RE: [SGII] Fire of AT Missiles at disperesed tagets

G'day,

Replying to a few emails here.

John asked:
> So, if you can just dialup the phaser appropriately, then
> why would you ever use it on the lower setting?

The flippant side of me is dying to ask.... why don't we just nuke them
all from orbit and save the hassle?  ;) ;)

More seriously, because other settings work better in those
circumstances. I was more thinking of a case where (in game turns) it
may take an action to go from optimised "anti-tank" to optimised
"anti-infantry" and you've just been shooting at tanks for ages and
suddenly an infantry group pops up and threatens your flank so you want
to do something to freak them long enough to give you the breathing
space to get properly prepared. With "conventional" weaponry it'd make
most sense to put grenades or machine guns on the infantry, but in
another background where weapons don't automatically match that split up
of weapons then you might have a different set of options to draw from.

> It is gamey and not taking into account real-world factors to
> permit people to shoot off their anti-armor weapons at every
> clump of bushes they desire with no thought to the future.

In a conventional setting I agree with you, I was thinking of other
backgrounds (which I freely admit aren't everyone's cup of tea). Its
more a case of, "you're absolutely right for background one, but if
people were silly enough to play background 2,3 or 4 what is the best
way of representing what's going on."

> At a certain point you're not playing Stargrunt, you're
> playing "My house rules sorta kinda based on Stargrunt mechanics."

And as you've bought the game, and you're playing it happily and
assuming you're not forcing anyone else to do likewise against their
will, then there shouldn't be a problem with that to my mind ;)

> If you are operating in the sort of universe where there
> are 100% reliable electronics that can calibrate power
> outputs so precisely as to "stun" 100% of all human targets
> (from a 8 year old child to a 310 lb man on an adrenaline high)...

My bets being that if the kid was 3 not 8 then they'd need more juice
than the big guy ;)

> without causing any long-term harm to any of them,
> you are no longer playing a science fiction game. 
> You're playing a fantasy game.

You say that as if there were actually an immense difference rather than
a sliding continuum. A physics guy here at work thinks what I do as a
hobby is childish because it involves acceptance of faster-than-light
and anti-grav. 

Anyways I'm the first to admit that such fantastical backgrounds as a
Star-Trek-like phaser uses one aren't for everyone, but for those who do
want to dabble in them thought has to be given about what the altered
doctrine would mean and the implications for game mechanics/game play.

Laserlight wrote:
> If you can make anti-armor effective and in unlimited supply,
> there's no point in building armored vehicles in the first place.

Still better against those that don't have unlimited supply. Not every
nation in a background will be on equal footing. You may still want to
have armoured vehicles if you're surrounded by enemy X which can't just
crack you like an egg, even if enemy Z can and there is no cheaper way
of stopping X that also stops Z (or the means of stopping Z doesn't also
stop X). Thinking from the animal world and projecting into the
technological world there are very many cases (including your own immune
system) where the one force uses armoured vehicles to stop X because
that's most cost effective even though Z can get through it, while they
use shields to stop Z even though the lower tech solid slugs of X can
get through that.

>  I'd rather solve it by giving the players the same reason
> to conserve shots that the reall troops would have -- you
> never know when you might find a tank you didn't know was there....

You can still do that in the alternate backgrounds, just in different
spots with different choices to be made.

Cheers

Beth