation is currently not handled well. Changing the "Target
Priority" rule to something like "Elements involved in a FireFight may only
fire at enemy elements which are already involved in the same FireFight, or
which are located between the firing element and elements already involved
in the FireFight" would work better - OK, that sentence obviously needs
more work to become understandable, but the intent with it is that if you're
already fighting an enemy unit you can also shoot at any other enemy that gets
*between* you and the enemy you're already fighting.

> I don't know. I'm not sure that I've seen enough to justify my
is too
> drastic.
and "all
> out firefight". Not sure about that though. Hmmm....

Neither am I; that's why DS3 doesn't have one <g> See my previous reply to
TomB and Laserlight for more on this.

> The current explanation is along these lines for how the game turn is

... and the only vehicles capable of achieving 15 mph were Combat VTOLs in
Travel Mode and AeroSpace craft; the maximum possible speed for DS2
*ground* vehicles was 7.5 mph (for Grav and Fast GEV vehicles) :-/

> 2) Combat drags. [...] You might achieve 1:1 kill

In comparison, the Gulf Wars of the past fifteen years featured several
actions where US armoured units wiped out numerically superior Iraqi armoured
units within a couple of minutes in spite of the Iraqis initiating combat...
and I've read eyewitness accounts from WW2 German tankers that

were surprisingly similar too, with Panthers in particular knocking out more
than their own numbers of Soviet tanks in the space of a few minutes.
You can't do that in DS2 :-(

[...]

> So with a problem defined, there were a number of things that were

To clarify: While most of today's MBTs "only" do 40-50 mph on roads,
most of today's wheeled APCs like the Stryker both can and do move at 60
mph...
and historically there have also been tracked tanks (eg. Christie's designs)
which managed around 60 mph.

> 3) When the actual combat does occur, *that* is where you want to

minute window. OA >can speak much more coherently about this than I can,

but it does make sense.

Coherent? Not when I'm this tired... <g>

> Rates of fire (including laying in the target) are generally a *bit*

Yeah... under ideal conditions, today's tanks can reach rates of fire of 1
target per 4-6 *seconds*. DS3 justifies its 20-second tactical combat
round
length by assuming that conditions rarely are that ideal - the tank may
have to move around a bit to get a clear line of fire to its next target,
or shift to new firing positions if fighting turret-down, or search
around
some seconds longer to locate the next target, or fire back-up shots at
targets already shot at to make sure that they really are destroyed, etc.
(Firing back-up shots is fairly common today, since a TC often doesn't
have time to determine what effects the first shot at an enemy vehicle had
before it is time to fire the next shot. Note that DS3 includes the effects
of such "double-taps" in the standard to-hit mechanics, ie. scoring a
"hit"
means "at least one of your shots hit the target".)

> The flow is,

DS3 essentially aims to take the old description of combat as consisting of
"long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of intense terror" and shift
the time scales so the player can concentrate on the terror instead of on the
boredom <g>

> [...] In DS3, from the dozen or so games I've played in the last year,

...and which we try to correct as quickly as possible - after all,
finding quirks and trouble spots is what playtesting is all about! ('Course,
one

drawback with fixing problems ASAP that is that the playtesters
occasionally forget which rules were the latest version... ;-) )

> Sorry for rambling... I had the need to explain stuff. ;)

And you did far more succinctly than I could, too :-)

On OGREs:

> Cool. It would be a real shame if oversized vehicles aren't well

Translating the "feel" of one game faithfully into another game is always
difficult; it is usually much easier to capture the feel of SF novels. IOW,
don't work too hard on modeling *OGREs* in DS3 - concentrate on
modelling
*BOLOs* instead ;-)

> In OGRE, the OGREs can usually move farther in 1 move than max weapons

range of >the enemy (give or take). Time slices are done in standard "turns".
Ganging up >(adding attackers to improve attack odds) counts (in DS, other
than counting on >BOOM chits, it really doesn't matter how many
RFAC/1s you have, you aren't >getting through 7 points of armor).

Assume that those Light GEVs have GMSs as well as light autocannon, or
remember that while an RFAC/1 has no chance to *destroy* a target with
Armour/7 it can still *damage* it ;-) (An OGRE module would be less
vulnerable to Special Damage outcomes than normal vehicles are though, since
the track modules are unaffected by "Systems Down" results while the weapon
modules are unaffected by "Immobilized" results.)

> So, what are my expectations for when I try this out?

lowest >armor is likely to be around 8, and could easily go as high as 12. I'm
also >likely to bump the OGREs armor die up to a D10.

