[GZG] Stargrunt suppression and enemies that won't??

I'm sure this topic has been mentioned before but what can you do about
opponents that just don't suppress (eg. the aliens in the Aliens movie).

Even if you give green human troops a reason for not suppressing, (combat
drugs, etc), they become almost unbeatable.

So how do I increase kiiling power without turning SG2 into WH40K.

> On May 4, 2008, at 10:43 AM, Adrian1 wrote:

General (quick) answers would be doubling of range bands and handing
out support weapons like they were grass seed.  Assume the non-horde
side has all sorts of artillery ready to drop, command detonated mines, drones
providing intel, squad support weapons everywhere, etc.

Any horde player that makes it through a wall of MGs, GLs, mines, and
artillery should be easy to take care of.

Damo

> On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 9:43 AM, Adrian1 <al.ll@tiscali.co.uk> wrote:

It has been discussed in the past.

Here's my take. Caveat: A LOT of people disagree with me. YMMV.

Suppression models two things as far as I'm concerned. First is the natural
reflex to hide when folks shoot at you, second is the
common-sense piece of good tactics to find cover when rounds start
coming a bit too close. Because suppression on occurs when fire is "almost"
effective, to me it is primarily the latter. So people who aren't suppressed
aren't taking cover.

Simple solution: All minor successes which would impose only a suppression are
resolved as major successes which inflict casualties. Major successes have
their casualties doubled before armor is rolled.

> On Sunday 04 May 2008 16:59:00 John Atkinson wrote:

> Here's my take. Caveat: A LOT of people disagree with me. YMMV.

[...snip...]

> Simple solution: All minor successes which would impose only a

Sounds similar to what our group came up with when discussing the possibility
(though I don't think we doubled Major). It also fits
the Aliens feel - lots and lots of casualties on the Aliens side,
but they still keep on coming...

From: Adrian1 <al.ll@tiscali.co.uk>
Subject: [GZG] Stargrunt  suppression and enemies that won't??

I'm sure this topic has been mentioned before but what can you do about
opponents that just don't suppress (eg. the aliens in the Aliens movie).

Even if you give green human troops a reason for not suppressing, (combat
drugs, etc), they become almost unbeatable.

So how do I increase kiiling power without turning SG2 into WH40K.

-----------------

Adrian, please be more clear for me on your question. The first paragraph
discusses units which are unlikely to show suppression effects. This could
include robots, aliens, etc.

The secon paragraph disucsses 'green human troops' who are given 'a reason for
not suppressing'? I'm not sure I understand what you are saying there. And the
sentence goes on to say 'they' (which properly would refer back to the green
human troops) become almost unbeatable.

It seems to me you are suggesting one (or a combination) of the following: a)
enemies that do not take suppression are very tough to defeat and become hard
to stop b) green troops cannot stop such enemies c) even green enemies that
are hard to stop if they do not take suppression

Suppression generally limits mobility. It is a key limiter to the actions of
troops in Stargrunt. If you remove suppressability from a unit, that is a
sizable increment in capability.

So, how do you balance off such an increment of capability for a game so that
the force facing troops that are hard to suppress?

1) Suppression represents a self-preservational edge that gets people
down and out of the line of fire, at the cost of them being reluctant to stick
their heads back up. If you have troops that do not feel fear
or otherwise have similar behaviour that is self-preservative, then
you can justify removing suppressability from them. At the same time, this
means they are also likely not to duck when they should. It would be quite
justifiable to give enemies a greater degree of fire effectiveness against
such foes. This could be achieved several ways: Downshift the range die by one
range band (making the defensive die smaller), Upshift the firepower or unit
quality dice of the firing unit for this purpose, change the hit resolution
mechanics to allow more hits to occur where suppression would normally occur
(since clearly you aren't ducking). I think the cleanest, but perhaps not
large enough, change is to downshift the range die. The largest, and perhaps
too potent, change would be to allow one dice beating the foe in ranged combat
to score a hit (where it would have scored suppression, but they aren't
ducking or moving evasively).

2) Another approach to balance is to grant the opposition, who recognize this
increased threat environment, a more upgunned TO&E. Instead of one SAW, AGL,
or marksman per squad, perhaps have two. Two SAWS plus rifles often gives you
enough dice to score hits. It would represent the knowledge that the only way
to stop these guys is a wall
of hot lead/coherent light/sun-hot plasma.

3) Yet another approach is to give the overwhelmed foes some powered armour in
place of conventional forces. Faster, fight better in close assault, generally
heavily armed. This would help balance off scenarios.

4) Another approach would be profligate deployment of command detonated mines
if the foes is one like Aliens that has to close with the enemy. Each squad
could carry one or two of these and deploy them for an action. Allow them to
detonate them for an action or automatically if close assaulted. You'll find a
single CDM can wreck an enemy squad (Stuart, Mark and Kieth could attest to
the demolition of one of their Kafer squads at the last ECC by one of these in
just a similar sort of situation).

5) If you want to keep the overwhelmed force's TO&E the same and it
happens that they are surprised or wouldn't know to up-arm (or
couldn't), then the only balancing tactic is force size reduction from
the now-unsupressable enemy force. Simply take away some units from
that enemy. This will allow the force that was overwhelmed by the same sorts
of numbers to concentrate more firepower on each stand of the foe and thus
score better chances of kills. This gives them a higher chance of survival and
thus means perhaps a more even game.

Those are some examples of the sorts of ways to redress this. How you want to
approach it requires some thought to the flavour you wish to establish and the
particulars of your scenarios. Sometimes you need to make a change and
playtest a scenario again to see if it was enough. The key to balance is
'design, test, evaluate, small tweak, repeat cycle'. Then you eventually get
something akin to a fair balance.

Assuming, of course, you want scenarios both sides can win. The other approach
too this problem is just establish victory point structures that don't require
the overwhelmed defender to survive, just ensure that the VPs of a typical
sort of outcome would balance out evenly. Maybe killing a defender is one VP
and killing an unsuppressable foe is 2 VPs just as one quick example (no idea
if this is the right ratio).

TomB

Simple use double the amount of dice that you would roll for combat
resolution. And then divide the total number of dice rolled by 2, using only
the highest dice as hit's, then do the same for wounding, just a thought. But
may make it very evil empireish.

james

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In our 'Tyranid' conversion for Stargrunt the bugs dont lose actions from
being suppressed but take an actra 'hit' from the weapon that caused the
suppression. So even a minor success can cause a casualty. These guys are not
taking cover or avoiding shots so it makes some sense but not the double
effect, seemed a little severe to us.

Yoj

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