FMA Skirmish comments and questions

Comments:

Laserlight wrote:
>The idea is that all explosive/area effect weapons have a dice type
to use
>for impact value at the actual point of impact, and a blast radius
band
>over which the impact die drops one type. So, a warhead with a
>point-of-impact value of D10 and a radius band of 2 will roll a D10
attack
>at anything within 2" of the final impact point, then D8 at 2-4", D6
at
>4-6" and finally D4 at 6-8". EVERYTHING within the maximum radius (in
this
>example, 8") gets rolled for if in LOS of the impact point, rolling
>relevant warhead impact die vs. target armour.
>Yes, this is nasty, and the blast diameter of the bigger warheads is
quite
>large,

Too large, in fact.  May I suggest you put the initial blast radius at
whatever you wish, then have it fall off one die type per 1", so a
weapon
that is D10 at 2" will be d8 at 3", d6 at 4", and d4 at 5"?  This
still
covers a 20 meter diameter circle.

** Not really. From what I understand, with real defensive grenades,
you quite likely can hit anything within (someone who knows for sure
check me) about 50-100m depending on the model. They are very nasty.
Meant to be deployed while you are entrenched or behind a damn solid
cover chunk.

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SHOTGUNS:
** A shotgun must be an area weapon which lets you hit multiple
targets, intended or not. It is very dangerous to fire into crowds.
And an autoshotgun is the best hallway clearance device ever invented.
The string idea wasn't bad. Or the one I saw from another skirmish
game where you put down two pennies a distance from the shooter, then
deviate them to form the cone. Of course, thankfully no one has yet
mentioned 40mm Cannister rounds for the GLs.... OOooops....
------------------------------
FLAMERS:

Brendan wrote:

Flamers: Using a standard tape measure (~1/3-1/2" wide), measure 10"
from
the firer strait over the target.  Everything touched by the tape
measure is
hit by a FP:d12, I: d8 attack.	Cover has no effect.
Miss: suppression
Minor Hit: suppression + automatic combat move directly away from the
firer
(terror effect)
Major hit: hit + suppression + automatic combat move directly away.

However the drawback is; when the flame junkie takes a HIT, if he gets
a 1
on the armour roll, then his feul tank has been hit & explodes as a
FP:d12,
POI: 1" blast grenade, automatically suppressing anyone in range (&
obviously killing the poor shmuck).

** You missed the "light you up like a roman candle" effect. How about
this:
If you get a "hit" from a flamer (the major hit), each subsequent
turn, roll a d4. On a 1-2, the fire is out. On a 3-4, you take another
hit with impact d8. While "lit up", you must make a "Gut check" (roll
to exceed twice your motivation) to do anything other than try to put
out the fire. If you do make this check, whatever you do has a one
level negative die shift (you are, after all, on fire...). Each action
you spend trying to separate yourself from the burning fuel (stop drop
and roll, or smother it, or whatever), you may roll another d4. If
somebody
is helping, for every action they expend, they can roll a d4. (Unless
they happen, for some odd reason, to be packing a fire extinguisher in
which case one action should be sufficient). The idea of flamer
victims staggering around burning is not attractive, but it is
probably somewhat real.

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Comments In General:
1) It would be nice to see the fuller HTH rules Jon obviously has in
mind (see costing section for hints).

2) Rifles.... I know the idea is to make a skirmish game. But a
standard combat rifle has 12" range bands. Meaning 0-24, 25-48m,
49-72m ranges. 144m if aimed. I know several guys who can shoot tacks
off of targets at 50m. Hitting a man sized target out to 400m isn't
that hard. And they are what you would call Regulars (if that) firing
aimed fire. 144m maximum range for a rifle seems a little awry. (Or
have I read something wrong?). If you want to make grenades and
explosives accurate, you might want to think about your weapon range
bands. One approach to this would be making the bands non-linear.

ie: Short 0-12", Medium 13-48", Long 49-96".  (this translates to
0-24m short, 25-96m medium, 97-192m long, and aimed it would mean a
max range of about 384m, closer to the 400m usual effective range on
modern rifles).

This means you still only hit well at close ranges (under 100m), but
you can hit out to longer distances. Even 200m isn't all that far in
the modern day.

3) In the section on suppresion, you cite an example of PA having
d12x2 armour (and being unbothered by hits from small arms) but then
in the armour section, no personal armour has that high of an armour
value. I understood the purpose of the example, but it seems a poor
choice given the later section on armour not matching it.