RE: 25mm Grav Bikes and Rules

At 02:59 PM 19/11/98 +1000, Owen wrote:

>>I have some of the OU minis that look like they have a centerline
weapon as
>>well but if they all have a SAW it would have an unbalancing effect on
the
>>game, it gets worse if you give them a heavy weapon.	Another post
>>containing a discussion with Brian sent explains this point better. 

Snip a whole chain of reasoning that was necessary because of my over
enthusiastic addition of the words "heavy weapon".

>The Grav Bikes as employed in the OU Orbat are a Strike/Recon force and
the
>added firepower is actually intentional for their intended employment. 
>In the Strike role the firepower is there to take out armoured vehicles
or
>hardened targets. In the Recon role it gives them the firepower to
break
>contact swiftly.

>The Grav/Jet bike vehicles should not really be discussed in the same
>context as the motorcycle style vehicle as they have totally different
>characteristics. 

I agree with all the things you stated and the rules exist to use bikes
as
size 1 vehicles but what if you want to include a generic set of rules
for
using mounted infantry squads (ie. not infantry riding individual size 1
vehicles), then you need to consider both styles of bikes and the fact
that
if all the bikes had a SAW on them you would end up needing a bucket to
roll all the dice when they fired as a squad.  (eg.  9 man Regular OU
squad
mounted on gravbikes with SAW's.  2 guys fire their ACR giving a D4, 7
guys
fire their bike mounted SAWs giving 7 D8s plus an additional D8 for
quality.  This is alot of fire power no matter how you look at it and if
they where rotary type SAW's with D10 fire power I think even power
armour
would melt before this hail of fire.)	

Wayne.