RE: 25mm Grav Bikes and Rules

On 19th Nov 1998 Brian wrote:

Things snipped through out.

>> 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.

>> 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?

In the rules, as they now stand, when suppressed mounted infantry can
only
do movement and leader ship actions. Close assaulting someone doesn't
qualify as either of these actions.

>I'm an egocentric type, but I prefer my original idea: first
suppression,
>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...

You win, I'm a convert.  After reading the above reasoning I'm going to
steal you idea and add it to the rules with the addition that if you
take
casualties from incoming fire you have to do a 'bail & hug dirt'
dismount
as well.

>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.

An alternative is to allow some squad members to carry their support
weapons on their bikes but not shoot them unless they are dismounted. 
That
way the squad would have improved fire power when dismounted.  I still
think not being able to carry heavy weapons is a necessary trade off
that
is needed to balance the advantages of increased movement and such that
bikes give infantry.

Wayne.