As I mentioned a bit earlier, working with a friend of mine, we've come up
with the very beginning of a WWII mod for Dirtside (expanding on the one
posted a lont time ago by Mike Elliot) along with a set of rules for the
Martian invaders, movie style.
The rule modifications are still very much in playtest version. They work
decently well in a vacuum, but there are still some balance issues with the
Martians (especially the shielding) that have to be worked out.
As we have more time to playtest (a rare commodity these days) we will post
some scenarios and additional rules.
http://okapi.andrew.cmu.edu/lerchey/www/DSII/wwii.html
http://okapi.andrew.cmu.edu/lerchey/www/DSII/martians.html
Comments are welcome, of course.
Tom
Interesting stuff. A few comments I've got on it...
I'm not quite sure how one reconciles forcefields into DS2 without forcing a
pretty much complete rebalancing of the system, regardless of how strong or
weak they are. I'm not sure if it was an oversight on Saint Jon's part or if
his vision of the armor assumed that you could as easily call it a combination
of armor and forcefields. It's conceivable that shielded armor could be taken
as a different armor type, similar to how ablative and reactive armor is
handled now. I'd tend to say they should be even more expensive than stealth,
however, if they're going to be useful enough that they're even worth using at
all.
Lastly...
A comment (possibly OT) on H.G.Wells' original vision in his novel. Wells
was trying to convey a quasi-religious message that no technology can
equal the works of God, and therefore humanity should be humble. The problem
is that today his vision of an alien race (Martians) that can ignore human
weaponry but could be stopped by common microbes that we are immune to, as an
illustration of God's wisdom in putting such things here to protect us against
all comers, has progressively fallen on its face over time.
His original tripods that could be stymied by what we now consider laughably
sluggish ironclad rivercraft and stopped in token numbers wouldn't fare too
well against modern guided missiles. The 1938 broadcast that upped the ante
to massive B-17 airstrikes also would've had troubles with guided
weapons, to say nothing of the obvious nuclear trump card. Even the 1953
movie's hoverships, which could ignore nuclear devices outright, fall short in
their implementation of Wells' vision, against modern biowarfare. After all,
an alien invader that can't even put up with the common cold isn't going to
have much fun at all against weaponized anthrax.
This isn't to say that there aren't still natural events that can outmode
human technology. The problem is that there aren't any that can do so without
destroying the entire planet. Even the nuclear winter of an
asteroid strike that _wouldn't_ shatter the entire planet could be
reproduced.
E
[quoted original message omitted]
> On Thursday, July 17, 2003, at 08:37 PM, Eric Foley wrote:
> their
Er.. You'd have to find a microbe that they were vulnerable to but we weren't.
YOu couldn't just throw any old WMD at them. I doubt the inhabitants of
whatever city was involved would be very happy with you using weaponised
anthrax against the Martians. You could probably find one, but you'd have to
capture a few martians to test them on first...
As to the whole 'killed by microbes' thing, you have to remember Wells was
writing long before we ventured beyond the atmosphere. When he was writing,
ironclads were about the most powerful fighting machines on the
face of the earth. They had a much more fearsome reputation than an F-16
does today, no matter how many mavericks you load onto it. I find it very hard
to believe that any advanced race who could travel from one planet to another
en masse would be stupid enough to allow their own environment systems to mix
with the local atmosphere. At least until the
planet had been appropriately terraformed anyway.
It's quite possible to come up with an alien technology which would be
invulnerable to just about anything. It's also possible to invent one that
looked that way, but in fact had a weakness. It all just requires the right
amount of PSB.
TTFN
Jon
> After all,
Weaponized Anthrax is the perfect weapon to use. Especially if you know
you're going to use it. You simply hand out anti-biotics a few days
before spraying the whole area. The advantage to such diseases like anthrax is
that we have the cure in hand. The current difficulty with
bio-terrorism is that often you don't know you've been hit until the
window for cheap and effective cures has already passed. If you are
doing a planned, pre-emptive strike, then you can protect your own
people, whether that be soldiers or civilians using prophylactic measures.
Same for nukes - you will note that most SF writers always use the
caveat that aliens will land in population centers and that's why most
governments would be reluctant to use nukes. Personally, if I didn't know
better, I would land in a spot that was devoid of high concentrations of
natives to test out their defenses. Unless aliens have a great amount of
knowledge about us, how do they know that
microwaves from cell phones won't scramble their sensors/cause
cancer/bad headaches at short ranges? I would not like to drop into the
center of a hornet's nest until I knew more. For all they know, every
human is a proto-warrior ready to convert to a blood thirsty killing
machine at the slightest provocation (just think of the Hollywood movies being
broadcast on TV and Satellite right now...) Thus I would tend to land a "Recon
in Force" unit to test the defenses, and if it looked good then land the main
invasion fleet. Landing blind is a bad idea.
