Re: My own comments on Re: mixing technology force in Dirtside

--- John K Lerchey <lerchey@andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:

> To be fair (or whatever) I designed this force of
> what I had sitting in a 
> box when I decided that I wanted to build a DSII
> OGRE force.  The banshee 
> looks (to me) more like a saturation rocket weapon
> than the P.E. missile 
> tank does.  The banshee has twin (connected) boxes
> that are reminiscent 
> of rocket pods, while the P.E. missile tank has
> three missiles on rails. 
> It *looks* like a SLAM to me. :)

Digging through my OGRE minis I find I agree. 

> Absolutely.  No argument at all.  By the same token,
> it was pretty clear 
> that the French during that period were fully
> prepared to win WWI.	Sadly 

And would have!  Char 1s would be really great to
break through trench lines defended by machine gun
nests.	The French fielded a force any officer in 1917
or 1918 would have loved to have and probably would
have won the war.

> for them, the Germans were gearing up for WWII. :) 
> I've found that my 
> SLAMs are not terribley effective against OGREs, but
> that's ok, 'cause the 
> missile tanks in OGRE were not that effective in the
> original game. Thus, 

I'm a GEV addict in the original game.	Can't have
that, I end up with SHVY and HVY and very little
finesse.  Missle tanks are just too slow in my
opinion.

> quite cutting edge.  Thus, the MBTs have HKPs
> instead of MDCs (OGRE 
> secondary batteries are MDCs, so I wanted the MBTs
> to be not quite as 
> good), but OTOH, the tank destroyers do have MDCs,
> albeit in a fixed mount 
> (those things look like Swedish S tanks!).  I wanted

Which mini is that?

> I use stealth in some of my vehicles as well, but
> not all on all of them. 
> I think that sometimes that die shift will save your
> bacon, so when it 
> does, it was worth it. :)

Yeah, some things just feel right regardless of what
statistical analysis says.  And I trust my instincts.

> I agree with that as well.  However, most rules
> don't.  Thus, if you're 

Is it just me or can you sit down with every single
in-print Nappy game (and all the OOP ones too) and
determine which nation the designer has stacks and
stacks of lead for, and which ones he just can't work
up the interest to buy lead for?

> Similarly, I don't expect my SLAM tanks to act like
> GSMs, so again, while 
> I may not be delighted with the number of kills they
> pull, I don't have 
> any false expectations, and try to use them where
> they'll do some good. :)

Oh, yeah.  Sounds good.

Roman doctrine is pretty focused on killing the
enemy's main armor.  I justify every vehicle in terms
of how do I kill the enemy's tanks with it.  The IFVs
carry infantry which carries GMS.  I use them like old
dragoons, racing ahead to sieze crappy terrain in good
positions and harassing the enemy with missile fire
from them.  Everything else is focused on either
killing tanks or protecting the tank-killers.  So we'd
never build SLAM-armed vehicles.

Whence comes this focus?  Well, from a jaundiced view
of the utility of light infantry alone except in
exceptional circumstances.  And from a strategic
doctrine focused on seizing resources and population
centers intact.  Far better to smash up some armored
units with precision fire than to focus on dug-in
infantry because cleaning them out is a mess.  But if
you chew up the armor units then the infantry has very
little choice but to die in place--no tactical
mobility, little long-range firepower, and no ability
to protect their logistics.  Besides which, infantry
comes in two flavors.  Numerous and crappy, or good
but few and far between.  The crappy infantry flees
before armor, and you can bypass the guys that know
what end of their weapons get hot. 

John

		
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