Dirtside II eval (fwd)

Since there's so much discussion about DSII recently, I'd like to share
something I ran into a couple of days ago. Someone (a former US Army
artillery officer) from anothing mailing list had amassed a list of
complaints about Dirtside II from a while ago. (when he played it)
I'd like to hear some discussion from you guys about these problems
(some
of them might not be "problems" per se since they are complaints that
DSII
doesn't follow the modern pattern), and maybe inspire :) some house
rules
ideas. Maybe the designers of the game can also share some info on why
they chose to design some particular features the way they did?

Sorry for the wide margins on the text version, but that was how it came
originally.  Attached is a Word version, which (hopefully) isn't too big
for the list.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 21:10:39 -0500
From: Kevin Rose <vladt@interaccess.com>
To: cqin@ualberta.ca
Subject: Dirtside II eval

This is old. Modification date of Dec 23, 1993.  But here it is.  it is
also attached in Word 97 format.  The orginal was in Wordstar 6.  The
txt version below uses fairly wide margins.

Hopefully you can get some use out of it.
Kevin

Dirtside II rules eval

System weak points
1)	Direct fire
	A)	Damage vs armor values does not scale: Nonlinear
			Mean damage per draw is in excess of 1.5
			Must be reduced to 1.0 or less
				Table	D4 Red=1-2, Green=3, Yellow=4
				01-17	0 points
				18-68	1 point
				69-86	2 points
				87-93	Immobilized
				94-94	Catastrophic Kill
				95-99	Target Systems Down
				00-00	Firer Systems Down
	B)    Infantry too hard to kill? It is almost impossible to kill
power 
	      armor without DFFGs or SLAM
	C)    ATGMs too good vs armor. For example, the GMS/H is a class
5
warhead 
	      (mean  damage  is  7.5pts) and is almost unsurvivable.

2)	Artillery
	A)    Effectiveness is vastly raised by silly system
		   Rounds should probably land after movement is
completed
		   Predicted fire by grid on the map sheet?
	B)    Kills armor too easily
		   Armored vehicles should be very hard to kill with
arty
		   Mean modern damage is 144 rounds per AIFV  (Bn 6 -
8*3*6)
	C)    Excessively ineffective on infantry			
	       
		   Infantry is the primary target for artillery
		   A battery 1 on moving Non-powered) infantry should
result in really 
		   high casualties.
	D)    Range Problems: Light artillery of the type that is
described would typically 
	      have a range of maybe 6-9km.				
       
	E)    Counter Battery: CBR data goes into main data system,
usable by anyone, not 
	      just one fire unit.

3)	Command and control						
       
	A)    Morale effects ineffective and pointless: Scale to
company?  
	B)    Morale effects are limited to one platoon
	C)    Typically it is destroyed before it suffers from adverse
effects.
	D)    In reality, loss of a single platoon will normally stop an
attacking company.

4)	ADA								
	       
	A)    MANPAD systems range is shorter than current modern stuff
by lots. Effective 
	      range should be 3km or LOS
	B)    Mobile ADA systems have a lot of range, greater than the
3.6km.	8km would be 
	      more reasonable

5)	The objective markers being placed by the defender makes no
sense.
	A)    The objective is not determined by the defender, but by
the attacker
	B)    The defender may guess what the attackers objective is,
but won't know.
	C)    The attackers objective may or may not be related to
scenario victory.

Relatively minor stuff.

6)	Opportunity Fire rules do not allow overwatch
7)	Unit integrity rules are too rigid.  See 6.
8)	You cannot effectively clear mines with arty.  It just doesn't
work.