Re: [GZG] Timescales

[Oerjan Ariander <oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxx>]

TomB wrote:

> I always thought SG2 was 2-5 minutes,

Quoting the SG2 rulebook, page 5, "Timescale":

"If it is necessary to determine how long a battle has lasted in game terms 
(...) then treat each full turn as being equivalent to approximately 5 
minutes; hence a six-turn game would represent a battle lasting about half 
an hour of campaing time ..."

I agree that the 5-minute turn doesn't make sense either from a movement 
rate or a rate of fire point of view, but it is what the rules themselves 
claim.

> and I tend to favour 2, based on movement rates.

Based on infantry movement rates I'd call each SG turn either 1 minute or 
3-4 minutes long, but not 2 or 5...

Based on *march* movement rates I'd call each SG turn 3-4 minutes long: 
Average infantry using Travel Movement (ie., marching in a column without 
making any attempt to take advantage of cover, etc.) can move 32 inches 
(320 meters in the SG2 ground scale) per turn, so if the turn is 2 minutes 
long they'd be jogging at about 6 mph (nearly 10 km/h). That's *very* fast 
for humans - I'm a fairly fast long-distance walker, yet my sustained 
marching speed with heavy equipment is only a little over 4 mph (7 km/h), 
and I've been told that most soldiers march slower than that - typical 
marching speeds are around 3 mph (5 km/h). Using my marching speed to 
"calibrate" the SG2 game turn would give a turn length of 3 minutes; using 
typical soldiers' marching speeds would give a turn length of 4 minutes.

> In fighting order, even doing "Advance to Contact" (up/he-sees-me/down) 
> style of movement that we were trained to use in open terrain, I could 
> probably cover 100m in 30-40 seconds. That's sort of normal. So that 
> equates to about 10" which is more than one average combat move of 70m. 
> But lets say it was 70m and I was a bit slower (a third or so). Then 140m 
> in two moves (one activation) would be about right, and that'd be 60-80 
> seconds. So that, to me, spoke of 2 minutes.

Um, TomB? 60-80 seconds is roughly *1* minute, not 2. If an SG2 squad uses 
both its actions on movement it can't shot at all that turn, yet based on 
your recollection of moving 100 m in 30-40 seconds (which agrees with what 
I've seen and done) it has only moved about half as far as it should have 
(~300 meters)... yet it is unable to do anything else that turn. Too 
winded, maybe? <g> This is where the "1 minute turn" length I mentioned 
above comes from.

> 5 minutes would be an eternity, and in that time you can only engage one 
> enemy squad?
> Hmmm. As I recollect, in five minutes, even firing deliberate (one trigger 
> pull every 3-5
> seconds), which is probably a bit unlikely in an actual fight, I'd have 
> expended my
> personal ammo allotment (if I was unwise enough to do so) in 4-5 minutes. 
> I'd sure hope I
> could engage more than one target in that time.

2 minutes is also close to an eternity in combat, yet you only allow a 
squad to move half as far as you recall yourself moving in that time and 
you only allow a squad to engage one enemy squad in that time... :-/

15 minutes is *definitely* an eternity in combat, yet DS2 only allows each 
tank to engage one single enemy tank in all that time.

Which is of course why DS3 uses telescoping time scales instead <g>

> Perhaps, on a smaller scale, SG2 suffers from the same problem DS2 suffers 
> from.

IMO there's nothing "perhaps" whatsoever about it.

> But if you think troops don't move far in SG2 turns and the game sometimes 
> bogs down into hunker-down-and-shoot rather than manouver, then 20 second 
> turns (even with more realistic movement rates) would surely amplify this.

Not if you also give the troops means to advance without being seen or 
attacked by the enemy. If you can't find a route of advance that's hidden 
from enemy view, deploy a smoke screen or put enough suppressive fires on 
the enemy that he doesn't dare stick his head up; then you can use the 
larger-time-scale movement rates to advance. It works quite well in 15mm 
scale; I haven't tried it in 25mm scale yet though :-/

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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