Re: [SG] No idea what I am doing. Help!

On Wed, 25 April 2001, Andy Cowell wrote:

> The rules make no case for firing support weapons as a group without
> small arms fire.  I'm not stating that this is necessarily logical,
> I'm just stating that is how the rules are.

Upon re-reading the rules, you are correct.

I think there is a hole in Jon's logic when it came to support weapons.
The rules, as written, seem to make the consistent assumption that a
squad is made up of troopers, a leader and a support weapon.
Occasionally there will be a second support weapon, like a GMS, for
specific uses but it won't be used against infantry.

This is just my interpretation of what I see as Jon's thinking in the
rules.

Multiple support weapons firing isn't included in the rules at all. A
couple of years ago I presented the situation I created for my Plasma
Ambush scenario: a bunch of mercs in 4 man squads wearing Power Armour
but armed only with plasma guns conduct an ambush against infantry and
vehicles. That's 4 support weapons in a squad of PA.

I asked how people would allow these to be fired, assuming it wasn't
cheesy. The rules I used, out of a consensus opinion on the list, was as
follows:

Against infantry - Quality Die + FP Die for each plasma gun. 
Against vehicles - Quality Die + FP Die for one plasma gun, with each
gun in the squad firing one at a time.

This isn't as cheesy as it sounds. It gave squads with D8 + D6 + D6 + D6
+ D6. Lots of nasty damage... if they hit. They often didn't hit beyond
the 3rd range band.

The conclusion, though, was that there should be nothing stopping a
squad consisting only of support weapons from all firing with one
action. Nor should there be a problem with two support weapons firing at
one target, and two at another. In practice, this worked great, but all
figures were using the same support weapon, so the FP and Impact dice
were all identical.

The implication of the passage you cite in the rules is that a squad has
one support weapon. The rules don't actually cover more than one support
weapon in a squad. The rules don't allow them to fire separately, nor do
they prevent it.

The consensus at the time was to allow it (albeit this was at a time
when the SG2:FT ratio was much lower than it is now, and there wasn't a
huge amount of discussion on it).

Allan Goodall - agoodall@canada.com
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