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nts:
1) OA has it pinned. When you stackup k farmers against j SF Operators and are
trying to determine at what point k and j equate (or the relative worth), you
have two problems:
a) your k/j balance is as affected by survivability (ability to take
multiple hits, ability to bounce impacts off, ability to autoresolve and be
back on your feet, but primarily the armour question) as by firepower
b) firepower probably doesn't accrue linearly - I don't have the
brainpower handy, but I'm betting that doubling the number of farmers opposing
the SF may more than double their chances, once you pass a certain point. For
instance, the difference between 1 and 5 farmers may be near zero - they
may all just get whacked before they can do anything (SF has greater range,
accuracy, and effectiveness and typically acts first and with good
coordination of fire) so their value is pretty much unaffected. But going from
7 farmers to 14 may very well mean bad things for the SF team. So the
progression may not be linear.
Ultimately, every point system I've seen, including those agonized over by
many smart people (DS, SFB, Car Wars, etc) all have flaws and places a smart
player can exploit the system and usually quite a few of those.
This was one of the reasons I always loved SG2 - it ultimately didn't
engage
in that particular straw-man of trying to calculate (using simple math)
the
very complex. So much of a units utility is scenario dependent - how
much cover is on your game board? The value of an autoshotgun is high if all
sight lines are 6" or less, the value of a sniper rifle is high if all sight
lines are cross-board, for example. RO&E, relative balance of one force
to another, etc. Similar other factors come into play in SG2 in things like
commander quality, number of units on the board relative to the other side,
relative mobility, etc. There's a reason that OA and others in his trade don't
do their estimations on the back of a napkin with very basic math for people
who can't handle range bands.
This kinda sucks, but good prefab scenarios provided by experienced players
are the best route for newbies to a game - I'd recommend that approach
far more than any point system. New players then get a scenario that is mostly
balanced (by playtesting and hard-won experience of from the designers)
and they aren't given an illusionary point value scheme that they'll be mad
about when they find the holes. Play a few scenarios, start to get a feel for
the underlying issues, make small changes, see how they work, develop an
expertise in setting up fun, workable scenarios without the artificiality of a
point system. Ultimately, point systems seem to me to be just a hard road
- hard to come up with, destined to fail, illusory for new players, and
despised when exploits are found as they inevitably will be.
If you feel you have to develop a point system to be in the required market
niche, then I wish you the greatest of luck. May God have mercy on your
soul.... :)
TomB
PS - Did I mention how good Stargrunt is lately? :)
> Points:
All agreed, Tom, and I think in hindsight that I phrased the initial
question confusingly - as I then explained in the rest of the post
(and in several subsequent explanations), I was NOT referring to an overall
points value in combat, but purely to useful directed firepower at that stage.
It should probably have been phrased something more like this:
"Is one super-trained elite special forces soldier with the best
cutting-edge high-tech weapon able to put down controlled and
effective fire equal to that of 25 untrained farmers with shotguns?"
What I was trying to get folks discussing is whether the extremes of the scale
feel in any way reasonable: if a stand of untrained civilians with obsolete
weapons outputs 1 firepower point, then does it feel right to have a stand of
special forces Elites with
super-hi-tech kit outputting 25 firepower points? Or is that simply
too much of a variation - or even not enough!?
Note that these are raw firepower values BEFORE any modifiers are applied for
range, circumstances, cover, armour or anything else.
> This was one of the reasons I always loved SG2 - it ultimately
I couldn't agree more! :-)
> This kinda sucks, but good prefab scenarios provided by experienced
Once again, this is exactly how I look at it - now we just have to
convince everyone else to see the light that has illuminated our
lives, Brother Thomas of Canadia... ;-)
> If you feel you have to develop a point system to be in the required
Whether we end up with a points system at all, or some kind of hybrid force
builder system that is linked to the scenario, remains to be
seen. What I'm trying to do at the moment is to pin down unit-vs-unit
infantry fire combat resolution.
