RE: Full Metal Atkinson (long--are you surprised?)

Most of John's comments are pretty valid and I think have been covered
already to some degree. I like his comment about the support weapons
effecting any target within X" of point of aim. After all Light Support
Weapons amd MGs actually are designed with FIRST priority to suppress
rather
than kill an individual soldier. Rifles do that.

I would like to comment on his observation about the quality die opposed
roll for Ranged Fire. One reason I can see for using the quality die in
a
Skirmish level game is that the more experienced/talented the soldier
the
better use he makes of cover at ANY time.

Example, a 'Newbie' fresh from Basic has less of an appreciation of use
of
cover; he tends to stand in sunlight rather than shade , he is more
likely
to remain standing when halted rather than automatically 'propping',
when he
does prop he will not look for the best cover but likely the most
comfortable etc etc etc. 

So I'd say at the Skirmish level the target should roll a quality die as
his
defence and THEN this is added to by the cover die.

Good to see John is as subtle as ever ;-)

Cheers,

Owen G

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Laserlight [mailto:laserlight@cwix.com]
> Subject: Full Metal Atkinson (long--are you surprised?)

SNIP
> Quality dice to defend vs. fire.  I'm not sure what you're 
> getting at here.
> In my mind, the diffference between elite troops and green 
> troops as far as
> difficulty shooting at them come under two main headings.  
> Elites will get
> closer to the enemy before they are noticed. This should be a 
> factor of
> spotting, not shooting.  Elites will take cover faster and 
> under better
> cover.  This should be a bonus to going In Position in 
> Stargrunt terms, not
> sure what it translates to here.  But They aren't harder to 
> hit once you
> catch them.  Note that this is not based on actual combat 
> experience--I'll
> yield this point faster than I'll yield the others that I've listed.