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Re: DSII for the 2020s

From: "Oerjan Ohlson" <oerjan.ohlson@t...>
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1999 20:45:04 +0100
Subject: Re: DSII for the 2020s

David Brewer wrote:

> > * HKPs... don't work with the current PSB. The blurb describes them

> > as	"...relatively small-calibre (but VERY long) barrel to develop
> > hyper-velocities for its superdense long-rod penetrator rounds
..",
> > and goes on to describe two pressure-driven launch mechanisms (LP >
> and  "plasma reaction").
> 
> I've never liked HKP's. Three different kinetic energy guns seem
> like at least one too many.

Yep. Particularly when one of them is physically... well, maybe not
*impossible*, but extremely unpractical.

> Old Dirtside only had one, the mass driver cannon (as well as a HEAT 
> ammo rocket-assisted gun and the familiar DFFG and HEL).

Modern HVCs are able to fire HEAT, KE of various types (APDS, APFSDS,
etc), HESH (poor vs vehicles, very good against buildings etc), HE (ie,
anti-personnel frag charges) etc. Restricting them to rocket-assisted
HEAT only seems a bit too restrictive to me :-/

> Playtest Dirtside II had a smart-munition- firing gun, but I 'spose
that's too > similar to a GMS.

...which could be taken to represent the current Russian fashion of
launching missiles through the main gun of an MBT as well as the more
common approach of carrying a separate missile launcher somewhere. 

> > * Allow ADS to intercept incoming artillery rounds - I'm 99%
certain
> > that there will be at least one such system in active service
within 5
> > years. Of course it will pretty soon be countered by carrier shells
> > filled with decoy submunitions etc; in DSII terms this is an
opposed
> > dieroll between the quality of the ADS and the quality of the
incoming
> > salvo.
> 
> About how far away is a submunition-carrying artillery shell when
> it seperates? Is it feasable to bring it down before this point?

IIRC within a km of the target, which is deemed close enough at least
for the laser-based ADS under development now.

> > * Allow infantry GMS/L teams in open-topped vehicles to fire their
> > missiles "effectively" (ie, able to hit and inflict actual damage),
but
> > at a one die-shift penalty in missile guidance (ie, Basic rolls
1D4,
> > Enhanced 1D6, Superior 1D8).
> 
> Do you mean open-topped or open-hatched? Several different APCs
> seem to allow this, German Marders, UK Warriors.

Good point. Not sure if the weapons used in these cases correspond to 
IAVR (GMS/P) or GMS/L, though - ie, were they LAW-80/AT4 types, or
Milan and similar?

Open-*topped* vehicles would have no problems at all allowing this;
open-*hatched* ones might depending on how large the grunts' missile
launcher is. 

> >   - Flechette rounds: Counts as HEF against Militia and Line
infantry,
> > as MAK against PA, and completely ineffective against armoured
vehicles
> > (armour level 1 or more *in the front*). (Flechettes are very good
at
> > penetrating cloth, kevlar fibres, earth, timber etc, but literally
> > piss-poor against hard armour). In addition, flechette missions
will
> > NOT set fire to things like woods or buildings.
> 
> In my (very) limited understanding, current arty submuntion are
> usually dual-purpose with both fragmentation and a shaped charge
> attacking any vehicle unfortunate enough to be hit directly.
> Wouldn't this still be the case for a flechette submunition?...
> that they would be equally as effective against vehicles as HEF?

Current artillery submunition carrier rounds (the term doesn't usually
include flechette rounds) correspond either to DSII HEF (cluster
rounds, 20-50 subs in each shell) or to MAK (Bonus-style, currently 2
subs per shell).
 
Flechettes are 1-2 inches long and up to some mm in diameter; solid
metal, no explosives, several hundred (in some cases - 152mm rounds
IIRC - several thousand) in each shell. Think of them as anti-infantry
long rod penetrators. Nothing like them in DSII at the moment.

> >  - PGDH rounds (Precision Guided, Direct Hit - not a good name, but
> > they're quite different from the MAKs so I need a different name
for
> > them...) These are direct descendants of weapons like the US
Copperhead
> > or the Swedish Strix, using a shape-charged warhead big enough to
punch
> > through the front of a 1999 MBT horisontally even through fairly
> > serious reactive armour... but with a stand-off of a couple of
meters
> > at most. Counts as MAK against both infantry and vehicles, but the
> > target can use both its ECM *and its PDS* to defend against it (in
> > addition to any nearby ADS helping out).
> 
> This is surely a case for artillery-delivered GMS systems.

Which is basically what you get when you allow ECM and PDS to defend
against MAK rounds. 

The differences lie in the number of missiles launched in one go
(several per launch tube per game turn for PGDH, one per tube per turn
for GMS) and therefore the number of targets one salvo can engage (all
targets under the template for PGDH, one for GMS), and the way you buy
them in the vehicle design rules (one salvo for PGDH vs one
last-all-battle box for GMS).

Regards,

Oerjan Ohlson
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
- Hen3ry

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