> TomB
Thanks! What I'm trying to do now is make sure that SG:AC is as good
if not better! :-)
If I may humbly ask... what is SG:AC??? And more importantly when is
it? :)
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,
Your new formulation seems more focused and more easily thought upon.
It seems to me that the contrast between poorer and better troops is, given
the same tech is:
- somewhat improved effective range for better troops - better troops
zero their sights, shoot enough to have a good feel for windage, and are more
calm and focused doing their job
- improved efficacy at all ranges when compared to their poorer
counterparts. Better concentration, better use of bursts, a sense of timing,
coordination of fires, etc
ROF, as such, isn't the determiner. As the resident ginger beer pointed out,
good troops don't use full auto much. Aimed shots, with rifle at shoulder,
using sights, vs. spray and pray. Even given the same guns, I'd expect
slightly better effective ranges and better effectiveness at all ranges. SG2
captured this with quality based range bands and quality in the attack
calculation, although the variability of polyhedral dice sometimes make that
hard to see.
So I would say good troops should provide an additional firepower factor at
any range and should perhaps have slightly longer maximum effective range.
(Note, I'm talking practical range, not how far a bullet could actually
travel)
Comparing troops of equal quality using weapons of differing qualities, I
would expect that better weapons (of any given sort, say comparing an advanced
rifle with a basic one) would:
- potentially add to effective range (better aerodynamics of the round,
better sights, better recoil management)
- add to accuracy at most or all ranges (similar reasons)
- deliver burst increasing hit percentages
- have better penetration or tissue damage
So, you can then examine your initial suggestion of:
Aggregate FP = Troop Q x Weap TL (rating 1-5 for each)
If you aren't rolling FMAesque dice, and just using this rating, then a Troop
of Q2 can effectively *be* 2x as good as a Troop from Q1. Same with tech.
If, OTOH, you are using SG style dice, Green D6 vs. Regular D8 isn't a 2x
relationship... I'd have to get Beth or OA to speak to the value, but my
guess is that's about a 25% increase. Ditto the way weapon FP/accuracy
dice go. Even if I'm a better gun (one die type up), it won't be a 2x
relationship.
So it sort of depends on the underlying rules mechanics. The balance would be
different depending on the backing rules.
But even then, I don't totally like that formula. If we take a test case:
TL1 Q1: Rabble with smoothbore muskets TL4 Q4: Experienced veterans with high
tech advanced combat rifles
Is the ratio 16 to 1? I don't think practically that your described tech
spread matches with a xN relationship. TL1 and TL5 are closer than 5x and
probably so is troop quality.
If you traded weapons:
TL1 Q4: Veteran Gaurds with smoothbore muskets TL4 Q1: Untrained rabble with
high tech ACRs
The suggestion here would be that the result is equal. I don't think so. All
the expertise in the world won't overcome the basic ballistics and ROF of the
smoothbore. Idiots may be using the ACRs, but some of the rounds are likely to
find their mark and they shoot a lot more a lot faster and to better range
even in the hands of clowns.
Let us also consider one of the ginger beer's points:
Poor troops don't act with coordination or efficacy and lack espirit de corps
or morale to keep to the fight. This does manifest itself, even in the
firepower field. But John rightly points out a certain scale is needed to reap
the teamwork and coordination benefits. And most of these aspects show up in
other regards.
I have not found math that works that doesn't cause an aneurysm in test
subjects or epileptic seizures when contemplating edge cases....
Every simple formula I tried leads to a bucket full of fail.....
------------------------
SG2 Rules of Thumb:
My experience in SG2 has been that, assuming terrain and ROE allows leveraging
of quality advantages:
- Veterans tend to be worth 25-33% more than regulars, but that factors
in their better range bands and better QD for shooting (and possibly their
better QD for comm checks, reaction tests, etc)
- Elite tend to be worth 50% more than regulars. You start to hit issues
with numbers of activations and number of casualties you can take here.
