John A.

I heard this morning that some of the troops on that Chinhook that went down
were from Fort Hood. Anyone Know if John A has contacted or gotten state side
already? I recall that he was about to go on leave.

> I am returning home (Northern VA) on leave this week.

I sure hope he was on schedule.

On the other hand, there's always something ghoulish about hoping it's someone
else. There is no 'good' news out this one.

I wish I could tell the rest stationed there to be careful and we're thinking
of them, but they'd probably just say, 'yeah, right, thanks old
man.'

The_Beast

Forwarded from JohnA, msg received this morning (US Eastern)

Been browsing through the archives. Couple comments for forwarding:

1)Low-tech DSII. As far as mixing tech levels, it's a
waste of time. See: 3rd ID vs. The Entire Iraqi
Army. Low-tech armies can't play on the modern
battlefield. Not invited. You can play reasonable SGII guerilla warfare
scenarios, but a fight on the DSII table is lost before it begins. Simply the
command-and-control and EW options available to the
higher tech forces, as well as superior weapon and sensor ranges, means it's
about as "balanced" as a gunnery range. Unless you go after some completely
lost-and-confused convoy of mechanics with few
crewserved weapons and improperly maintained personal weapons, as well as a
moron of a commanding officer and lousy Situational Awareness in the whole
convoy.

2)AGL vs. SAW. The AGLs postulated in SGII are not Mk19s. They are lightweight
weapons in the 20mm range
such as are under development by the US Army--OCSW,
IIRC. Intended to replace/supplement the M-240, and
hopefully in that weight range. It has a higher firepower due to area effect
of the grenades, but a lower penetration because the primary wound effect
mechanism is shrapnel. They do much better against targets in cover than
machine guns, but 'modern' body armor (by SGII standards) greatly reduces the
danger from fragmentation. Now, the SAW category in SGII presumes that exotic
propulsion technologies (binary liquid, gauss, ETC, etc) push the muzzle
velocities
and sustained ROF of SAW-weight weapons up to GPMG
levels and hence the distinction between these weapons disappears. So a SGII
SAW will be a far superior direct fire weapon. AGLs are used primarily to
cover dead space. They also complement machine guns. MGs cause people to get
down and take frontal cover. The arcing trajectory and HE effect of AGLs mean
people huddled in one spot behind lumps in the ground get blown to bits. If
you wanted finer distinction between them in game terms, personally I would
downgrade the effects of cover by one level vs. AGLs, but upgrade the effects
of armor by one level.

Having said that, the NRE primarily uses gauss SAWs as their crewserved
weapons.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: SGII does not model heavy
crewserves like the.50 cal or the Mk19 at all. It's a light infantry game, and
light infantry doesn't have these puppies except on vehicles. And we all know
SGII rules only cover vehicles because JT couldn't get away with dispensining
with them entirely.

3)Re Flakmagnet's comment on civilized warfare: I'll deal with you later.

3.5)Belt Buckles still aren't funny.

4)Andreas Udby--Essayons, man. Where you in 2nd Eng?
It's my life goal to avoid getting sent to Korea as long as I can avoid it.:)
4th ID Force XXI doctrine jacks Engineer line platoons all up. Only 2 squads,
and gives the PSG a track. PL and PSG tracks both get Mk 19s, the 2 squad
tracks get an M2. From what I can see you joined the list the month after I
deployed, or at least your first post is 30 APR.

5)Looks like mid-tour leave for me is now back on, for
12 Nov.

> On 3 Nov 2003 at 12:11, laserlight@quixnet.net wrote:

> 1)Low-tech DSII. As far as mixing tech levels, it's a

This is a really, really good point!

> Now, the SAW category in SGII

To me this seems a lot like the computer concept, "it's not a bug, it's a
feature!" I haven't seen anything in the SG2 rule book, this list, or the
playtest list to suggest that Jon T. designed the game with the above in mind.
Maybe he did, but I haven't seen anything about it. I suspect, instead, that
John A. is rationalizing the lack of GPMGs in SG2.

My own opinion? Using Occam's Razor, I suspect that Jon lumped all machine
guns in the SAW category due to the restrictions of the game system. If AGLs
have D12 impact and rotary (gatling type) SAWs have
D10 impact, that leaves non-rotary SAWs at D8. Likewise if a Gauss
SAW has a D12 impact and an AGL has a D8 impact, that doesn't leave a lot of
room for the impact of machine guns in general (D10). I suspect that with this
level of granularity Jon didn't see the point in the modelling the difference
between SAWs and GPMGs.

> I've said it before and I'll say it again: SGII does

I agree that it's a light infantry game. I disagree that it's a light infantry
game by design. I do agree that Jon made a conscious decision to tone down
vehicles, but I think that decision was unfortunate.

On Mon, 03 Nov 2003 13:01:52 -0600 "Allan Goodall" <agoodall@att.net>
writes:
> On 3 Nov 2003 at 12:11, laserlight@quixnet.net wrote:

Agreed, the difference between HVC and MDC is a lot less then with
pre-2100 stuff versus 1970's (much less 1940's) stuff.

> Now, the SAW category in SGII
John A. is thinking as a professional soldier and Jon T. is thinking as a
professional game designer (Yeah, even John has to be aittle envious of that
label <grin>)

> I've said it before and I'll say it again: SGII does

I plan to use the DS2 table I created for DS2/SG2 crossovers and indeed
almost * everything * has 80 inches or more (usually more) as Close
range...  I think even DFFG/1 is up there.   Yep the DS2 range for APSW
is 120 inches in SG2 terms (converting DS2 to SG2 range sis easy since 1"=100
meters adjust to 1" = 10 meters (IIRC) in math even "I" can do)
and DFFG/1 is a mere 80 inches in an anti-infantry role - the non-HEL LR
champion is MDC/5 at 600 inches in SG2 terms.

Anyone interested in a copy of this Excel spread sheet with almost all
the SG2/DS2 weapons listed with SG2 Inches/DS2 Inches (Anti-infantry and
Anti-armor)  can e-mail me at warbeads@juno.com  and I will forward a
copy from work (look for a ".mil" address) or warbeads@aol.com since my juno
account does not do attachments..)

Gracias,

> On Mon, 3 Nov 2003 16:21:40 -0600 <warbeads@juno.com> writes:
<snip>
This was a typo (read wrong column - it's only 480 inches in SG2 terms.)

Not that the 480 inches isn't long enough...

Gracias, Glenn

Hx, SF, and Fx: 6 mm figures, Starships and 1:6K "Wet Navy" warships are my
main interest. But I have forces in 6 through 25 mm FWIW...

> I plan to use the DS2 table I created for DS2/SG2 crossovers and