[SG2] Vehicles and Heavy Weapons

1) Mr.Johnson, my Factor will attend to the arrangement of details. As the
challenged party, you have the right to declare our use of waffles. Might I
humbly suggest an appropriate fruit such as blueberries or strawberries as an
augmentation? Of course, the loser of the duel must render unto the winner the
cost of breakfast.

And yes, I was tawkin to yoo, ya Tron-tonian! ;)

2) Silliness aside:

If anyone has seen modern weapons stabilization (let alone that of 2183), I
can't imagine why you'd penalize a fire on the move. You might argue it from
game balance, but that shouldn't be required. What are the hazards of
movement? Being spotted (easier), having a harder time spotting (very bad),
drawing attention to yourself (target priority rules), and of course it takes
you out of cover and exposes you to all sorts of reaction fire or overwatch
shots. I'm not sure I'd penalize stabilized
weapons at all. I've seen an M-1 bouncing over
terrain that made the hull sway and buck like a rowboat in a high sea state,
and the main gun was rock solid and pointed at its target.... I don't think
things are likely to get feebler in the future.

3) Adrian has an interesting idea. Let's try out another form: I fire my RFAC
at PA. I get the following two results: Suppression or hits. If I get hits,
roll the first one as 2d10 (assume
RFAC/1) and the others as D8. That grants one
contact hit and fragmentation effects. That might give a reasonable
compromise. Pretty good chance of killing one soldier and maybe wounding some
others.

3) Another interesting bone to pick: PA not getting cover benefits to armour.
They have D12 armour, sure, but if I'm PA behind a brick wall, I'm arguably
better off than PA in the open. If we allow an open shift on armour to 2d6 and
2d8 or d16 and d20 or something (details fuzzy in my head now), then PA could
still benefit from cover. An earth berm or a concrete wall should still give
cover benefits!

4) Allan has an interesting idea. Another approach might be to say that range
bands are 12" for no FC, 16" for basic, 20" for enhanced, and 24" for
superior. This then makes groundmounts without FC able to get 12" range as
well as pintle mounts, but a remote
mount MG/RFAC could apply for at least a 16"
range due to the built in target stabilization gear.

Don't get me wrong, I like unit quality to matter, but I get the impression
that DS2 weapons ranges were more determined by technology (at a certain
point, your FC probably matters moreso than your skills in determining when a
weapon can hit).

5) Allan said: Chris mentioned the problem of a vehicle moving 24" and then
the squad racing forward another 12" (I don't think he put these numbers to
it, but that's the maximum: two move actions for the vehicle, 6" free
disembark range for the troops, 1 troop move action
of 6").

[Tomb] Um, what if both did combat
moves?

Let's take another situation. The vehicle wants to move up 12", disgorge the
infantry, and then move another 12" into a safe location. You can do this with
the current system.

[Tomb] Not necessarily. What if the
position you want to move to is 12" forward (the endpoint of the first vehicle
move) and 12" out to the side. Your 12" disgorge from end of move will not
(because it is the hypoteneuse, assuming you head for the point you wanted to
get to) allow you to arrive there. You'll come up and inch or two short.

Allan also said: If you let the vehicle pay the cost of disembarking the
troops, the vehicle moves and then they jump out 6". They
are now _out of the vehicle_. They are no
longer vulnerable. Unless you use overwatch rules (and not everyone does), you
won't have that moment of vulnerability.

[Tomb] Agree. But what if I, as a vehicle,
want to drive half my available move and disgorge my troops? I'm giving up
half my movement range in exchange for removing this vulnerability (assume no
overwatch...). Isn't that a valid trade off? I'm choosing caution. I'm
spending an even smaller percentage of my turn moving in exchange for wanting
my troops out sooner (for their safety).

Allan also said: Chris points out that in most cases there's no reason to do a
combat move. The average isn't really worth it. I've decided to give a combat
move a die shift up on the range band if attacked while moving. I would do the
same die shift up for doing a combat move while firing (which would give the
range band two die shifts up for vehicles).

