Re: [GZG] DSIII

Grant Ladue wrote:

 >I would limit the length of firefights within a turn. This is
 >primarily an issue of fairness within a game.  It seemed to me that it
 >is very possible to have quite long firefights where few players are
 >involved and everyone else is sitting on their thumbs.
[...]
 >I would limit these to something like 5 rounds of mutual fire (exact 
number to
 >be determined).  A firefight that doesn't end within those 5 rounds
would
 >be considered "continuing" into the next game turn (ie everyone in the
 >firefight is stuck there).
[...]
 >I think this would certainly help keep the game flowing, especially
 >in a convention atmosphere.  I think it would also help keep units
from
 >moving a long distance in a one sided firefight.

The main reason for the thumb-sitting issue is that DS3 is designed 
primarily as a two-player game, rather than as a
multiple-player-per-side 
participation game. The "opposing sides alternate activating one unit
(or 
group of units) each" mechanic works very well when there's only one
player 
per side... but if there are larger multiple-player teams on each side
the 
waiting can be very long indeed for inactive players, particularly if
the 
team (or team leader) chooses to activate most or all of one team
player's 
units before going on to the next team player's units. From Mark K.'s
post 
I get the impression that this was a factor at least in the Sunday
morning 
DS3 game.

So yeah, we're aware of it; but so far our best-working solution has
been 
to rely on the team leaders to distribute activations "fairly"... and
that 
solution relies on having team leaders that are fairly experienced with
the 
game, making it impractical for real-world use :-(

I'm not sure limiting FireFight lengths to X rounds would help much
though, 
for two reasons:

* Exept when waiting for off-table artillery barrages to arrive over the

battlefield (not sure if the ECC battles featured off-table artillery 
though), I've so far seen very few FireFights that lasted longer than 5 
rounds. Yes, it is *possible* to get them, but in my experience
one-sided 
"direct-fire" FireFights usually end after 1-2 rounds as the losing side

pops smoke/goes into cover as quickly as possible; and since units that
are 
already involved in a FireFight can't force new units to join in, a 
FireFight ends automatically once one side has withdrawn all units from
it. 
If the fight is more even it can last longer, but usually not much.

* It would be fairly easy for the inactive side to circumvent such a 
FireFight length limit by leaving the FireFight "at the last moment" and

almost immediately start a new FireFight as the active units continue
their 
activation. (If OTOH the *active* units try this, they lose the rest of 
their activation.)

 >Using unit quality to determine your base firing dice doesn't seem
 >right to either of us.  Should a green unit with high tech sighting
 >systems really be much worse than an elite unit with iron sights?

As John pointed out your example is a bit exaggerated, but aside from
that: 
all tankers with actual combat experience that I've talked or listened
to 
agree that crew quality and training is far more important than the fire

control equipment used. The biggest problem for Green crews isn't to
*hit* 
a target they've already detected (though that's a factor too), but
rather 
to *detect* that target in time to shoot at it; here the more
experienced 
units have a huge advantage.

BTW John, "iron sights" could be rated as either "Primitive" or
"Obsolete" 
in DS3 depending on what type of gun mount it uses. Unstabilized guns
would 
definitely be Primitive; those with at least some form of stabilization 
would be Obsolete.

In case of a Systems Down hit the FCS would most likely damage the gun 
stabilization too and thus degrade all the way down to Primitive, ie. a
-2 
die shift if moving and -1 if stationary. Thanks for the idea, Grant -
I'll 
definitely put that in as an optional rule! :-)

 >We felt it would be better to buy a targeting system for the unit and
use
 >the quality of the unit to modify it.  Green down 1 dice, Blue even,
 >Orange up 1 dice.

<g> You have just described how the DS3 to-hit die types were originally

derived - if you apply the die shifts you suggest to the DS2 to-hit dice

table, you get exactly the same to-hit dice for the various combinations
of 
range, FCS quality and unit Quality as you get in DS3 :-)

The main reasons for changing the background logic from "FCS die shifted
by 
unit Quality" to "Quality Die shifted by FCS type" was that DS3 already 
uses the QD for most other tests already, and that the QD was already
well 
defined elsewhere in the rules so we could get rid of DS2's FCS die
table...

Later,

Oerjan
oerjan.ariander@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry

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