Re: (FT,SG) News Break

On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 18:51:52 +0000, "John C" <john1x@hotmail.com> wrote:

>Sure, more accurate artillery would be more "realistic" (although it's
easy 
>enough to PSB accuracy away in an SF game), but devastatingly accurate 
>artillery strikes in SGII scale can just...suck..  Makes for a very
quick, 
>and generally quite boring, game when Death From Above wipes out one
side on 
>turn two.

I've talked to Oerjan about this, as I was contemplating making some
changes
to vehicles and artillery for SG2. Yes, you're right, if you have a
one-sided
combat (i.e. Afghanistan 2001/2002) it's going to be boring gaming the
one
side. However, there are compensatory factors.

The thing that gets me about artillery in SG2 is that the second and
third
tubes of a three tube fire mission deviate too much. Oerjan suggests
that they
shouldn't deviate more than the blast radius of a single tube. That
makes
artillery a lot more devastating. However, the flip side with modern
artillery
is that if you are fighting against an equal force you have a major
problem
with counter battery fire. You may get your one fire mission, but a
second or
third may be out of the question (or you could force the issue and
possibly
lose your artillery assets).

Then there are the other assets around that would take out rounds in
bound to
a battle area. This is more futuristic stuff, though I understand work
is
being done in this area. Rounds would be taken out by anti-artillery
assets
behind your lines. This could be anything from artillery and missiles
designed
to take out artillery shells, to some sort of "sandcaster" idea, to
brigade
and divisional level EW assets designed to spoof enemy artillery.

The idea I came up with, but never finished, was the equivalent of an
air
defence environment. I was going to call it ArtDE. You called artillery
as in
the standard rules, but there was a possibility that the artillery
rounds
would be blocked inbound. Even if they made it, there would be units in
your
force on the table that could, possibly, stop the rounds from hitting.
If they
hit, though, they would be far more accurate than currently allowed in
the
rules.

Note that the ArtDE would also give a rationale for not allowing a unit
to
have artillery when, in modern combat, they would. "The ArtDE is so
intense,
you don't have any artillery assets available. So, yes, we would
normally just
bombard the bunker from orbit (it's the only way to be sure!), but
instead you
have to take out the aliens the hard way."

>Increases the tension level, makes the 
>game better.  For me, at least.

I fully understand that. I even agree with it a certain amount. The
problem I
have is one of suspension of disbelief. It really _bothers_ me that SG2
artillery is so inaccurate when modern day artillery is more accurate.

On the other hand, as I said originally in this thread, you could play
Vietnam
scenarios almost without modification by simply ignoring the EW rules,
Power
Armour, and the other obviously sci-fi components of SG2.

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

"The only normal people are the ones you don't know 
well!" - Joe Ancis