Re: FIRE TEAMS IN SG II

On Tue, 26 Feb 2002 08:17:40 -0600 (CST), DAWGFACE47@webtv.net wrote:

>sure they live together, train together, travel together, and fight
>together, but, fighting by fire teams instead of whole  squads makes
>much more  sense.

This discussion comes up several times on the list.

My personal feeling is that SG2 shouldn't use fireteams. The mechanics
don't
easily support it. Fireteams are implicit in the squad formation and the
game
scale. 

I have run with small squads, but they tend to be for elite units. When
you
take an SG2 squad and drop it to fireteam size, you have the following
results:

- more units to activate, thus a slowing down of the game
- more forgiving morale, because squads typically take fewer morale
checks
before they are wiped out (and SG2 is already too easy on morale)

To do fireteams properly, you should have restrictions on their movement
with
regard to the other fireteam in the squad, and you should have one
cohesive
morale level for both fireteams in the squad. This requires a number of
house
rules.

Plenty of people use fireteams in SG2, I just feel that they are
implicit in
the squad set up. It's the difference between playing Squad Leader and
Up
Front, to use board games as analogies. The forthcoming FMA Skirmish
game
would be better suited to fireteams.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't try using fireteams in SG2, just
that
from extensive playing I find that SG2 isn't "fine grained" enough to
allow
fireteams as separate squads except with the use of house rules.

Allan Goodall		       agoodall@hyperbear.com
http://www.hyperbear.com

"Now, see, if you combine different colours of light,
 you get white! Try that with Play-Doh and you get
 brown! How come?" - Alan Moore & Kevin Nolan,