Smaller Elite forces become more subject to randomness of dice than larger
(more regression to the mean) forces of rabble.
- Greens, including panic and special morale failings, are worth about
50% of regulars
- Untrained troops might be worth 20-25% of regulars, but they might
never get in range if the regs move and shoot. I'd guess 20% might be fair if
you don't forget to apply the correct morale and panic rules.
SG2 uses the polyhydrals and that means a D8 isn't that much worse than a D10
(mean 4.5 vs. 5.5 and both have the dreaded 1). It does count, but it isn't
doubling. And the D10 is inherently more unpredictable than the D4 which
matters in some decisions.
If you were to try to preserve the good sort of balance of potence that SG2
gives, you might find that 6-8 stands of untrained, poorly equipped
colonists might be worth 1 stand of elite SF. Simlarly, about 3 stands of
militia with slightly outdated tech might be worth 1 SF stand. You just can't
pile up suppression heavily enough and fast enough as one SF stand to handle
being hugely outnumbered.
I think you'll find with a point system that the more you try to break it
down, the more you'll have skewed results. Perhaps just rating a stand and
giving a rough idea of what a stand should contain is the way to go. That's
how I eyeball SG2 clashes, realizing that you also want to keep within about
25% in number of activations in most cases for the most fun games. I also know
that more than 3 FP dice per stand starts to really bend the ruleset in
unpleasant ways.
SF in SG2 play much like I'd expect them to in the real world - they can
hit waaay hard and move fast and shrug off some damage, but once they get
suppressed and pinned, they'd better bust out fast or the plebes will dogpile
on them until they cannot activate to do much but remove suppression
and they eventually start taking wounds and dying. They're brittle - if
they
can move and shoot, they are very potent and can defeat-in-detail lower
quality units. When the higher quality units get pinned, they get hammered
flat. That's hard to really put into points in a sane way because you have
to play them a particular way to show their true capability - use them
for a
stand-up fight and you'll lose them fast.
Untrained Yellows, by en large, fail to score hits, fail to penetrate with
crappy weapons, have no range, and panic or run away at first chance -
much like the real world. This works well but is very contingent on panic and
morale and motivation rules being applied.
TomB
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you took ten wargamers down to a firing range and gave them a bolt action
rifle (yes 1 each) and said how many point can you score in a minute and the
totalled the score. I think that 10 highly trained special forces troopers
with assault rifles would easily score 10 times the scores of the wargamers. Â
When you factor in even more advanced weapons, self guiding munitions, rates
of sustaiend fire in the thousands of rounds per minute or anything else you
can dream of then 25 times the baseline score doesn't sound unreasonable. Â
That's about the only scenario that I can imagine that takes out the other
gaming factors like survivability, terrain, mission, or morale.
> On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 6:09 PM, Tom B <kaladorn@gmail.com> wrote:
> If you traded weapons:
A lot depends on the floor of your tech level. If your bottom-tech
troops are using bolt-action magazine rifles (SMLE, Kar98, M1903) then
the difference is not nearly as dramatic.
On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 5:01 PM, The Sutherlands <nishawn@charter.net> wrote:
> If I may humbly ask... what is SG:AC???
Stargrunt: Assault Company. 15mm rules, focus on an echelon higher than SG2
> And more importantly when is it? :)
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> ertson, Brendan wrote:
> Lanchester's Square Law; basically Combat power = square root of
> The above gave me a bit of an idea. It doesn't work great at TL1 (due
to Sqr function), but after that I like the way the curve works against the
current Q die.
> Effectiveness = Sqr(TechL*Q*Q) <
That's slightly redundant. You're taking the square root of Q squared... so
it's simpler to write it as Q * Sqrt(TL). You get the same answers.
Phil
> If I may humbly ask... what is SG:AC??? And more importantly when is
SG:AC = "Stargrunt: Assault Company".
