Re: Full Metal AAR and more FMA thoughts

Ground Zero Games wrote:

>
> figures' activations purely as a game mechanic (I know this is pretty
> obvious, but it is easily forgotten in the heat of discussion). What
the
> figure's failure to complete the run in one activation really
indicates is
> that he has mis-timed it, or not gone quite fast enough, allowing the
enemy
> to get a shot or two at him in mid-run. If he survives this, then in
his
> next activation he will complete the run - to him, the two activations
> would have been contiguous (I think that's the word?) and he will
actually
> have been running all the time - not stopping for a minute and
standing
> there while people shoot at him!

True I understand that's a given. But ASL adresses this pretty good by
marking a
moving vehilce with a motion counter. this makes it harder to hit and
also makes
it harder for the thing to shoot. (In game terms during the next turn a
vehile
that happens along and sees that counter sitting their in the open will
no it's
actually in motion thus harder to hit)	In the scenario I describe
above. I.e.
running across teh street. the guy who is going to dash ten meters but
fails
(normally well with in his move lets suppose)  is stuck in he middle of
the street
because of a bad roll. Sure we know in real life he's in teh middle of a
run. Now
normally during this move the only guy that could fire at him is someone
on some
sort of version of opportunity fire or overwatch. fair enough. But
because he's
stuck out these and that model actioned-out until the next turn, any
other model
on the board that happens along in the interim can take a pot shot at
him as if
he's just camping out in the middle of the street scratching his ass.

Now again ASL came up with another rule to cover this. (NOTE: I'm not
trying to
turn this into ASL, just pointing out various solutions others have
tried to get
around this problem), and that is called DASH. Given a street or path or
normal
length and no enemy at the arriving location. you can move the unit from
one
covered location direct across to the other in one move (It dashes
across the
street). This of course uses all the movement allowance but avoids the
stuck
outside porblem. Any fire against dashing units was halved but all the
normal
(ASL) moving in teh open and using non assault movement modifiers
applied.

Variables in FMA of course have to include how much actual time a turn
takes vias
vis how far  someone can move, even encumbered across a short open area
(a street
not a damn highway!) in that time.

Anyway keep in mind that I like the rules as written for FMA and am not
trying to
start some sort of lobby to overhaul the movement rules. But since
someone started
talking about various movement techniques in the game (Tom?) I thought
I'd just
throw out as many different ideas as possible. If nothing gets changed
at all I'd
still buy them. If one is trying to make a realistic (and common sense)
set of
skirmish rules, then the farther down the realistic scale you go the 
higher up
the complexity scale you go. Certainly a fine line to be balanced on.

I have tried a number of skirmish rules and even though they're easy and
fun to
play (Underfire and High Noon come immdeiately to mind), they are so
basic that
they take away from me (as the real soldier turned game player) many
basic
life-saving moves/actions that a soldier in teh actual situation would
use to stay
alive and win.

If you want to see me really get going we can start talking about room
clearing
and close quarter battle <grin>.

And scott says:
>There was a truly good post from a combat instructor for the US Army
showing  how
a >combat rush works. I think I'll leave the last word with him.

yeah that was me <grin> (or Tom, though he's a bit North.)

Cheers all.

Los