Beast: Conversion of RotHafen to stargrunt.ca format involves ripping apart
Los formatting, and repackaging inside out standard templates which include
breaking the thing up for page length, getting links right, and making sure
all the stuff to include the SSI is present. Not a trivial piece of work and I
have no idea how to distribute the task effectually. Thanks for the offer
though.
My long term goal for stargrunt.ca submissions is to provide template so
people can submit articles preformatted.
Women in Combat:
Reason 01 why we have fewer women in combat arms in Canada: Interest. Most
women don't seem to want to shoot things and blow stuff up.
Reason 02: Physical Demands. When I was in training, there were two female
infanteers in my training course. 1 washed out and the other finished near the
bottom of the class. Infantry physical demands are significant, not even
counting the "health in the field" issues. Carrying around a wounded 180 pound
man, route marching with 60 pounds of kit on, etc. are all very demanding. Not
all guys can muster the stuff to manage, but fewer women have the physical
stature (frame, muscle, etc). to manage. These requirements are the barrier
and IMNSHO justly so. I couldn't pass the reqs in my current pear-
shaped programmer body, and if someone let me coast by, I'd be endangering my
squadmates by my inability.
Reason 03: Treatment. There are a fair number of male chauvinists left in the
world, maybe more in the military. Women get a very rough road from some of
these dorks. Someones there is some justice (someone pulling down a whole
platoon do to physical inability is gonna take a lot of hazing regardless of
sex, but women tend to take it a bit worse than men do to the perception there
inadequacy is gender oriented and due to their perhaps not growing up with
this kind of harrasment).
I don't have a problem with a woman combatant if she can pull her weight (and
mine if I'm bleeding) and if she can handle the job. Many women shoot better
than men.....
Allan's Combat Move:
A combat move shifts the range die down 1. This gives players a
I think you meant UP1. You want a bigger die Allan, not smaller. I've used
this on and off for a long time, but it usually makes you harder to hit by
having a larger die (shift UP 1).
Smoke:
1. Smoke in SG2 is directly placed up to 60m away. This suggests a smoke
launcher or a smoke grenade from the rifle. It forms instantly (in game
granularity) and goes away about as fast (no real time to form a "screen" in
the classic sense or be affected by wind).
2. You should be able to pop smoke it while suppressed. A number of people who
have spoken against this have done so from a rules perspective, a number who
have spoken in favour have done so from an
experience/personal training perspective. I'd go with the latter :)
3. Unlimited smoke is annoying in games. Limited smoke deployments are
probably wise.
4. The smoke in the GZGverse is obviously full spectrum blocking (blocks LoS
hence LoF) and very thick and fast to form (and short lived). There are no
stipulations made about wind or weather etc. so the smoke cannister must
produce a profligate amount of obscurant.
5. Smoke launching should be considered a firing action. Allan, if you haven't
seen this abused, you need to get out and game more... it is very easy to have
two activations, FIRE then POP SMOKE. This protect you (magical wall) from
counterfire. Then it goes away at end of turn. Then you repeat. As long as you
activate first, your fire is unblocked and counter fire is impossible. I make
popping smoke a firing action because it will involve dischargers or rifle GLs
(no 60m grenade throws most days, esp if prone or suppressed) and therefore is
"a firing action". Also, it serves to prevent this annoying use of smoke which
is super cheesy.
Tomb.
> On Wed, 30 Oct 2002 17:05:07 -0500, kaladorn@magma.ca wrote:
> I think you meant UP1.
Definitely. That was a typo.
> 5. Smoke launching should be considered a firing action. Allan, if
I play mostly with those without a military background. Smoke hasn't been a
big issue. I often don't "play", either, but referee. As such, yes, I need to
get out and game more!!!!! (Of course, there doesn't seem to be that many
gamers within 2 hours of me...).
I will only use smoke as a fire action, then. However, the rules don't let you
fire when suppressed. This means that suppressed units don't get to pop smoke.
