Mobile mines

> You wrote:

Mobile mines are placed as standard mines and have a defined area as for
minefield type (be this defined by magnetic fields, robotic intelligence,
etc....). Treat as a standard minefield in all respects except clearing. If
attempting to clear an infantry lane through the field, no effect. The mines
are in constant random motion (underground) and will reseed the laneway in a
very short time. If attempting to clear a vehicle sized laneway, no lane is
cleared due to the mines movement but the effectiveness of the enitre field is
reduced by 5% for each attempt. However no mobile minefield may have an
effectiveness below 10% (diminishing returns on the clearance attempts). Any
vehicle attempting to clear any lane will detonate a mine as per
effectivesness of the field at the start of the turn that the attempt is made.
Cost of minefield is 5 times that for minefield type and takes twice as long
to emplace. A minefield that has a mind of it's own is just tooooo nasty for
your own side. How do you stop it wandering into your own lines?

John just what did you mean by the resource multipliers in your mine posts?

On Sat, 16 May 1998 20:16:00 +0100 Tony Wilkinson
<twilko@ozemail.com.au> writes:
> Mobile mines are placed as standard mines and have a defined

Duh, but excuse me for asking, but just what are the mine clearers doing when
this dinner plate thing just digs itself out of the ground and wanders across
the trail and then digs itself back into the ground? A couple of sharp
shooters could take those babies out with one or two bursts of their AR's. I
think a mobile mine field is a good idea but it needs a little more work on
just what that would constitute. Mobile could mean that the mine field deploys
itself, or that it reconfigures itself on command or something, but move
around on its own? If it could do that I would have to ask for the rules on my
"assault mine field" it would be perfect for assaulting a fixed position.
Could you imagine the fun you would have when a mine crawled into your
foxhole? No troopers, just the attack of the dinner plates that go Boom!

> You wrote:

> Duh, but excuse me for asking, but just what are the mine clearers

Here's why I didn't even want to get started on these lines. Let me quote from
the Dirtside II book.

"Basically, this is a game about armored warfare - that is, battles
using tanks and mechanzied infantry. As such, it is really an
extrapolation of present-day warfare in a future setting. . . Thus
Dirstside II reflects the 'popular' view of SF combat - troopers in
powered armor suits, huge hovertanks, lasers and railgun... Perhaps tanks and
infantry will survive in some form, perhaps they won't; here we assume they
will, becaue a game terrain full of nicely painted figures and AFVs is much
more fun than an empty battlefield with a couple of robot drones flying over
it!"

Yes, I am trying to keep things 'modern'. Because if you assume too much
development on autonomous combat drones (be they 'mobile mines' or robot
infantrymen) or Artificial Intelligence, it becomes "I send my
robots at your robots.  Opposed die roll--I bought Superior robots, of
course. Oh, I loose. Damn! See you next week, Ted." And that isn't my vision
of Dirtside. If you disagree, feel free to. But please consider the
implications of this track. I, for one, would insist you
paint up a couple thousand teeny-tiny robots.  And then still wouldn't
play you, because whatever you're doing, it's _not_ Dirtside.

Yes, this is personal opinion publicly expressed. Yes, I expect people to
disagree. Yes, I welcome a philisophical, polite, and rational debate on the
subject. No, I have no interest in being slammed for having an opinion on what
is and isn't Dirtside. I know I didn't come up with it. If that's all you have
to say, save the electrons.

I just finished watching a discovery station special on this. Some of you do
show a lack of imagination, humorous though what you did think of. I can't get
the funny image of dinner plates out of my head.

The show I watched had something like a tele-operated atv with a rocket
launcher. They then showed a tank driving by, which was successfully knocked
out. I thought it was really neat, especially considering the thread.

While I agree that robotic drones is something I don't want to play, I know it
could happen. When I said robotic mines a lot of you thought of teller mines
sprouting legs and walking around. This, while being funny, in a Simpsons way,
is not how I see it. I see, much like in the show, a small robotic atv that is
given orders when placed. Something like: sit here, engage enemy tanks with AT
rocket. Now instead of laying 20 $100.00 indiscriminate mines, you place a
$2000.00 dollar one.

In game terms, I would have to agree with John in saying it wouldn't be much
different than a normal minefield except with the ability to determine friend
from foe.

For those of you arguing that nothing will replace mines as they are today:
remember the initial resistance to smart bombs. Smart bombs are used to great
effect along side 'normal' bombs today.

