Marksmanship - longish

One last thought:

A lot of people have pointed out most gunfights happen at under 25
feet, and the hit rates are abysmal. They also point out that many of
the fights are in poor light and with kind of panicky or nervous
people firing. Some people alluded to some of the better known stories
of the guy who fires 15 rounds at close range without hitting
anything.

All these things are true. And combat does make men more nervous, and
shooting changes its nature somewhat under that circumstance.

HOWEVER - many of the people on whom the above stats are compiled are
not combat soldiers. They are civilians, criminals, or police. They
are not stats for the military. At least in the CF, they have taught
us that most ranged combat will occur in the 100-400m band. Close
assaults occur, but so too do gunfights at 300m. In the case of
civilians, you can't assess their level of firearms skill, but many
times it is not great I'd guess, and their level of panic may be high.
Same goes for criminals. And the police have an evil job in the sense
that they are trained for violence, but don't spend (in most
departments) near enough time on the range or in the training sims and
even if they do, they have a job that requires they don't fire at
longer ranges for the potential side effects. And I know quite a few
cops (used to be in my job description) that have NEVER used a firearm
to take a life, many of whom have only drawn in a 'situation' a few
times. So they don't end up under fire very often, they don't end up
in life-or-death situations all that often (though any situation could
be that) and consequently when the lead starts flying it is an unusual
experience even for them. This set of characteristics is reflected in
the game by motivation, quality level (green or yellow) quite often
and that should be the mechanic that handles this inaccuracy of fire.

Contrast this with serving line soldiers in a hot war. I'm sure they
get shot at more often, and the regular or veteran troops are far less
likley to flinch or fire stupidly. I'm sure the fog of war prevents
some of the longest range shots sometimes, but if we read historical
accounts of skirmish battles between seasoned troops (esp I'd say
eastern front WW2, Korea, etc), we will find that many engagements of
hostile targets occur successfully out beyond 200m (or at least, the
killing starts there... it often ends closer in or even in HTH). These
soldiers realize they can be killed, but they don't flinch as much,
panic as often, and their recovery is far faster. And they do kill
people at a distance.

And I didn't say it should be easy to hit things at a distance, though
I'd point out to those of you who might not have thought about it -
target movement is very potent under 20m, the further out you go the
less it means. It is easier to hit a crossing target (relative to a
stationary one) at 150m than it is at 15m. This has to do with how
fast you have to track the target - the longer the range the fewer
minutes of arc you have to track through. Shooting at range in combat
isn't like shooting on the Range on a sunny day lying on your belly.
There, quite a few folk can routinely put 90% of their rounds inside a
1m area at 500m. You'll do worse than this most times in real combat,
but this should be a function of poorer troop quality (poor training,
lack of practice, panic or inexperience comes to the fore),
environmental modifiers (darkness, cover, movement), or suppression.
Assuming the troop quality is good, the shooter isn't suppressed (no
one is shooting at him AFAHK), and his target is in reasonable light
or out in the open, etc - it shouldn't be impossible for him to hit
that target. If he's a poor quality troop (trained but inexperienced)
of if he's being shot at (suppressed), is in poor light, target in
cover, etc. the shot will obviously be harder and he could fire 15
rounds at close range and miss all of them (but again this should be a
product of those modifiers, not the basic inability of a rifle to hit
anything at any notable range). Of course there is another side to
those shootout examples quoted: The veteran beat cop that has to open
up at 5m can also drop 2 or 3 targets in less than 10 seconds (a la
Real TV video of a Texas trooper shooting it out with some baddies in
front of his patrol car).

Now, the best defence of poor range bands for rifles is what Jon
said - (not best in terms of it makes me very happy, but best in terms
of justification for why FMA has them) - it's a game and balancing it
might require it. (That's a paraphrase). And what the Tuffleymeister
feels is how things should be is how the canon will likely read. And
we'll all still buy it <grin> and play it and I'll bet there will be
as many house rules as there are list members.... :)

Thomas Barclay
Software UberMensch
xwave solutions
(613) 831-2018 x 3008