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

["john tailby" <John_Tailby@xxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Rodemaker" <dar@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> 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.
Yep big changes in technology makes it very hard for points value system. 
Take the British matilda tank in WW2, in Early war it is a monster, only 
able to be damaged by 88mm guns, by the end of the war most tank guns can 
kill it and it's own gun is hopeless against almost all tanks. How do you 
assign a points value to something that goes from superwapon to junk in less 
than 5 years?

With the advent of the Clans it looks like present day technology got 
dropped into ww2. How do you assign a points costs to M1 Abrams against 
German tiger tanks?

Flames of War didn't try. They divided the game into early middle and late 
and can then control the points costs reasonably well.


> 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.
If you were playing the game scale at a reinforced company level you would 
expect the formation to be chosen from a type of unit. E.g tank company, 
mechanised infantry, infantry, reconnaissance, air -cav, power armour etc. 
The primary units should come from the type of formation and then 
restrictions on the type of support elements. e.g. tanks can have 
attachments of mechanised infantry or self propelled artillery but not leg 
infantry or towed guns.
You could do up a compatibility matrix of what can go with what and vary it 
by the different "races" to reflect differences in doctrine / availability.

You could then assign rules about who gets to be the attacker in the 
scenario e.g. tanks attack  mechanised and both would attack infantry. If 
both armies are the same type then dice off. This allows the player to have 
some certainty about what their force will get assigned.
Or you could assign an "aggression rating" to each type of formation and or 
race to indicate how likely they are the ones to do the attacking. e.g. in a 
GZG universe maybe the Kravak are always attacking, or both sides could roll 
a dice and add their aggression rating to determine the attacker.

That way you don't get games that have infantry companies trying to attack 
positions defended by dug in tank companies. 


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