> -----Original Message-----

On this thread, there are a couple of things that are pretty useful (and
nasty).

Off-route mines - An ATGM, or IAVR is set up pointing across a road, and
a sensor wire (or other mechanism) fires the weapon when a vehicle goes by.

I can't remember where I saw this other thing, but it made a real impression
on me:

Delivered by air, a medium sized (1m diameter?) squat cylinder sits on the
ground. After deployment, it raises a short mortar barrel up out of the top.
It sits and waits, listening with seismic sensors for any mechanized movement.
When it senses such within range, it adjusts the barrel and fires a projectile
or 10. These projectiles, upon reaching the apogee of their arc, deploy
parachutes, and float gently down. Using the IR sensor in thier nose, they
look for the heat bloom from vehicle engines. When they detect one, they
explode downward, firing their internal projectile with great force, usually a
SEFOP round (SElf FOrging Penetrator) into the thin top armor. All
autonomously.

Neat, but (probably) not Dirtside. However, i think that the autonomous
robotic weapon systems do add something to the game. I'll give up on crawling
mines, but you can't have my Ogre!

In a message dated 5/18/98 1:55:06 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
NVDoyle@AOL.COM writes:

<SNIP>

> I can't remember where I saw this other thing, but it made a real

> crawling

What you just described is the Wide Area Mine (WAM) being developed for the US
armed forces. Each mine carries two projectiles allowing it to engage
follow-
up targets. They are also being modified to make use of the arcing flight you
describe to engage low-flying, slow aircraft like helicopters;  thus the
reason in Dirtside II that minefields can attack VTOLs. Jon modeled his
minefields off the WAM program, so yes they definitely are Dirtside.

Forgot to mention another thing about the WAM. It's sensors are acoustic, not
seismic. The mine keeps a registry of different target vehicle sounds (and
friendly for IFF to prevent "own goals") and a priority target list (flak
wagons/SAM tracks over tanks, command tracks over all else, etc).

> In a message dated 98-05-18 07:55:10 EDT, Chris Ruhl writes:

<< Jon modeled his minefields off the WAM program, so yes they definitely are
Dirtside. >>

I stand (pleasantly) corrected. Wow. These things are scarier than I thought.
So a DS2 minefield would reresent not only traditional buried mines, but
things like this as well.

> Duh, but excuse me for asking, but just what are the mine clearers

If they are underground burrowing in something like Brownian motion which is
what I had in mind, what are the odds of being able to shoot all the moving
mines?

> perfect for assaulting a fixed position. Could you imagine the fun you

To be honest when someone first suggested the idea of mobile mines my first
thought was an engineer going out, laying a minefield, going back to camp to a
shower or the latrine when in walks one of his own mines and blows him up! Not
really that much fun. Hmmmm. Attack of the killer dinner plates. Sounds like a
really bad 50's
movie and not at all why I play DS/SG/FT/ all the other games I have.
Have to agree with John Atkinson on this. No troopers just mines huh? Sounds
like Russian or Chinese tactics in reverse, all troopers and not much else,
cheaper too.

> You wrote:

> What you just described is the Wide Area Mine (WAM) being developed

The WAM post is to follow.  These things are neat--I got to play around
with a mockup and snag a whole bunch of manufacturer's literature at an AUSA
convention about a year and a half ago.

> You wrote:

My house rules are set up for buried/surface laid mines.  But if you
want to include something like a WAM... Treat it like you do in DSII
rules--all within 2" of marker are attacked.  This represents not a
couple hundred buried mines, but a couple dozen WAMs arranged in a rough
circular patter. Attack procedure is to roll as normal
attack--WAM is always assumed to be at close range, may be basic,
enhanced, or superior.  WAM gets +2 bonus to represent surprise value.
3 chits, validities as per MAK.  Damaged result is damaged, not M-kill,
and it attacks top armor. May be laid as per DSII normal rules, but dispenser
only takes up 4 capacity points and a reload takes up 2.
Even this is probably being hard on them--but to make a size class 1
vehicle able to lug around four complete minefields makes things a little
unbalanced. May be laid by VTOLs or DFO pods from aircraft.

[snip]>
> What you just described is the Wide Area Mine (WAM) being developed for

Actually, no I didn't, because I'd never heard of it till now! Sounds a neat
idea though, and it was KIND of the thing I had in mind when I did the
"jumping mines" rules - an emplaced remote launcher of some kind that
fires either a penetrator or a scatter warhead straight up when it detects a
grav or VTOL craft low overhead.