Re: Well, too interesting to drop all of the posts in this thread...

Glenn M Wilson wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 19:44:41 -0700 (PDT) Brian B
> <greywanderer987@yahoo.com> writes:
> >--- Glenn M Wilson <warbeads@juno.com> wrote:
> <snip>
> >> >3. Allow for a greater variety of armor levels on
> >> all
> >> >sides of vehicles.
> >>
> >> Sure, although this slightly complicates angle of
> >> attack since you now
> >> have at least three values (top being only relevant
> >> for top attacking
> >> systems.)
> >
> >Actually, 6 values:	front, rear, top, bottom, and
> >sides.
> >
> <snip>
> 
> Six?	Each side can be set at a different value?  Why would you do
that?

Protection on the side that would be primarily facing the enemy, save
cost
on armoring up all sides as much as possible. Oerjan did a study (maybe
is
still doing a study in his copious spare time; I still have to type up
and
give him some more data points :-( ) in the past couple of years about
what
sides were primarily targetted in DS2 games (front/side/rear mainly,
since
so relatively few bottom/top attacks happen). The idea of the study was
to
support a proposition to be able to re-armor vehicles to be more
reflective
of reality, iirc (he gave the example of the Abrams tank, in DS2 terms
it
should have armor 8/2/1 for front/sides/rear, iirc; if my sides/rear
numbers
are off, they are off by only one or two, can't remember, but I think
8/2/1
is what he postulated). 

In any event, in the DS2 games I ran and kept records for since then, I
found that well over 70% of the shots fired at targets were directed at
the fronts of targets, not the sides or rear (about 30% were aimed at
the sides of targets; less than 1% at target rears). Now, Oerjan was
also
collecting data on weapon types, sizes, and ranges at the same time, so
he
had larger fish to examine than just the front/side/rear aspect of it
all.
The result of what I was recording for Oerjan was that I would like to
see
an armor points system, where I can assign armor values as I see fit for
my vehicles, rather than the current DS2 rules that you set your armor
value for your front and drop it by one or two for sides, rear, top,
bottom.

If anyone out there reading thinks my numbers are an aberration, and
that
you think more shots are fired at sides/rear than what I was finding,
feel
free to record which side units are firing against in your next set of
DS2
games and report them. :-)  I would be interested in seeing if others
find
significant differences or not.

Anyway, my two bits worth.

Mk