Working title for shifting SGII up from a platoon-level 25mm game to
a company-level 15mm one.
As with everything else, no dates, it'll happen if and when it happens; but
it's something I'm fiddling about with in odd moments, so will occasionally
post a few questions about to the list in order to get some reactions and
discussion about particular points.
Jon (GZG)
> Thanks! What I'm trying to do now is make sure that SG:AC is as good
> On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 5:01 PM, The Sutherlands <nishawn@charter.net>
wrote:
> If I may humbly ask... what is SG:AC???
It's all right, Allan, you can calm down... I've done it for you! ;-)
Jon (GZG)
> --
> At 6:57 PM -0600 12/15/08, John Atkinson wrote:
I'll take the quality trained troops over the Untrained rabble. They'll hit
what they shoot at. Unless that untrained rabble is in power armor and has a
substantial numerical advantage, the trained troops will likely clean up. The
Lawdag Files has something on this in a round about way.
http://thelawdogfiles.blogspot.com/
> Jon,
We had a very long discussion on the test list about this point just a while
back; the general consensus of opinion that emerged from that was that
effective range probably does NOT alter between quality levels as much as SGII
depicts; the argument for this was that poorer troops tend to open fire at
longer ranges than they should do in an attempt to prevent the enemy closing
with them, even if they can't really do anything effective at that sort of
range. Better quality troops have the fire discipline to wait until the enemy
are close enough that their fire can really be effective, so might actually
start firing at a CLOSER range than the poor ones. The outcome of the
discussions was pretty much that for game purposes we'd be better off using
fixed range bands for all troops rather than variable ones by quality level.
The firers' quality would then be taken into account in the weight of
effective, directed firepower, not at the range it was used.
However, this is not yet set in stone, and I'd welcome further discussion and
input here.....
> [snip]
To clarify without actually posting the whole resolution mechanic just yet (I
don't want to do that till I've pinned down a few more
things about it), no, this is NOT an FMA-dice based resolution at
this stage; it will be totalling up of fixed firepower numbers of the
elements firing (fire will be on a unit-vs-unit basis), modifying
that total for range, cover and other circumstances, then using the modified
total to determine number of potential hits on the target unit.
> But even then, I don't totally like that formula. If we take a test
Just to clarify, TL1 will be early-mid 20th Century weapons
(bolt-action rifles), not 19th Century kit. If you want to use
smoothbore muskets for a particular scenario (VSF, or alien primitives etc),
then they will be in a special category of "archaic" firearms with significant
adverse modifiers to range and firepower.
> [snip]
Hi Jon,
I come out of lurkerland to give some opinion (for once)...
> was that effective range probably does NOT alter between
It is true that badly (or no) trained troops tend to fire sooner and farther,
and mostly at full auto, but that´s just usually a waste of ammo. While a gun
might have an effective range of a few hundred yards, the real effectiveness
is in hitting the target, not in the shooting itself. Luck, of course, is a
factor (as always), but a good shot at 200 yards is more effective than a
hundred bad shots at 400... unless, of course, one of those 100 actually hits.
Before I start ranting... my point is that IMHO and rulewise, you should look
at the effects of the shooting, not the number of actual shots that would have
been fired. The SGII rules does this very well, but it can
forget that "flight-of-the-intruder" lucky shot that was impossible, but
actually hits.
In my (admitedly, very few) games, we tried to simulate this with additional
range bands for lower quality troops. They more or less would
equate their standard (shorter) bands with the elite-troops´ ones in
length, but they had an appalingly bad possibility of hitting (additional d4
dice, taking the worst result). I must admit that it had no real influence in
the game, but at least the player with the better troops was quite careful
with the movement of his troops, even at long range, "just in case".
It is just an idea, but if it helps... well, there it is.
