Is it just me, or are vehicle fire controls in sg2 as pathetic as they seemed
to be to me last night? I'll admit that it was the first time I'd ever played
with any signifigantly armed vehicles. take a typical soldier with a saw and
he rolls a d8 for his quality, put him on the same gun on a vehicle with a
basic firecon and he goes down to a d6. I just think the firecon thing is kind
of crap, it doesn't take into effect the people using the fire control system
and for an infantry centered system this feels wrong. wouldn't it make more
sense to take a vehicle crew, give them a quality, and then let them use that
quality to roll with, modified by the type of firecon they are using? I just
think that an elite trooper controlling a turret with open sights would do
better than a green trooper on the same gun, and I think the rules should show
this. It also seemed that some of the vehicle weapons were woefully
underpowered vs infantry, any particular reason2? I'm really loving stargrunt
II, this is the first thing so far that has felt wrong, I guess because none
of our games up till now had used heavy weapons or vehicles.
There are several factors that you need to include: 1. vehicle range bands are
based on the size of the target, so what would be a d12 defence die for a
regular SAW gunner could go as low as d6 defence die due to the range change.
2. most vehicle weapons aren't designed to fire at infantry!
There are benefits and drawbacks to using vehicle mounted weapons; it takes
experience to pick the situations where one is better than the other.
You could also search the archives, as this subject came up in the first
quarter of this year sometime.
Neath Southern Skies -http://home.pacific.net.au/~southernskies/
[mkw] Admiral Peter Rollins; Task Force Zulu
[DitD] Captain Puppilier
> -----Original Message-----
I don't have the rules in front of me right now but why would a weapon mount
use the vehicles fire control? I can see the main gun using it, but a pintel
mount? Actually with the nice stability of a pintel mount, a MMG or HMG should
be much superior to it's ground lugged varient, no?
On Wed, 1 Nov 2000 16:45:42 -0600, "shogakusha" <shogakusha@geotec.net>
wrote:
> wouldn't it make more sense to take a vehicle crew, give them a
Okay, I think I see some confusion. Not to worry, this is an area that isn't
too specific in the rules.
I hope the following answers your question, as I'm not exactly sure of the
scenario you're talking about. Are you talking about a vehicle firing a heavy
weapon, or a vehicle firing squad support weapons mounted on it?
For firing a heavy weapon, the vehicle rolls quality die and fire control die,
versus the target's range die. If the target is a vehicle, the range bands are
12" x the size class of a vehicle. This makes, for instance, your average APC
at close range even 24" to 36" out. This is in the SG2 rulebook, page 38.
Okay, but what about a vehicle firing a squad support weapon? For instance,
you have a grav tank with a gatling SAW mounted on the turret. How does this
work against infantry?
Well... uh... the rules do not SPECIFICALLY state how it is handled. However,
the implication is that it works exactly the same way as infantry. Vehicles DO
have quality markers. So, you would roll the vehicle's quality die and the
weapon's firepower die versus the range die of the target. This is the same
procedure as listed under "Individual Fire of Support Weapons" on page 37,
So, to answer your question, a vehicle DOES have a quality marker, and squad
support type weapons mounted on a vehicle DO work just like squad weapons
operated by an infantry squad.
I have some Kryomek grav vehicles that I use as APCs. They have twin gatling
SAWs mounted in a small turret. I have these fire rolling the vehicle's
quality die, the firepower die (for the first barrel) and a second firepower
die. This makes these APCs pretty potent anti-squad weapons (or would if
they didn't go "pop" whenever a missile hits them! *S*).
> It also seemed that
If the target of a heavy weapon is infantry, the impact die is reduced to a
D8. This is because it's hard to kill dispersed infantry with a heavy weapon.
It's hard to take out an entire squad with an anti-vehicle weapon.
That having been said, yes, the vehicles in the rulebook are WOEFULLY
inadequate against infantry. This is pretty much the same problem vehicles
like the Elephant in World War II had. The Elephant had poor
anti-infantry
protection. Most World War II tanks had multiple machine guns to deal with
infantry. Modern tanks are better protected. The solution? Design your own.
Give them multi launcher packs and SAWs.
Also, vehicles get one SAW for free in the design. The vehicles in the book
don't have SAWs listed. I suspect that the single, free SAW isn't listed but
should be.
Allen Goodall says:
> Well... uh... the rules do not SPECIFICALLY state how it is handled.
Actually Allen, a quick read of the rules shows that they are indeed VERY
specific.
Section 13 (Vehicles) Page 32 Column 2 Paragraph 2 states:
Each Heavy Weapon system should have it's FIRE CONTROL type specified; if
there is no Fire Control type given then the weapon is assumed to be manually
operated.
So a vehicle mounted MMG or HMG would be manually operated. The dice you would
use are: Crew Quality Die, Support Firepower die.
So an M1A3 might fire it's 120mm gun using it's FC, the M60 pintel mount
would be fired using the Crew Quality die.
Enjoy,
On Thu, 02 Nov 2000 11:25:12 EST, "Peter Mancini"
<peter_mancini@msn.com>
wrote:
> Actually Allen, a quick read of the rules shows that they are indeed
Actually, no it's not. *S*
The paragraph above the one you quote says, "When we get up to support and
heavy weapons on vehicle or carriage mounts, however, we need to take into
account sophisticated electronic fire-direction systems that can be
attached to such weapons."
After that, everything refers to "heavy weapons". No mention is made of "heavy
and support weapons" or support weapons on their own.
Now, this is rules lawyering, but as I said it's not specific. It is easy to
infer that you roll Quality and Firecon for vehicle mounted support weapons.
As I said, though, it's not specific. In fact, the rules go on to talk about
heavy weapons as separate from support weapons. The rules for 12" range bands
for vehicles mounting support weapons are likewise unclear. It's obvious from
context that support weapons on vehicles also get the 12" range bands. But on
page 40, there is a section on "Heavy Weapon Fire Against Infantry". It goes
on to only talk about when a vehicle fires its main gun at dispersed infantry.
But's it's listed as "heavy weapon fire against infantry". In this case, it's
obvious that "heavy weapon" should not include support weapons.
The problem is that Jon uses the term "heavy weapons" in two ways. In many
parts of the rules he uses "heavy weapons" to mean, "vehicle/carriage
mounted main guns and infantry support weapons mounted on vehicles or
carriages". But in other sections, such as firing "heavy weapons at dispersed
targets", he
uses the term to mean only "vehicle/carriage mounted main guns" and not
support weapons.
Fortunately, though, the rules are clearly enough written and the mechanics
smooth enough that we can see what Jon implied.