RE: SG2 Vehicle Questions

Gary spake thusly upon matters weighty: 
 I played some Modern Micro armour battles and found that
> "spotted" usually means dead. 

In SG2, if ATGMs (GMS/P and GMS/L) are on the board, the same is 
true. IAVRs to a lesser extent. Armour does have a problem with 
infantry anti-armour weapons. 

You mention that vehicles on a board would be
> at close range all the time, then how do Infantry in the future fight?

I think I'll take a stab at answering this. I assume DS2 is the more 
correct place to fight such a battle with lots of vehicles, because I 
think infantry would have to debark at a reasonable range because the 
IFVs might well get clobbered as ranges close. Now mind you, my 
Colonel used to say that the ideal battle from an infanteers point of 
view was to drive up (on top of) an objective, and debark amongst 
dead and dying enemy killed by Arty, TacAir, and Ranged Fire. So I 
assume some part of modern IFV doctrine must include how to close 
range to effective range for infantry given the threat environment of 
ATGMS to the IFVs. 

Do they ever get into effective infantry weapon range, if vehicles 
are always destroying the their APC's?

I do wonder a bit how this works in modern warfare. Anyone with 
knowledge of how this panned out in the gulf, or bosnia, or anywhere, 
please feel free to contribute. 

> Players make the senario's up and it is their carelessness that will
> unbalance the game. 

True. I think part of the point Owen might be making is that HW have 
such long ranges and are relatively deadly so that two sides bringing 
in tanks would not expect them to survive to 700m which is about the 
edges of a 6' board, unless environment allowed. But the first time 
they saw each other, they'd splatter each other at close range. So 
its not like Microarmour in that its not long ranged armour duel 
material. And I think Owen is sort of saying that the balance between 
the capability of tanks and infantry is somewhat akin to acceptable. 
The time scale is arbitrary. The unit placements are approximate. The 
only thing that matters (in a way) is that if infantry moves X, then 
armour moves 2X or something like that. The balance is sort of 
preserved by that. (sort of). The proporations of firepower and 
manoevre allow good infantry battles to be fought. My only issue is 
that I think (and its only an opinion, not gospel...) that the 
balance has been struck by slighting the modern vehicle. I'm not 
proposing turning the game into microarmour, or DS2, but I would 
llike to see a bit more capability on the (admittedly few) vehicles I 
may see on my boards. 

  Although I love playing fictional and fantasy 
games, I just cannot get away from trying to make them as realistic 
as possible. I am sure Tom Barclay could bore you quickly to death 
with tales about this habit of mine. 

Um Yeah. But we don't hold it against you forever..... most of us. :)
 
> (Actually, I had thought Trevor was talking about the vehicle on the
back of
> the SGII cover, since it has two independant turrets). 

I'm thinking I'm not sure (the origins are lost to list archives 
now). But I think Owens point was the Aliens APC is heavily armed. I 
didn't think so for a modern IFV, but I took that up in another post. 

But I guess unless we have sat down and thought about it, and written 
some *extra optional use at own risk* rules for vehicles to let them 
do a few more things (move and shoot, fire more stuff, sprint, etc), 
to limit them if they have a shortened crew (if you leave the 
commander out, the gunner might find himself too busy to command), 
and to reflect what we think they may or may not be able to do, we 
haven't got much more to say. 

Some folks will like the simple rules as they are. Others will need 
to take a hack at them and come up with some house rules. In either 
case, its whatever a given gaming group wants to do that should be 
what they do. :)

Owen, BTW, Have you finished those cavalry rules?

Tom.  

>				  Gary
> 
> 
> 
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