(as for the simulation of the bad fire discipline of green troops, we also
used some borrowed rules from Heavy Gear tactical, adding another "ammo roll"
after firing full auto repeteadly, which they did very often... but had to
discard them because the green troops with auto guns ran out of ammo quite
fast... which we thought was more realistic, but turned into boring games).
My 2 cents.
> Hi Jon,
Thanks for the input, David, very welcome. What you've said is pretty much the
same as the result of the test
list discussion - that while poor troops are not very effective at
longer ranges, they SHOULD still be allowed to fire, because otherwise better
troops can simply stand off just out of the range of any return fire. If the
better troops know there is still a chance, however slender, that they just
MIGHT be hit by their poorer opponents then it makes them act much more
carefully.
The quality-dependant ranges in SGII work well enough, but it is true
that they can give some odd results in certain circumstances. In DSII, on the
other hand, we used fixed ranges by weapon type, and I certainly don't recall
anyone grumbling about it.
Jon (GZG)
> _______________________________________________
> On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 3:00 AM, Ground Zero Games <jon@gzg.com> wrote:
> We had a very long discussion on the test list about this point just
I would buy that provided the poorer quality troops suffered
relatively more severe effects for firing at long ranges--the
effective range of the guys who have spent more time on the rifle range is
greater. If an untrained idiot starts blazing away with an
AK-47 at 400m, while it is "fire" it is not effective fire, is
unlikely to land close enough to do much good, and simply pinpoints his
precise location.
On a related note, should quality reduce your chances of being hit? It seems
like more experienced troops select better cover and are less likely to reveal
their positions. So, all other things being equal, should veterans be hit less
often than green troops?
> I would buy that provided the poorer quality troops suffered
> At 8:51 AM -0600 12/16/08, John Atkinson wrote:
Whereas a troop of soldiers who CAN hit a target at 600 yards are a hazard.
Range isn't the question. Effective fire at WHAT range is. If you're a Boer
shooting at British troops at 1000 yards and the British troops can't put
effective fire back on you at a given range because of limitations of weaponry
you might have a problem. The same could go for troops with small caliber
assault rifles being fired upon by soldiers with better longer ranged weapons.
It's the skill level that makes the troops a danger to their enemies rather
than just their kit.
If the Indian police with their Enfields and FALs had received regular rifle
training and were moderately skillful with their rifles they would have easily
scotched the asshats in Mumbai by using longer ranged fire.
On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 9:21 AM, Ryan Gill <rmgill@mindspring.com> wrote:
> If the Indian police with their Enfields and FALs
Except, of course, that there is a scenario-driven range limitation on
them, which is that your average line of sight in a city is 50-100m,
depending on type of buildings and streets.
Ok,
Something that's driving me crazy even trying to comment on this issue is that
everyone keeps throwing in mismatched weaponry to the equation then asking how
much skill matters.
It almost impossible to compare a unit of fighters with WW1 Bolt Action Rifles
with a modern unit of fighters using assault rifles without taking into
account range and terrain, because with even a modicum of skill the WW1 Bolt
Action Rifles seriously outrange the assault rifles. On an open plain, the
guys with assault rifles will die or run because they have to spend a few
hundred yards getting shot at with no effective reply. Whereas in a wooded
area or city, the guys with assault rifles will tend to dominate. In these
cases the weapon factor overrides the skill factor.
And while I understand that the issue is exactly how much should it matter
when weapon and skill are thrown together. I would argue that even with poor
weapons, the better skilled will tend to dominate the less skilled. Let the
weapons just decide where and when they can dominate. Shotguns vs Rifles isn't
a fight, it's a slaughter unless it's under 100 yards, whereas Assault Rifles
vs. Bolt Action Rifles isn't really a fight unless it's under 500 yards, and
closer to 300 yards.
> The quality-dependant ranges in SGII work well enough, but
There are two reasons I can see for this lack of grumbling.
One is that DS is much more hardware-oriented than Stargrunt.
