Re: [sg] Support Weapon Questions (Somewhat related)

On Fri, 19 January 2001, "Jack Mosquera" wrote:

> One thing that I found missing in the rules, or at least not covered
well,
> is the use of SAW/Machinegun Teams.

Quite true. This was sort of discussed earlier, too, with regard to the
firepower and penetration abilities of heavy machine guns.

In one respect, this isn't really any different than how it's treated in
Squad Leader. A machine gun fires once in a turn in Squad Leader. Its
effects do something to the target... or they don't, just like SG2. A
suppression marker in SG2 (or 2 or 3...) simulate fire falling onto that
squad throughout the turn.

On the other hand, I think it's ASL that has the concept of firelanes,
or something like it. In real life, a lot of fire is poured down by a
machine gun. You don't want to try running through a machine gun's fire
lane. This isn't supported in SG2.

(This got me thinking about something. Machine guns don't actually fire
in flat trajectories, like a laser. They have to fire in some sort of
eliptical trajectory due to gravitational effects. You could argue,
then, that depending on the range, a machine gun firing at a distant
squad has to "arc" the shots up to hit the target. However, a laser --
like a vehicle mounted HEL -- should be able to fire in a flat
trajectory and cut through anything in its path. A gauss SAW would still
have to worry about gravity, but to a lesser extent due to the weapon's
high velocity. I'm not sure how this could be implemented, though.)

> Machinegun teams, according to the rules would only be able to fire
once,
> even if they had two activations, where in position, set up with a
field of
> fire, loads of ammunition (belt/battery/box feeds), and containing a
gunner
> and other crew.

Bear in mind that there is errata on this. A weapon may fire once PER
ACTIVATION, not once per turn as stated in the rules.

Allan Goodall - agoodall@canada.com
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