If aliens land in the middle of the New Mexico desert and started rampaging, I
don't think there would be as much issue about dropping a tac nuke on them,
than if they landed in downtown LA.
--Binhan
> I'm not quite sure how one reconciles forcefields into DS2
I was originally not in favor of a point value for shielding, but John talked
me into it for completeness sake. As it stands I'm looking for more of the
right feel than anything else, and I can guarantee that the point values will
change, probably drastically, by the time it's fully tested.
What DS2 does not represent well is any kind of ablative or degrading
system. Even an OGRE (in DS@) follows the ping/ping/ping/boom paradigm
of waiting for a lucky hit rather than gradually degrading its effectiveness.
So, I gave the Martians some level of shielding that would allow them to
degrade gracefully and be a match for the human forces.
In the first game the Martian player had 2 fliers and six tripods (each with
an infantry element) each of which as an individual unit. The Humans had 17
Shermans, 5 Chaffees and an assortment of infanty and artillery.
The humans were badly outmatched, but with some tweaking of the shielding
(lowering it to the values you see now) and adding a few more tanks and some
ad-hoc anti-armor capability for the infantry I think we'll have a good
balance.
As for the faithfullness to the books, either in theme or philosophy, I
haven't read the book or watched the movie for years. This is intended really
to be a fun, beer and pretzels style game, though a working and (hopefully)
interesting WW2 mod will be a nice side effect.
Tom
> On Thursday, July 17, 2003, at 09:01 PM, B Lin wrote:
> with bio-terrorism is that often you don't know you've been hit until
> people, whether that be soldiers or civilians using prophylactic
This is all very well presuming you have two days notice that a bunch of
aliens in tripods are going to show up and start trashing the place. Most SF
invasion movie aliens don't show up with banners saying 'We're psychotic alien
killers. See you next week':). OK, except maybe Mars Attacks. The original
Wells story suggests they manage to achieve a high
level of surprise and disruption - he pretty much describes the
breakdown of society almost immediately the pods pop open. If we gained some
level of warning I'd agree with you, that would give us many more options. But
that still doesn't get around the point that we know now (and didn't then)
that you can seal a vehicle against intrusion by chemical and biological
agents. If we can do it with a Challenger, you'd
have to presume they could do it with a tripod. In the end if we're talking
about playing WotW as a game, bioweapons
don't really work other than in the abstract - martian player has to
achieve the objective inside X rounds or lose. Maybe have a malfunction table
which gets nastier as time passes as the martians are affected. The problem is
that, in game terms, having a device that says 'I win, game over' is no real
fun.
> Same for nukes - you will note that most SF writers always use the
> governments would be reluctant to use nukes. Personally, if I didn't
There is a line in the Wells story about how the martians had been observing
Earth for some time before launching their invasion. If we 'update' Well's
idea to the levels of science we now understand, that would have to include
observations throughout the EM spectrum. Short range emissions would obviously
be missed though, so maybe something a mobile phone could be this centuries
microbe:). They certainly seem to have proliferated at a similar rate... An
interesting game mechanism would be to force Tripods to keep a certain
distance from groups of humans or suffer damage due to such emissions. Not as
far as the heat ray range though.
> I would not like to drop into the center of a hornet's nest until I
> Landing blind is a bad idea.
Actually, if you were a sensible alien you'd throw rocks down the gravity well
at all the centres of population & CCC but I guess we're discarding that
possibility on the grounds it wouldn't make a very fun game.
> If aliens land in the middle of the New Mexico desert and started
> tac nuke on them, than if they landed in downtown LA.
Is there anything to trash in the New Mexico desert? It would be a good place
to establish a base to gather intelligence prior to the invasion proper. But
that's more Invaders from Mars than War of the Worlds. If we
want to 'play' WotW, I think you need to keep to the spirit of it in that the
Tripods should only be stoppable by the application of a significant
proportion of the firepower the human player has available,
therefore requiring the human player to try to separate them to deal with them
and marshall his forces correctly. In the end we shouldn't get
too bound up in hypothetical discussion about what they may or may not do if
it doesn't get us closer to a game that people will enjoy.
TTFN
Jon
> Eric Foley wrote:
> Interesting stuff. A few comments I've got on it...
<snip>
> After all, an alien invader that can't even put up with the common
And the Martians that land in Korea aren't going to enjoy the Hanta virus,
those in mainland China aren't going to have fun with influenza or SARS and
those that land in central Africa aren't going to like
Ebola...
Of course, they probably wouldn't appreciate the invisible big-game
hunting excursions either:)
Jay
Jay
[quoted original message omitted]
G'day,
> Vulnerability to just about any kind of chemical or
Except the air that we breath. If they're conditioned for anaerobic
environments they'd be pushing it up hill and still be able to blink off or
neutralise weapons we use.
