RE: 25mm Grav Bikes and Rules

On Thu, 19 Nov 1998, Wayne wrote:
 
> I don't have any concrete ideas about alternatives its just that I
don't
> like the idea of everyone jumping of their bike cause someone shot at
them.
>  Though movies aren't a good factual source I keep thinking of all the
> Westerns where the response of the US calvary to getting shot at by
the
> indians is not to instantly jump off their horses, and use them for
cover,
> but to gallop out of range, regroup and then to think about dingo
something
> about the indians.  
> 

We've had people quoting Tom Clancy as a source recently. I think we can
survive the quoting of Hollyweird. (sorry, it's late...)

> It just seems that if you are riding your bike across some open ground
with
> your squad mates and start to get shot at, you wouldn't all instantly
jump
> off but would instead gun the engine and drive as fast as you could
out of
> there, and probably toward some near by cover to hide behind.  Then
> dismount and return fire in a more organised and coordinated fashion.
> 

Granted. But if really heavy fire came in, and that cover started to
look
a long, long way off, and the distance from there to here was filled
with
bullets?

> Here's an idea I just had.  Maybe the mounted infantry should only do
a
> crash dismount if they actually take casualties from the fire,
otherwise
> they can continue to move no matter how many suppressions they have. 
What
> do you think.
> 

This seems way too generous to the mounted troopers. What's to stop
them,
under this rule, from driving up to the squad shooting at them and
close-assaulting?

I'm an egocentric type, but I prefer my original idea: first activation,
movement but no fire. After that, they bail & hug dirt like normal
infantry. You can only get one suppression every time someone fires at
you, so collecting more than one indicates either several squads opening
up on you or a squad getting two turns or more uninterrupted firing at
you. God knows I'd crash-stop my bike (or my horse, to use the
regular-cav
example) and hunker down. You may have a fast bike, but bullets are
faster...to say nothing of laser beams or fusion bolts...

On the topic of SAW-armed bikes vs unarmed bikes:

Try this: one or two bikes per squad are 'heavy' cycles, and mount
integeral SAWs of some sort. The rest are basic cycles, w/o integeral
weaponry. It means mixed-vehicle squads, but if they're the same basic
chassis, with the gun-cycle slightly beefed up, there's no major
problems...This solves the 'oh-shit-six-SAWs' problem, but allows some
bikes to have weaponry, and allows bike squads to have heavy weaponry
they
couldn't carry normally. There could of course be (rare) squads which
have
all-heavy mounts - mounted assault squads, or recon squads that need
extra
firepower.

My $0.02,

Brian (burger00@camosun.bc.ca)
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