Is this realistic? Or do you make smoke count as a fire action, but the only
fire action you can conduct while suppressed?
> On 31-Oct-02 at 11:07, Allan Goodall (agoodall@hyperbear.com) wrote:
> >is very easy to have two activations, FIRE then POP SMOKE.
So what about this situation:
I have 6 soldiers: FP3. I have four fire (d12) and, as my second action have
the remaining two drop smoke. Any less abusive than the "not a firing action"
scenario?
Realistically I don't think so. It's just a variation on shoot and scoot or
fire and duck. Other examples might be soldiers in a bunker firing then
slamming blast shutters down immediately after, or soldiers firing GL's then
ducking back down into trenches or foxholes. In both situations the soldiers
expose themselves for the least amount of time and gain the benefit of
increased cover compared to soldiers who stay up in position.
In real life, this type of action usually results in less accurate fire
- if you don't take a few seconds to sight on a target and make the
appropriate corrections for cover, movement, wind, etc then your outgoing fire
is going to pretty inaccurate.
Other game systems that I have played offer a wider variety of
modifiers, some give a bonus for being braced (i.e. on a tripod/bipod,
using a window or door frame or being prone) and sometimes a negative modifier
for moving, with ducking or shifting position counting as moving. This allows
players to shoot and scoot with a negative impact on their accuracy. In play,
I have found most will opt to stand and shoot on the theory that if you shoot
and hit first, you will take less shots in return.
Then looking at your example more closely - one scenario is that two
soldiers pop smoke just as their teammates fire - within a few seconds,
the whole group is enguled with smoke and can't be fired on. I think
that is a viable tactic. I think the defect is in the rules - smoke
blocks LOF. The rule book makes no distiction between smoke grenades
and smoke generated by fires, which is obviously a defect - after all
modern firefighters now use IR goggles to see through the smoke in building
fires. A possible solution is to modify the rule to smoke decreases the
effectiveness of firing (perhaps a die shift) with multiple layers of smoke
being cumulative (i.e. three layers in the way would result in a triple die
shift).
I mentioned before that perhaps smoke needs to come in various levels from
basic natural smoke to high tech versions that block almost all types of
sensors and detection equipment.
Thus it would provide another edge to high-tech forces - local militias
might be equipped with basic sensors (Thermal) so it would be a
perfectly viable option then for the high-tech forces to use chemical
smoke dispensers that wouldn't block radar, ultrasonic ranging, or other
high-tech means, but are impervious to IR, and lay down a thick smoke
screen and work under conditions that effectively neutralizes the militia.
--Binhan
> -----Original Message-----
> At 11:13 AM 2002-10-31 -0500, you wrote:
it
> >is very easy to have two activations, FIRE then POP SMOKE.
It didn't happen in our games but this is a potential hole in the rule. To
avoid abuse, I suggest that ALL the soldiers must fire smoke.
If you want something more realistic, you could vary the smoke radius in
function of the number of soldier that fire. So in your example, the smoke
will be smaller and probably too small to protect the entire squad. This might
be too complicated to handle if all squads are using smoke!
In our game using smoke, we usually limit the number of squad that can use it
and most of the time allow it only on one side.
Last game we played, only the attacker had access to smoke but with artillery.
He could not use explosive warhead, only smoke (to avoid damaging the
objective). This was great because it cost a communication action and that was
not easy. Lots of time, more than one action was spent attempting to call
artillery.
I can attest that smoke screen are VERY efficient. That game last 15 turns.
The worst turns for the attacker were those turns when the smoke deviate or
the artillery call was not made or failed. We finished the game this week (it
was started more than a month ago before my wedding) so eventually, I should
be able to do an AAR with digital picture and all...
G'day,
> I think the defect is in the rules - smoke blocks LOF.
We long since made it block LoS not LoF, in the same way cover does. Soft
cover if only hazy smoke, heavy cover if dense smoke.
Cheers
[quoted original message omitted]