Cheers
[quoted original message omitted]
[quoted original message omitted]
You also have to consider how the martians feed, it's pointless sealing your
vehicle if your just going to keep injecting infected fluid into yourself.
even if they produce a vaccine you also have to deal with the problems of
blood type incompatability and it congealing in their own system.
> If some survive teh common cold, they would start developing
***
What DS2 does not represent well is any kind of ablative or degrading
system. Even an OGRE (in DS@) follows the ping/ping/ping/boom paradigm
of waiting for a lucky hit rather than gradually degrading its effectiveness.
***
I thought you got around this by modularizing the OGRE. No comment on the
point system.
***
...
> nest until I knew more. For all they know, every human is a
Heh. There was a short SF story...
***
Plenty of examples closer to home; it was hyperbole, but the scene from Pred
II in the subway(?) where the gang saunters into the car, only to have
EVERYONE pull a piece, was funniest because of the slight ring of truth.
In the final analysis, the problem with DS2 doing this kind of thing isn't
mechanics, especially shielding and the like, but the near modern ethos
associated with the game. For WotW, original Wells fans would want an
opponent by whom Victorian tech is outclassed, but not totally god-like.
For a Vicky Sci Fi, the aliens would be unlikely to think they NEED cbw
protection, as it tended not to be considered a battlefield technique on Earth
at the time, so why pressurize? By WWII, after the horrors of WWI, YOU BET!
Natch, the idea that humans are more adaptive than the aliens is useful; 'the
aliens not only failed to make allowances for cell phones, but could not
adjust their ancient weapons of carnage in time to avoid the several ambushes
where retreating forces left automatically activating cell phones.'
The_Beast
> Natch, the idea that humans are more adaptive than the aliens is
Using "cell phones" to activate the bacteria?
> > Natch, the idea that humans are more adaptive than the aliens is
Nope, using the time honored practice of mass telemarketing..... :-)
Sorry, couldn't resist.
> Using "cell phones" to activate the bacteria?
Whoops, that was refering to one of the posts suggesting Martian equipment
being susceptible to cell phone interference...
Litter a field from which your retreating with cell phones with some
jury-rigged timed activation, and run back when your opponents are right
on
'em.
Just an example of an adaptation of simple 'harmless' items I pulled from my
nether regions.
The idea, that is. I have no cell phones, or Martians, in my nether regions.
The_Beast
From: "Eric Foley" <stiltman@teleport.com>
> His original tripods that could be stymied by what we now consider
On Fri, 18 Jul 2003 07:14:21 +0200 KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de
> (kh.ranitzsch) writes:
E. Coli has killed some humans.
On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 20:25:18 -0400 Nyrath the nearly wise
> <nyrathwiz@comcast.net> writes:
<snip>
> Heh. There was a short SF story on the cover of Analog magazine
LOL!
<snip> If you nuke Albuquerque who knows "where" Bugs Bunny will end up?
Gracias,
> > What DS2 does not represent well is any kind of ablative or
Yes and no. Modularizing the OGRE does allow you to blow off one tread unit
after another, but assuming that the main body is where the AI lives, I'd send
all of my fire there, waiting for that Boom shit, or a lucky number hit.
So I shoot for 5 turns in a row with no effect and then suddenly it blows up.
> ...
What we are postulating is that the Martians made another attack in 1940 after
getting hit by bacteria the first time around. So all of their vehicles are
sealed and the infantry is in powered suits.
Again, it's more for the feel (of the movie) than anything else. It's not
necessarily goofy, but not so serious that I've bothered to think about the
long term implications of the invasion.
Tom
In message <059E67CF-B8A0-11D7-A6B3-000502096793@nessie.mcc.ac.uk>
> Jonathan White <jonw@nessie.mcc.ac.uk> wrote:
[snip]
> Actually, if you were a sensible alien you'd throw rocks down the
> game.
Been done a few times, the ones that spring immediately to mind are:
Daleks Invasion of the Earth (both the TV and Movie versions) - they
'salted' the rocks with bioweapons as well:)
Footfall - but only after they realised how stiff the resistance was.
[snip]
***
Yes and no. Modularizing the OGRE does allow you to blow off one tread unit
after another, but assuming that the main body is where the AI lives, I'd send
all of my fire there, waiting for that Boom shit, or a lucky number hit.
So I shoot for 5 turns in a row with no effect and then suddenly it blows up.
***
Sorry, I thought it was modularized further, with each weapon in it's own
'hull'.
What can I say? I'm a vacc-head.
The_Beast
On Fri, 18 Jul 2003 13:32:36 -0500 Doug Evans <devans@nebraska.edu>
writes:
> ***
Nothing says you can't do that....
Gracias,
> > Yes and no. Modularizing the OGRE does allow you to blow off
Actually that might work better. I was just going off the example in the book,
which had 4 tread modules, a forward module and back module with weapons split
between them.
Tom