Re: GZG DS2 Mikko: Genres for DS2.

On Fri, 11 Sep 1998, Alex Shvarts, Andrew & Brian Martin wrote:

>     Yes. Can it handle modern, battle tech and ultra modern? No.

I never claimed it could! Jeez. What is your fixation with adapting DSII
to everything under the sun?

I'm quite happy with one good rules set per genre. Rulebook cost is a
pebble in the pond compared to the cost of the miniatures, and if it
can't
be summarized in five minutes, I don't want to play it anyway.

Now on to the meat of the things...

>     Yes. That's where I got the information from. Careful reading
shows
> this. Don't extend today's or near future technology into the HS
genre. It
> doesn't fit.

Bad news, Andrew. You got me started. Remember the bits of Slammers
trivia
you wrote a day or two ago? Let's have a closer look:

> first used in war. Hammer's Slammers era missiles are operator
controlled,
> wire guided, joystick control devices, where the operator guides the
missile
> to the target by seeing where the missile was and guiding it to its
target.
...
> the Arab Israeli wars. HS GEV tank crew deal with them in exactly the
same
> way as the Israelis did. That is, fire heavy MG and tank guns at the
> operator and the missile. The fire causes the operator to duck, the
missile

"An alarm pinged to warn him that a laser rangefinder painted
Deathdealer's armor. The gunnery computer was already rotating the
turret,
while a pulsing red highlight arrowed the source: an anti-tank missile
launched twelve-hundred meters away..." - David Drake, Rolling Hot, 1989

"post-mounted missile systems, both guided and hypervelocity" - David
Drake, The Warrior, 1991

Technically, these bits don't speak of the actual guidance mechanism,
but
I submit my final bit of evidence as to *how* they are dealt with: 

"Reconnaisance satellites, computer fire control, and powerguns combined
to claw *missiles* out of the air before they were dangerous. ... locked
defensive weapons on the *missiles* in microseconds. And a single
light-swift tribarrel could hose any *missile* with enough fire in its
seconds of flight to disintegrate it." - David Drake, Interlude:
Supertanks, 1979 (emphasis added)

>     HS combat cars were open topped because they were based on a old
Soviet
> apc wich was open topped. I get the impression David Drake didn't like
> M113s!

"Hammer's vehicles were designed around the M48s and [M113] ACAVs I'd
ridden..." - David Drake, Afterword to Counting the Cost, 1987

>     HS also isn't NBC capable. Their rules of war didn't allow NBC
weapons
> to be used.

"...and then the nukes, against a regiment more likely to advance
stark naked than without a nuclear-damper up!" - David Drake, The
Butcher's Bill, 1974

"'We have clearance for a nuke'" - David Drake, The Interrogation Team,
1985

"The political soldiers had naively failed to consider gas. The Slammers
introduced KD7 into the forced ventilation system, then spent three days
neutralizing the toxin..." - David Drake, Standing Down, 1979

>     In David Drake's military experience, there was no terrain
following, no
> Nap of Earth flying and no multimach ground attack aeroplanes. All

"Similar weaponry was mounted on helicopters which skimmed battlefields
in the nape of the earth, protected by terrain irregularities. At the
last
instant the birds could pop up to rip tanks with their missiles." -David
Drake, Interlude: Supertanks, 1979

>     They didn't have PDS in the stories! Therefore it's not allowed by
> the genre!

Erm, isn't shooting down missiles exactly what PDS does? Fill in the
blank: If a computer-controlled tribarrel automatically tries to shoot
down an incoming missile, it is functioning as a ... system.

Maybe your Drake books came from an alternate universe?

-- 
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