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

While I have not collected any actual data on this matter, and while it 
may repeat some things previous said on the list, this last post got me
to 
thinkin' (can you smell the smoke from there?) so I figured I'd chime
in.

Forgive me if this is just beating a dead horse. :)

So, statistics seem to confirm that most shots occur against frontal 
armor.	This does't suprise me at all.	For shots to be taken against
side 
and rear, you have to be able to get into a position to target the sides

or rear (yes, painfully obvious, I know), and that is *hard* to do in a 
game designed like DSII.  In most cases, you have weapons capable of 
firing between 30 and 60 inches.  Vehicles, however, can usually move 
around 12 inches per turn.  In the best case scenario, you need two move

periods (turns) to cross the range of a gun.  To further complicate 
things, each units activates once and is then done, allowing the next 
enemy unit to activate and so on.  Since all units are seen at all times

(unless you are using the rather primitive hidden units rules for an 
attack against a defensive position, or house rules) it is nearly 
impossible to "ambush" anything.  There is no incentive to ever expose 
your weaker side/rear armor (duh) and your opponent doesn't have enough 
movement to outflank you.  This is especially true since armored
vehicles 
die at relatively long ranges, and in my experience, rarely get close 
enough to each other to do any kind of pass through moves.

The game plays very much like the modern 80s tank battles as O.O. 
frequently points out.	Front-heavy armor makes sense here because you 
*can* keep the front armor facing the enemy - a U.S. tank commanders
best 
case scenario.

Granted "plunge fire guided missiles" that pop up and hammer the top
armor 
would change this somewhat, but only by changing the specific technology

used, not by changing tactics.	Tactics being those things that you do
to 
gain advantageous position, not "what cool new toy" you're using.

Unless there is a change to the movement speeds and likely defensive
fire 
options, again, as previously suggested, this enforced tactical 
situation will not change.

Among the things that I can think of to address this would be increase 
movement rates to match something closer to "real life" rather than the 
"fast" 30kph tanks we see in DSII now.	If the speeds are increased, 
however, something has to be done to the activation system to allow
better 
options for opportunity fire.  The thing that stops enemy movemnt is 
firepower.  If you can engage them and interrupt their movement, you
can't 
effectively fight them.

Is this doable?  Sure.	But at least for now I also feel that we're just

making noise to ourselves.  I know that Jon has more on his plate than
he 
can handle, and that DS3 is rather low on his priority list.  Hopefully,

our various suggestions and rants will stay in the archives so that 
when/if he decides to work on DS3 he won't have to ask us what we want.
:)

Ok, I'm done rambling for now.

J

John K. Lerchey
Computer and Network Security Coordinator
Computing Services
Carnegie Mellon University

On Wed, 28 Jul 2004, Oerjan Ohlson wrote:

> Indy wrote:
>
>> Oerjan did a study (maybe is still doing a study in his copious spare

>> time;
>
> "Copious" being the key word here :-/
>
>> The idea of the study was to support a proposition to be able to
re-armor 
>> vehicles to be more reflective of reality
>
> More to serve as the basis for determining the points costs of 
> differently-armoured sides; but of course allowing
differently-armoured sides 
> is an aspect of allowing DS2 to be more reflective of reality.
>
>> 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).
>
> Beth Fulton and David Stuckey also kept similar records, and got very
similar 
> results. Interestingly enough these values are also quite similar to
those 
> from real-world studies made after WW2 and onwards, on which the
design of 
> today's real-world MBT armours are based... that's another thing DS2
gets 
> right about combat in the 1980s ;-)
>
>> 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.
>
> Very much so, yes.
>
>> 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.
>
> So would I! Not only that; I'd be interesting in seeing data from
other 
> people regardless of whether or not they resemble Indy's... so far I
only 
> have data from four player groups (my own, Indy's, David Stuckey's and
Beth 
> Fulton's), and although we're literally spread out all over the world
it'd be 
> nice to have a larger sample <g>
>
> If any of you want to join in, what I'd like to see recorded for each
shot 
> fired (not just each *hit*, but each *shot*) is:
>
> - Target signature
> (- Target size and armour rating)
> - Weapon type and class for the firing weapon
> (- FCS type for the firing weapon)
> - Range
> - Face of target attacked
> - Outcome (miss, hit but no effect, damage/mobility/systems, or
destroyed)
>
> IOW, essentially the same data as I've been recording and collecting
for Full 
> Thrust over the past five or six years, but for DS.
>
> Later,
>
> Oerjan
> oerjan.ohlson@telia.com
>
> "Life is like a sewer.
> What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
> -Hen3ry
>
>
>