Re: Oerjan Ohlson's Wet Dreams

Laserlight wrote:

>>>Hmmm, wet dreams about infantry carried AT weaponry...  Yikes.
>>
>>When you design LAWs for a living, your perspective sometimes gets
>>a bit odd :-/
> 
>Actually, Oerjan, you said something to the effect of "even if I and
my
>colleagues work 48 hours a day for the next 100 years, which won't 
>happen even in my wettest dreams"... most sane people complain >about
that kind of schedule instead of dreaming about it.

You missed the first part of that sentence, which said "Not unless the
armour developers stop working last year and don't lift a finger for
the next century or two, ..." 

Having your opponents/competitors lay down all their research for a
couple centuries is surely a wet dream in any research-intensive
industry, don't you think? <G>

Peter Mancini wrote:

>>>P.S. and yes I know from first hand experience.
>>
>>Tanker, infantry or weapon designer experience? All three are valid,
>>but tend to be somewhat different :-/
> 
>I should have been more clear - when I was suggesting a psychiatrist I
>was suggesting one from frist hand experience!  

Oh, *that* <g> I've already had ulcers caused (mainly) by stress; I
know myself well enough to avoid them in the future :-/

>So, let's rethink this problem through.  What is it that makes this
>system not work?  We know the sympton is bad odds.  We know that
>small arms fire is explicitly excluded.  Is the IVAR just simply too
>powerful in it's impact die?  D12 (doubled for major hits...) 

I can see three options:

1) the IAVR's impact die is too big (too easy to penetrate, esp. for
major hits)

2) the probability to get a major hit is too high - Regular soldiers
will get Major hits at the tank with more than half the shots, and even
Greens manage it almost half the time. 

3) the performance of the armour is much too erratic.

So what to do about them?

1) is easy to modify, of course - just reduce the IAVR's impact die.
Might make it too weak against infantry - though IAVRs aren't really
designed to shoot infantry in the open :-/ If they hide in a bunker the
IAVR works fine, but the bunker counts as a "vehicle".

2) can be modified by reducing the IAVR's *firepower* die, but that
won't help very much. Besides the *total* hit rates (major + minor
hits) are OK against *stationary* targets, and reducing the firepower
die would hurt that.

3) Tom Barclay suggested a solution here: let level-X armour roll XD12
instead of 1D12*X.

At the moment I prefer 3). It still gives the IAVR a chance to knock
the vehicle out completely, but it is *very* small; the number of
System and Suspension hits would go up a bit (since the number of
non-penetrating hits goes up) - which is IMO as it should be, since
those bitz are where a real IAVR gunner would aim at anyway! Haven't
tested it yet though, so I don't know if there are any hidden snags :-/

I'd also like to increase the range die of a moving vehicle by one or
two steps if the firing weapon lacks an FCS or Guidance. (You can
assume that the IAVR has a low-grade FCS to help it hit moving targets
if you like, but it's not as good as the FCS on a vehicle or a real GMS
guidance system!). I'll let Allan figure out the exact formulation <g>

>Perhaps the IVAR should come in flavors the differentiate the Impact
>die.  Start at D6 for something as old as a Panzerfaust and go up to
>D10 for something as modern as an Armbrust.

Um - OK, if you mean the WW2 Panzerfaust, but I'd probably rate that as
a D2 or D1 impact against armour :-/ IIRC Armbrust's warhead is fairly
small; today's Panzerfaust III family is a fair bit more potent... 
Yes, different IAVR types should realistically have different impact
dice just like different assault rifles do. But I'd try Tom's idea
first.

Later,

Oerjan Ohlson
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
- Hen3ry