Re: Traveller + SG2/DS2/?

I'm replying to a bunch of stuff all at once here.

> Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2005 08:19:24 +0100 From: Infojunky
> <infojunky@ceecom.net>
> 
> I'm gonna have to go back to the real world on this, in rough and
> varied terrain sometimes feet are better than vehicles.

I don't disagree, though in the far future you have to take GEV and grav
vehicles into account, too.

>> One of the reasons for my change in vehicle rules is to allow 
>> vehicle-on-vehicle games in SG2 using 1/144, 1/285 or 1/300 scale 
>> vehicles. That would necessitate faster vehicle movement, as not
>> all vehicle-on-vehicle engagements are going to involve a lot of
>> infantry.
> 
> 
> That game exists it's called Dirtside, Stargrunt 2 is about the PBI.
> If I want to play armor I'll use a game that is centered on armor,
> not try to fit a infantry based game to it.

DS2 doesn't handle vehicle-on-vehicle, it handles
vehicle-platoon-on-vehicle-platoon. I wasn't clear when I replied to
you, but later on I pointed out that I wanted the ability to do
something like 10 tanks versus 10 tanks. That's too small a scale for
DS2.

> Ah, I see now. Your hung up on the the time scale. Ok I see the basis
> of some of your arguments then. Still we are talking about combat, to
> time is fuzzy.

You can't help but be "hung up on time scale". We know how far a unit
can move in an activation, both in combat and off road. We know the
ground scale. So, we know how far a unit can travel in an ambiguous
amount of time (the turn). Comparing this to the real world, we get a
time scale, whether we want one or not.

>> It may be too drastic to have them roll 2D12 for combat movement.
>> I'm still thinking about this. I think playtesting will shake out
>> what might work best.
> 
> 
> You mean like Page 23?

Yeah, like that.

It's been a while since I read the rule book all the way through. I did
it when I first bought the game. I did it when I wrote the SG2 index,
which is on my web site. I also read most of it two years ago when I
began work on a board game implementation of SG2. I have it fixed in my
head that someone told me in GenCon that vehicles can't do combat moves,
so I don't think I've played them. The problem with being stuck mostly
playing solitaire or with people you've taught is that this kind of
mistake goes unchecked.

I'll begin using combat moves for vehicles all the time... if I ever get
to play SG2 again.

By the way, please let me know if there's any interest in a board game
implementation of SG2. You'd need your own boards (ASL or Squad Leader
boards work well), but I've finished the rules. All that needs to be
done is a tweaking of counter sheets. I have counter sheets suitable for
humans, and for Phalons.

> Now that is a good idea. Kinda. How much detail do we really need in
> a infantry game. It's like getting all the available Rhinemetal data
> to model how all the weapons act in the lab and using those ideal 
> conditions to model the real field action of the weapons systems.

I was hoping to keep it simple, in keeping with the rules themselves. As
I mentioned earlier, perhaps giving a vehicle a minimum for their combat
move would suffice.

> Now that could work. Maybe beyond Bugs don't Surf, Jon might want to
> do a vehicle options book.

Jon promised BDS when SG2 came out in 1996. So far the only work to be
"published" for BDS are the Phalon beta test rules that I came up with
(and which are on my site). It's unlikely we'll see BDS before FMAS, so
it's unlikely we'll get BDS before SG2's tenth anniversary. At this
rate, you can probably start hoping for a vehicle book sometime in 2012.
*grin*

> The eighties and nineties Navel Special Forces at Subic in the 
> Philippines and police patrol work in cities. The funny thing is
> dealing with a drunken Admiral is a lot like dealing white trash at
> closing time.... Funny how life hands you things.

It really doesn't surprise me that a drunken Admiral is the same as a
drunken anybody else. *L*

> Gonna have to play that one, but it looks like a keeper.

That seems to be the consensus, what little consensus we get in the SG2
community anyway.

> Humm..... A sensor vs Stealth kit opposed roll thingy.... Might not
> be all that bad an idea.

Either that or incorporate stealth and sensors into the to-hit roll.

> The hard part is to figure out what needs a real change or just a
> tweak.

Or what should just go into your own, do-it-yourself rules... After a
while my brain starts to hurt!

>> I've seen a lot of games where combat takes place on what's
>> essentially a salt flat with a few bushes and houses.
> 
> 
> Then why are the infantry there fighting?

That's the point. Many players tend not to enough terrain on a board.

> Yes, reread that section Small rapid fire cannow should get their
> impact die not the general die.

I'll have to do that, but my understanding is that _all_ heavy weapons
do D8 impact on dispersed targets. Do you know, off hand, what page to
check. I should have it in the index, but I suspect it's not there.
(Time to work on the index, again?)

> Thomas Barclay wrote:
> 
> From: "Laserlight" <laserlight@quixnet.net>
> 
> If a vehicle doesn't move very fast in relation to infantry, it ought
>  to be because the player says "I'm going to get shot up if I try 
> this", not because the rules say "a tank can't move faster than 
> 6mph--not even a grav tank in a hurry".

That's exactly what I'd like to accomplish.

> From: Indy <kochte@stsci.edu>
> 
> So, out of curiousity, what is our antiquated view, and what should
> it be corrected to? :-)

I just noticed that Oerjan replied to this. The antiquated view was that
reactive armour was only good against HEAT, and no good against KE. As
he pointed out, the truth is far more complex than that.

> From: Oerjan Ohlson <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com>
> 
> On the StarGrunt timescale, at least. In DirtSide OTOH I'd rate the
> speed as more important, since the DS game turn represents a much
> longer period of time.

I should have been clearer that I was talking SG2, solely.

> Same accel, not higher. Depends on what mark of Merkava you're
> looking at, of course - the earlier ones were a bit underpowered,
> giving the Merkavas a reputation for sluggishness.

Thanks for the clarification! I wish I had a good book on modern armour.

> From: Adrian <adrian@stargrunt.ca>
> 
> This is how the vehicle movement rules in SGII work already.

I explained my mistake on this, above, but thank you for the
clarification!

> However, I also agree with what Jon says on page 31 in the
> introduction to the Vehicles section - mostly they're "totally
> unsuited to the kind of battle we are trying to simulate in SGII."

Unfortunately the type of battle that Jon is trying to simulate is very
much in the minority today, and probably in the future. It's fine for
special ops games, or pure infantry games, but I simply prefer something
that could handle a more typical combat. As I've said in the past, you
could take SG2 and with only a little bit of tweaking come out with a
nifty Vietnam War game.

Also, I'd like to use the mechanics in SG2 for some tank-on-tank
battles. Granted that _these_ aren't very typical, either, but they are
just as much a staple of sci-fi as infantry-only battles.

> That isn't to say adding rules is a bad thing - just that in the end
> it seems to be making a 25mm scale sort-of-Dirtside, more than
> anything else...

Except that Dirtside is very much played with a group of tanks as the
basic maneuvering unit. I want something lower level than that. The
ideas we had for vehicles in FMAS on the playtest list might work, too,
but they are missing a lot of chrome and they are probably _too_
detailed for what I want.

Allan
-- 

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