I don't really favour increasing the Armour Die type, because it makes the
armour performance less predictable - D10s and D12s have higher maximum
and average results than D8s do, but they still roll "1"s occasionally. The
only real reason to increase the Armour Die type instead of the Armour Rating
is to make the OGRE harder to hurt with larger heavy weapons while
still allowing Size/1 weapons to damage it...

> Now, the scary part is that the OGRE is going to be able to fire

Being robotic, it should also have a Motivation Number of 0.

> If the OGRE is swarmed (hit by a company) it could suffer badly. OTOH,

I'm looking forward to it :-) Which reminds me that I still haven't
painted
my own OGREttes - those Mk Is and Mk IIs might not be any good against
real OGREs (Mk IIIs and larger), but they're still a handful for lesser
vehicles <g>

Later,

Lots of stuff is being commented out on this one, as I only have a couple of
things to address.:)

John K. Lerchey Assistant Director for Incident Response Information Security
Office Carnegie Mellon University

> On Thu, 16 Mar 2006, Oerjan Ariander wrote:

> 1) Vehicles are SLOW. Flat out most can't achieve 15mph.

Yeah. I recalled them being slow, but didn't recall HOW slow.;)

> And you did far more succinctly than I could, too :-)

Thank you.

> On OGREs:
IOW,
> don't work too hard on modeling *OGREs* in DS3 - concentrate on

Yup. I like the feel of the OGREs as a separate genre, but don't think that
the models map very well to Bolos. Because of that, I'll do big,
scary cybertanks that are OGRE-esque, but the rules will not be
radically faithful to the OGRE game. My OGRE fighting NRA forces (Combine)
inlcude
GEVs modified into rotor-bladed VTOLs, AA tanks, and other less
OGRE-verse
stuff so that they fit better in the DS realm.

> I don't really favour increasing the Armour Die type, because it makes
The only
> real reason to increase the Armour Die type instead of the Armour

Yup. I'm aware of your reluctance to change the armor die. I'm going to try a
D10 anyway with the OGREs as it is my belief that the *worst* that

can happen is that don't ever roll 9,0, and aren't any better off than a

target rolling a D8.:)

> Being robotic, it should also have a Motivation Number of 0.

I have Orange 0 counters from my DSII OGRE rules.:) Already there.

> I'm looking forward to it :-) Which reminds me that I still haven't

I have some Is and IIs painted up, and have used them. They tend to be a
transitional unit IMHO.  Not OGRE-ish enough to act like a fully blown
OGRE, but a little harder to kill than a really big tank. As I get things
playable for DS3, I'll certainly try the OGREettes at some point.:)

J

> Grant Ladue wrote:

> LoS-blocking terrain feature. If there is no such terrain feature

I wonder if it was the inability to pop smoke for our units that dragged out
the firefights. We ended up in firefight where neither side was all that
  likely to damage the other.  Two of my tanks were damaged, so at 1/2
move they were hideously slow. Took 5 or more rounds to get behind cover. I
dunno. It seems odd in retrospect. Has there been much playtesting *without*
smoke capable units?

> >
Hmm, I think the grav tanks only move 3.5 inches at at time undamaged in the
firefight. Perhaps they were unusually slow in combat. I didn't seem wrong for
movement *towards* the enemy, but seemed slow for breaking to cover. Perhaps
when running for cover and not shooting at the enemy, the units should move
faster?

> > >>Say, how do very large units like Ogres work with firefights?
Does
> > shooting
   :-)  I was thinking that that may allow the Bolo/Ogre to squash each
enemy unit in detail as they open fire. Now that I think about it though,
every unit can fire on the big unit at once can't they? Definitely

interested in how this turns out.

> John Lerchey replied to Grant Ladue:
My inclination would be to not limit it to a unit between you. I would define
an area around the enemy where you could pick out new combatatants during
combat. I'd probably base it around your firing system. Basic visual
targetting with laser sights wouldn't pick up much beyond the unit. Very
sophisticated remote sensing targetting systems might id all possible threats
over a quite large area.

> >>I don't know. I'm not sure that I've seen enough to justify my
My initial feeling was that "speed change" was too drastic. Very fast grav
tanks seemed horribly slow in combat when they wanted to duck for cover. Now
that I think about it that way, I'm feeling that if you allowed units to move
faster toward cover, it would probably fix it for me.

