Re: [SG2] Alternate Quick Combat Resolution (Modified Impact Versus Armour Procedure)

Neat -- I'll give this a try.  Thanks, Allan.  

I'm really surprised at your groups response to power armor being more
powerful.  My group won't play SG2 if there is any PA on the board. 
They are "so powerful you might as well not play."  

Nick

-----Original Message-----
From: agoodall@att.net
Sent: Feb 4, 2004 12:42 PM
To: GZG Mailing List <gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu>
Subject: [SG2] Alternate Quick Combat Resolution (Modified Impact Versus
Armour Procedure)

This house rule is part of my quest to speed up combat resolution in 
Stargrunt II. 

I've playtested the following rule and it seems to work rather well,
with 
some caveats explained in the design notes at the bottom. This is used
as an 
alternative to the quick combat resolution system in the book.

ARMOUR RATING SYSTEM

Figures do not have armour dice. Instead, they have an armour rating.
The 
armour rating is equal to the armour die in the book divided in half.
For 
example, a figure with an armour rating of D8 would have an armour
rating of 
4.

The armour ratings look like this:

Armour Die   Armour Rating
N/A	     1
D4	     2
D6	     3
D8	     4
D10	     5
D12	     6

The armour rating is calculated _after_ any armour dice shifts. A figure
in 
D8 armour behind hard cover would have D12 armour, which results in an
armour 
rating of 6. A D12 Power Armour figure behind soft cover already has the

maximum die possible for armour, so it would continue to have an armour 
rating of 6.

The combat resolution system remains the same up to, and including, the 
calculation of the number of potential casualties. The attacking player
rolls 
a number of impact dice equal to the number of potential casualties.
These 
dice are compared to the armour rating of the figures in the squad. If
an 
impact die exceeds the armour rating, one of the potential casualties is

wounded. If the impact die exceeds twice the armour rating, one of the 
potential casualties is killed. Otherwise, the armour protected the
potential 
casualty.

(The procedure is essentially the same as if the defending player rolled
his 
armour dice at once and all the dice rolled the same number.)

Once the number of wounded and killed figures is determined, roll
randomly to 
see which figures were wounded and which were killed, and complete the
combat 
resolution phase as normal.

To speed up combat even further, players should round off fractional 
potential casualties instead of rolling for the fraction. For instance,
if 
there are 2 and 7/8 potential casualties, the players should choose to
round 
up the potential casualties to 3 (or, if they prefer less bloody
conflicts, 
round down to 2).

Design Notes

SG2 combat resolution takes a long time, a little too long, in my
opinion. It 
only takes a single opposed die roll to see if a squad misses or
suppresses 
an opposing squad. The number of dice rolls goes way up when a unit hits
the 
target and causes casualties. This is because of the armour roll. You
have to 
make an opposed die roll for each potential casualty. You can't just
roll a 
bunch of dice at once and get the results for all the figures.

The benefit of this house rule is speed. Opposed rolls are slower than 
unopposed rolls. Each player has to pick up the correct dice and roll
them. 
In multi-player situations there is a good chance that at least one of
these 
players will be distracted. Often one of the players wants to be the
last one 
to roll, and so he waits until his opponent has rolled the dice before
he 
rolls his. In testing, a combat that resulted in three or more potential

casualties took between two thirds and half as long to resolve in this
system 
than in the regular system. This is simply because it's faster for one
player 
to pick up three dice and compare it to a rating number than it is for
two 
players to dice off against each other three ore more times.

Another benefit is that you can have figures with an armour rating of 1.
This 
would be suitable for non-combatants without any armour (such as unarmed

townspeople).

There are a couple of caveats to this system.

There is a slightly higher chance of scoring a casualty under this
system 
than under the regular combat resolution system. The average roll for D8

armour is 4.5, while in this system the armour rating is a 4. This
doesn't 
have a huge effect in the game. If players are worried about it, simply
round 
down all fractional potential casualties. Example: if there were 2 and
7/8 
potential casualties, the players would round this down to 2.

With this house rule it is impossible to wound a figure in D8 armour or 
better with a weapon with a D4 impact. Likewise, a figure in D12 power
armour 
is impervious to weapons with a D6 impact or lower. This isn't
necessarily a 
bad thing. Should an archaic musket have _any_ chance of wounding
someone in 
power armour? Scenarios where there is that great a discrepancy between 
impact rating and armour rating are fairly rare. Only archaic firearms
have 
D4 impact, and only light autopistols and anti-armour submunitions
against 
dispersed targets have D6 impact. If it's an issue for players, they can

simply choose to use the regular combat resolution whenever there is a 
difference of three die types or more between the impact die and the
armour 
die. (The anti-armour submunitions issue is the biggie here. A simple 
solution is to shift the impact up one versus PA, as they are dispersed
like 
infantry but armoured like light vehicles.)

With this system it is impossible for weapons with an impact die of D10
or 
less to roll more than twice the armour rating of power armour troops (5
or 
6). This means that it's impossible to kill a power armour trooper
outright, 
unless the same trooper takes two hits in the same fire combat. In 
playtesting this tends to strengthen power armour troops. Comments I
received 
suggest that this was actually a _welcome_ change. PA troops could still
be 
killed (if one trooper took two hits in the same combat resolution, or
if a 1 
was rolled on the trooper's recovery roll), and as mentioned above they
are 
slightly more likely to be wounded than in the regular combat resolution

system. What this house rule does is eliminate some of the quirky
situations, 
like a musket rolling a 2 on a D4 killing a PA trooper whose armour roll
was 
a 1. Note that the quick combat resolution system in the rule book has
this 
same issue, as each potential casualty is simply treated as a wounded
figure. 
The quick combat system in the rulebook applies this effect to all
figures, 
not just PA. Again, if this bothers players they may want to use the
regular 
combat resolution system against PA.

Any questions and comments are welcome!

--
Allan Goodall		   agoodall@att.net
http://www.hyperbear.com   agoodall@hyperbear.com