The second is the actual ranges that appear in both games. Ranges in stargrunt
are relatively short (well, it depends on the gaming table you are using, of
course) while in Dirtside the ranges are much larger (and the combat is
faster).
In a standard SGII game the maximum range of the weapon is not a factor
(usually): most weapons could (in theory) hit almost anything within a
standard gaming table, so the skill of the soldier is the actual limit.
In dirtside a standard game terrain could cover a few miles, so maximum range
is a real factor to consider, since some of the guns will not be able to hit
something on the other side of the battlefield.
As for SG:AC, I do not really now the scales that will be used, but
something in-between will probably be the case: the skill of the soldier
is (or should be) the main factor, up to the maximum range of the weapon (so
both things should be important).
Just a thought.
Or a clever way to get us to buy more troops! (Works with me)
Michael Brown mwsaber6@msn
--------------------------------------------------
From: "Ground Zero Games" <jon@gzg.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2008 1:00 AM
To: <gzg-l@vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu>
Subject: Re: [GZG] Small arms tech and troop quality
> If I may humbly ask... what is SG:AC??? And more importantly when is
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> Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 08:55, Michael <mwsaber6@msn.com> wrote:
> Or a clever way to get us to buy more troops! (Works with me)
You mean you don't already own a company or two?..... For Shame......
--
Evyn
> On a related note, should quality reduce your chances of being hit? It
Yes, very much so in my opinion, and this WILL factor very strongly in the hit
resolution system.
Without going into too much detail at this stage, the number of hits will
depend on how many multiples of the target's quality there are in the final
modified firepower total. Yes, it means players will have to do a little
mental arithmetic (at least to the point of knowing their 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12
times tables), but a very similar system is already used in SGII and most
folks seem OK with that.
Jon (GZG)
> I would buy that provided the poorer quality troops suffered
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's keep some focus here.
Jon has already pointed out that the resolution he was looking into would
involve *subsequent* additional factors like range, cover, and so on. So the
issue he is looking at isn't range independent. This eliminates the immediate
need to consider reduction of effective firepower levels with range. It also
eliminates the 'who has greater maximum range?' question.
What he's really asking could be boiled down to:
How do you relate various tech levels and various quality levels to aggregate
firepower from a figure at point blank range?
---------------
Jon:
Having thought about what I tried to implement in a D20 skirmish game that me
and a few friends were noodling around, I took a very similar
approach -
anyone can fire at any range up to and including maximum weapon range,
efficacy being a product of quality/skill and perhaps weapon tech.
So, using weapon range as maximum range makes sense, as long as effective
firepower drop-off with range is greater for poorer troops and lesser
for better troops.
I like to see a degree of a random factor involved in the resolution, just so
it isn't a straight excercise in accounting to calculate hits. But that factor
shouldn't be huge, just enough to matter sometimes. Whenever I see straight
addition or division for calculations, it makes me think nobody every has a
good or bad day, which just doesn't map to reality.
------------
As to the issue of better troops being harder to hit:
Study your wars. A lot of very good troops died when not employed correctly.
That is to say, elite special units have been wasted when forced to fight as
conventional line troops. Plenty of elite troops have sucked up bullets during
assaults and so on.
Veterans are more careful (sometimes timid if they are battle weary). They do
know how too use cover better. But they are also highly motivated units and
are often given very tough fights to handle and thus tend to take a fair
number of casualties.
In static defense, or 'in position', I think that better troops may be harder
to dig out (fallschirmjager in rubble for instance). In the open, during an
assault, much less so. They still have to cross open ground and really can
only run as fast as normal guys. So if I was to award them any defensive
benefit, it would be a small one and one associated with being in
cover and/or in position.
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mes of War a 15mm company level ww2 game uses exactly that mechanism, the
training of the target unit determines how likely they are to be hit.
Conscripts are hit on a 2+, trained on a 3 and veterans on a 4+. The
same mechanism is used for both infantry and vehicles.