> >The flow is,
Hmm, I agree with the approach, but I have some concern that you've created a
problem similiar to Piquet's problem. Almost all the action is concentrated
around the activated units, and the whole thing can be over before a good
chunk of the forces even move. I don't think this is a

problem for people who are experienced with the game and know what to

expect. On the other hand, I find that convention games and other public games
often involve new or inexperienced gamers. I'm concerned that this can lead to
a distinct feeling of not being involved for these players that turns them
off. I know that Piquet suffered like this for years, with people quickly
moving into the "can't stand it" or "love it" camps. Eventually a number of
different home rules evolved that minimized the effects of concentrating the
action around the activated player. It's less realistic that way, but it's
more playable in situations where everyone wants to be involved. I agree that
careful construction can help to minimize this, but not all GM's are capable
of it. Even fewer can do it in situations where they don't know all the people
involved.

One possible suggestion: In situations with a mobile attacker and a static
defender, you may want to allow the whole attacking force to activate at once.
Alternatively, allow sub units to be entirely activated by the main leader
with one activation. It could speed up some pieces of it.

> >[...] In DS3, from the dozen or so games I've played in the last
   no doubt   :-)

> >Sorry for rambling... I had the need to explain stuff. ;)

> >totally lame. The biggest problem is that a game like OGRE just
IOW,
> don't work too hard on modeling *OGREs* in DS3 - concentrate on
Agreed. I don't think the actual Ogre "game" will translate well. It's
  simplistic at it's core (a strength! :-) ) in ways that would be out
of
  place here.  I've got no problem with Ogres/Bolo's being different in
this system, so long as they are effective (which large tanks aren't in DSII).

> >game is likely to be a sigle Mk III going after a command post

And very nasty to the infantry too!

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lOn 3/16/06, Grant
> A. Ladue <ladue@cse.buffalo.edu> wrote:

I thought there was a 'go to ground' method for breaking up a firefight,
ducking into one of those too-small-for-the-table undulations in the
terrain. Of course this would immediately end your movement, but it is an
option to take. IIRC the humans did it a couple of times (or maybe I'm
misremembering; John?)

> >

I don't remember what the engine/movement rating we gave the grav tanks
in the Friday night game. I think we wanted to keep the speeds down a
*little*, so we made them slow grav tanks. This was to help offset a little
the heavy punch the K'V tanks had vs the H'Ms

Mk

> On Thu, 16 Mar 2006, Grant A. Ladue wrote:

> Grant Ladue wrote:
 I
> dunno. It seems odd in retrospect. Has there been much playtesting

That was a part of it. But the K'hiff players were told regularly that they
could take Cover Tests or use their Combat Move to move behind a major terrain
feature. In almost all cases, the players (hey, it was a game at a con, what
do you expect?) chose to continue the attack instead.
:)

Yes, we've actually played out the K'hiff attack on Strike Base Alpha a number
of times so that I wouldn't be going into the con without having any idea of
how it would play out.:) The K'hiff never had smoke. Most

Firefights were not as long and drawn out as they seemed to be on Sunday

morning at ECC IX.

> Hmm, I think the grav tanks only move 3.5 inches at at time

Your heavy grav tanks moved at 3.5; the lights moved at 7 or 8, and the APCs
did something like 9. *Backing* them out of combat is done at half

speed.

There is an option for "travel mode" which makes your morale and ability

to fire suck, but increases your movement by either *1.5 or *2 (don't have the
rules open in front of me). You *could* theortically run away in travel mode,
but I don't recommend it unless you are really *running away*.

> :-) I was thinking that that may allow the Bolo/Ogre to squash each
Definitely
> interested in how this turns out.

Largely depends on tactical positioning and activations.   :)

J

> DS3 essentially aims to take the old description of combat as
...<piquet sucks:) >

> One possible suggestion: In situations with a mobile attacker and

But you *can* and players *do*. The cascading activation system having a
command unit burn command points does this. Maybe they don't produce *enough*
command points, but that's just a detail.

K'hiff attackers:

Command Group Command Platon Support Platoon
        Air Platoon

Company A: Command Platoon Heavy Tank Platoon Medium Tank Platoon Medium Tank
Platoon

Companies B and C as A.

The K'hiff command group activates and generates his QD in command points (if
that's not enough, consider an option to allow them to generate 2QD or QD*2,
or multiply based on color <shrug>). He now activates the company

commanders for A, B, and C, who in turn generate command points to activate
their platoons.

