Re: [GZG] Stargrunt II rules questions

[Oerjan Ariander <oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxx>]

Allan Goodall wrote:

> >I'd ignore the SG2 GMS mechanic completely, and instead treat them pretty
> >much as any other direct-fire weapon - albeit with an extra UP shift for
> >being guided and extra DOWN shifts for the target's ECM.
>
> Okay, so the firer would roll a Quality Die and a Guidance Die (which
> is essentially the same as a Fire Control die). The Guidance Die is
> shifted up one due to the weapon being guided (versus a
> fire-and-forget missile).

Er - no, versus weapons firing ballistic projectiles (ie., most guns) that 
can't adjust their trajectory to compensate for unexpected target 
movements. A fire-and-forget ATGM is just as much "guided" as a 
gunner-controlled one is; it's just that the sensors guiding the FoF 
missile are mounted in the missile itself rather than in the launcher.

[...]

> What do people think? I'm leaning toward the revised version myself,
> but the way Oerjan put it might be more realistic.

Within the restrictions posed by adhering to the standard SG2 to-hit 
mechanic, anyway.

One feature you might want to model is that many missiles today have 
*minimum* ranges of between 50 and 150-200 meters; they need that distance 
both to arm their warheads and to stabilize and get up to speed after 
leaving the launcher (so inside the minimum range they have severe 
difficulties hitting anything, and most likely won't explode even if they 
*do* hit). Even in the future I don't expect infantry missile minimum 
ranges to drop much below 20 meters, mainly for safety reasons - if the 
warheads *do* explode that close to the gunner, there's a major risk that 
the gunner will be hit by rearwards-going missile fragments. (If OTOH the 
missile is launched from an armoured vehicle the safety distance isn't a 
very big concern, though.)

> >Sounds pretty accurate to me... but the SG2 vehicle-launched smoke screens
> >do seem rather narrow; IIRC real-world smoke screens tend to extend some
> >50-70 metres to either side of the vehicle (so the SG2 screen would consist
> >of 5-7 2mu-wide cotton balls, rather than the 3 currently allowed).
>
> So smoke dischargers fire at a set range?

Many of today's smoke dischargers do, anyway; but I'm not at all sure that 
*all* of them do and there's no technical reason why future ones couldn't 
have variable ranges instead. (I can't see any pressing *tactical* reasons 
for using variable-range smoke launchers - in most situations where you'll 
want to use the smoke launchers you don't have much time to consider what 
range you want the screen at, and if the enemy you want to hide from is 
within 50 meters of you when you launch you're probably smoked anyway - but 
that's another issue entirely.)

Set or variable range wasn't my point though; I was just commenting on the 
"60 meters away seems awfully distant" bit. The purpose of these smoke 
screens is not only to hide the vehicle from enemy view, but also to allow 
it to *manoeuvre* without being seen by the enemy. To accomplish that the 
screen needs to deploy far enough away from the vehicle that it won't 
engulf the vehicle (since that would slow the vehicle down, which is *not* 
what you want when you're trying to escape), and it also has to be wide 
enough that the vehicle can move a bit parallell to the screen (eg. to 
dodge incoming missiles) without immediately moving out from behind the 
screen again.

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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