RE: [SG] Close Assault & Detachments

Well thanks for the constructive comments guys. Some good points. I
won't
get into a cycle of refuting and then counter arguments on a couple of
the
points. Most of my adult life was spent as a professional soldier so I'm
well aware of the discussion points regarding effect on morale, fog of
war,
particularly at the infantry section level and physical effects of
"fight or
flight" reaction in a contact.

So........

Close Assault

After playtesting at the club today we decided that the Attacker should
get
advantages for his initiative but that the defender should get
advantages
for use of cover, occupying prepared defensive positions and making best
use
of cover ie In Position. The Defensive Fire option we decided on is very
similar in effect to the Snap Fire that Tom referred to from Jon T.

We decided and then playtested further and came up with this Second
Draft.......

After the Attacker/Defender CL checks, assume both pass. The Attacker
does
his Combat Roll, the Defender gets his Defensive Fire with Range mods
for
Suppressions. If there are any casualties and the Attacker still presses
his
assault he does so but without the benefit of the Die Shift up. The
Defender
has no negative die shift in the open but does get negative die shifts
for
each suppression. The Defender gets positive die shifts each for In
Cover
(building tree line etc), In Prepared Defensive Position (eg trench,
fighting bay etc) and In Position (ie making best use of any available
cover/protection). These shifts are Open Die shifts, so Yes to the
question
about Elites with advantages.

Please actually try a simple test with some figures on a table or even
just
a 'paper fight'. I'm pretty sure that the results will be pretty
reasonable
and yet still simple to resolve.

Detachments

The playing of the Detachments was VERY well received. We did decide
that
any detachments from the one squad engaging the same target had to
resolve
fire as a single fire ie add up all weapons firepower and qual dice and
resolve in one die roll. Quality and Leaderships we left as the current
rules ie the Det is assumed to have same Q/L as parent.

As a result we saw the players using detachments in almost every squad.
The
particular game saw 2 Indonesian Commonwealth short Companys (18 squads
all
up) conducting a fight through in an Oceanic Union held piece of Urban
terrain (OU had 2 Platoons, Company HQ and Heavy Weapons Support). 5
players
on a 8'x6' playing area and took about 3 1/2 hours for the 9 turns!? The
attacker used detachments very well as he pushed his fire teams across
open
space hitting the defenders with small amounts of suppressive fire or
putting down smoke. The morale tests taken by all the remainder of the
squad
if dets took hits in LOS played well too.

Again I'd ask you to play this a little to see how it feels.

Now I probably won't get many responses to my reply as, like me, you're
all
probably reading Jon's FMA skirmish use.

Bye for now,

Owen G