Re: [SG] Discussion about weekend questions

On Wed, 17 Jul 2002 16:34:28 -0400, "laserlight@quixnet.net"
<laserlight@quixnet.net> wrote:

>My point was that a squad which stops its vehicle, debusses and runs,
can
>get father (at end of turn) than a squad which spends the same amount
of
>time driving.	Okay, flexible time scale and all that, but that still
>doesn't make sense to me.

It's a matter of where the time slices end. Think of it this way: you
stop the
car. Your wife jumps out and runs towards the store. You move the car
forward
into a parking spot 20 feet ahead of her (not because you're a sadist,
but
because that spot just opened up. *grin*). For a brief instant, your
wife was
ahead of you even though you were in the faster vehicle. That could be
the end
of the turn. The next turn, you're in the parking space and she hasn't
caught
up with you.

That's how I suspend my disbelief on it, anyway.

>All the guns in AD 2190 are stabilized, so you should be able to drive
and
>shoot simultaneously, right?  But vehicles have to burn an action to
fire a
>weapon.  It would be just as logical to say they have to burn an action
to
>"fire" their passengers.

Technically they should lose something off their final movement. This is
true
in most wargames I've played. It costs so many "action points" to debuss
the
passengers. Or, the amount of movement allowed in a turn when you
load/unload
is restricted. Since the distances moved by these vehicles is such a
small
part of their movement potential, I don't have much of a problem not
penalizing them. Besides, it makes the game simpler to play.

>I agree that I'd rather not have the squad and the vehicle activate
>simultaneously.
>
>What you might do is say *either* the vehicle *or* the squad has to pay
the
>action.

What needs to be done, really, is a split activation. Both the vehicle
and the
squad get two actions. What I'd like to see is a split action situation:
you
can activate two units (in this case, a vehicle and a squad) and have
them
each take one action. Then, you could easily have the vehicle fire with
action
1 while the troops move out. I'm not sure how the bookkeeping would work
with
this, and it sounds like a difficult rule to "legislate". It also sounds
like
a rule that could easily lead to munchkinism if extended to other
situations
(i.e. "I'll activate these two squads and have them each do a fire
action.") I
think it also makes things difficult to administer. "Did that squad with
one
action left already fire???" 

As for vehicles not being able to move and fire, that's a pet peeve of
mine.
I'm trying to come up with a "fix" for an all vehicle game. 

I thought of a variation on the detached element rules. Say you have a
tank
with four crew (Tank Commander, driver, loader, gunner). You could
consider
the driver a detached element. The TC transfers an action to the driver
(allowing him two move actions), while still having one action left over
to
fire. You may even want to require a communication roll. Sure, they're
in the
same vehicle, but they are looking at different displays and separated
by
bulkheads and the like. This gives a tank (or any vehicle, by extension)
three
actions if two of them are move actions, or two actions otherwise. Not
really
much of a break in the game system. This would be a stabilized weapon
platform
that could do this, of course. Otherwise, like most WW2 tanks, you just
play
as is. 

An even simpler answer, though, might be to give vehicles with
stabilized guns
a 24" range instead of 12", but they can only spend one action at most
moving
(much like any given weapon in a squad may only fire once at the most). 

Now, another question: should a vehicle be able to fire all the weapons
on the
vehicle with one action? That is, if a vehicle has a hull mounted MG and
a
main gun, should it be allowed to fire both with one action? Or if it
has a
main gun and a missile launcher, should it be allowed to engage an enemy
vehicle with both for one action? If so, should it be restricted to
firing at
the same target with all weapons, like in a squad? A gun-stabilized tank
should be able to fire its main gun and machine gun, and still move, all
at
once. I'm willing to let this go, though, for the sake of simplicity.

Allan Goodall		       agoodall@hyperbear.com
http://www.hyperbear.com

"At long last, the earthy soil of the typical, 
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