More experienced troops are likely to be able to undertake skilled actions
like digging in.
The effects seem to work very well. Hordes of conscripts charge enmass at each
other blazing away, like napoleonic columns with rifles. Veterans infiltrate
through cover towards each others positions.
It's completely counter intuitive to people that have grown up on games where
the skill of the firing unit determines how accurate you are.
They also use a 3 grade motivation system, fearless, confident, and reluctant
to define the determination levels of the units, This gives 9 different
combinaitons of experience and determination, from war weary veterans to
fanatical conscripts...
> On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 2:16 PM, Ground Zero Games <jon@gzg.com> wrote:
> ... but a very similar system is already used in SGII
I agree based on my own experience (limited to a small local groups and then
ECC folks) but are you in any way hoping to attract those folks used to the
more popular d6 based systems? Assuming a certain level of basic math
knowledge can be a pretty tall order.;)
I look forward to the details of this system -- I'm already imagining
the hard times ahead for two elite units trading shots...
> On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 2:56 PM, Tom B <kaladorn@gmail.com> wrote:
Excuse me for being dense. But...
Why wouldn't some form of a power function handle this? Say FP = SQRT( TL ^ Q
)?
I mean...besides the fact that it pretty much falls on it's face for all TL=1
or Q=1.:)
> On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 2:16 PM, Ground Zero Games <jon@gzg.com> wrote:
Well, only time will tell! Yes, there are probably a fair number of people who
find anything more mentally taxing than rolling a D6 to be too much hassle,
and those folks probably already avoid SGII because
of that - they will probably steer clear of SG:AC for the same
reason. On the other hand, every time a question is asked about favourite SF
rulesets on TMP, then SGII is still usually one of those mentioned.
Frankly, I'm not out to capture the market; there are enough rulesets out
there already that there are perfectly viable options at most levels of
simplicity or complexity, so people can take their choice. What I want to do
is produce a set that has the best playability and overall "feel" that I can
manage, without any "dumbing down".
We're already selling lots of 15mm stuff to folks that are using
other rules, which is fine by me - I just want to give them another
option.
> I look forward to the details of this system -- I'm already imagining
Well, the more positive feedback and constructive discussion that I get from
this list, the more motivated I'll be to get something to a
playtestable stage..... ;-)
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I do.
"More is Better"
Michael Brown mwsaber6@msn
From: Evyn MacDude
Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2008 10:59 AM
To: gzg-l@vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu
Subject: Re: [GZG] Small arms tech and troop quality
> On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 08:55, Michael <mwsaber6@msn.com> wrote:
Or a clever way to get us to buy more troops! (Works with me)
You mean you don't already own a company or two?..... For Shame......
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e of my friends spent time developing some homebrew 1/300 scifi rules.
They decided that D10s were a good dice to use because you could include some
simple modifiers without quickly moving to the "how do I roll a 7 on a D6?"
problem.
If it's all the same dice then it's pretty simple whether it's a D6 or a D10.
Our gaming group got put off playing the GZG ground combat games because of
the percieved difficulty of rolling the different number of dice made the game
harder to pick up the game than others out there.
In a company level game firing, by platoon at a target platoon seems to be a
good compromise between realism and playability. If the game play is declare
the platoon fire action, calcuate the number of dice, roll, apply modifiers,
work out the hits and effect then the game might play pretty fast.
> Some of my friends spent time developing some homebrew 1/300 scifi
That's certainly the intention; while the actual resolution mechanic might
look quite complex to some people, (it isn't, but it might LOOK that way at
first glance), it will resolve an entire platoon's fire in one go (though
exactly the same mechanic will be used if you're firing just a squad, or a
single stand, or a full company!).
Given that a typical combined-arms force will probably have no more
than two or three platoons of infantry, you'll usually only have to be working
out the resolution a couple of times per turn.
