RE: 25mm Grav Bikes and Rules

At 10:04 PM 18/11/98 -0500, Thomas Barclay wrote:

>Of course, with any sort of an ammo capacity, you'd run out after a 
>few turns of fire. With basic firecontrol (the best the bike could 
>mount), you are only somewhat dangerous (per SAW). 

I would call six bikes shooting six SAW's at my squad more than somewhat
dangerous.  That is like, with basic Firecon and depending how you
handled
their shooting (individually or as a unit) from one to six D4 and from
one
to six extra D8's.  If you use a gattling type SAW that becomes D10's.
Since I move faster than you I should be able to get to within one or
two
range bands which means you would probably be rolling D4's or D6 defence
dice.  This will mean my bike squad is going to hurt you a lot.

Ammo capacity doesn't come into SG2, except for missiles.

>And if the bikes 
>themselves increased weapon damage (to integrate the likelihood of an 
>explosion or being thrown off or any number of things), then they'd 
>still be pretty balanced. And, like I've always said, I can balance 
>any situation if I think about it. If I give you a fast bike squad 
>with 6 SAW weapons, I'd better have a reasonable counter - maybe a 
>VTOL, some good arty, or chassis mounted quad-APSWs to offer some 
>examples. 

All these reasonable counters use vehicles, how about an infantry
response.
SG2 is after all an infantry game.

>If you don't like the idea of armed bikes, I'm fine with 
>that, but I think it is hard to say it is technologically impossible 
>to arm such a beast. A saw (even with ammo hoppers) won't weigh more 
>than 30 pounds - limited ammo. I don't think that is too much to 
>assume. Maybe the RFAC is too heavy. Maybe these 'gun bikes' have 
>slower movement rates. Who knows? What makes one comfortable is what 
>one should always go with. 

I can see armed bikes existing but that wasn't the point I was trying to
get across. It was infact an attempt to write rules that created a
mounted
infantry squad type, that could be used for grav bikes and other types
of
bikes (even cavalry if you are insane enough to try), and that
maintained
game balance.
    
As for the US cavalry analogy, it wasn't meant as proof to support my
reasoning but just as a way of highlighting the context that the rules
where writen in.(Though after rereading what I wrote I can see how you
thought it was)

>Unless I realized that the drive across the open would keep me 
>exposed to the aforesaid threat (like say a SAW or RFAC) for some 
>period of time. My bike won't move fast enough to outrun its 
>traverse, it has a high cyclic, and I have no armour to protect me. 
>I'd consider bailing off and getting prone.  

Speed makes you harder to hit.	And rapid acceleration would through off
the aim of the people shooting at you, at least for a while, so would
rapid
evasion movements.

Wayne.