RE: Blue Sky Thinking (was: Re: [GZG] re: Wanted)

["David Rodemaker" <dar@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

john tailby wrote:

From: "David Rodemaker" <dar@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Jon (GZG) wrote...
> Back in the day (before there was fire practically), I played with a group
> that did this for a Battletech campaign. Everyone built a company of 
> mechs,
>then we had a random scenario list that we rolled on. The scenario would
> determine what force could be used and what the victory conditions would 
> be
> for that player.
This idea is quite commonly used, Flames of war and 40K do similar things. 
It is good at preventing armies from becoming engineered to just play one 
mission. However it can lead to all armies having a sameness feel to them.
In your example everyone would have ended up with mech companies with a
scout lance a medium/heavy lance and a heavy/ fire support lance. You would
be less likely to see armies that represent specialist units like Hansens 
Roughriders or Eridani light horse.

In a GZG universe I imagine a formation like Atkinson's Arrows would not be 
very willing to take on a city assault scenario where their tanks and long 
range firepower are nullified by the terrain. I am not saying that they 
can't do it but that it's not what they would necessarily want to do. Same 
thing if you chose to design a light stealth infantry force. The last thing 
they want is to be given an assignment to hold trenches.

Scenarios need to have the capability to be achieved in different ways so 
that different armies can be selected . 

------------

All excellent points - and ones that we did run into. A couple of things
worked in out favor. We were all playing mercenaries, we all started with a
company of mechs (12), we were all constrained to Light, Medium and heavy
Mechs, and everyone started with Green Pilots (and 1 Regular IIRC as a
Company Commander). The advent of Los-tech really changed the game to a
degree but later the Clans basically killed it.

It was a pretty good run there for a few years though.

What was interesting is that people very quickly started buying vehicles to
flesh out their forces and provide back-up (or replacements) for mechs that
were mis-matched to a mission. Mechs remained rare, but forces quickly
became much more diverse. 

Another thing that was available was the ability to refuse some missions
(basically refusing to take the contract) either as an explicit clause in
the scenario or as a general choice (which had some penalty, I can't
remember what exactly). By the same token, some missions could not be
refused at all (ambushes for example).

What this may force into being is more developed TOE's and ORBAT's for the
existing GZGverse powers because that's one of the few ways to create this
type of random scenario pack. That will determine what a company, regiment,
platoon, etc. will look like so that decent comparisons can be made.

David


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