On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 9:02 PM, John Tailby <john_tailby@xtra.co.nz>
wrote:
> In a company level game firing, by platoon at a target platoon seems
Please don't go with platoon vs. platoon fire if you can help it. IMHO it's
much better to go platoon vs. squad or team...
Wouldn't this be better represented in the fire resolution/casualty
stage?
Not saying I know how to, just that it makes sense to keep the units the same
for simplicity. Otherwise, aren't you likely to want the fire broken down to
squad or ft level as well?
The_Beast
Damond Walker wrote on 12/17/2008 06:44:23 AM:
> On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 9:02 PM, John Tailby <john_tailby@xtra.co.nz>
wrote:
> > In a company level game firing, by platoon at a target platoon seems
> On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 9:02 PM, John Tailby <john_tailby@xtra.co.nz>
wrote:
> In a company level game firing, by platoon at a target platoon seems
Damond - I'm not quite sure I get what you're meaning, here..... :-/
As it stands, the system under consideration is that fire from a group of
elements (stands) is combined into a single resolution to determine a number
of hits on a target group of elements, then those hits are distributed among
the elements of the target unit, then the effects of those hits are
individually resolved as
no-effect/suppress/kill on each "hit" element.
The system will work just as well if either the target or firer groups consist
of one fireteam stand, a squad, a platoon or even a full company, and you can
actually choose to resolve it at any level you wish, breaking down or
combining attacks in any combination.
Does that answer your concern, or have I misunderstood your comment?
> On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 11:32 AM, Ground Zero Games <jon@gzg.com> wrote:
wrote:
> As it stands, the system under consideration ...
Check.
> The system will work just as well if either the target or firer
THAT is what I wanted to know.
Will breaking down the fire require some sort of command roll or will you be
able to partition it on demand? Being able to split fire on demand shows a
remarkable level of field presence for untrained dirt farmers after all.
D.
> On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 11:32 AM, Ground Zero Games <jon@gzg.com>
wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 9:02 PM, John Tailby <john_tailby@xtra.co.nz>
wrote:
> As it stands, the system under consideration ...
That's the sort of detail we'll start to deal with once we've firmed up the
basics and decided whether they work well enough; it may end up with something
simple like the number of target units that fire can be split between is
relative to the quality of the firers, on a scale of untrained = 1 to elite =
5. As the the actual mechanics of the resolution, I haven't yet run it
all past our resident number-crunchers so they can tell me that the
percentages are all wrong <grin>, but it should be possible to allow the
player to decide how (and if) to split his fire while keeping the
overall results the same - what it will do in some cases is mean that
concentrated attacks will produce a certain number of hits, while split
attacks will produce around the same AVERAGE number of hits but might end up
with more or less according to dice results.
[Note that a "hit" in this context is not a kill - it's getting
enough fire on target that it MAY have an effect.]
> It should probably have been phrased something more like this:
As others have discussed, raw firepower has not too much to do with combat
effectiveness.
But if you want to go into how many bullets a group of fighters can
theoretically fire into the landscape, a ratio of 5:1 or even 25:1 is not SF,
such numbers were common in WWII, indeed without too much of a stretch you
could argue that this was the case in the First World War.
A good shot (not your untrained farmer) could get off about 1
shot/second with a magazine rifle (e.g.a Lee-Enfield) until he has toi
recharge the 10 round magazine. Theoretical rate: 60 RPM. See for
example the video linked from the Wikipedia page on the Lee-Enfield.
A Bren gun had an rate of 500 RPM. That gives you a tech difference factor of
8:1, well over your 5:1.
The ratio for a WWI MG is not that different.
An MG42 has a theretical rate of 1200 RPM, 20:1 compared to the rifle. If the
rifleman is not that skilled, you easily have the 25:1 ratio.
Of course this is purely theoretical, not taking account even the changing of
magazines, gun barrel overheating etc., and we have not even
started to look into any training/skill/morale issues.
Greetings Karl Heinz