Re: [GZG] DSIII

[Oerjan Ariander <oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxx>]

Mark Kinsey?) wrote:

>1) Remember that a Dirtside III game rarely goes past 3 turns. The
>Friday night game was two turns and the Sunday morning game was one
>turn. As a result you need to be very careful about what order you
>activate units.

Very much so. This is something veteran DS2 players often have trouble with 
at first; it takes game or three to adjust to just how far a DS3 unit can 
move and how much it can do during a single activation.

>2) If you're the defender, don't shoot at a superior force that has
>stopped after a firefight is over.

Also, if you're the defender and you're losing a FireFight, don't hang on 
until your units are destroyed or forced to hide because they're Shaken. 
IME it is usually better to pop smoke/go to ground while your units are 
still in reasonably good shape, so you can counter-attack in your own 
activation - preferrably after bringing up some reinforcements, treating 
casualties (yeah, I know Indy forgot to give the NSL any ambulances...), etc.

[...]

>Then at the end of the game the defender
>activated a unit that had LOS on the stopped Tank unit. The resulting
>firefight gave Grant all the excuse he needed to roll into the base and
>wipe out the defenders command unit.

Hm. If the defenders started this firefight, Grant's units could only have 
fired at the defenders' Command Unit if the Command Unit had first fired at 
them - ie., either it was the Command Unit that started this final 
FireFight or it voluntarily joined the FireFight in the second or later 
TCR. The only way for Grant to engage the defenders' Command Unit against 
the defenders' will is if *he* started a FireFight against *it*, but that 
doesn't seem to have been the case here.

(DS3's Target Priority rule basically says that a unit can *start* a 
FireFight against any enemy within range and sight, but once *in* the 
FireFight it can only shoot at enemies which have already joined the same 
FireFight. It is a kind of "tunnel vision" effect - enemies which are 
actively shooting back are percieved to be far more dangerous than those 
who are not, and thus get all the attention. Because of this units not yet 
involved in the FireFight can join it voluntarily after it has started, but 
they can't be *forced* to join in by units who are already involved in it.)

>This create a bit of a cascading
>stress situation, which seems to be the way most DSIII games end,

Not really - both of the *ECC* DS3 games ended this way, but this type of 
complete cascading morale collapse has been quite rare during previous 
playtests. There have been some cascade effects, but not nearly as severe 
as in the two ECC games.

>I don't think any unit should be able to move beyond
>their major move capability, firefight or not.

I thought so too when we first started to work on DS3.

Unfortunately, in practise it quickly proved to be an utter pain to track 
how far each unit (active as well as inactive) has moved during the game 
turn, particularly for units including elements with different Basic 
Movement Factors (eg. both infantry and APCs); and we also got some 
outright surreal situations where units suddenly became immobilized in the 
middle of a FireFight because they had used up all their Movement Points 
while their opponents were still able to manoeuvre because they hadn't yet 
activated this turn. In the end we decided that it was easier (and faster, 
game-flow-wise) to fudge it, and assume that most units' movement rates 
have a bit of extra "give" in them to cover Combat Moves after a unit has 
spent its entire BMF on Major Moves instead of tracking how many MP each 
unit had spent.

There's also another aspect of DS3 movement which affects this, and that is 
Travel Mode. (I'm not sure if Indy and John mentioned this at the ECC, 
since neither of the playtest scenarios needed it what with one side in 
each battle having to defend a fixed position and the other being equipped 
with highly mobile Grav Tanks.) The standard movement rates in DS3 assume 
that elements are both maintaining a sharp watch for enemies and making use 
of available cover while they are moving, and therefore aren't moving 
anywhere near as fast as they could do; in Travel Mode OTOH they 
concentrate on moving, and therefore get to move at up to twice as far as 
normal for each Movement Point spent but suffer fairly serious penalties if 
they get involved in FireFights.

Even the Travel Mode movement rate however isn't the *true* maximum speed 
of the element - instead it too includes a bit of leeway, since it is 
extremely rare for elements to move at their *absolute* top speeds for an 
entire DS3 turn (15 minutes). To use my own car - a Hyundai Atos, 
essentially a tiny motorized shopping basket - as a marginally relevant 
example, I'd give it the DS3 mobility rating LMW/90 ("Low-Mobility Wheeled, 
BMF 90"). Using Travel Mode movement on roads (the normal mode of operation 
for most civilian cars <g>) this rating gives it an in-game maximum Major 
Move of 270 mu per game turn, corresponding to a real-world highway 
cruising speed of just under 70 mph (110 km/h; if I drive faster than that 
the car starts vibrating as if it were trying to tear itself apart); but 
its *real* maximum speed is somewhere over 90 mph... and if someone starts 
shooting at me I would most likely drive that fast trying to get away, too! <g>

What all this means is that the "fudge" solution is actually at least as 
realistic as the "track all MPs" one (but of course neither is *perfectly* 
realistic!), and that the "maximum" movement rates in DS3 aren't nearly as 
absolute as they might seem at first glance. IOW, unless Grant's tanks used 
Travel Mode movement (highly unlikely under the circumstances) the movement 
you described as "ALL of their major move" was in fact only about half as 
far as they *could* have moved in a game single turn in that terrain - and 
even if they had made their entire Major Move in Travel Mode they would 
*still* have had enough of a margin to make several Combat Moves before 
their total movement during the game turn started approaching really 
unbelievable levels.

(FWIW, in both DS2 and DS3 the conversion rate between on-table movement 
rates and real-world speed is 4 mu/turn = 1 mph. In old DirtSide 2, a Grav 
Tank can move up to a maximum of 30 mu/turn (7.5 mph) if it doesn't want to 
shoot at anything whatsoever; if it does want to shoot but accepts a to-hit 
penalty it can move up to 15 mu/turn (3.8 mph), and if it wants to avoid 
any to-hit penalties it can move up to 7.5 mu/turn (1.9 mph). As a 
comparison I can *walk* at a sustained speed of ~4 mph, and the fastest 
World War *1* tracked tanks could move at ~5 mph cross-country...)

Later,

Oerjan
oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxx

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

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