If that's not a battalion wide mass activation, I don't know what is.:)

J

> >> DS3 essentially aims to take the old description of combat as
and shift
> >> the time scales so the player can concentrate on the terror instead
:)
> J

Yeah I know, but it's dependent on the die rolls which are also dependent on
what kind of chits your commander's drew. Don't get me wrong, I *like* this
system once combat has begun, but when you're in travel up mode it seems like
the companies would travel together. I'd either allow the the company
commanders to generate 2QD points or allow the whole company to move on the
commander's activation. I'd only do this if the company remains together and
  only until the firefight begins (we all know C+C goes to hell in the
firefight). So, if you want to send that recon unit forward to scope out the
situation, you have to live with whatever you roll. On the other hand, if you
want to push your whole company into the trap, well more power to you.
  :-)
In our case, the company commanders had iffy QD and we ended up moving up in
piecemeal. It might just be a matter of taste though.

> On Thu, 16 Mar 2006, Grant A. Ladue wrote:
Well, the odds of the big grav tanks actually making cover were not too good.
Once the human's had fired their missiles for the firefight, their other
weapontry wasn't too awful likely to kill a grav tank. The slow crawl to hard
cover with covering fire was better than trying for and not getting cover (and
being pinned in place).

> Yes, we've actually played out the K'hiff attack on Strike Base Alpha
Most
> Firefights were not as long and drawn out as they seemed to be on
Do you have any feel for why they were different?

> > Hmm, I think the grav tanks only move 3.5 inches at at time
Hmm, could I have used this to duck behind the hill I was headed for? If so,
then it would have cut down on the firefight (on both flanks) by at least a
few rounds. I don't think we realized we had any other options to move quicker
at that point.

So, my only counter point to this (and Grant, I certainly agree to parts

of what you just said in concept!) is that it is a set of rules in progress.
There is no "build" system for forces. The command chits were literally drawn
randomly. I could certainly envision (and recommend!) that there be some
method to opt to upgrade some of your commanders or units so that you don't
have two companies led by green 3s, unless the scenario calls for it.

Next year, if there isn't something in place, I'll pre-determine some
method to improve command quality if needed.:)

J

John K. Lerchey Assistant Director for Incident Response Information Security
Office Carnegie Mellon University

> On Thu, 16 Mar 2006, Grant A. Ladue wrote:

> DS3 essentially aims to take the old description of combat as
and shift
> the time scales so the player can concentrate on the terror instead
:)
> J

> On Thu, 16 Mar 2006, Grant A. Ladue wrote:

> Yes, we've actually played out the K'hiff attack on Strike Base Alpha
Most
> Firefights were not as long and drawn out as they seemed to be on

Feel, yes, maybe. Data, no, not a chance.

Here are some pieces of it, though again, it's not reliable - just gut
feelings.

1) Purely subjective time issues. We, at the absolute max, have 3
players.  And generally, at least in DS, I don't play - I run the game.
Because of this, we're all always focused in on the firefight, which makes
time subjectively go faster for us, so the firefights *feel* faster.

2) Game style. When Tom or I attack with the K'hiff, we tend to send in a
single platoon of light grav tanks to do some level of recon. Granted, when
they get their clocks cleaned, it reduces the overall fighting force, but
Dude, it's not *my* fault that Jon never made a scout vehicle that goes well
with the K'hiff grav tanks!;) Because we do more probing, we

tend to get a round or two, then back down.

3) Command Quality/Die Rolls.  We often have games with crappy
commanders, as (to some degree) happened in the Sunday morning game. Tom tends
to roll in, fire a shot or two, and then fail. Don just fails. I tend to be
about 50/50.  Failing Stress Tests ends firefights (ok, not always, but
often). In the Sunday game, Grant just rolled over everything, and his morale
held through it all. Since there was no compelling reason for him to back down
(ok, you had damaged tanks, but you can't deny that your attacks were
generally successful!), he kept on rolling. A K'hiff K'Patton are Grant.;)

4) Familiarity with the system. Tom, Don, and I know that it's dangerous to
overextend and keep pushing 'cause in many games, that's when something bad
happens. E.g., you go rolling in and pound on an enemy tank platoon, round the
corner, and get your ass kicked by the other two that were waiting for you. It
happens. It ends firefights.

Those are off the top of my head, but I think that they are reasonabley valid.

J

> I don't remember what the engine/movement rating we gave the grav

Yeah, they were slow. Only about 140" per turn, as I recall.

> Laserlight wrote:

> I don't remember what the engine/movement rating we gave the grav

140" per turn is only 35 mph... you call a grav tank moving at 35 mph
*fast*? <g>

More seriously though, for most DS3 vehicles it isn't the *total* movement
rate which is important - even a fairly slow wheeled vehicle can usually

get to any point of the table it wants in a single game turn as long as the
enemy doesn't interfere - but rather the *combat* movement rate, ie. how

far the vehicle can move in a single 20-second combat round.

Later,