Re: (DS, SG) A Sort of Halfway idea

> "Robert W. Hofrichter" wrote:
> 
> I'm thinking of doing a kind of armor-heavy scenario of SG2, but not
> really use SG2.  So, you are thinking, what the heck is he talking
> about?  Well...
> 
> I've been working on scratch building several hover tanks and such,
> that plus the toy conversions I've done and the 1/48 models I plan on
> doing will give me a whole bunch of vehicles (three ADS trucks, an
> MRLS truck, two cargo trucks, a command truck, four IFV, an APC, two
> hover tanks, four hover sturmgeshutz, a helicopter, and about 6 jeeps
> of various types).  Too many to really do a Stargrunt game that one
> can play in a single day.  But what if I kind of do a
> cross-fertilization between Dirtside 2 and Stargrunt 2?  Ahhh, I think
> that will do it!
> 
> I will work on something of the sort, then post the idea here, but
> before I start, has anyone done something similar?  If so, let me know
> so that I can steal...urr, I mean borrow, your ideas!

I've been thinking about this (= the idea occurred to me but I haven't
done anything about it yet). I'd like to use plenty of vehicles in an
SG2 game, but at the moment IMHO the SG2 vehicle rules aren't up to it.
We've found that SG2 can run quite quickly if you stick to the basic
rules - an engagement involving infantry only is easy to play - but
slows down when you introduce additional game elements. I'd thought of
integrating the DS2 vehicle rules and leaving the SG2 infantry rules as
is, since we're now quite comfortable with those.

One task for integrating DS2 vehicle rules to SG2 would be sorting out
the ranges for vehicle fire. Are vehicle weapon ranges affected by troop
quality as much as infantry ? What would be a sensible scaling factor to
apply (I don't have my copies of either rule set to hand and can't
remember what the respective ground scales are) ?

The second task would be converting the vehicle firing rules to 'proper'
FMA standard, probably doing away with the chit system in favour of
dice-based resolution. I guess a starting point would be the
experimental DS2 dice-based firing table that JonT posted to the list a
long time ago - I've lost my copy thanks to a change of e-mail system,
so I'll have to dig through the archives unless someone has a copy they
can send me.

How do you organise vehicles ? In DS2 they activate by platoon, but in
SG2 they activate individually. The latter is better for smaller games
since allowing a whole platoon of vehicles to activate without the
opposition being able to retaliate might make them too powerful. On the
other hand, I'd ideally like to apply morale by vehicle platoon, and
unit integrity also becomes an issue.

I guess I'll have to go away and think this one through a bit more -
it's more involved than it first appears ...

-----------------------------
Tony Francis
Senior Software Engineer
Kuju Entertainment