Re: Traveller + SG2/DS2/?

Allan Goodall wrote:

> This extends to squads, too. There's no reason that a squad with two 
> support weapons and regular small arms couldn't engage in three or
more 
> targets, splitting up their firepower as necessary. The RAW strictly 
> forbid this. It's one fire action per target.
> 
> An example of this would be a Red Team squad on a hill spur defending 
> against three Blue Team squads approaching it from three different 
> directions. Red squad could fire at only two Blue squads. The third
can 
> not be fired upon. This runs up against another issue, the requirement

> that missile weapons in a squad fire with their own action.
> 
> I would be in favour of allowing a squad to split its fire among as
many 
> targets as it wants, but using up both actions to do so. However, this

> rule doesn't help with vehicles, and I'd prefer to use the same
general 
> rule for vehicles as I would for infantry.

Instead of a new rule why not reorganise your forces? Weapons teams are 
often only given gereral enguagement orders and fire on their own 
intative. Instead of one "squad" why not Two oe Three sections? i.e. a 
main rifle team with attached SAW, then your attached weapons team. all 
under the same leader.
> 
> Would it be good enough to allow units, all units, to split fire among

> multiple targets with a single Fire Action, but at a drop in Quality 
> Level? For my rationale, let's go back to Red Squad on the hill spur. 
> They could spend a single action firing in every direction, but their 
> Quality Die would drop a level due to the Squad Leader being so busy 
> that he can't direct fire adequately against any one target.
> 
> Three other options: 1) drop the Quality Die one level per target
after 
> the first target (Quality Die down 1 for 2 targets, down 2 for three 
> targets, down 3 for four targets, etc.), or 2) the Squad Leader can 
> associate himself with one attack, which would be resolved at the
normal 
> Quality Die, but all other attacks are shifted down 1, 3) a
combination 
> of 1 and 2. Regardless of the option used, the player can always fire
at 
> one target with a single action at no penalty. And one infantry weapon

> could only fire at a single target per activation.

Food for thought, though it might still be more efficant to breack down 
to mutiple teams.
> 
> This brings up yet _another_ point. The above rules still limit a
single 
> weapon (like a support weapon) to a single target. A great many
weapons 
> can engage more than one target in 3 to 5 minutes. I touched on this 
> previously with regard to turret traverse rules. A modern MBT could 
> engage quite a few targets in 3 minutes, yet in SG2 it's allowed to
fire 
> only once per activation. How do we handle that?

Still working on this one, though at least for vehicle.... Naw got to go

read....
> 
> How do we handle weapons like HMGs that suppress areas and not 
> individual squads? Right now all fire is aimed at an enemy squad, when

> in reality an HMG has a specific area it deals with. What happens if
the 
> HMG wants to defend an area that is covered by two squads? Why can't
the 
> HMG engage both squads? I came across this same problem in _Hardtack_ 
> (SG2 rules for the American Civil War). Canister fire from a cannon 
> would rip into a line of men. It very rarely only hit one squad. It's 
> easy enough to apply these sorts of weapons to multiple squads, but
then 
> you get the player's God's Eye View interfering again. They will 
> deliberately fire so that the weapon hits more than one squad in an 
> effort to gains suppression and Confidence Tests on as many squads as 
> possible, instead of firing for the most damaging effect. I haven't 
> playtested this enough to know how big an issue this is.

Beaten zone rules.... Yes, a general supression fire rule might be nice,

deignate a area that you are using automatic weapons to supress.
> 
> As you can see, once you start down the path to fixing some of these 
> things, you very soon begin to think, "Gee, maybe I should just write
a 
> whole new set of rules."

Yes I have run into this problem many times, one of the reasons I gave 
up on 40k.

>> I wrote up rules for tank riders long ago as well. I see they are not

>> up on stargrunt.ca
>> in the house rules area. Clearly this should be remedied (I should 
>> also post the
>> range-band shifted combat movement rule too). And my implementations 
>> for missing DS
>> systems into SG2. They're all written - just reformat and maybe take
a 
>> latter day editing
>> pass. Hmmm. I'll see what can be done this weekend. 

Still mulling this over ....

>> It would also be nice to be able to carom a civilian car at high 
>> speeds through SG2 urban
>> terrain and have some mechanism for resolving whether the driver 
>> crashes, fishtails or
>> makes it look like its just running on rails.

Find a copy of CarWars.

-- 
Evyn

"Scientia Est Potentia"

http://ceecom.net