Re: do GMS/P troopers carry ARs?

Wading into the mess I've created...

>> Exchanging kit especially if you have to grab extra ammo or
specialist
>> equipment can actually take a considerable amount of time....if an
>> Activation is approx 5 minutes then an Action is reasonably argued to
>> be 2 and a half minutes...that isn't really very long at all..ever
>> tried clearing a double feed on a machine gun? It can take a minute
of
>> two in itself...getting kit off a body that has been blasted can be a
>> very messy thing, clearing the weapon, checking ammo feeds etc WILL
>> take time....
>
>    That's why you still roll the dice the next time the weapon fires.
>A low roll could indicate a slight weapons malfunction, such as a jam.
>My point is, SGII is far too granular to REQUIRE such a long time to
>pick up a weapon from a fallen comrade and fire it.

But right now the weapon is just OUT.  There isn't *any* mechanism for
recovering lost special weapons.  Owen (who I tend to agree with here)
isn't arguing that it takes lots of time, just one reorg action - which
isn't that much time, really.  Sure it's easy to say "but the guy next
to
him just grabs the saw and starts rockin' and rollin', but if the weapon
is
a hopper fed gauss machinegun with a battery pack, or a plasma projector
with a battery pack, or ..... etc.   Nowadays, it is easy enough to grab
the fallen weapon - if the strap isn't hooked on the other guy's gear...
But if you have to start fidding around rolling your buddy's body of the
now rather gooey mg, and unhook it from his harness, clear the jam from
the
barrel nosediving into the mud when he fell over, clear off the goo from
him being cooked by the plasma shot, plug it into your firing HUD system
and reset the system for the new weapon, figure out what you forgot
'cause
it doesn't work the first time, reset it, and start again....

Maybe one reorg action isn't unreasonable.

>> ....and the last one may have been a typo on your part but a Re-org
is
>> one Action only and as I said earlier it will be approx 2 and a half
>> minutes.
>
>    No, I'm counting the average time to use BOTH the remove
suppression
>and re-org actions.

But the issue of getting the weapon going is unrelated to the
supression.
You can reorg while supressed, and besides, there may not be *time*
right
NOW to grab the weapon 'cause we gotta bug outta here... mabye they
carry
their buddy with them and get it later.  In any event, what Owen is
arguing
for is the expenditure of one action, for a reorg, which does allow you
to
do all the other stuff a reorg allows anyway... it isn't like the ONLY
thing the squad is going to do is grab the SAW...

>    Yes, it is gospel, according to St. Jon, chapter 2. <g>  Seriously,
>it's in the book as the average.  Now, I don't think that every action
>takes 2.5 minutes.  It's simply the average. 

This is one of those "well sort of kinda maybe" situations.  What Jon
actually says is that for games where measuring time is actually
important,
like in a campaign scenario where the arrival of reinforcements is a
timed
event, then take the turns to work out to be appx 5 minutes.   But he
starts that paragraph off by saying "In Stargrunt II, the timescale is
fairly loose, and in most cases pretty irrelevant to normal
play......the
full turn may safely be assumed to occupy one or even several minutes of
elapsed time."	etc.  It's quite clear that the five minute turn length
is
given for that specific sort of situation, ie in a timed scenario
situation
where timing is important, and that for other games it should be treated
loosely.  But that isn't really the point.  Even if it is a five minute
turn, clearing up the weapon and getting it back into action is ONE of
your
two actions.  That may be 30 seconds of the turn.  It may be 4 min and
30
sec of the turn.  It isn't divided up into *exact* amounts, with *this*
type of action taking x amount of time, and *that* type of action taking
y
amount of time...  Maybe the other action in your turn is spent in
movement, running like hell from the guys that shot your SAW gunner.  Or
maybe you're returning fire before checking the wounded.  Or maybe you
took
three casualties and the squad needs to catch their breath before going
on.
 Or whatever.

A reorg action isn't a "long" period of time necessarily.

Here's another way of looking at it.  Right now, as the rules stand, if
your SAW gunner goes down as an unknown casualty, the only way to find
out
what happens to him is to use a reorg action to check your wounded.  He
may
be dead, he may be stabilized.	But just 'cause the SAW goes out of
action,
doesn't necessarily mean that the gunner is toast and it's time go get
someone else on the job.  The squad leader doesn't know right away. 
Maybe
the gunner is stunned.	Maybe dead.  Mabye tripped and fell.  Maybe the
weapon is jammed.  But the rules takes this unknown situation into
account
with the "unknown casualty" result, and the necessity of finding out
what
actually happened by using a reorg action.

How about this:

If a special weapon gunner goes down and is killed outright, then the
weapon is assumed to be either destroyed, or damaged beyond reuse in the
current fight and maybe returnable to service after maintance (after the
battle).  The hit on the gunner packed a real punch...

If the gunner is an "unknown" casualty, then the weapon may be
recoverable.
 The squad undertakes a reorg action (as it would to check any of it's
wounded).  If the gunner turns out to be a "stabilized" wounded, then
another model may take up the weapon.  If he's dead, then on a 1 - 3 the
weapon is recoverable and on 4 - 6 it isn't.  This takes into account
the
varying amount of damage a trooper may suffer.	A shot that kills him
outright is one that obviously packed a punch, but one that gets him
slowly
or that isn't so obvious (his buddies had to actually check to see,
rather
than saying "ok that's one of his legs, I guess he's had it...") gives
the
weapon a better chance of staying in action.

This keeps things simple, and takes into account the fact that weapons
may
indeed be damaged beyond use, but gives quite a good chance to the
survivors to get it back into action.

>    This is another reason why I argue against the extra re-org action.
>No one is talking about the procedure of picking up and using a weapon
>lasting over 5 minutes.  However, we can all imagine a guy dropping a
>conventional SAW and having his buddy pick it up and start firing
within
>a few seconds.  If the average is some kind of arithmetic mean or
>median, that little scene I described would cancel out dozens of time
>when it would take 5 minutes to get the support weapon going, and would
>create an average closer to 2.5 minutes.  Thus, the remove suppression
>action would be more than enough to cover the average.

But the supression and the reorg actions represent completely different
things, and, more importantly, this doesn't account for the fact that
the
weapon may in fact be damaged beyond use.  With this system, a squad is
going to be able to keep the special weapon going down to the last guy
standing as long as they can unsupress and stay calm... irrespective of
what the gunner got hit with...

And there's my $0.02

Adrian