[Tomb] Oddly, I think I may have been the one
to bring this up first years ago. For long and weary, I've been toying with
giving a die shift to combat moving units. I have two problems with this (as
someone who has tried it). It reduces already easily reducible range bands yet
again
(not great) and it presumes that non-combat
move would be the default in the game, which mostly revolves around combat. It
strikes me we should take the other tack: Anyone NOT engaging in a combat move
is fired at as if 1 range band closer. This makes effective infantry range a
bit LONGER instead of shorter, and makes the default move a combat move. Try
it out... it makes for a more exciting game.

> TomB wrote:

> If anyone has seen modern weapons stabilization (let alone that of
What
> are the hazards of movement? Being spotted (easier), having a harder

Does SGII have a separate "spotting" mechanic which penalises you if you move?

If it doesn't, then the spotting bit would seem to be included in the shooting
mechanic... in which case it is perfectly realistic to penalize a fire on the
move. If you "miss" due to the penalty, it was probably because
you didn't see the target in the first place :-/

DSII obviously handles things this way, BTW - if the hit probabilities
are taken as the simple *hit* probabilities (with spotting assumed to be
automatically successful), they are ridiculously low.

> 3) Adrian has [...]

> 3) Another interesting [...]

A more normal sequence would be "1, 2, 3, *4*,..." without the double
"3",
but we all know that TomB isn't entirely normal ;-)

Later,

On Fri, 19 Jul 2002 03:17:06 -0400, "Thomas Barclay" <kaladorn@magma.ca>
wrote:

> If anyone has seen modern weapons

I can.

Even with the gun stabilized, while moving you're going to go through
undulations and past pieces of terrain not modelled at the ground scale found
in the game. The engagement time while moving is going to be less than if you
are not moving.

Plus, from a purely game-y sense, I kind of like the idea of it costing
a vehicle more to move and fire.

> Being spotted (easier), having a

That, right there, is another reason for costing more. Even for a unit that
isn't hidden, spotting it while moving is harder than if you're still.

Take the case of a tank rolling around a corner and firing on an enemy tank
before the moving tank ducks behind a building. The engagement time for that
moving tank is a lot shorter than if the tank spent the entire turn sitting in
a hull down position on a ridge overlooking the opponent's tank.

For this reason, I'm in favour of it costing a range band. This is the same
reason (though in reverse) for it costing a range band for a stationary unit
on overwatch to fire at an opposing unit.

> 3) Adrian has an interesting idea. Let's try out

I could live with that. It _is_ a 5 minute (sorta) long turn, anyway.

> 3) Another interesting bone to pick:

Funny enough, that is _not_ in the rules. It was a clarification made on
the list, either by Mike or by Jon (and the intention seemed to be to limit
armour effects for PA).

There's a question as to whether or not armour is an open shift. The
implication is that it is. Page 6 says that Opens Shifts are clearly stated as
such, and says something like "See Impact versus armour on page 38". Page 38
doesn't say anything about it being an open shift! Assuming page 6 is right
and one of the few open shifts is armour (which I think was part of the
clarification), then I don't see a problem with PA getting the open shift as
well.

I think that was the "clarification", that PA wasn't to get the open shift,
but rather it should be a closed shift. There is nothing in the rule book, per
se, that says PA should not shift armour die up for cover.

They
> have D12 armour, sure, but if I'm PA behind a

That is _not_ how an open shift works. The Impact Die would go down. So,
if you have D10 Impact Die versus a D12 PA behind a brick wall, the Impact Die
would be shifted down to a D6. If you had light PA behind a brick wall (Armour
Die of D10) versus D10 Impact, the open die shift would result in a D8 versus
D12 (armour goes up to maximum, which is a D12, and then impact drops for the
other shift).

> 4) Allan has an interesting idea. Another

It could work. Either way would work. Trying to remember range bands for FC is
harder than trying to figure them out based on die type. The dice, after all,
are sitting right in front of you on the table.

> Don't get me wrong, I like unit quality to

I've only played DS2 twice, and that was a long time ago.

> It strikes me

Hmm... I think I like this better! After all, the rules suggest that combat
moves _should_ be the default movement.

> >If anyone has seen modern weapons

Because you're likely to spend part of the turn unable to fire, until your
move takes you to a point where you have LOS.

On Sat, 20 Jul 2002 02:12:13 -0400, "Laserlight"
<laserlight@quixnet.net> wrote:

> Because you're likely to spend part of the turn unable to fire, until

Oh, sure, say in two lines what took me a couple of paragraphs...